Faculty Highlights: Recent Awards and Grants

Last term, Drexel University faculty members 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 

Margaret Finley, PhD, associate professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation sciences and interim chair, and Laura Baehr, DPT, PhD, assistant professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation sciences, both from the College of Nursing and Health Professions, received a $3.2 million Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Research Program Clinical Trial Award from the U.S. Department of Defense. Funded through a partnering principal investigator mechanism, this award supports collaborative leadership by a senior (Finley: $2 million) and early-career investigator (Baehr: $1.2 million), each managing independent budgets and research teams. This randomized controlled trial will evaluate the effectiveness of tele-exercise to promote empowered movement in individuals with SCI through an online group exercise program, compared to a self-guided video library, to improve physical activity, exercise beliefs, quality of life, pain, sleep and wellbeing.

Principal Investigator (PI) Rikki Patton, PhD, research professor of family therapy in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, received $2.4 million from Health Resources & Services Administration to launch the Strengthening Healthcare through Interprofessional Networks and Education (SHINE) Program along with College of Nursing and Health Professions co-investigators. The co-investigators are Jessica Chou, PhD, assistant professor of counseling and family therapy; Stephanie Krauthamer Ewing, PhD, associate professor of counseling and family therapy; Kimberly Garcia, DNP, assistant clinical professor of nursing; Christian Jordal, PhD, associate clinical professor and chair of counseling and family therapy; Lauren Sponseller, PhD, professor of occupational therapy and chair; Phyllis Swint, PhD, assistant clinical professor of counseling and family therapy; Arun Ramakrishnan, PhD, director of research labs; and Andrea Tyszka, OTD, associate professor of occupational therapy. The SHINE program is a training initiative designed to strengthen the behavioral health workforce in the Philadelphia region through interprofessional collaboration and advanced training in youth suicide prevention and crisis management.

Ali Afify, PhD, assistant professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a notice of award from the Department of Defense for a grant entitled “2D Materials for Protection Against Mosquito-Borne Disease.”

Alexa Tompary, PhD, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a notice of award for a new five-year, $1,753,397 NINDS R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Zachary Klase, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at the College of Medicine, was awarded a one-year, $574,112 NIH grant for his project “Transcriptional Silencing of HIV by LTR Targeting RNAi.”

Alison Carey, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, and microbiology and immunology at the College of Medicine, received a one-year, $416,199 NIH grant for her project “Immunomodulatory Effects of Interferon Lambda on Infant Neutrophils.”

Adaobi Anakwe, PhD, assistant professor in the Dana and David Dornsife School of Public Health, was awarded a Changemakers in Family Planning training grant of $83,919 by the Society of Family Planning. This training grant will accelerate her career by supporting the development of a body of research that illuminates contraceptive decision-making processes among Black young adult men (and fathers) and enhances community-led strategies that increase their uptake of family planning interventions with attention to the systemic/structural facilitators and barriers to uptake.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant project led by Vera Lee, EdD, clinical professor and department chair of teaching learning and curriculum in the School of Education, introduced agriculture and food science to 22 high school teachers and guidance counselors. They learned about the many different career options in the food industry and developed lesson plans and resources that they can apply in their schools this fall.

Catherine von Reyn, PhD, associate professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, received a five-year, $577,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for the project titled, “BIO-AL: Dendritic Democracy in Drosophila Connectomes.”

Vikas Bhandawat, PhD, associate professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, received a one-year, $458,000 National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders grant for the project titled, “The Circuit Logic of Modulation of Locomotion by Odors.”

Joshua Snyder, PhD, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in the College of Engineering, is co-PI on a new Department of Energy-funded research project aimed at making fuel cells more efficient, durable and affordable.

Christopher Li, PhD, professor of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering, received a three-year NSF grant for his project “Growing Polymer Crystalsomes under Dynamic Confinement. 

Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor in the  College of Engineering, along with colleagues in the Drexel Nanomaterials Institute, is embarking on a three-year, $5-million, multinational collaboration to produce MXene nanomaterials. The project, which is a collaboration with Kalifa University in the United Arab Emirates, the University of Padua in Italy and the Kyiv, Ukraine-based MXene manufacturing company Carbon-Ukraine, seeks to use the promising nanomaterial first discovered at Drexel to provide clean drinking water for arid areas of the world threatened by climate change and improve cell labeling and tracking technology for biomedical analysis.

Ioannis Savidis, PhD, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, will head Drexel’s partnership in a $10 million research and development effort led by Princeton University and backed by the National Semiconductor Technology Center to advance the use of artificial intelligence in designing microchips for next-generation wireless communication.

Major Gifts, Honors & Recognition

Clare Milner, PhD, associate professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation sciences in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, was elected as a fellow of the American Society of Biomechanics (ASB) and inducted at the ASB 2025 annual meeting.

Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, PhD, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been appointed by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to their elite Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Usha Sankar, PhD, associate teaching professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, was selected as a Case-Based Active Science Education (CASE) Fellow. This is a 10-month program that allows faculty fellows to build a teaching case study with mentorship. 

Linwood R. Haith Jr., MD, professor and academic chair of the Department of Surgery and associate dean of external affairs in the College of Medicine, was awarded the American Burn Association’s President’s Leadership Award, which recognizes distinguished and exceptional service to the association and the burn care profession.

Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, MD, MEd, professor and academic chair of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology in the College of Medicine, is the 2025 recipient of the American Heart Association’s Louis B. Russell Jr. Memorial Award, which honors outstanding service in advancing health and hope for everyone.

Robert I. Field, PhD, professor in the Thomas R. Kline School of Law and Dornsife School of Public Health, was awarded the Jay Healey Teaching Award by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics at Boston University. The award celebrates dedicated health law faculty and their passion for teaching health law, their mentoring of students and/or other faculty, and their ability to inspire others.

Brent Langellier, PhD, associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health, was one of eight health professionals selected for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Policy Fellows Program at the National Academy of Medicine. Fellows were chosen in a national competition for highly accomplished health and behavioral/social science professionals who have an interest in health policy.

Jonathan E. Spanier, PhD, Hess Family Endowed Chair Professor and department head of mechanical engineering and mechanics in the College of Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS Fellowship recognizes individuals whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.