Dr. Hanqin Tian has been named a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and will receive $200,000 to support his research on how Asia, home to more than half of the world’s population, can provide enough food for its citizens without detrimental effects on the environment. Tian is the Solon and Martha Dixon Endowed Professor and director of the International Center for Climate and Global Change Research in the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences.
Dr. Maria Soledad Peresin, assistant professor of forest biomaterials in the Auburn University School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, served as co-chair of the scientific committee for the International Conference on Nanotechnology for Renewable Materials in Chiba, Japan. The annual event draws professionals and students from around the world who are members of the nanotechnology division of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry. Peresin specializes in developing novel applications of value added materials from renewable biomass.
Dr. Marcelo A. Kuroda is the recipient of a $536,000 NSF CAREER Award to investigate properties of heterostructures formed with ultrathin materials. Kuroda is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics. With the award, he will analyze complex heterostructures for their weak interactions and devise mechanisms to tailor their physical properties. His group will employ theoretical calculations and large-scale computations that capture both quantum mechanical phenomena and compositional details.
Dr. Lauren Beckingham, assistant professor of civil engineering, has been named a recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Development award for her work in environmental engineering. The $315,000 award is designated toward her work, “Quantifying evolution of accessible mineral surface areas and pore connectivity for improved simulation of mineral reaction rates,” and it is funded through the NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, Geobiology and Low Temperature Geochemistry.
Two electrical and computer engineering researchers at Auburn University were awarded a patent for their invention of new logic cells for use in next-generation computers. Dr. Michael C. Hamilton, professor, and doctoral student Uday Goteti developed new logic circuits based on superconducting electronics, instead of the semiconducting silicon platforms used in traditional electronics. Their superconducting logic technology uses nearly lossless circuits that feature lower power dissipation and higher speeds of operation than traditional electronics, as well as other superconducting electronic technologies.
A scientific paper that the Auburn Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Alumni Professor Dr. Valentina Hartarska co-authored has won the Association for Social Economics’ 2019 Warren Samuels Prize. The society presents the award annually to a high-quality scholarly article that is important to the field of social economics and has broad appeal across disciplines. In the winning paper titled “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: The Conflicting Impacts of Subsidies and Deposits on the Cost-Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions,” Hartarska and collaborators discuss their study to evaluate the costs and benefits of microfinance subsidization. Their findings suggest that unsubsidized, credit-plus-deposit microfinance institutions constitute the most cost-efficient group, and unsubsidized, credit-only institutions the least.
Department of Theatre Chair Dr. Chase Bringardner has been elected as president-elect of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). Bringardner took office in August 2019 at the annual conference in Orlando, Florida, and after serving two years as president-elect will assume the position of president for a duration of two years. Bringardner specializes in the study of popular entertainments such as medicine shows and musical theatre; regional identity construction; and intersections of race, gender and class in popular performance forms.
Dr. Brian Connelly, professor and Luck Eminent Scholar in the Department of Management at the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, has been appointed incoming editor at the Journal of Management. Connelly began his four-year term, balancing research, teaching and editing duties, as editor-elect in July 2019 and will take over as editor-in-chief on July 1, 2020. The Journal of Management is among the world’s most prestigious journals, ranking among the Financial Times’ top 50 business school journals.
