Accolades

Jonathan Rubin elected fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Jonathan Rubin, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, was recently elected a fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Rubin, one of 28 new fellows, was recognized for his contributions to mathematical neuroscience, mathematical biology and dynamical systems theory.

Rubin majored in mathematics as an undergraduate at The College of William and Mary and received his PhD in applied mathematics from Brown University in 1996. He was a Zassenhaus Assistant Professor and then a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mathematics at The Ohio State University before joining the Pitt mathematics faculty in 2000. 

In addition to his mathematics position, he is a Center for Neuroscience at University of Pittsburgh Graduate Training faculty member, a member of the Center for the Basis of Neural Cognition, an affiliate of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a visiting professor in computational biology. Fourteen students have completed their Ph.D.s at Pitt under Rubin’s supervision or co-supervision. He has also mentored eight postdoctoral fellows.

Kinloch and Feingold selected for American Council on Education Fellowship

Dean of the School of Education Valerie Kinloch and Executive Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Public Health Eleanor Feingold were both named fellows in the American Council on Education’s (ACE) 2021-22 class.

The ACE Fellows Program is the longest-running, cohort-based higher education leadership development program in the United States. Many of its alumni are now university presidents and provosts.

Acceptance into the ACE Fellows Program is extremely competitive at the national level. The 2021-22 cohort has 52 college and university leaders.

The ACE Fellowship Program is distinctive for its mentorship model. The fellowship combines retreats, interactive learning opportunities, visits to campuses and other higher education-related organizations and a placement experience at another higher education institution. It is designed to condense years of on-the-job experience and skills development into a single year.

During the placement experience, ACE fellows will select a university president to serve as their mentor. The fellows will observe and work with the president and other senior officers at their host institution, attend decision-making meetings, and focus on issues of interest.

Jeremy Levy leads research to create one-dimensional lattice for electrons

A recently published paper in Nature Physics by a research group led by Jeremy Levy, distinguished professor of condensed matter physics at the University of Pittsburgh and founding director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, describes how the Kronig-Penney model is reproduced within a programmable oxide material. 

The Kronig-Penney model, introduced in 1931 by Ralph Kronig and William Penney, shaped the understanding of semiconductors, metals and insulators—the materials that are used to create computers and many other technologies.

The lead author, Megan Briggeman, used an atomic force microscope in a manner they describe as analogous to an Etch-A-Sketch toy, and created an artificial one-dimensional lattice of buckets for electrons that repeats every 10 nanometers. In real materials, the buckets are formed from individual atoms spaced from one another by a fraction of a nanometer. 

Briggeman found that electrons placed into this artificial lattice interact in unexpected ways, and in some sense behave as though the charge carriers were fractions of an electron. The experimentally observed behavior, partly explained by theory, extends far beyond the simple model of Kronig and Penney.  In contrast to the Kronig-Penney model, the real system contains hundreds of electrons, which interact in complex ways that give rise to the observed behavior. 

The research is part of a larger effort to produce, through quantum simulation, new electronic states of matter which could be helpful in developing future quantum technologies like quantum computers.

Other researchers involved in the research are Hyungwoo Lee, Jung-Woo Lee and Ki-Tae Eom at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, François Damanet, Elliott Mansfield, and Andrew Daley at the University of Strathclyde, and Jianan Li, Mengchen Huang, and Patrick Irvin at the University of Pittsburgh.  The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Air Force of Office of Scientific Research and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK).

Doris Rubio receives diversity and inclusion award

Doris Rubio, received the 2021 Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Award for Contributing to the Diversity and Inclusiveness of the Translational Workforce. ACTS presents its annual Translational Science Awards to recognize investigators for their outstanding contributions to the clinical research and translational science field.

Rubio has been committed to the mentorship and development of faculty of color and women in science in her role as assistant vice chancellor for clinical research education and training for the health sciences and director of the Institute for Clinical Research Education. With the goal of addressing the limited number of people who are underrepresented in science, she started the LEADS (Leading Emerging and Diverse Scientists to Success) program at Pitt. Additionally, she has a U01 funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Diversity Program Consortium to test an intervention for underrepresented biomedical researchers to help launch their research careers. Among other honors, she recently received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award given her work on diversifying the workforce.

“These awards reflect the outstanding contributions of our community of clinical and translational scientists, and their enduring commitment to healing and to the health of the world,” said ACTS President Christopher Lindsell.

Lisa Garland recognized by National Association of African Americans in Human Resources

The Office of Human Resources’ Lisa Garland was recently recognized for her efforts as a person of color breaking glass ceilings in the modern workplace by the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources, Pittsburgh chapter.

