College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
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Dear CASE alumni, faculty, staff and students,
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The College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE) is proud to benefit from over 100 endowments that provide vital support in the form of fellowships, lectureships, scholarships, professorships, as well as teaching and research awards. These endowments offer programmatic support across all CASE departments. The comprehensive list of these generous endowments is available here, showcasing the unwavering support from our alumni, friends and faculty.
We encourage those willing to support us to consider directing their philanthropic contributions to one of these established funds. Your donations enable us to offer merit scholarships, address unexpected financial needs of our students, engage in experiential learning, support faculty innovation, enhance our facilities, and foster partnerships with relevant communities, among many other initiatives.
Thank you for your invaluable support in advancing the careers of the changemakers within our college.
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Julie Dawn Bolin, a biological sciences alumna, who is currently program director of Nuclear Medicine Technology at GateWay Community College in Phoenix, was elected 2024-25 president for the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Technologist Section.
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Madeline Kovaleski, Quinlin Neuhaus, and Braden Stillmaker (pictured above) took first place at the Missouri Collegiate Math Competition (MCMC). The MCMC is an annual mathematics competition in which more than a dozen Missouri colleges and universities send teams of three to compete. Madeline, Quinlin, and Braden are all a part of the Math Competition Club, coached by Dr. C. J. Lungstrum and supported by the mathematics and statistics department.
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Physics graduate student Gaurav Khairnar (above) attended the 7th International Summer School on Computational Quantum Materials, held by the University of Sherbrooke, Canada from May 19 to May 31. He presented a poster titled 'Phases and Phase Transitions in Disordered Quantum Clock Model'. His participation was supported by the Graduate Student Travel Fund of graduate education.
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Stephen Yaw Owusu, a Ph.D. student in chemistry, was awarded a summer 2024 internship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His advisor is Dr. Chariklia Sotiriou-Leventis, chair and professor of chemistry.
John Tubbesing, a Ph.D. student in chemistry, has been selected to participate in the NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium’s 2024 Summer Internship and Fellowship Program. The advisor is Dr. Jay Switzer, Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry and a senior investigator in the Materials Research Center.
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Meet CASE's newest office team member
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Kimberly (Kim) Courtney joined the CASE Dean’s office in May 2024 as a Business Specialist II. She has been with the university since 2016, following a 15-year career in management with local Subway restaurants. Prior to her role, Kimberly spent eight years with the University Police department, where she managed Parking Lot Operations for the last six years. She is a proud mother of three and grandmother to four. Kimberly is excited to join CASE and is looking forward to supporting the students, staff and faculty, and contributing to the growth of the university.
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The Institute of Multi-messenger Astrophysics and Cosmology (IMAC) and the physics department hosted a summer workshop for undergraduate students (group photo above) titled "Coding the cosmos: introduction to gravitational waves" from May 21 to May 24. The workshop covered lectures on gravitational waves and their detection, and multi-messenger astronomy, as well as hands-on python tutorials in gravitational-wave data analysis and guidance on pursuing an advanced career in STEM by IMAC faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. Twenty-six participants from seven institutions in Missouri and nearby states attended the workshop, which was funded by the NSF.
Dr. Amy Belfi, associate professor of psychological science, received the Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society, an international community of cognitive psychologists. Read more about it here.
Dr. Martin Bohner, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of mathematics and statistics, was ranked No. 416, and Dr. Xiaoming Wang, the Havener Endowed Chair of mathematics and statistics, was ranked No. 1,821 globally among Best Scientists in the field of Mathematics for 2024 by Research.com.
Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, recently published articles with two prominent Washington, D.C. think-tanks, The Atlantic Council and the Stimson Center, focusing on Iran’s presidential elections. His insights have been featured in BBC News Brazil and Iranwire. Additionally, Boroujerdi participated in the Council of Fellows meeting of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., in June 2024.
