Kudos April 2023
Celebrating Tufts Faculty and Staff
by: Sara Norberg
Kudos is a monthly submissions-based roundup celebrating university faculty and staff -- awards, honors, thought leadership, new arrivals, and more. Share your own great news or recognize a colleague at go.tufts.edu/kudos.
AS&E Shared: Elizavette Cordero, Admissions Program Assistant, Admissions - AS&E
AS&E Shared: Rosana Arriaza, Administrative Assistant, Health Services
AS&E Shared: Shaquille Jones, Administrative Coordinator, LGBT Center
Advancement: Hannah Henkel, Annual Giving Officer, Tufts Annual Giving
Advancement: Patricia Brown, Director of Development, Fletcher Dev & Alumni Rel
Central Administration: Jeanette Liu, Senior Treasury Analyst, Treasury Operations
Cummings: Cornelia Peterson, Assistant Professor, Comparative Pathobiology
Cummings: Alicia Goodrich, Accounting Assistant, Foster Hospital
Cummings: Erin Piccioli, Vet Tech I, ECC, Foster Hospital
Cummings: Keara Malakie, Veterinary Technician I, Foster Hospital
Cummings: Julia Grocer, Veterinary Technician II, Foster Hospital
Cummings: Benjamin Cohen, Veterinary Technician I, Large Animal Hospital
Dental: Diane Lamm, Billing Lead, Clinic Billing Operations
Dental: Kirsten Wood, Insurance Coordinator, Clinic Billing Operations
Dental: Richard Bulger, Administrative Coordinator, Clinical Affairs
Dental: Emilia Chang Ho, Patient Registration Asst II, Clinical Affairs
Dental: Gessie Joseph-Delerme, Patient Registration Asst II, Clinical Affairs
Dental: Shankar Rengasamy Venugopalan, Associate Professor & Chair, Orthodontics
Dental: Elizangela Depina, Patient Registration Coord, Public Health & Comm Service
Dental: Karen Kast-Mcbride, Patient Registration Coord, Public Health & Comm Service
Dining: Hassan Lamlaihi, Chef Manager, Carmichael Dining Hall
Engineering: Reddhy Mahle, Postdoctoral Scholar, Biomedical Engineering
Engineering: Artem Arkhangelskiy, Postdoctoral Scholar, Biomedical Engineering
Engineering: Aayush Pankaj Arora, Research Asst, Biomedical Engineering
Engineering: Marisa Smith, Sr Research Coordinator, CABCS
Engineering: Farjana Mim, Postdoctoral Scholar, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Engineering: Kundan Saha, Postdoctoral Scholar, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Engineering: Gorantla Srividya, Postdoctoral Scholar, Mechanical Engineering
Fletcher: Joshua Pimental, Program Administrator, Academic Support
Fletcher: Megan Litvinenko, Assoc Dir P/ships & Experiential Learning, Student Services
Friedman: Kia Jones, Postdoctoral Scholar, Christina Economos Research
Medical: Hana Do, Research Asst, Ctr for Study of Drug Development
Medical: Ruby Ford, Research Asst, Ctr for Study of Drug Development
Medical: Catherine Considine, Lab Instructor, DPT Boston Program
Medical: Joseph Schreiber, Lab Instructor, DPT Boston Program
Medical: Annie Colby-McKeon, Senior Library Assistant, Health Sciences Library
Medical: Dan Zhang, Postdoctoral Scholar, Microbiology-Basic Science
Medical: Norman Lam, Postdoctoral Scholar, Neuroscience-BasicScience
Medical: Samantha Rhuda, Admissions Counselor, Public Hlth and Community Med
Medical: Colleen Hughes, Student Services Coordinator, Public Hlth and Community Med
Operations: Dan Macdonald, Facilities Manager, Facilities Services - Medford
Provost: Lily Hopkins, Animal Care Technologist, CMS
Provost: Amanda Wells, Lab Animal Caretaker, CMS
Provost: Jennifer Ross, Preclinical Svcs Technologist, CMS
Provost: Paul Hart, IRB Analyst III, Office of the Vice Provost
Provost: Meera Zassenhaus, Communications Manager, Provost's Office
Provost: Jasmine Raynor, Executive Assistant, Provost's Office
Tisch: Katrin Kaeufer, Professor of the Practice, Tisch College
TTS: Ariel Cuevas, Assoc IT Client Support Spec, Tufts Technology Services
TTS: Taifur Ather, Senior Systems DevOps Engineer, Tufts Technology Services
Alexandra Awad, V24, co-founder of the student chapter of the Latinx Veterinary Medical Association, received the prestigious Patricia M. Lowrie Diversity Leadership Scholarship from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges.
