Student and Faculty Highlights
Art, Art History, & Visual Studies
Meagan Green (seventh-year doctoral student) was the recipient of the 2009-2010 Fulbright Institute of International Education Research Grant–Italy for her on-site and archival research in Verona, Italy. She will be using this fellowship to complete her dissertation, “Friars in the City: Mendicant Architecture and Pious Practices in Medieval Verona (c. 1220-c. 1375).”
Neil McWilliam (Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies) was awarded funding of $50,000 through the Provost’s annual Common Fund competition to support the interdisciplinary project, Lines of Attack: Conflicts in Caricature. The project will feature an exhibition of contemporary and historical graphic satire at the Nasher Museum of Art in Spring 2010; the exhibition was developed by undergraduate seniors and graduate students at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Business Administration
Will Mitchell (J. Rex Fuqua Professor of International Management) received the Irwin Outstanding Educator Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management, a career award for contributions to Ph.D. education and junior faculty development.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Krishnendu Chakrabarty (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering) has been appointed editor-in-chief of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) Design & Test of Computers journal for the 2010-2011 term.
Chris Dwyer and Adrienne Stiff-Roberts (Assistant Professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering) each received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given to scientists by the U.S. Government. These awards are intended to recognize young investigators and support them in the early stages of their independent research careers.
Mark Andrew Ewing (third-year doctoral student) was awarded first prize and $15,000 in the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges for Engineering video and essay contest in March 2009. Andy’s graduate advisor is April Brown, John Cocke Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Research in the Pratt School of Engineering.
Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Brian Mann (Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering in Materials Science) has developed a theory framework that enables broadband energy harvesting with inertial generators. These devices convert environmental disturbances into mechanical oscillations and then apply transduction methods to convert the vibratory energy into usable electrical energy.
Sam Stanton (third-year doctoral student) has developed a piezoelectric inertial generator that is capable of broadband energy harvesting. His broadband harvester could be used as a remote power source that would replace batteries in many applications.
Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Jen-Tsan Ashley Chi (Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology) was selected as a 2009 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases for his research on the role of human microRNAs in malaria. Dr. Chi also received a grant for this research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Music
Chia-Yu Hsu (seventh-year doctoral student in Composition) received the Stern Dissertation Fellowship for work on her Ph.D. thesis, entitled Fan Jing (Folk Images) for orchestra. One portion, Feng Nian Ji (Harvest Festival) was featured at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music on August 10, under the direction of Marin Alsop. Chia-Yu has also received an artist residency this summer at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her piece, Hard Roads in Shu, was performed by the Charlotte Civic Orchestra in May as the first prize winner of the Charlotte Civic Orchestra Composer Competition.
Jennifer Woodruff (eighth-year doctoral student in Musicology) was named a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. The Newcombe Fellowship, a highly competitive national award, is given by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation to support 12 months of work on a dissertation in the humanities or social sciences that addresses questions of religious or ethical value. Jenny’s dissertation title is “Learning to Listen, Learning to Be: African-American Girls and Hip Hop in Durham, NC.”
John Supko (Assistant Professor of Composition) will be joining the Music Department beginning Fall 2009. He comes to us after completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University.
Psychology and Neuroscience
Crystal Reeck (second-year doctoral student) has received a graduate fellowship award from the National Science Foundation. In the laboratory of Kevin LaBar, she is studying inhibitory control processes in emotional memory.
Katie Flanagan (third-year doctoral student) will receive the 2009 Hollingworth Award from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) at an annual awards ceremony in November as part of NAGC’s 56th Annual Convention in in St. Louis, Missouri.
Ashley Allen (fourth-year doctoral student) has been awarded a National Research Service Award, a two-year fellowship from the National Institute on Aging for her study, “Self-compassion and Well-being in the Elderly.”
Religion
Christine Luckritz Marquis (fifth-year doctoral student) won one of Duke’s Julian Price Fellowships for dissertation research and writing. Her proposed dissertation title is “Haunted Paradise: Remembering and Forgetting Among Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert.”
Eric Meyers (Bernice and Norton Lerner Professor of Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies) was honored by the by the Upper Galilee Regional Council with a lifetime achievement award for his forty years of archeological research in Galilee. He is editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, and co-author of the Cambridge Companion to the Bible.
Kyle Smith (sixth-year doctoral student) received a Dolores Liebmann Fellowship for dissertation research and writing. His dissertation is entitled “The Persian Persecution: Politics, Martyrdom, and Religious Identity in Late Ancient Syriac Christianity.”
Statistical Science
Jerry Reiter (Associate Professor of Statistical Science) and Ph.D. alumnus Saki Kinney created the first-ever public use file of U. S. business establishment data using Bayesian simulation techniques. Created with support from the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of the Census, the file provides researchers and policy analysts all over the world with unfettered access to U. S. business data, enabling investigations of, for example, job creation and destruction, patterns in annual payroll by industry sector, and trends in establishment life times.
Certificate in Teaching College Biology
Julie Reynolds is the new director of the Certificate in Teaching College Biology program. As a member of the biology faculty, Julie has established an active research program focused on effective pedagogies that promote science literacy. She was also chosen to participate in the American Society for Microbiology’s 2009 Biology Scholars Research Residency Program and was recently elected to be chair of the Ecological Society of America’s education section.
Certificate in Women’s Studies
Madhumita Lahiri (sixth-year doctoral student, English) and Netta VanVliet (eighth-year doctoral student, Cultural Anthropology) are the recipients of the 2009–2010 Dissertation Fellowships in Women’s Studies.
Fiona Barnett (seventh-year doctoral student, Literature) and China Medel (third-year doctoral student, Literature) have been chosen to lead this year’s Graduate Scholars Colloquium: interdisciplinary scholars.