As Human Resources' director of talent acquisition, Garland oversees hiring and onboarding for more than 8,000 staff positions across the University.

She was previously recognized as a 2012 New Pittsburgh Courier 50 Women of Excellence.

Kay Brummond wins award for encouraging women into chemical sciences

Kay Brummond, associate dean for faculty in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and professor in the Department of Chemistry, is the recipient of the 2021 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.

In particular, ACS recognized Brummond “for serving as a pathfinder, an agent of change and mentor to women at all stages of their careers in the chemical sciences.”

In articulating to the ACS leadership her goals for the next decade, Brummond said, “I hope to prepare the next generation of chemists with practical skills in synthetic, organic and computational chemistries to thrive in highly collaborative and team-oriented environments. As an active researcher and academic leader, I hope to close diversity, equality and inclusion gaps in the sciences.”

Brummond’s scholarly endeavors have been honored with awards including the 2015 ACS Pittsburgh Award, the 2003 Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award, the 2007 ACS Akron Section Award, the 2007 Carnegie Science Center Emerging Female Scientist Award and the 2005 Johnson & Johnson Focused Giving Award. She was named the 2016 Diversity Catalyst Lecturer by the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity in recognition of her efforts to enhance their departmental climate for diversity and inclusion through inclusive policies, procedures and actions. She has been recognized in Chemical & Engineering News for her efforts to increase the representation of women among chemistry faculty at Ph.D.-granting universities. Brummond became associate dean of faculty of the Dietrich School in 2017. 

Ming-Te Wang garners two research excellence awards

Ming-Te Wang, assistant professor of psychology in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and professor of education and research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, has been awarded the Distinguished Research Award for Human Development and Learning from the American Educational Research Association. The award recognizes scholars who strive to improve the educational process through scholarly inquiry and dissemination of research results. Wang received the award for a series of three meta-analytic articles on parental ethnic-racial socialization and youth of color’s developmental outcomes.  

Wang is also the recipient of the 2021 Society for Social Work and Research Excellence in Research Award. The award recognizes social work research that advances knowledge with direct applications to practice, policy and the resolution of social problems. The award was granted for Wang’s publication “Parental Ethnic-Racial Socialization Practices and the Construction of Children of Color’s Ethnic-Racial Identity: A Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis.”

Wang’s research on racialized experiences of children of color has also been recently recognized by a Heinz Endowment grant. In this work, Wang, with co-principal investigator James Huguley, interim director of the Center on Race and Social Problems and assistant professor in the School of Social Work, received a $500,000 grant from the Heinz Endowments. The Heinz grant will support continued work on a school discipline program Wang and Huguley have implemented in the Woodland Hills Intermediate School, the Just Discipline project. Just Discipline builds on research on racialized experiences in school contexts and is designed to reduce out-of-school suspensions. This is the third consecutive grant that Wang and Huguley have received from the Heinz Endowments, totaling $1 million. Wang and Huguley will work in collaboration with the Center on Race and Social Problems, the School of Education’s Motivation Center and the Woodland Hills School District in this research-to-practice partnership.  

School of Medicine awards Cynthia Kenyon highest honor

The Pitt School of Medicine recently presented its highest honor, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, to Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist whose research has redefined society's understanding of aging.

The Dickson Prize is awarded annually to an American biomedical researcher who has made significant, progressive contributions to medicine. The award consists of a specially commissioned medal, a $50,000 honorarium and an invitation to present the Dickson Prize Lecture on Pitt's campus. Kenyon is a professor emeritus in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the date of Kenyon’s lecture has not yet been determined.

“It is our honor to present Dr. Kenyon with the School of Medicine’s most prestigious award,” said Anantha Shekhar, Pitt’s senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of Medicine. “Undoubtedly, Dr. Kenyon has fundamentally shaped our understanding of aging biology. Her work to overturn long-held assumptions about the aging process and her discovery of molecular mechanisms that modulate aging demonstrate the exceptional and influential research that the Dickson Prize recognizes.”

Adriana Kovashka’s research aims to 'teach' computers object detection

Adriana Kovashka, assistant professor of computer science in Pitt's School of Computing and Information, recently received an National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop a framework to train computer vision models for the detection of objects from weak, naturally occurring supervision in the form of text or speech language and additional multimodal signals.

The framework considers dynamic settings, where humans interact with their visual environment and refer to the encountered objects, such as: “Carefully put the tomato plants in the ground,” and “Please put the phone down and come set the table,” as well as captions written for a human audience to complement an image, like news article captions.

The project will benefit society by exploring novel avenues for overcoming this challenge and reducing the need for expensive and potentially unnatural crowdsourced labels for training.

