Last term, Drexel University professors were recognized for their scholarly research and prolific academic and professional contributions. This update offers a snapshot of activity courtesy of the Office of the Provost. 

Sponsored Research

Aleskandra Sarcevic, PhD, professor of information science in the College of Computing & Informatics, was awarded a Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with research collaborators from Children’s National Research Institute and Rutgers University. The project, titled “NIH/NBIB R56: Development of a Video-Based Personal Protective Equipment Monitoring System,” aims to integrate video-based approaches and user-centered design to develop a system for automatically monitoring the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in settings at high risk for infection transmission.

Joke Bradt, PhD, professor in the Department of Creative Arts Therapies in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, received a $2.3 million grant from the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to build the Music4Pain Network. The network will focus on bringing researchers from different fields together to advance understanding of underlying mechanisms related to music and pain as well as identify patients for whom music-based interventions, including music therapy, would be an effective treatment.

Jennifer Nasser, PhD, associate professor of nutrition sciences and director of the PhD program in nutrition sciences in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, and Jessica Barson, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy in the College of Medicine, received a $250,000 grant from Pfizer Inc. to study the effect of genetic predisposition to obesity on protein-induced satiety.

C. Clare Strange, PhD, assistant research professor of criminology and justice studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a $730,834 award from the Department of Justice titled “A Statewide Mixed-methods Evaluation of Pennsylvania’s 8th Edition Sentencing Guidelines and their Impacts on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes.” This five-year project is funded under the National Institute of Justice W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship Program.

Zhiwei Chen, PhD, assistant professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering, was awarded an NSF Rapid Response Research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the effect that collapse and reconstruction of a section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia has had on commuters’ attitudes toward public transportation. Using ridership data from SEPTA and GPS requests collected from location service providers, along with surveys of people using the trains and buses, Chen and his students hope to understand whether the incident drew more people to public transportation and if they stuck with it after the road reopened.

Steven May, PhD, professor and department head of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering, received a three-year, $900,000 grant from the Department of Energy for a project designed to control magnetism in quantum material heterostructures. The magnetic properties of quantum materials are of central importance for understanding fundamental aspects of their electronic structure and spin interactions, as well as for potential applications in microelectronics and quantum information systems.

Joshua Agar, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in the College of Engineering, is the lead in securing an NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Grant for the development of a Platform for Accessible Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (DISE). This was awarded alongside co-PIs Shannon Capps, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering; Matthew Stamm, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering; Jane Greenberg, PhD, Alice B. Kroeger Professor and director of the Metadata Research Centerin the College of Computing & Informatics; and Linh Ngo, director of high-performance computing in the Office of Research & Innovation. DISE will be a system for data management, sharing and analysis that allows for automatic data collection and curation, instant access for computational analysis and research result sharing for reproducibility.

Ahmad Najafi, PhD, PC Chou Assistant Professor in mechanical engineering and mechanics and civil, architectural and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering, is part of a team supporting researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder on a DARPA-sponsored project, “Reinforced Concrete Repair by an Evolving Visualized Internal Vascular Ecosystem (RC-REVIVE).” This multi-university project aims to engineer a bio-inspired healing vasculature that remediates mechanisms of degradation and maintains such bio-inspired function to extend the service life of reinforced concrete structures.

Mary Ann Comunale, EdD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the Center for Scientific Communications and Outreach in the College of Medicine, was awarded a one-year, $224,908 award from the NIH for her project “Immune Modulation During Acute Lyme Disease Infection as the Result of Aberrant Immunoglobulin Glycosylation.”

Tatiana Bezdudnaya, PhD, research assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy in the College of Medicine, received a one-year, $216,250 National Institutes of Health grant for her project “Respiratory Motor Control in the Intact and Injured Spinal Cord.”

