Honors & Achievements of UD faculty & staff
Kenneth Barner, professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering , has been named an IEEE Fellow, a distinction reserved for select IEEE members, conferred on one-tenth of 1 percent of the total voting membership each year.
Mangone Scholar
Tania L. Roth, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, has been selected by the University’s Francis Alison Society to receive the 2015 Gerard J. Mangone Young Scholars Award.
The award recognizes promising and accomplished young faculty. The recipient is chosen by fellow faculty members who have received the Francis Alison Award, the University’s highest competitive faculty honor.
Roth, a behavioral neuroscientist, studies what happens to the brain when stress occurs early in life, exploring how that experience can cause molecular changes to DNA. She works in the area of behavioral epigenetics, or the study of specific molecular modifications that change gene expression and produce short- and long-term effects on physiology and behavior.
Using a rodent model, Roth studies the mother-infant interaction and effects of maternal maltreatment, investigating the relationship between environmental experiences and lifelong patterns of gene expression and behavior.
She has investigated the neurobehavioral basis of infant attachment to an abusive caregiver and has been part of a national consortium of researchers seeking to better understand posttraumatic stress disorder.
In 2010, Roth was first author on important publications in the new field of behavioral epigenetics and found that adverse maternal care alters the expression of a gene that plays a key role in brain development.
Chuck Crawford, head coach of men’s crew, was named the 2015 Fan’s Choice Collegiate Coach of the Year by USRowing.
Dominic Di Toro, the Edward C. Davis Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences Foundation.
Thomas H. Epps, III, the Thomas and Kipp Gutshall Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been awarded the American Physical Society’s 2016 John H. Dillon Medal, which recognizes outstanding research by young polymer physicists who have demonstrated exceptional promise early in their careers.
Yan Jin, professor of plant and soil sciences with a joint appointment in civil and environmental engineering, has been awarded the 2015 Don and Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award by the Soil Science Society of America.
Martha Narvaez, policy scientist with the University’s Water Resources Agency in the School of Public Policy and Administration, was inaugurated as the 50th president of the American Water Resources Association.
Babatunde Ogunnaike, the William L. Friend Chair of Chemical Engineering and dean of the College of Engineering, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
Michelle Rodgers, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and director of UD Cooperative Extension, was named chair of the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy and elected as a trustee on the National 4-H Council.
Michael Shay, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, an honor that places him among the top one-half of 1 percent of society members.
Donald L. Sparks, Unidel S. Hallock du Pont Chair in Soil and Environmental Chemistry and director of the Delaware Environmental Institute, has been named an honorary professor of the Institute of Soil Science in Nanjing, China, becoming the first soil scientist to receive the title of honorary professor in the institute’s 60-year history.
Michela Taufer, the David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills Chair of Computer and Information Sciences, has been named a distinguished scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s leading association of computing professionals.
Faculty Books
Carlos Asarta, associate professor of economics, Principles of Economics, McGraw-Hill. (Co-written with Roger Butters).
Karen Avino, assistant professor of nursing, Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
David Coker Jr., associate professor of education, and Kristen Ritchey, associate professor of education, Teaching Beginning Writers, Guilford Press.
Fred DeMicco, professor and ARAMARK Chair of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, Restaurant Management: A Best Practices Approach, Kendall Hunt.
Saul Hoffman, professor of economics, Women and the Economy: Family, Work, and Pay, Pearson Addison Wesley. (Co-written with Susan Averett).
Charles MacArthur, professor of special education and literacy, Handbook of Writing Research, Guilford Press.
Vimalin Rujivacharakul, associate professor of art history, Architecturalized Asia: Mapping a Continent Through History, University of Hawaii Press, in association with Hong Kong University Press.
David Teague, professor of English, The Red Hat, Disney-Hyperion.
Jeanne Murray Walker, professor of English, Ambition, Wipf and Stock Publishers. (Edited with Luci Shaw).
