Faculty & Staff Accolades: January 2016

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science.

Alonso Aguirre, Environmental Science and Policy, published the following articles: “Effective coordination and management of emerging infectious diseases in wildlife” in EcoHealth; “Isolation, characterization, and antibiotic resistance of Vibrio spp. in sea turtles from northwestern Mexico” in Frontiers in Microbiology; “Viral diversity of bat communities in human-dominated landscapes in Mexico” in Veterinaria Mexico; and “Metacommunity and phylogenetic structure determine wildlife and zoonotic infectious disease patterns in time and space” in Ecology and Evolution. He also organized a symposium ,“Conservation medicine: Connecting human, wildlife and ecological interfaces related to emerging infectious diseases.”

Harbir Antil, Mathematical Sciences, received the Dean’s Early Career Excellence Award at the annual COS Awards Celebration in December.

Martha Buckley, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, had the paper “Observations, inferences and mechanisms of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation: a review” by Buckley and Marshall accepted by Reviews of Geophysics. The paper is being spotlighted in the American Geophysical Union newsletter, EOS.

Benjamin Cash, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, was an invited speaker at the World Bank on the topic of El Niño and Human Health in South Asia.

Robin Couch, Chemistry and Biochemistry, received the Dean’s Impact Award at the annual COS Awards Celebration in December.

Lorelei Crerar, Biology, published “The Surprising (and Mostly Legal) Trade in ‘Mermaid Ivory,’ It’s not what you think it is. It’s also not always what sellers or buyers might think.” in Scientific America.

Kevin Curtin, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $37,800 by the International Association of Fire Chiefs and Federal Emergency Management Agency for his work on IAFC/FEMA/(FSTAR) Evaluation.

Paul Delamater, and Timothy Leslie, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Tony Yang, Health Administration and Policy, and another author published a paper “Sociodemographic Predictors of Vaccination Exemptions on the Basis of Personal Belief in California” in American Journal of Public Health. This work has since been prominently featured in numerous high visibility press outlets such as CNN, New York Times, Discovery News, US News & World Report and ARS Technica.

Paul Dirmeyer, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, presented two talks on land-climate interactions at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and was coauthor of three other presentation.

Rebekah Flis, Biology, received the Dean’s Award for Distinctive Service at the annual COS Awards Celebration in December.

Harold Geller, Physics and Astronomy, presented the talk “What’s happening in Space: Space Exploration by NASA” at the Wintergreen Nature Foundation in Wintergreen, Virginia. He spoke about the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from its inception through the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and all the other explorations in between. He presented “The Sky IS Falling: Space Rocks and You” at the Peaks of Otter Lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway, in Bedford, Virginia. He spoke about asteroids, comets, and other debris in the Solar System, and the nature of meteorites, the rocks we find on Earth that came from outer space.

Geraldine Grant, Biology, was awarded $239,988 by Bristol-Myers Squibb for her work on BMS/Fibrotic ECM Investigations.

Subhadeep Halder, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, presented his work on the Indian Summer Monsoon in posters at the Climate Dynamics and Prediction Workshop in Denver and the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and a talk at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

R. Christian Jones, Environmental Science and Policy, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center, was awarded $14,704 by Alexandria Renewal Enterprises for his work on AlexRenew/Hunting Creek Res. Assist.

Alexander Koufos and Dimitrios Papaconstantopoulos, Computational and Data Sciences, published “Pressure-induced insulator to metal transition and superconductivity of the inert gases” in the Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism.

Lance Liotta, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, received the Health Award for Translational Research, MD Anderson Hospital Houston. He was also awarded $500,000 by Virginia Biosciences Health Research Center for his work on VBHRC/Nanotrap Tick-Panel Test.

Julia Manganello, Benjamin Cash, James Kinter, Eric Altshuler and Michael Fennessy, Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences, were co-authors of the paper “Seasonal Forecasts of Tropical Cyclone Activity in a High Atmospheric Resolution Coupled Prediction System” published in the Journal of Climate.

Chris Parsons, Environmental Science and Policy, published “So you think you want to run an environmental conservation meeting? Advice on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that accompany academic conference planning” published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

Emanuel Petricoin, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $30,000 by Hospital Santa Maria Della Miscerico for his work on Perugia/AIRC/Pathway mapping KRAS.

Jennifer Salerno, Environmental Science and Policy, was recently appointed to serve on the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) Public Policy Committee. The committee coordinates and participates in activities that introduce policymakers to aquatic science and is also charged with developing the process for public policy positions. ASLO has been the leading professional organization for researchers and educators in the field of aquatic science, with a membership of more than 4,300 from 58 countries, including the United States.

Evelyn Sander, Mathematical Sciences, has been elected 2016-17 Program Director, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) activity group on Dynamical Systems. As part of her position, she will be organizer of the 2017 SIAM Conference on Applications in Dynamical Systems (DS17), May 21 – May 25 at Snowbird, Utah, along with Martin Wechselberger. This conference is the foremost conference in the world in the field of applied dynamical systems. In 2015 the week long conference had 12 parallel sessions, 133 mini symposia, and over 100 posters, as well as the awards ceremony for the prestigious Moser prize and Crawford prize for outstanding dynamical systems research.

Reid Schwebach, Biology, STEM Accelerator, was awarded $9,000 by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership for his work on COL/Regional Ocean Science Bowl 16.

Michael Summers, Physics and Astronomy, was the recipient of the American Astronomical Society 2015 Neil Armstrong Space Flight Achievement Award and the GCN IT “Tenacity Award” for information technology that went into the spacecraft between its mission preparations from 2001 to launch in 2006. The New Horizons Pluto Mission team continued to be featured prominently in the media, being chosen by Science News as Science Story of the Year, and by Science Magazine as Science Breakthrough of the Year to name a few. The team has also won the 2016 Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy.