Category: Kudos

Rou-Jia Sung, Assistant Professor of Biology, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant (#1841992) for her project, “Development of Novel Augmented Reality Tool for Teaching Molecular Visualization in Biochemistry.” Prof. Sung will work with coPI Dr. Andrew Wilson, Academic Technologist for Digital Scholarship, to develop a freely available AR-based application that can be installed on mobile smartphone and tablet devices and will contain virtual 3D objects representing the molecular structures of three fundamental molecules central to biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, and genetics curricula. Each molecule will be associated with a set of learning materials, developed by the project team, to facilitate use in the classroom. The three-year project involves 5 Carleton undergraduate researchers, Prof. Jane Liu at Pomona, and Prof. Thom Bussey and a graduate student at UCSD. Prof. Sung’s and Dr. Wilson’s application was recently covered the magazine The Scientist, which published a short article on its development and use so far.

Ryan Terrien, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, received a contract from NASA in March 2018 to serve as a co-investigator on a project to develop a new exoplanet-finding spectrograph. The spectrograph, called “NEID,” will detect exoplanets by measuring their minute gravitational tugs on their host stars. During summer 2018, Prof. Terrien will work with collaborators from Penn State, the University of Arizona, and other institutions to develop and commission new software and calibration systems for NEID, working towards a goal of commissioning the full spectrograph at the WIYN Telescope (Kitt Peak Observatory, AZ) in 2019.

Juliane Schicker, Assistant Professor of German, has been accepted for the NEH Summer Institute “Culture in the Cold War: East German Art, Music and Film.” This four-week institute allows participants to pursue an intensive program of study under a team of experts on the GDR. Prof. Schicker will apply the interdisciplinary examination into the GDR arts gained at the Institute to her teaching and research, including projects on Mahler and women’s rock music in the GDR.

Gao Hong, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments and Director of the Carleton Chinese Music Ensemble, along with three Carleton students, received a fellowship from the ASIANetwork’s Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows (SFF) Program. Centered on a research trip to China, the project will document how musicians in the city of Quanzhou maintain and preserve nanyin, a genre of Chinese classical music local to the Fujian province. Working with Gao, the three student participants – Gus Holley ’20, Lia Spencer ’18, and Yiqing Yu ’21 – will improve their Chinese language skills, further develop their musical abilities, transcribe music, interview the local people working to preserve nanyin, and develop a website to document the project.

Ryan Terrien, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has received a subaward from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) for the Heising-Simons Foundation-supported project “Towards Tranquil Terrestrial Worlds Orbiting Tiny, Turbulent Stars: Next-Generation Algorithms to Reveal Nearby ExoEarths Using Near-Infrared Doppler Spectroscopy.” In summer 2018, Prof. Terrien will work with undergraduate researchers to help improve the precision of analysis techniques that are being used to search for exoplanets orbiting nearby red dwarf stars.

Cecilia M. Cornejo, Instructor in Cinema and Media Studies, has been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant to complete Ways of Being Home, the second in a trilogy of films that traces the experience of marginalized communities in Northfield. In collaboration with members of the Mexican community of Northfield, Cornejo will complete a poetic documentary that examines issues of displacement, belonging, and resilience from their perspective. Community members will contribute to the making of the film by sharing their personal experiences, performing technical roles during the shooting process, creating the film’s soundtrack, and offering their feedback at three screenings of the work in progress, actively shaping the final film.

Juliane B. Shibata, who has been a visiting assistant professor in ceramics, received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Visual Arts grant to create three new installations that integrate living flowers with her ceramic ones. She will unite floriography, a language of flowers that has traditionally been rooted in the female experience, with her ceramic practice to produce works that combine specific cultural and historical themes in ways that widen Minnesota’s artistic heritage. MSAB funds will also allow Shibata to professionally document her work and approach exhibition venues in Minnesota about displaying her installations.

Laurence Cooper, Professor of Political Science, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support work on a book-length study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s crowning work, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Rousseau’s Reveries articulate the meaning, requirements, and expressions of the philosophic life, a life that Rousseau deemed the most choiceworthy life for a human being but also a deeply problematic one. The most daunting demand of the philosophic life, and the focus of the Reveries‘ dramatic narrative, is the need to overcome certain fiercely held moral passions and prejudices. The provisional title of Cooper’s book is Dreaming of Justice, Waking to Wisdom. Cooper’s fellowship is one of just 74 awarded this year, only twelve of which went to faculty at liberal arts colleges. The NEH received approximately 1,100 applications.

Sarah Titus, Associate Professor of Geology, has received an Undergraduate Research grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. Her project, “Making laboratory deformation bands in sandstones for comparison with natural field data from the San Andreas fault system,” will enable the interpretation of some enigmatic small-scale faults from central California. The three-year grant will support Prof. Titus and six Carleton students, with undergraduate researchers participating in field work in California and laboratory deformation experiments with a colleague at Rice University.

Kimberly Smith, Professor of Environmental Studies and Political Science, has been awarded a William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Grant to support archival research for her book project “The Conservation Constitution: The Conservation Movement and Constitutional Change, 1870-1930.” Professor Smith’s book examines the impact of the Progressive Era conservation movement on constitutional doctrine, explaining the role of the judiciary in creating the constitutional foundations of the modern environmental regulatory regime.