For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, students and alumni.

Recent publications and honors include the following:

Publications

Ray Callahan, professor emeritus of history, is the author of a new book, Triumph at Imphal-Kohima: How the Indian Army Finally Stopped the Japanese Juggernaut, published by the University Press of Kansas. In spring 1944, the Japanese Army suffered the worst defeat in its history on the eastern front of India near the Burmese border at the hands of Lt. Gen. William Slim’s British XIV Army, most of whose units were drawn from the Indian Army. This book tells the largely unknown story of that critical victory for the Allied forces in World War II. British military historian Robert Lyman has called Triumph at Imphal-Kohima “an astonishingly good and much-needed book, written by a master in his field who is blessed with the rare skill of brevity. The book is lively and beautifully written.” Author Edward J. Drea said, “This superb account of one of the great battles of World War II by a master of his craft sets new standards for future historians.”

Honors

Rebecca L. Davis, associate professor of history, has received a travel grant from the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism to support her research on the history of religious conversion in the United States. Davis’ book in progress, American Converts: Religion and Identity Since World War II, argues that celebrity religious conversion experiences reveal shifting ideas of self and identity at play in the postwar American cultural imagination. The Cushwa Center recently published an interview with Davis about her research.

Multiple UD students — current, past and future — won awards in the student paper competition at the Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering and Biotransport Conference (SB3C) held from June 21-24 in Tucson, Arizona. Brian Graham, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, won second place in the Cellular Mechanics and Mechanobiology category for his work titled “Insights into Tribological Rehydration of Articular Cartilage via Analysis of Solute Transport in situ.“ Mengxi Lv, a doctoral student in bioinformatics and computational biology, won second place in the Diseases, Injury and Remodeling category for her work titled “Statin Attenuates the Inflammatory Damage on Cartilage by Inhibiting Rho Activity in Chondrocytes.” Babak Safa, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, won third place in the Diseases, Injury and Remodeling category for his work titled “Modeling Tendon Viscoelasticity, Plasticity, and Damage Using Reactive Inelasticity.” Ellen Bloom, who is joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering as a doctoral student this fall, won first place in the Fluids and Microfluidics, Cellular and Tissue Mechanics, Physiology and Diseases category for her work titled “Steady-State Characterization of the Mechanical Properties of the Pacinian Corpuscle.” Brandon Zimmerman, a UD alumnus and doctoral student at Columbia University, won first place in the Tissue Mechanics and Characterization category for his work titled “A Finite Element Algorithm for Large Deformation Frictional Contact of Biphasic Materials with Application to Contact of Articular Cartilage in Diarthrodial Joints.”

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