The 2018 “W” Awards
The College's innovative grant program inspires faculty to take their research in new directions
By Daniel P. Smith
Eighteen Weinberg College faculty members representing 10 different academic departments and 15 distinct research projects have received 2018 Weinberg College Research and Innovation Grants.
Dubbed the “W Awards,” the annual College honors provide seed funding to help faculty members explore intriguing areas of scholarship and collaborations beyond their existing research tracks.
“The W Awards allow our faculty to pursue fascinating new lines of investigation, many of which reflect the College’s strategic research goals,” associate dean for research and graduate studies Kelly Mayo says.
To date, 41 faculty members tackling 33 different research projects in the sciences, humanities and social sciences have received a W Award since the internal grant program’s launch in 2016.
Bearing fruit
From a study of Native American homelessness in the early 20th century to global economic governance, from youth asthma rates to insights on ethnic violence, W Award-winning projects have spurred compelling lines of research, fostered new collaborations and positioned faculty to land external funding.
Earlier this year, for instance, 2016 W Award recipient Kelly Wisecup, an associate professor in the Department of English, earned a Common Heritage grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her study of Chicago’s indigenous stories.
Meanwhile, 2017 W Award winners Matthew Goldrick, a professor in the Department of Linguistics, and Vijay Mittal, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, recently submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health for their project exploring links between speech, motor-control difficulties and susceptibility to psychotic disorders.
“As we look at the outcomes from the first faculty groups to receive the W Awards, it’s clear that impactful studies are being performed and that this work is stimulating applications for continued external research funding,” Mayo says.
The latest honorees
College leaders now hope the current batch of W Award honorees follow that trend. The 2018 award winners include:
- Assistant professor Adia Benton in the Department of Anthropology, who will use the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak as a case study to understand the values, norms and practices of epidemiological modelers.
- Associate professors Traci Burch and Reuel Rogers and assistant professor Thomas Ogorzalek in the Department of Political Science for their Chicagoland Neighborhood Study, an original public opinion survey detailing local residents’ attitudes about demographic change, policy innovations and politics.
- Deborah Cohen, the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and a professor of history, who will explore the relationship between the inner lives of American foreign correspondents and geopolitics from the 1920s to the 1940s.
- Professor Jorge Coronado in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, who plans to map the differences and similarities between archaeological interventions as stated by their practitioners and the way those interventions have been taken up as analytic, metaphor and discursive strategy.
- Associate professor Mesmin Destin in the Department of Psychology, who will investigate how students from low socioeconomic backgrounds navigate new cultural contexts and shifts in their identities during college and early careers.
- Associate professor Jesús Escobar in the Department of Art History, who will explore architectural and cultural exchange across the Atlantic Ocean in the early modern period.
- Professor Nathan Gianneschi in the Department of Chemistry and associate professor Daniel Dombeck in the Department of Neurobiology, who aim to engineer a new class of non-viral vectors that carry genetic materials.
- Associate professor Laurel Harbridge-Yong in the Department of Political Science, who will research the causes and consequences of intra-party conflict in the era of high party polarization.
- Associate professor Bill Hurst in the Department of Political Science, who will consider the long-term impacts of land reorganization on politics in mainland China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia.
- Associate professor Christina Kiaer in the Department of Art History, who will study visual representations of African-Americans in Soviet visual culture.
- Associate professor Melissa Macauley in the Department of History, who will examine war and revolution in translocal China from 1927-1958.
- Adilson Motter, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who will explore the role heterogeneity plays in the stability of physical systems.
- Assistant professor Sylvia Perry in the Department of Psychology, who will analyze the role of parental socialization in the development of white children’s negative inter-group attitudes.
- Assistant professor Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz in the Department of Sociology, who will investigate radical Puerto Rican politics in Chicago.
- Professor Brad Sageman in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, who looks to better understand the nature and rate of environmental changes that accompany elevated atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels and resulting temperature increases.