Philosophy undergraduate students Alana Cronin, Ezra Kanarick, Anna O’Sullivan, and David Whittingham placed second nationally in the Ethics Bowl competition hosted by the Association for Professional and Practical Ethics, in Portland, Oregon, in March. In the field of 36 colleges and universities, the Tufts team was undefeated in the four preliminary rounds, the quarterfinal round, and the semifinal round, but lost a very close final round against the U.S. Naval Academy. The Jumbos have been selected to represent the U.S. in the inaugural International Ethics Olympiad in April. The Tufts team was coached by Susan Russinoff, distinguished senior lecturer in philosophy, and teaching assistants Claire Ganiban, A22, AG23, and Audrey Ledbetter, AG23.
Liping Liu, assistant professor of computer science, and Jivko Sinapov, assistant professor of computer science, received NSF CAREER Awards for their promising research in graph generation and machine learning. This prestigious grant award supports early career faculty who show promise of making significant contributions to their field and becoming academic role models as they advance in their career. Read more about Liu and Sinapov and their research on the School of Engineering website.
Arun Mohan Sukumar, international relations Ph.D. student at The Fletcher School, won a Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his book Midnight’s Machines: A Political History Of Technology In India. The Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award honors writers of books whose works offer thorough research into, and investigation of, an issue or idea on a scale that “newspaper or television channels, with their space and time limitations, cannot aspire to tackle.”
John Morris, director of athletics, is the winner of a National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Division III Cushman & Wakefield Athletics Director of the Year Award for 2021-22. Morris came to the job at Tufts in 2015. Tufts’ athletic successes peaked during the 2021-22 academic year, when Tufts won the Learfield Directors’ Cup as the most successful NCAA Division III program, topping nearly 440 colleges and universities in this national competition. The Jumbos had 13 teams advance to at least the Sweet 16 round of NCAA tournament action, and eight student-athletes earned NCAA individual national titles.
Sarah Rosenberg-Scott, assistant professor of family medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, was awarded the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians Educator of the Year Award.
Katie Stevenson, M23, was awarded a 2023 Excellence in Public Health Award from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS). This national award is given to students who advance the USPHS’ mission to protect, promote, and advance the health and safety of our nation, and who are helping address public health issues in their community. Read more about Stevenson on the School of Medicine website.
The Tufts Department of Computer Science announced the 2023 winners of its three departmental awards. Ankur Dahal, E23, Diego Griese, E23, Max Mitchell, A23, and Teo Patrosio, E23, received the Ben Hescott Award for Excellence in Teaching, awarded annually to undergraduate teaching assistants or teaching fellows to recognize them for their excellence in teaching; Binh (Irene) Chang, E23, and Madeline McLaughlin, A23, received the David Krumme Award for Experimental Computer Science, awarded annually to students for producing substantial CS projects of practical worth, outstanding participation or organization of student-directed coding events or hackathons, and/or meritorious research in experimental computer science; and Ellis Brown, E23, received the James Schmolze Award for Excellence in Computer Science, awarded annually to a student with an excellent academic record in CS and who has also engaged in active contributions or service that enrich the computer science community at Tufts.
Tufts University received its first gold assessment from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), a program of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. STARS is a comprehensive, self-reporting system by which colleges and universities measure sustainability performance. Tufts participates in the program every three years and has received silver ratings since 2011. Read more about the highlights of the gold assessment on Tufts Now.
Pilar Alcaide, assistant dean of faculty development and Kenneth and JoAnn G. Wellner Professor of Immunology at Tufts School of Medicine, has been named the vice president of the American Society for Investigative Pathology. Alcaide’s term as vice president will begin on July 1. Alcaide was also profiled in a recent Nature Cardiovascular Research article in which she discussed her scientific and life journey.