The Dana and David Dornsife School of Public Health received a $20 million award to be disbursed over five years from the NIH Common Fund through the agency’s Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS) program to study health equity solutions nationwide. Drexel will serve as the coordination center on the national initiative, working in partnership with the University of New Mexico College of Population Health and the data and social-science organization Mathematica. The ComPASS Coordinating Center at Drexel will be led by principal investigators from the Dornsife School of Public Health: Amy Carroll-Scott, PhD, associate professor and chair of community health and prevention, and Jan M. Eberth, PhD, professor and chair of health management and policy.

Ayanna Allen-Handy, PhD, associate professor and department chair of policy, organization and leadership in the School of Education, received a $1 million NSF Civic Innovation grant to support her Placekeeping Project with Second Story Collective. The Placekeeping Project is an innovative multi-generational cohousing model that uses the arts to cohere diverse communities and preserve homeownership for families in the Village Square on Haverford in Mantua.

Jacqueline Genovesi, PhD, research professor in the School of Education and executive director of the Center for STEAM Equity in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and Toni May, PhD, associate professor in the School of Education, received a NIH grant to support Seeds to STEM, a program through the Academy of Natural Sciences that works with educators or providers, families and children ages 3–5 to promote early science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills, literacy and nutrition to help prepare children for kindergarten.

Glen Muschio, associate professor of digital media, and Brent White, assistant teaching professor of music, both in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, were jointly awarded a $6,500 Creative Communities grant by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. The grant supports work toward a project to commemorate and celebrate Philadelphia’s historic Black Bottom neighborhood. Muschio has led STAR Scholars in advanced research, cultural anthropology and development of digital reconstructions of Black Bottom landmarks.

Agus Surachman, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology in the Dornsife School of Public Health and a secondary appointment in nursing in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, and other co-principal investigators received $50,000 in pilot funding from Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center — Drexel University Consortium for research on the financial hardships, daily stress processes and inflammation among cancer survivors.

Mariana Lazo, MD, PhD, associate research professor of community health and prevention in the Urban Health Collaborative in the Dornsife School of Public Health, and her team received a NIH R01 grant to address large and sustained liver disease disparities. The team includes research partners at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA.

Major Gifts, Honors and Recognition

Gregory Hislop, PhD, professor of information science in the College of Computing & Informatics, is the recipient of the 2023 Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education. The award honors an individual who has demonstrated outstanding contributions to software engineering education and training, as well as software engineering professionalism.

Sharrona Pearl, PhD, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Health Administration in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, served as the Kingfisher Institute for Liberal Arts and Professions Visiting Fellow at Creighton University. She offered a keynote lecture and public talk as part of her visit.

Kristine A. Mulhorn, PhD, professor and chair of health administration in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, was inducted into the Fellowship of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Fellows are recognized for their work to improve medical education, scientific medicine and the public’s health.

Dov Jaron, PhD, professor emeritus and Calhoun Distinguished Professor of Engineering in Medicine in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, was inducted into the Fellowship of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Steven May, PhD, professor and department head of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) for “significant contributions to the understanding of structural, electronic and magnetic properties in complex oxide heterostructures.”

Masoud Soroush, PhD, professor of chemical and biological engineering in the College of Engineering, was awarded the 2023 Excellence in Process Development Research Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, sponsored by Pfizer, Inc. Soroush was recognized for his “extraordinary contribution to the field of process development.”

Jill Wenderott, PhD, Anne Stevens Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering, has been selected for the Reciprocal Exchange component of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. In this program, Wenderott is implementing a project co-designed with Cecilia China, PhD, of Tanzania to expand the use of low-cost physics and materials science lab kits for K-12 students in regions in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Kareem Edouard, PhD, assistant professor in the School of Education, was honored by Zeno as their 2023 Gamechanger of the Year. Zeno is an organization whose mission is to spark joy and inspire a love of math in young children and families through racial equity, family engagement, and play, all centered in the experiences of communities of color.

Dave DeMatteo, JD, PhD, professor of psychological and brain sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of law in the Thomas R. Kline School of Law, has been appointed editor-in-chief of Law and Human Behavior, the leading interdisciplinary journal in psychology and law.