Maximilian Schuster receives award for research on campus climate

Maximilian Schuster, assistant professor of practice in the School of Education, was selected for the 2021 Excellence in Research Award by the NASPA Orientation, Retention and Transition Knowledge Community.

Schuster received the award for his article “‘An Experience Unlike Any Other’: The Experiences of First-Year Students with Minoritized Identities with Campus Climate During the 2016 Presidential Election,” which appeared in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education in June 2020.

NASPA’s research award recognizes exemplary research that practitioners can use to improve student services in the areas of orientation, transition and retention within higher education institutions.

“It’s an honor to be recognized with this distinction from NASPA, the leading professional association for student affairs,” says Schuster.

Schuster will be honored during the 2021 virtual NASPA Annual Conference, which is scheduled from March 17-21.

His award-winning paper examined a tumultuous time on college campuses across America: the 2016 presidential election.

Using a campus climate framework, the qualitative study reported on the experiences of 17 first-year students with minoritized identities amid this divisive political context. The students, who included people of color and LGBTQ+ students, were from an urban university within a battleground state.

The study found that students with minoritized identities experienced increased hostilities within this political context. To contend with this negativity, the students engaged in forms of activism. Their activism allowed them to rebuff the hostilities they were experiencing, raise awareness of their own identity and foster stronger peer connections. 

Schuster was previously selected for the 2019-20 NASPA Emerging Faculty Leader Academy. The one-year program is for early-career faculty in student affairs and higher education graduate programs. 

Karen Bursic wins Grant Award for best paper in the Engineering Economist

The Engineering Economist recently published an article by Karen Bursic, associate professor of industrial engineering and undergraduate program director at the Swanson School of Engineering, that evaluates a concept inventory to determine students’ learning in engineering economy courses. The article, “An Engineering Economy Concept Inventory,” was recently awarded the Grant Award, an award given annually by the Engineering Economy Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

“With all the changes in engineering education, like flipped classrooms or problem-based learning, it’s especially important to have an unbiased, targeted assessment tool to make sure students are learning important core concepts,” said Bursic. “The Engineering Economy Concept Inventory I have developed can help instructors understand whether the pedagogical changes they make to their course have been effective.”

Papers considered for the Grant Award are evaluated on originality, importance of the problem they address, logic and clarity, and adequacy of the proposed solution. The award includes a cash prize of $1,000.

Bursic will receive the award at the ASEE conference in Long Beach, California, on July 28, 2021.

Disability specialist Jurica receives IUP Impact award

Chad Jurica, disability specialist in the Office of Disability Resources and Services, recently received the Indiana University of Pennsylvania College of Education and Communications Impact Award.

The awards recognize College of Education and Communications alumni for their outstanding achievement in their profession, their engagement with IUP, and/or their leadership in their discipline or community.

Jurica was a member of the second graduating class from the IUP Disability Services program and was invited to be the commencement student speaker for his graduating class. Following graduation, he continued his education at IUP, focusing on Student Affairs in Higher Education. He has worked the past 11 years in a role of advising and disability support services.

In addition to his disability services responsibilities at the University of Pittsburgh, Jurica is very involved with Staff Council. He also sits on the board of Academic Success Advocates, a nonprofit organization supporting parents of children with special needs.

 

Wolfe and Gaskew named associate deans at Bradford

Angie Wolfe, who has spent much of her career working with and advocating for college students, has been promoted to new associate dean of student affairs and experiential learning at Pitt–Bradford. Tony Gaskew, professor of criminal justice, has been named the associate dean of academic affairs at Bradford.

Wolfe’s previous work at Pitt-Bradford includes serving as the director of leadership learning, service and advocacy and as the director of community engagement and the Harriett B. Wick Chapel. She also coordinated the Pitt-Bradford Academic Coaching and Tutoring Center.

She will continue as an active instructor in the Pitt-Bradford Freshmen Seminar Program, an instructor of yoga, and a weekly campus mindfulness meditation facilitator. She holds Master of Science in Education in community counseling from St. Bonaventure University and a Bachelor of Science in German and acting performance from Augustana College and Universität Passau.

In his role as associate dean, Gaskew will provide senior leadership in all matters related to the course curricula, which includes the scheduling of classes and instructor assignments, curriculum compliance, course evaluations, division and program reviews, and the development of new degree programs.

Gaskew has served as a faculty member at Pitt-Bradford since 2006. He is a Fulbright Hays Scholar, and has conducted critical ethnographic research in Africa and the Palestinian Territories.