Michael Beckley, associate professor of political science, published “A more hawkish China policy? 5 takeaways from House committee’s inaugural hearing on confronting Beijing” in The Conversation.
The Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School released a database on Global Public Energy RD&D Expenditures from 2000—2020. Kelly Sims Gallagher, Fletcher School academic dean and Climate Policy Lab director, wrote the op-ed “This is what the US needs to stay competitive in the clean energy race” in The Hill to discuss what the database is and its impact, and Zdenka Myslikova, adjunct assistant professor of innovation policy at The Fletcher School, wrote an accompanying blog post for Climate Smart, “Shining new light on global public investments in energy RD&D.”
Cristóbal Cea, professor of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship as an Interdisciplinary Art Resident this summer.
John Coffin, American Cancer Society Research Professor and Distinguished Professor of molecular biology and microbiology, was quoted in an article in The Scientist, “Jumping Genes’ Role in Cancer.”
Chris Dulla, professor and vice chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine, is the corresponding author on a study titled “Cortical Parvalbumin-Positive Interneuron Development and Function Are Altered in the APC Conditional Knockout Mouse Model of Infantile and Epileptic Spasms Syndrome” published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Other Tufts researchers also contributed to the study, including Moritz Armbruster, research assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Michele Jacob, professor of neuroscience, Anar Kansara, A20, Rachael Ryner, GBS22, and Mary Sommer, lab manager in the Department of Neuroscience. The research in mice suggests both a potential new target for treatment of infantile spasms syndrome, a rare but devastating form of epilepsy, and raises the hope that, in the future, early diagnosis and treatment could detect and prevent some of the most significant impairments associated with the syndrome. Read more on the School of Medicine website and on the Cure Epilepsy website.
Rakesh Ganji, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Developmental Molecular and Chemical Biology at the School of Medicine, and Malavika Raman, assistant professor in the Department of Developmental Molecular and Chemical Biology, and their colleagues published their research “The p97-UBXD8 complex regulates ER-Mitochondria contact sites by altering membrane lipid saturation and composition” in Nature Communications. The researchers found that protein mutations associated with brain disorders cause different kinds of molecules to build up where mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum connect and share information. Read more on the School of Medicine website.
Kelly Greenhill, associate professor of political science, has published a new co-authored article “Deal-making, Diplomacy and Transactional Forced Migration” in International Affairs.
Tarun Gopalakrishnan, international relations Ph.D. student at The Fletcher School, wrote “India’s ‘Green Growth’ Climate Spending Shortchanges Adaptation” in World Politics Review.
Justin Hollander, A96, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, Jo Riddle, AG23, and Sonya Sternlieb, AG23, had their plan to introduce bus rapid transit to Worcester, MA, endorsed by the Boston Globe.
Paul Joseph, professor emeritus of sociology, has a new book recently published, Precious Cargo: Following Mark Twain Across the South Pacific (Red Penguin Press). At the end of the 19th century, Twain and his wife and one of his daughters traveled around the world for a year on a lecture tour, recounting his experiences in Following the Equator. More than 100 years later, Joseph spent an academic sabbatical in New Zealand while also traveling in Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia with his wife and children, and compares the geographic and emotional journeys of the two families as they move through the same places a century apart.
David Kaplan, Stern Family Endowed Professor of Engineering, was quoted in the CNN article “Eating meat without slaughtering animals may be in our future,” in which he discussed ongoing innovations in cellular agriculture.
Seongok Kim, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Microbiology at the School of Medicine, and Ralph Isberg, professor of microbiology at the School of Medicine, published the study “The Sde Phosphoribosyl-Linked Ubiquitin Transferases protect the Legionella pneumophila vacuole from degradation by the host” in bioRxiv.
Maxim Krupskiy, visiting scholar in the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School, published “Why the growing number of foreign agent laws around the world is bad for democracy” in The Conversation.
Rachel Kyte, dean of The Fletcher School, outlines how 2023 can finally be the year that businesses gain access to a “transparent and viable” carbon market that can assist with net-zero goals in the edie article “From hysteria to transparency: Are we on the verge of credible carbon markets?”
Susan Landau, professor in cybersecurity and policy at The Fletcher School and the School of Engineering, weighed in on the new national cybersecurity strategy in a recent Marketplace segment.
