Twenty U. of I. faculty members have been named Center for Advanced Study associates or fellows for the 2015-16 academic year.
The faculty members are awarded one semester of release time to pursue scholarly or creative projects in the coming academic year. The winning proposals are selected by the Center for Advanced Study’s permanent professors.
“In accordance with the center’s mission, these appointments provide an incentive to pursue the highest level of scholarly achievement,” said Tamer Basar, the director of the Center for Advanced Study and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “CAS support is unique in that it is not limited to one area of study or discipline but cuts across these lines to provide all faculty members with an unusual opportunity to explore new ideas and demonstrate early results.”
CAS associates are professors or associate professors and CAS fellows are assistant professors. In addition, four of the CAS fellows were designated as Beckman fellows, which supports “outstanding young scholars.”
CAS associates for 2015-16 and their research projects:
- Yuliy Baryshnikov, mathematics/electrical and computer engineering, “Applied Configuration Spaces”
- Howard Berenbaum, psychology, “This I Believe”
- Eyamba Bokamba, linguistics, “Multilingualism in Africa: Sociolinguistic and Cognitive Dimensions”
- Weng Chew, electrical and computer engineering, “Computational Electromagnetics for Quantum Optics and Casimir Force Study”
- Cara Finnegan, communication, “The Camera Politic: American Presidents and the History of Photography from the Daguerreotype to the Digital Revolution”
- Farzad Kamalabadi, electrical and computer engineering, “Computational Spectral Imaging: Theory Algorithms and Fundamental Performance Limits”
- Jean-Pierre Leburton, electrical and computer engineering, “Genomics with Semiconductor Nanotechnology”
- Hedda Meadan-Kaplansky, special education, “Capitalizing on Internet Technology to Support Families with Young Children with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities”
- Harriet Murav, Slavic languages and literature/comparative and world literature, “A Strange New World: Untimeliness, Futurity, and David Bergelson”
- Philip Phillips, physics, “Strongly Coupled Electron Matter”
- Renée Trilling, English, “Ecce Corpus: Beholding the Body in Anglo-Saxon England”
- Ted Underwood, English, “The Social Differentiation of Literary Genres 1800-1950”
CAS fellows for 2015-16 and their research projects:
- Nora El-Gohary, civil and environmental engineering, “Big Data Fusion and Analytics for Resorting and Improving Urban Infrastructure”
- Brendan Harley, chemical and biomolecular engineering, “Advanced Biomaterials for Cancer Research and Therapy” (also a Beckman fellow)
- Taylor Hughes, physics, “Interplay of Symmetry Geometry and Topology in Crystalline Phases of Matter” (also a Beckman fellow)
- Charles Ledford, journalism, “The Cultural Geography of Firearms: Illinois as Microcosm of the Nation”
- Jian Ma, bioengineering, “Evolutionary Annotation of Regulatory Sequences”
- Robert Morrissey, history, “The Illinois and the Edge Effect: Bison Algonquians in the Tallgrass Prairie Borderlands 1200-1850”
- Shinsei Ryu, physics, “Topological Phases of Matter and Quantum Anomalies” (also a Beckman fellow)
- Joaquin Vieira, astronomy, “Observing the Birth of the Universe: Building and Deploying a New Camera for the South Pole Telescope” (also a Beckman fellow)
Beckman fellows are funded through the Beckman Endowment, named for UI alumnus and benefactor Arnold O. Beckman, in recognition of outstanding young faculty members’ scholarly contributions.