United Way, Pitt partnership enhances regional database of community needs

United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh collaborated to add PA 211 Southwest data to the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC) open data portal in an effort to provide a better understanding about community needs in the region.

The WPRDC was created in 2015 and is managed by the Pitt Center for Urban and Social Research, in partnership with Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh. This new partnership adds the latest information from United Way’s 211 Counts dashboard directly to the WPRDC open data portal every day. The addition of 211’s data to the data already shared by the county’s 911 and city’s 311 systems provides a more comprehensive look at requests for services in the region.

“United Way's PA 211 Southwest’s partnership with WPRDC enhances their trusted database and provides an even greater centralized resource for information about the region," said Michele Sandoe, senior director of United Way's PA 211 Southwest. "Through this transparent sharing of up-to-date information, we are helping people find and use information to help their communities."

Over the last 10 years, United Way’s PA 211 Southwest has answered 1,102,843 requests for help (650,887 requests via call or text and 451,956 inquiries online). The top three needs across the region are consistently related to housing, utility assistance and access to food.

“Sharing the 211 data as open data enables people to start to look at service demand in context with other information. For example, people can now make a map of requests for food assistance by ZIP code and overlay that with information on grocery stores and food bank locations without first having to transcribe or scrape the data from the 211 dashboard,” said Robert Gradeck, project director for the WPRDC. “This is also a great opportunity for us to use highly relevant community level data in our efforts to build data literacy, and gives students and researchers another important dataset for research and teaching.”

If you or someone you know in the region needs help financially or with basic needs, contact PA 211 Southwest by dialing 2-1-1, texting your zip code to 898-211, visiting the PA 211 website, or accessing the web app.

Spring 2021 Pitt Cyber Accelerator grant recipients announced

Pitt Cyber announced the 2021 awardees for its Accelerator Grant program. The grants provide initial funding for novel and innovative multidisciplinary efforts that advance Pitt Cyber’s mission:  to bring the breadth of one of the world’s leading public research universities to bear on the critical questions of networks, data and algorithms, with a focus on the ever-changing gaps among law, policy and technology.

Influencing Detection through Multimodal Discourse and Vividness Analysis 

Aim: To pilot the methods and ideas for extracting or completing agendas, detecting concerns and emotions, and modeling different types of vividness. 

  • Adriana Kovashka, assistant professor, computer science, School of Computing and Information 

  • Diane Litman, professor, computer science, School of Computing and Information 

  • Rebecca Hwa, professor, computer science, School of Computing and Information 

  • Malihe Alikhani, assistant professor, computer science, School of Computing and Information  

  • Yu-Ru Lin, associate professor, informatics and networked systems, School of Computing and Information 

  • Tessa Provins, assistant professor, political science, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 

  • Jeffrey Cohn, professor, psychology, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 

The Pittsburgh Data Jam: Increasing Data Science Education in High Schools

Aim: To test the effectiveness of a high school data science curriculum.  

  • Judy Cameron, professor, psychiatry, School of Medicine 

  • Bryan Nelson, assistant instructor, statistics, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 

  • Thomas Akiva, associate professor, human health and development, School of Education  

Framework for Qualitative Research into Social Media and Misinformation:  A Relational/Ecosystemic Approach 

Aim: To develop protocols for conducting qualitative research into the dynamics of disinformation in social media spaces, ensuring that research is transparent, ethical and documented in ways that are consistent with data privacy as well as academic disciplinary standards. 

  • Lara Putnam, UCIS Research Professor of History, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 

  • Rosta Farzan, associate professor and associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, School of Computing and Information 

  • Mehr Latif, postdoctoral research associate, sociology, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 

Modeling the Effect of Disinformation on COVID-19 Vaccination Discourse in Online Social Networks

Aim: To investigate and model how disinformation propagates through online social networks and how it affects discourse and beliefs related to COVID-19 vaccination topics. 

  • Malihe Alikhani, assistant professor, computer science, School of Computing and Information 

  • Dmitriy Babichenko, clinical associate professor, informatics and networked systems, School of Computing and Information 

  • Kar-Hai Chu, associate professor, behavioral and community health sciences, Graduate School of Public Health 

  • Michael Colaresi, William S. Dietrich II Professor, political science, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences; Pitt Cyber research and academic director; affiliate scholar, Intelligent Systems Program 

  • Jason Colditz, research project manager, PhD candidate and instructor, Institute for Clinical Research Education, School of Medicine 

  • Beth Hoffman, graduate student researcher, Institute for Clinical Research Education, School of Medicine 

  • Patrick Healy, PhD candidate, School of Computing and Information 

  • Jaime Sidani, assistant professor, general internal medicine, School of Medicine 

Business & Operations names Lancaster and Roadman to leadership roles

Victoria Lancaster and Rebecca Roadman have recently been named to leadership roles in Pitt’s Business & Operations.