Dr. Marco Cavaglia, professor of physics, received a $25,813 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “WoU-MMA: Enabling Multi-Messenger Astrophysics with Advanced LIGO: from Detector Characterization to Interpretation of Gravitational-Wave Signals.” With this addition, the award totals $423,022.
Dr. Kathryn Dolan, associate professor of English and technical communication, has agreed to serve as the interim chair of her department until the end of 2024 while Dr. Kris Swenson, chair and professor of English and technical communication, is on sabbatical leave.
Dr. Michael Eze, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Dr. Robin Verble, an associate professor of biological sciences, were awarded a $10,000 seed grant from the Center for Biomedical Research (CBR) for the project “Assessment of residential exposure to toxic environmental compounds from wildfires”.
Dr. Chen Hou, associate professor of biological sciences, published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.
Dr. Irina Ivliyeva, chair of ALP and Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of Russian, was accepted as a 2024 summer associate into to the Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) and the Slavic Reference Service (SRS) provides support for scholars to conduct research concerning all aspects of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. REEEC and SRS support scholars this summer through both in-person and virtual programming, research assistance, professional development opportunities, and collections and database access.
Dr. Lia Katsimiga, assistant teaching professor of physics, and Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics, are authors on a paper titled "Observation of dense collisional soliton complexes in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate," which was published in Communications Physics, part of the Nature portfolio.
Dr. Alanna Krolikowski, assistant professor of history and political science, participated in the Cislunar Possibilities Forum at the White House, an event at which the Office of Science and Technology Policy convened experts on space policy and lunar governance. She was also quoted in The Wire China, a media outlet specializing in coverage of China news, on China's new satellite mega-constellations and their international ramifications.
Dr. Vahe Permzadian, assistant professor of psychological science, published an article titled “The role of affective states in the process of goal setting” in Current Psychology.
Dr. Michael Peterson, assistant professor of philosophy, presented his paper "Stable Sites, Legitimate Descent, and Just Policy" at the conference "Derrida Today" in Athens, Greece.
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Dr. Shun Saito, assistant professor of physics; graduate student Cole Rischbieter; and postdoc Dr. Hasti Khoraminezhad presented "Finding the dark secret in a galaxy playground" to an audience of children and adults at the Rolla Public Library on June 14. They say that exploring dark matter and dark energy is a great way to inspire the next generation of scientists.
Dr. Andrea Scharf, assistant professor of biological sciences, received a $501,772 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “BRC-BIO: The impact of pheromone signaling on C. elegans population dynamics.”
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard, professor of history and political science, published a co-authored article titled "Understanding Diversity in American Egyptology: Results of the 2021 Egyptology State of the Field Survey," in the journal Interdisciplinary Egyptology. This is a quantitative analysis of the data that the Egyptology State of the Field team collected in 2021. A qualitative analysis of the data, including providing solutions and paths forward in being more inclusive and diverse in American Egyptology, is forthcoming. Sheppard led the IRB part of the team, conducted interviews, coded the data, and co-wrote the article. Sheppard's new book, Women in the Valley of the Kings, was included on Town & Country's 39 Must-Read Books of Summer 2024. You can view the list here.
Dr. Alexey Yamilov, professor of physics, published a paper in a Nature Photonics magazine describing a new technique for delivering broadband light deep inside diffusive media.
Dr. Julia Medvedeva, professor of physics, co-authored a paper titled “Thermal Stability of Amorphous Metal Oxides: The Interplay of Secondary Cations, Degree of Substitution and Local Structure” published as an invited article in the Special Issue of the Chemistry of Materials journal on the occasion of Professor C.N.R. Rao’s 90th birthday. The work aims to help understand thermal stability of amorphous metal oxides, the candidate materials for emerging next-generation electronics, throughout an entire manufacturing process involved in device fabrication as well as device operation in specific applications.
Dr. Dave Westenberg, Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor of biological sciences, was featured in an Atlas Obscura story on agar art as a way to demonstrate the link between art and science. The story was also highlighted in the May 15, edition of ARTnews.
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College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
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Missouri University of Science and Technology
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