In the Spotlight: Nov. 13, 2020

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

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  • Northern Arizona University was ranked No. 14 by Learn.org on its list of Best Online Bachelor’s Degrees in Sociology. Rankings are based on factors such as academic and career resources, the quality of education, available faculty and more.
  • Diana Stuart, associate professor of sustainable communities, and Brian Petersen, associate professor of geography, planning and recreation, co-authored the book “The Degrowth Alternative: A Path to Address our Environmental Crisis?” The book explores the idea of degrowth as an economic alternative to offer a more sustainable and just future.
  • Kim Hensley Owens, director of composition and professor of English, published the essays “Handling Sexual Assault Reports as WPA” and “Preparing for and Managing the Emotional Labor of Sexual Assault Reports” in The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration. The book provides a wide range of ideas for negotiating the emotional labor of administration in general and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Regents’ professor of health sciences Julie Baldwin and program coordinator for the Center for Health Equity Research Carolyn Camplain, and associate professor of anthropology Lisa Hardy have co-authored articles in a special collection of Health Promotion Practice, a journal of the Society for Public Health Education. The articles are a collection of papers focusing on lessons learned from health promotion in indigenous communities in the United States. The collection will be available for free download from Nov. 15-30.
  • Jason Robinson, web design team lead of ITS Enterprise Information Services and graduate student, was granted Arizona State University’s Charter Award in the category of ACCESS. The award comes with a scholarship and recognizes Robinson and the work his Experience Design team is doing to improve students through technology at NAU.
  • Gerrick Lindberg, associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science, co-authored the article, “Phase Diagram for the Methane-Ethane System at Conditions Relevant to Titan” published in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. The study addressed Titan and combined molecular dynamics simulations with laboratory work to create a binary phase diagram at cryogenic temperatures and to gain a better understanding of how the system interacts at a molecular level.
  • Faculty and staff in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) had several recent publications.
    • Associate professor Fatemeh Afghah co-authored the article, “An Uncertainty Estimation Framework for Risk Assessment in Deep Learning-based Atrial Fibrillation Classification” published in Signal Processing. The study proposes a variational autoencoder classifier network that provides an uncertainty estimation to algorithms that detect atrial fibrillation through ECG signals and how those signals are classified.
    • Assistant professor Venkata Yaramasu co-authored the article, “Modulated Predictive Current Control of NPC Converter-Based PMSG Wind Energy System” published in the 2020 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition. The article addresses a proposed model of current control presented in a wind energy conversion system.
    • Postdoctoral scholar Bijan Seyednasrollah and Regents’ professor Andrew Richardson co-authored the article, “Seasonal variation in the canopy color of temperate evergreen conifer forests” published in New Phytologist. The article looks at seasonal canopy color dynamics using phenological observations, leaf-level physiological measurements, near surface hyperspectral remote sensing and digital camera imagery, tower-based CO2 flux measurements and a predictive model.
    • Peter Chuckran, doctoral student with the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society; Egbert Schwartz, professor of biological sciences; Viacheslav Fofanov, associate director for Research and Graduate Programs of SICCS; Bruce Hungate, Regents’ professor of the Department of Biological Sciences; and Paul Dijkstra, research professor of biological sciences; co-authored the article, “Metagenomes and Metatranscriptomes of a Glucose-Amended Agricultural Soil” published in Microbiology Resource Announcements. The study characterizes the response of microbial ecophysiology by sequencing the metagenomes and metatranscriptomes of glucose-amended soil microbial communities in a laboratory incubation.