Kudos to these students
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- Several Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leaders were awarded for their efforts in contributing to student success. SI Leaders are current students who have previously taken a course, performed well and want to help others succeed in the same course. Recipients of the 2020 SI Excellence in Leadership Award are Aaron Guerrero, Kathryn Valentine, Paige Knaub, Sarah Kline, Ryan Connor, Lilibeth Sanchez-Delgado, Sarah Van Horn, Cooper Jensen and Bridget Powers. Recipients of the Peer-Selected SI Excellence in Leadership Award were Powers, Alexie Clover and Emily Waffle.
- Recent forestry graduate Caden Chamberlain was the first author on the article, “Airborne lidar provides reliable estimates of canopy base height and canopy bulk density in southwestern ponderosa pine forests” published in Forest Ecology and Management. The research was part of the Hooper Undergraduate Research Award in Forest Ecology and Management. Chamberlain worked with co-authors Andrew Sánchez Meador, executive director of the Ecological Restoration Institute, and forestry professor Andi Thode.
- Ana Paula Chaves, doctoral student in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS), and Marco Gerosa, associate professor in SICCS, co-authored the article, “How Should My Chatbot Interact? A Survey on Social Characteristics in Human-Chatbot Interaction Design” published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. The study presents a survey to argue that chatbots should be enriched with social characteristics that cohere with users’ expectations.
- Junior in civil engineering David Lemcke was awarded Undergraduate Student of the Year for the Pacific Southwest Regions University Transportation Center. He carries a 3.83 GPA and has earned the Lumberjack Scholarship, the Fred and Edith Ohlinger Scholarship and the Busse Civil Engineering Scholarship. During his time here, he has co-authored the following articles for presentations:
- “Examining the Use of Microsimulation Modeling to Assess Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts at Intersections: A Case Study Incorporating Field-Observed Conflict Data” (Accepted for 2021 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Meeting)
- “Impact of Evolving Course Curricular and Operational Changes on Student Outcomes in Transportation Engineering” (Presented at 2020 TRB Meeting)
- “An Exploratory Parameter Sensitivity Analysis of Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts Using the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model” (Presented at 2020 TRB Meeting)
- Senior Hannah Fischer won the Outstanding Senior Civil Engineering Student Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers Arizona Section. The award recognizes individual achievement and service that demonstrates excellence in engineering academic achievement and service to the profession.
- Astronomy doctoral student Ryder Strauss co-authored the article, “A Single-chord Stellar Occultation by the Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object (541132) Leleākūhonua” published in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. The study looks at a stellar occultation by the extreme-perihelion trans-Neptunian object (541132) Leleākūhonua that was predicted by the Lucky Star project.
- Doctoral students Colin Chandler and Will Oldroyd and David Trilling, professor and interim chair of Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, co-authored the article, “Community Challenges in the Era of Petabyte-Scale Sky Surveys” published in Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The article outlines challenges faced by the planetary science community in the era of next-generation large-scale astronomical surveys and highlights that need to be addressed.
- Physical therapy student David Ung was selected as an American Physical Therapy Association Centennial Scholar by the Student Assembly Board of Directors. The program helps build future association leaders and will pair Ung with a mentor to work on a capstone project to benefit the Student Assembly Board of Directors.
- Astronomy doctoral student Annika Gustafsson gave a talk titled, “Revealing Regolith Properties of NEAs: Applications to Apophis” at the Apophis T-9 Years: Knowledge for the Science of Planetary Defense meeting. The topic was using radiative transfer modeling to determine whether or not changes could be detected to the surface of asteroid Apophis using ground-based telescopes after its historic close encounter with Earth in 2029. Assistant professor Cristina Thomas was a session chair for the meeting.
- The NAU hydrogeology research group was represented by several students who presented their papers at the Geological Society of America’s 2020 Connected Online Annual meeting. The participating geology students were seniors Cecily Combs, Zev Axler, Ronni Chavez and Henry Moore and second-year master’s students Keegan Donovan and Sara Bunch. All papers were co-authored by Abraham Springer, professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability.