In the Spotlight: April 16, 2021

Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs

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  • Northern Arizona University was ranked by Animation Career Review on its lists of 2021 Graphic Design School Rankings. Criteria for rankings included academic reputation, admission selectivity, breadth of the program faculty, value as it relates to tuition, graduation rate, location and employment data.
  • NAU was featured on CollegeCliffs’ list of The 20 Best Online Hospitality Management and Tourism Bachelor’s Degree Colleges of 2021. The list considered parameters such as program features, course options, financial aid options and tuition costs.
  • The Special Collections and Archives (SCA) at Cline Library received an NEH grant totaling $349,526 to support the digitization of rare and unique moving images documenting the human and natural history of the Colorado Plateau. The images in question are held by the SCA, the Hopi Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe and Diné College on the Navajo Nation.
  • Michael McCarthy, associate professor of social work; Morgan Lee-Regalado Hustead, graduate student; Rachel Bacon, administrative services assistant with the Center for Service and Volunteerism and the Center for Health Equity Research (CHER); Evie Garcia, associate professor of educational psychology; Heather Williamson, assistant professor of occupational therapy; Julie A. Baldwin, Regents’ professor of health sciences and director of CHER; and Dorothy Dunn, retired associate professor of educational psychology, co-authored the article, “Development and Validation of a Community Assessment Survey for Diverse Rural Family Caregivers of People with Alzheimer Disease and Related Dementias” published in Family and Community Health. The study detailed the development and content validation process for a community assessment survey for rural white, Latinx and American Indian/Alaska Native caregivers for people with Alzheimer disease and related dementias.
  • Linnea Evans, assistant professor of health sciences and CHER, co-authored the article, “How are social determinants of health integrated into epigenetic research? A systematic review” published in Social Science Medicine. The study reviewed literature on social epigenetics and examined how empirical research to date has conceptualized and operationalized social determinants of health.
  • Professor of forestry Carol Chambers gave an invited plenary to the Canadian section and Ontario chapter of The Wildlife Society Virtual Conference Plenary titled, “Being a Wildlife Professional.” In terms of conservation goals, the Ontario Chapter seeks to evaluate and respond to principles involved in societal actions that affect wildlife or its habitats.
  • Brian Petersen, associate professor of geography, planning and recreation, received a grant of $98,436 from the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center for a project that works to understand how land managers in the Southwest perceive and respond to drought and fire-induced ecosystem stress. The project will involve colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey agency and funds will cover travel costs and support from a graduate student for two years.
  • Emily Schneider, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice, published the article, “It Changed My Sympathy, Not My Opinion: Alternative Jewish Tourism to the Occupied Palestinian Territories” in Sociological Focus. The article demonstrated the ways tourists continue to employ racialized logics of violence that sustain colonial oppression despite experiencing increased sympathy towards local populations.
  • Lori Poloni-Staudinger, associate dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and professor of politics and international affairs, co-authored the article, “Linked fate, #MeToo, and political participation” published in Politics, Groups, and Identities. The article presented an argument affirming that those who see their fates as linked to the fate of women are more likely to overcome barriers and more likely to be mobilized by the #MeToo movement.
  • Professor of forestry Kristen Waring co-authored the article, “Adaptive evolution in a conifer hybrid zone is driven by a mosaic of recently introgressed and background genetic variants” published in Communications Biology. The study unraveled the genetic architecture of adaptive evolution in a conifer hybrid zone formed between pinus strobiformis and flexilis.
  • Morgan Vigil-Hayes, assistant professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, co-authored the article, “Too Late for Playback: Estimation of Video Stream Quality in Rural and Urban Contexts” published in Passive and Active Measurement as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series. The study looked at how quality of service metrics could be used to infer quality of experience in LTE networks.
  • Professor of SICCS Kevin Gurney and postdoctoral scholar of SICCS Geoffrey Roest co-authored the article, “Estimating nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions for the Los Angeles Megacity using mountaintop remote sensing observations” published in Remote Sensing of Environment. The study derived urban N2O emissions for the Los Angeles megacity using a unique dataset from a mountaintop remote sensing instrument.
  • Assistant professor of SICCS Truong Nghiem co-authored two articles. “ADMM-based Adaptive Sampling Strategy for Nonholonomic Mobile Robotic Sensor Networks” discussed the adaptive sampling problem in a nonholonomic mobile robotic senor network for efficiently monitoring a spatial field. “Distributed Experiment Design and Control for Multi-agent Systems with Gaussian Processes” focused on distributed learning-based control of decentralized multi-agent systems modeled by Gaussian Processes. Both articles were co-authored by SICCS graduate student Viet-Anh Le.
  • Associate professor of SICCS Fatemeh Afghah co-authored the article, “UAV-Assisted Communication in Remote Disaster Areas Using Imitation Learning” published in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. The study looked at solutions to disturbed communication services for cellular users when cell towers were damaged during natural and man-made disasters. She also co-authored the article, “Green IoT using UAVs in B5G Networks: A Review of Applications and Strategies” which is a survey that presented an overview of the techniques and strategies proposed recently to achieve green Internet of Things using unmanned aerial vehicles infrastructure for a reliable and sustainable smart world.
  • Assistant professor of SICCS Igor Steinmacher and associate professor of SICCS Marco Gerosa co-authored two articles. “Quality Gatekeepers: Investigating the Effects of Code Review Bots on Pull Request Activities” analyzed the effects that software bots bring to Open Source Software and investigated how several activity indicators changed after the adoption of a code review bot. “Don’t Disturb Me: Challenges of Interacting with Software Bots on Open Source Software Projects” identified several challenges caused by software bots in pull request interactions of Open Source Software projects.
  • Assistant research professor of SICCS Logan Berner was named a 2021 Champion of the Environment by the ARCS Foundation for his research which focuses on how forests and tundra ecosystems are impacted by climate change. The ARCS Foundation is a national nonprofit organization founded and run entirely by women with the goal advancing American leadership, science, and technology.