CoAS Accomplishments in Brief
January 8, 2020
We are pleased to recognize the recent grants, publications, presentations, awards and honors of the members of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Appointments
Eric Brewe, PhD, associate professor of physics, was elected to the chair line of the American Physical Society (APS) Forum on Education (FEd) — a four-year commitment that will lead to the chair role in 2022. The FEd is a 4,500-member group within the APS that focuses on promoting education in physics.
Mimi Sheller, PhD, professor of sociology and director of Center of Mobilites Research and Policy, joined the editorial board of the journal Mobilities and Humanities and was interviewed its first issues. She also joined the newly formed Asian Mobilities Research Network.
Honors and Awards
Drexel’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students was recognized with the 2019 Distinguished Chapter Award from the SPS national office within the American Institute of Physics.
Kelsey Clark, PhD student in psychology, received the David H. Barlow Poster Award for Research Excellence from the Renfrew Center at the 2019 Renfrew Center Foundation Conference. This award is presented to an early-career professional with the most outstanding poster submission. A member of the WELL Center, Clark presented “Clients and Clinicians Facing Fears: Exposure Therapy for Eating Disorders.”
Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences became a member of the National Humanities Alliance, a nationwide coalition of organizations advocating for the humanities on campuses, in communities, and on Capitol Hill.
Kelly Joyce, PhD, professor of sociology and of science, technology and society, was invited to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility for a three-year term starting February 2020.
John Kounios, PhD, professor of psychology, and his research were featured in a French documentary on the brain, broadcast on PLANETE+ and MY CANAL in France and Canada.
Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, PhD, associate professor of physics, was featured in the Symmetry magazine article “Get to Know 10 Early-Career Experimentalists.”
Emmanuel Koku, PhD, professor of sociology, was appointed a member of the 2019-2020 SSHRC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships selection committee.
Steve Sclafani, PhD candidate in physics, is the first person from Drexel to go to South Pole. He conducted neutrino research at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica.
Jillian Tessier, PhD student in clinical psychology, was awarded the inaugural Leonard Diller Dissertation Award in Neurorehabilitation by the Foundation for Rehabilitation Psychology.
Presentations
Mimi Sheller, PhD, professor of sociology and director of Center of Mobilites Research and Policy, delivered the keynote speech at a workshop on mobility justice organized by the Feminist Research Institute at UC Davis; a lecture on the relationship between climate change and migration, along with the concept of “mobility justice,” at Swarthmore College; and an invited lecture at the Institute for Mobilities & Humanities at Konkuk University in Seoul, where they also launched the Korean translation of her book, “Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes.”
Publications
David DeMatteo, JD, PhD, associate professor of psychology and law, Jaymes Fairfax-Columbo, JD, PhD, clinical psychology and law ’19, and Alisha Desai, PhD clinical psychology ’21, co-authored the book “Becoming a Forensic Psychologist,” Routledge.
Christian Hunold, PhD, professor of politics and of science, technology and society, published four papers on urban human-wildlife coexistence in 2019. One set of papers (“Green Infrastructure and Urban Wildlife: Toward a Politics of Sight,” published in Humanimalia, and Urban Greening and Human-Wildlife Relations in Philadelphia: From Animal Control to Multispecies Coexistence?, in Environmental Values) takes municipal investment in green infrastructure, and the (un)intentional creation of wildlife habitat this entails, as the point of departure for a philosophical and policy-oriented inquiry into the changing relationship between humans and wild animals who share urban spaces. Are cities teeming with wild animals also cities for wild animals, in the sense that cities are striving to create quality habitat for people as well as for animals?
A second set of papers, co-authored with Teresa Lloro, PhD, of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, takes a look at the shifting contours of this urban/wild divide through the lens of urban dwellers’ relationship with urban coyotes (There Goes the Neighborhood: Urban Coyotes and the Politics of Wildlife, published in Journal of Urban Affairs, and The Public Pedagogy of Neighborhood Facebook Communities: Negotiating Relations with Urban Coyotes, in Environmental Education Research). The papers draw on relational methodologies pioneered in human-animal studies, such as multispecies ethnography, to investigate how residents of two cities where coyotes are relative newcomers — Philadelphia, PA and Chino/Chino Hills, CA — defend, question, and modify traditional conceptions of cities as spaces intended to satisfy primarily human needs.
Jason Orne, PhD, assistant professor of sociology and James Gall, MS science, technology and society, published “Converting, Monitoring, and Policing PrEP Citizenship: Biosexual Citizenship and the PrEP Surveillance Regime” in the journal Surveillance and Society.
Grants
Danielle Kreeger, PhD, associate research professor in biodiversity, earth and environmental science, and Roger Thomas, operations manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences, received a $89K Sea Grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for their project “Innovative Restoration Aquaculture of Freshwater Mussels in the Tidal Freshwater Zone of the Delaware Estuary Watershed for Water Quality Improvement,” which will be managed by the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium. The goal of this study will be to develop and test new aquaculture methods that increase survivorship of mussels propagated at Philadelphia’s hatchery and relocated into nearby streams to restore historic mussel populations.
Karen Nulton, PhD, teaching professor of English, was awarded a $7,250 grant from the Office of the Provost and the Steinbright Career Development center for research co-op funding during the spring/summer cycle.
Paakh Srivastavai, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the WELL Center, was awarded a $50K Cotswold Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for her project, “The BODY+ Study: Using Just-In-Time, Adaptive Interventions to Address Body Dissatisfaction in Bulimia Nervosa.” The fellowship is intended to foster the career development of Drexel University postdoctoral researchers who are pursuing a career in academic research, and awarded in recognition of outstanding scientific record and promise of productive scholarship.