Faculty & Staff Accolades: March 2018

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science. The following accolades were published for the month of March 2018.

Natalie Burls, Julia Manganello, and Kathy Pegion, Atmospheric Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, along with another university colleague were awarded COS-VSE seed funding for their project “Predictability of storm surge and Chesapeake Bay flooding: from days to weeks”. The venture’s goal was to foster collaboration and facilitate scientific exchange between university investigators. Burls was also awarded $339,589 by the National Science Foundation for Collaborative Research: Examining the links between Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV).

Dieter Bilitza, Physics and Astronomy, was the main organizer of a 2-week workshop on Improved Real-Time Ionospheric Prediction at the National Central University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan November 6-17, 2017. The meeting was attended by over 100 participants from 27 countries including 37 young scientists (graduate and PhD students). The discussions during the meeting resulted in improvements of the representation of ionospheric densities and temperatures in the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI), which is the ISO standard for the ionosphere. IRI is a joint project of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) that is led by Dr. Bilitza. The meeting was organized and supported in the framework of the COSPAR Capacity Building Program. He also served on a marine biology panel at Awesome Convention, 2018 (a 70,000 person plus sci-fi convention), on a program that included astronauts and actors from Star Wars.

Benjamin Cash, Atmospheric Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, conducted research with a PhD student, and their paper titled “Indian Summer Monsoon Variability Forecasts in the North American Multimodel Ensemble” was published in the Climate Dynamics.

Paul Dirmeyer, Atmospheric Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies published an editorial in EOS, the American Geophysical Union newsletter.

Jacqueline Fischer, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $252,844 by NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center for Probing Radiation Pressure and Hot Gas Feedback through Spectral Simulation of Mid-IR to Submillimeter Fine-Structure Lines in Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies.

Amy Fowler, Environmental Science and Policy, was awarded $2,650 by Washington Biologists’ Field Club for Field surveys and comparative parasitology of freshwater native and invasive snails in Virginia and Maryland.

Harold Geller, Physics and Astronomy, served as a reviewer for the NASA Postdoctoral Program and as a judge for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) eCYBERMISSION competition.

Patrick Gillevet, Biology, was awarded $7,760 by Population Council for Phase 1 Griffithsin (GRFT) study.

Audrey Kelaher, College of Science, was awarded a Lord Fairfax Charity Ride grant of $2,500 for the College of Science Fellowship and Research Fund.

Chris Parsons, Environmental Science and Policy, authored a paper titled “Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right” – the sad case of vaquita, the Trump administration and the removal of protections for whales and dolphins” which was published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Dr. Parsons also co-authored the following papers: “Evaluating the sustainability of the gray whale-watching industry along the Pacific Coast of North America” in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, “The Blackfish Effect – citations, hearings, permits, and bills in the face of changing public opinion on captive cetaceans” and “To educate or not to educate: how the lack of education programs on whale-watching vessels can impact whale tourism and conservation in the Dominican Republic” in the journal Tourism in Marine Environments, and “Lower concern about “biodiversity” in members of the public in Washington DC area, than “wilderness”, “natural places” and key charismatic megafauna and/or charismatic habitats” in the journal Applied Environmental Education & Communication. Parsons was also on a marine biology panel at Awesome Convention this past weekend (a 70,000 person plus sci-fi convention), on a program that included astronauts and actors from Star Wars.

Emanuel Petricoin along with Co-PI Valerie Calvert, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, were awarded $50,000 by Minneamrita Therapeutics LLC for Protein pathway activation mapping of pancreatic cancer from patients treated with an HSP70 inhibitor.

Evelyn Sander, Mathematical Sciences, has been chosen to Chair of Selection Committee for the J.D. Crawford Prize that will be awarded in 2019. The SIAM Activity Group on Dynamical Systems (SIAG/DS) J. D. Crawford Prize, established in 2000, is awarded to one individual for recent outstanding work on a topic in nonlinear science. It is one of only two prizes awarded every two years.

Jagadish Shukla, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, was invited to deliver the Annual Institute Lecture on February 28, 2018, at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India. February 28th has been designated as India’s Science Day. The title of the lecture was: Science and Politics of Climate Change: Sustainability in an Unequal World.

Mark Uhen, Atmospheric, Oceanic & Earth Sciences, was awarded $34,847 by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for Paleobiology Database Adoption of RDA Scalable Dynamic Data Citation Methodology.

Robert Weigel, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $95,000 by NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center for API and Tools for a Time Series Data API.