Lancaster, director of HR shared services, will begin as assistant vice chancellor for operational excellence on April 1. In her new role, Lancaster is responsible for providing leadership and enhancing the performance of the B&O units, supporting the senior vice chancellor and the University as a whole, and maximizing organizational and overall workforce efficiency to align with the University’s strategic objectives.

Roadman, senior project manager in the Office of Human Resources, is now chief of staff to the senior vice chancellor of B&O, effective March 8. In her new role, she is responsible for mobilizing and working with unit leaders in B&O across the University and externally to connect, promote and make actionable the senior vice chancellor’s strategic and operational priorities. Roadman will provide essential leadership to develop employees and teams’ synergies across units and functions.

Pitt consortium to research pulmonary fibrosis treatments

The schools of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and Yale will lead a consortium to accelerate research into understanding and treatments of pulmonary fibrosis (PF). Pitt’s School of Medicine will receive a grant to develop and refine a new model to better understand the progression of PF and to identify possible therapies.

PF is a chronic, degenerative lung disease that causes lung tissue to become damaged and scarred, making it difficult for oxygen to enter the bloodstream. Each year, 40,000 Americans die from PF, yet very little is known about the mechanisms of the disease.

Melanie Königshoff, visiting professor of medicine at Pitt, is the lead investigator of the consortium. “I wanted to understand how diseased lungs can look so different from healthy lungs,” Königshoff said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the need for a deeper understanding of and more effective therapies for chronic lung conditions. As more people recover from COVID-19, therapies for living with long-term effects of lung diseases have become increasingly important.

Peggy Liu receives Society of Consumer Psychology Early Career Award

Peggy Liu, Ben L. Fryrear Faculty Fellow and assistant professor of marketing in the Katz Graduate School of Business, has received the Society of Consumer Psychology (SCP) 2021 Early Career Award.

The award “recognizes significant scientific contributions to consumer psychology by a scholar whose PhD was obtained in 2012 or later and emerging scholars whose research shows promise in shaping the field of consumer psychology.” Selection is based on nominations received by the SCP.

Among other honors and awards, Liu, whose research expertise is in consumer behavior,  was selected as a 2021 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar and was named among the Poets & Quants 2020 Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors.

“Within the business school, we have not witnessed such rapid and prolific progress from any faculty member in his or her first four years,” said Arjang Assad, Henry E. Haller Jr. Dean of the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration. “Peggy’s research productivity is simply in a class of its own.”

Read more about Liu’s most recent award.

Dean Kinloch selected for American Council of Education Fellowship

Valerie Kinloch, dean of the School of Education, has been selected to join the 2021-22 class of the highly prestigious American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program.

The ACE Fellows Program is the longest-running, cohort-based higher education leadership development program in the United States. Many of its alumni are now university presidents and provosts.

“To be selected as an ACE Fellow is a tremendous honor, and I am looking forward to having an opportunity to engage, connect, and think with other higher education leaders and administrators across multiple institutions,” Kinloch said. “The fellowship experience will allow me to deepen my perspectives on, and approaches to, current, emerging, and ongoing institutional challenges facing higher education institutions in the country. My hope is to apply this knowledge to further strengthen administrative capacity, implement strategic and academic priorities, and enhance philanthropic engagements, especially with regards to our Pitt School of Education.”

Acceptance into the ACE Fellows Program is extremely competitive at the national level. The 2021-22 cohort has 52 college and university leaders. Eleanor Feingold, executive associate dean of the Graduate School of Public Health, was also selected from Pitt. 

Page B. Pennell named chair of Neurology

Page B. Pennell will serve as the next chair of the Department of Neurology in the School of Medicine, beginning July 1, 2021. She comes to Pitt from Harvard Medical School, where she serves as a professor and vice chair for academic affairs in the Department of Neurology, among other responsibilities.

Upon arriving in Pittsburgh, Pennell will work to continue advancing the neurology department’s mission, which is to accelerate understanding of and treatments for many neurological disorders and conditions, including ischemic stroke, traumatic brain injury and epilepsy.

Pennell has focused her research to date on patients with epilepsy. She has examined, among other topics, maternal and fetal outcomes of women with epilepsy, pharmacokinetic changes of anti-seizure medications concerning pregnancy and exogenous hormones, and the effects of neuroactive steroids on seizure provocation. 

Read Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine Anantha Shekhar’s full message announcing Pennell’s appointment.