October 7, 2022

We are pleased to recognize the recent grants, publications, presentations, awards and honors of the members of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Awards & Honors

Karen Nulton, PhD, teaching professor of English, has been named a Fulbright Specialist to Costa Rica during the upcoming winter term. Karen will work and consult with the Asociación Conservacionista de Monteverde (Monteverde Conservation League) in the areas of work-integrated learning, narrative research techniques and connecting with international research partners.  

Clinical psychology doctoral student Emily Presseller (mentored by Adrienne Juarascio, PhD, assistant professor of psychology) was the recipient of an F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for her project titled “Using Wearable Passive Sensing to Predict Engagement in Binge Eating in Response to Negative Affect: A Multimethod Investigation of Predictive Utility, Feasibility, and Acceptability.” 

Feeling Medicine: How the Pelvic Exam Shapes Medical Training, a book by Assistant Professor of Sociology Kelly Underman, PhD, received an honorable mention for best publication from the ASA section on bodies and embodiment. 

Clinical psychology doctoral student Megan Wilkinson (mentored by Adrienne Juarascio, PhD, assistant professor of psychology) was the recipient of an F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for her project titled “An experimental study of the effects of alcohol intake on subsequent binge eating among adults with clinically-significant binge eating.”

Grants

Felice Elefant, PhD, professor of biology, received notice as principal investigator of a $1,908,990 award from the NIH National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS) for the competitive renewal of her R01 grant entitled “Mechanisms underlying Tip60 HAT action in neuroprotection of cognitive function.” 

Nancy Lee, PhD, associate professor of psychology, was awarded an administrative supplement to her NIH grant, “Executive dysfunction as a treatment target for DS clinical trials: An evaluation of its real-world and neural correlates,” to extend the parent grant’s goal of evaluating the real-world correlates of executive function via the inclusion of two supplemental aims. The aims involve (1) examining executive function links with work readiness, a complementary and continuous metric of vocational potential independent of broader and variable external factors influencing employment for individuals with Down syndrome; and (2) identifying potential confounding contextual/environmental factors that are external to the individual and likely to modify or obscure relations between executive dysfunction and vocational outcomes. The proposed research has increased potential to inform intervention development that improves quality of life for adults with Down syndrome. 

Publications

Mary Ebeling, PhD, associate professor of sociology, published a book, Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance, via University of California Press. Ebeling also published a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its implications regarding the criminalization of health data. 

Evan Forman, PhD, professor of psychology, WELL Center graduate students Michael Berry, Christina Chywl, Hannah Dart and Jasmine Sun and research assistant Abigail Metzler published "Associations between behavior change technique clusters and weight loss outcomes of automated digital interventions: a systematic review and meta-regression" in Health Psychology Review.  

Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, coauthored a book review of Julie C. Keller’s Milking in the Shadows with Kyle McDonald '22, BS sociology, that was published in the rural sociology subfield journal Agriculture and Human Values. The review emerged from an independent study they completed together in winter 2021–22.  

Chemistry graduate student Andrew Lindsay and Associate Professor of Chemistry Ezra Wood, PhD, published "Comparison of Two Photolytic Calibration Methods for Nitrous Acid" in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. 

Don Riggs, PhD, teaching professor of English, published a review of Lou Iovino’s novel Skybound in Future Fire.  

Scott Stein, MFA, teaching professor of English and director of Drexel Publishing Group, published a novel, The Great American Betrayal, via Tiny Fox Press. The Great American Betrayal is a sequel to Stein’s last novel, The Great American Deception, and has been named one of the best comedy books of 2022 by Vulture. 

Kelly Underman, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, published an article with colleagues including medical sociology minor Merlin Kochunilathil, “Online student culture as site for negotiating assessment in medical education,” in Social Science & Medicine. Underman also recently published an article, “The Social Transmission of Bodily Knowledge,” in Body and Society. 

K. Shwetketu Virbhadra, PhD, instructor of mathematics, published a paper, "Distortions of images of Schwarzschild lensing," in leading journal Physical Review D. The seminal results of this paper are likely to have important implications for the next generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) project. 

Eric Zillmer, PsyD, professor of neuropsychology, edited the book Military Psychology: Clinical and Operational Applications. 

Presentations

Mary Ebeling, PhD, associate professor of sociology, gave a keynote at the symposium Prediction, Power and the Politics of Health Data in the Department of Public Health at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.   

Adrienne Juarascio, PhD, assistant professor of psychology, hosted the 28th Annual Meeting of the Eating Disorder Research Society (EDRS). EDRS is an international organization of researchers in the field of eating disorders interested in anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder and obesity. WELL Center doctoral students Elizabeth Lampe, Emily Presseller and Claire Trainor each presented at the meeting.

Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, spoke on her research in an episode of the Drexel Pennoni Honors College podcast, “Pop, the Question.” 

Associate Professor of Spanish Mariadelaluz Matus-Mendoza, PhD, will present her paper "Framing Virtual Exchanges within Gen Z’s Interests and a Pursuit of a Global Citizenship Approach to Some World Challenges" at the fourth International Virtual Exchange Conference at CEU Cardenal Herrera University in Valencia, Spain on October 26–28. 

Alexis Wiley, BS Environmental Science '22, creator and instructor of the community-based learning course "Lessons of Da Land: Food Sovereignty and Land Justice in Black Philadelphia," was a keynote speaker at Drexel University’s Convocation ceremony.