Ming Lei, biotechnology engineering Ph.D. student, Nikhil Nair, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, Kyongbum Lee, professor and dean of the School of Engineering, and James Van Deventer, Bright Futures Assistant Professor of chemical and biological engineering, as well as former postdoctoral scholar Vikas Trivedi, published “Flow cytometric evaluation of yeast-bacterial cell-cell interactions” in Biotechnology and Bioengineering. The article was selected as editor’s choice in the journal. Read more about the study and the award on the School of Engineering website.
Hengrui Liu, economics and public policy Ph.D. student, wrote the Climate Policy Lab policy brief, “China’s Climate Policies and Actions in 2022,” and accompanying Climate Smart blog post, “Accelerating the Green Transition: China’s 1+N Policy Framework, Two Sessions, and Beyond” about China’s recent climate policies and actions.
Adam Lowenstein, assistant professor of pediatric dentistry, and Carlos F. Mourão, assistant professor of periodontology, in collaboration with other researchers, published “Comparing the Long-Term Success Rates of Tooth Preservation and Dental Implants: A Critical Review” in the Journal of Functional Biomaterials.
Megan McMillan, professor of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, alongside with her partner and collaborator Murray McMillan, have a new video installation at the Providence Children’s Museum, “What Is Possible Is Here Now.”
Chris Miller, associate professor of international history at The Fletcher School, joined CBS News in their segment “The CHIPS Act: Made in America, again.” Miller is the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.
Neda Moridpour, professor of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, has been selected as the MacJannet Artist in Residence in Talloires, France, this summer.
Stephen Moss, professor of neuroscience, is the corresponding author on new published research “Direct activation of KCC2 arrests benzodiazepine refractory status epilepticus and limits the subsequent neuronal injury in mice” in Cell Reports Medicine. Other Tufts researchers contributed to the study, including Department of Neuroscience members Krithika Abiraman, scientist, Tarek Deeb, research assistant professor, Aidan Evans-Strong, research technician, Shu Fun Josephine Ng, scientist, Joshua Smalley, research assistant professor, and Jamie Maguire, Kenneth and JoAnn Wellner Professor of Neuroscience. The study has identified a small molecule that may help treat people with epilepsy whose condition has become drug resistant. Read more on the School of Medicine website and in News Medical.
Dariush Mozaffarian, Jean Mayer Professor and dean for policy of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, will be appointed to serve as a member of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, & Nutrition. The council is a federal advisory committee that aims to promote healthy, accessible eating and physical activity for all Americans, regardless of background or ability. Mozaffarian also published “The time is ripe for ESG + Nutrition: evidence-based nutrition metrics for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing” in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition with Meghan O’Hearn, Ph.D. student in food and nutrition policy and programs, Suzannah Gerber, Ph.D. student in nutrition epidemiology and data science, and Sylara Marie Cruz, master’s student in nutrition science and policy.
Ethan Murrow, professor of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, was in Paris in February for the inaugural opening of Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire’s second exhibition space in the Marais. Murrow and other artists represented by Les Filles du Calvaire are part of the show Persona. Murrow also had a solo show of drawings and paintings at Obsolete.
Jan Pechenik, professor emeritus of biology, translated the sixth and final edition of Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, The Origin of Species, into accessible, engaging prose for modern readers. Pechenik’s book, The Readable Darwin (Oxford University Press), brings Darwin’s groundbreaking but dense book to life for readers of all backgrounds while remaining true to the original text.
Adrienne Roma Sacks, A16, communications coordinator at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, was awarded a residency at Dorland Mountain Arts in Temecula, California.
Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, assistant professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development, has recently been elected to serve on the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Latinx Caucus Steering Committee 2023-2025 as the technical/social media manager.
Robert Sege, professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, published the article “Steps towards equity in research” in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. The publication explores how clinical translational research processes can begin to address the gap in racial health equity.
Tara Sonenshine, Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in Public Diplomacy at The Fletcher School, had two op-ed articles published in The Hill: “The clock is ticking on TikTok” and “Space wars: When science fiction becomes reality.”
Find past Kudos (formerly known as People Notes). Submit your own great news or recognize a colleague at go.tufts.edu/kudos.