Publications

Earl Smith and Angela Hattery, both of whom are professors of women and gender studies, recently published a paper in the Journal of Black Studies. "Re-Conceptualizing Kaepernick’s Kneeling Protests and His Banishment From the NFL as an Infringement on His “Right to Work.” 

Presentations

Arild Hestvik, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, was the lead organizer of the PhonolEEGy 2 conference, a two-day event held June 24-25 as a satellite event during the Linguistic Society of America’s Summer 2023 Institute. The conference was designed to connect experimental research based on electroencephalogram (EEG) and/or magnetoencephalogram (MEG) with phonological theory. According to Hestvik, “while EEG/MEG-based research concerning linguistically relevant sound and its patterning (phonology) is growing, work that explicitly addresses how the phonological system is implemented in the brain is still relatively limited. The conference aimed to promote EEG/MEG-based experimental evidence as it informs phonological theory in order to grow the intersection of these fields.” The event featured 13 talks, including three by international invited speakers: Aditi Lahiri of Oxford University; Philip Monahan of the University of Toronto; and Milko Grimaldi of the University of Salento. The event was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, on June 14 gave a keynote talk, by Zoom: “A Historical Perspective on the Quest for Economic Self-Sufficiency in Iran,” for the International Iranian Economic Association.

Steven Eidelman, H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Human Services Policy and Leadership in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, was invited as an honored guest to the Inclusive Global Development Roundtable at the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games on June 18 in Berlin Germany. This global convening provided a platform for leaders to announce commitments to substantial advances in inclusion through sports for students and youth of all abilities as part of the launch of the Special Olympics's Global Leadership Coalition for Inclusion.

Alaina Robinson, policy specialist II at the Institute for Public Administration (IPA), presented a poster presentation at the 21st Annual Policy and Practice Institute: Delaware's Conference on Public Education at Dover High School on June 21, 2023. The Policy and Practice Institute is Delaware’s premier networking and professional learning event for over 650 educators, school leaders, and policymakers across the state. Robinson’s poster presentation titled, The Redding Consortium for Educational Equity: A Model for Educational Equity in Delaware, featured the work and accomplishments of the Consortium and its work groups. Robinson empowered participants to take action by promoting educational equity in their school communities. Furthermore, she  encouraged participant learning by sharing both practices and outcomes of the work of the Redding Consortium while also engaging scholars and practitioners in education in meaningful discussions about how to improve educational equity in their respective schools and districts across Delaware. The Redding Consortium was created to recommend policies and practices to the Governor and Delaware General Assembly that will achieve educational equity and improve educational outcomes for all Pre-K to grade twelve students in the City of Wilmington and northern New Castle County Delaware. The Redding Consortium is staffed by IPA and Delaware State University and supports programming to improve the lives of impacted communities by helping to fund full-day pre-K programs, wraparound services in schools, and scholarships to recruit educators and other educational support staff. IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. 

Xiaopeng Ji, assistant professor in the School of Nursing, was awarded the Club Hypno Cup for presenting her peer-selected study on sleep and cardiometabolic health disparities as part of 2023’s data blitz competition hosted by the Sleep Research Society. The study was co-authored by Lauren Covington, also an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, Freda Patterson, associate dean of research in the Department of Behavioral Health and Nutrition, and Janeese Brownlow, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Delaware State University. This cross-sectional research suggested a stronger correlation between unhealthy sleep and increased metabolic syndrome risk for racial and ethnic minorities vs. non-Hispanic whites in emerging adult populations. The 18 to 21 age period is critical as a shifting point where sleep issues typically increase most. “This research helps lead to my next study, an intervention powered by artificial intelligence, to help improve sleep in Black/African American young adults,” Ji said. “With increased cardiometabolic risks, this population deserves more attention and can derive the greatest benefits from a targeted intervention.” 

Staff from the University of Delaware Water Resources Center (UDWRC)  joined 360 attendees from water research universities throughout North America at the 2023 Universities Council on Water Resources and National Institutes for Water Resources (UCOWR/NIWR) Annual Water Resources Conference. The event was held on June 13-15, 2023, at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. At the conference awards luncheon, Gerald Kauffman, Jr. director of the UDWRC and associate professor with the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration was installed as the 59th president of UCOWR to serve a one-year term. Kauffman also presented on interstate river basin governance of drought and flood in the U.S. Four additional papers on water resources research in Delaware were presented by UDWRC staff and graduate students. Martha Narvaez, UDWRC associate director and policy scientist, presented on the  City of Wilmington Green Jobs Program. Andrew Homsey, UDWRC policy scientist, presented, “The Watersheds and Landscapes of the Delaware Basin and Estuary: 2023 Status and Trends.” Elizabeth Shields, master’s degree student in public policy, presented, “Indigenous and European Place Names Along Streams and Waterways in Delaware (Lenapehocking).” Lydia Franks, water science and policy graduate student, presented, “Economic Value of New Jersey Tributaries to the Delaware River.” The UDWRC is a public service, education, and research unit of the Institute for Public Administration housed at the Biden School. 

Honors

Cathy Wu, Unidel Edward G. Jefferson Chair and Professor of the College of Engineering’s Computer and Information Sciences department, has been named as a 2023 Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). The ISCB Fellows Program was introduced in 2009 to honor members that have distinguished themselves through outstanding scientific and leadership contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. Wu has been recognized as a longtime leader in the field of bioinformatics, most notably for her leadership of the Protein Information Resource (PIR), the UniProt Consortium and the Protein Ontology Consortium. As the Director of PIR, Wu co-founded the international UniProt Consortium in 2002, bringing together three disparate protein resources in the US, UK, and Switzerland, and serving as the US Principal Investigator with continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since its inception. As a central hub of protein knowledge to advance biomedical sciences, UniProt provides information from hundreds of thousands of publications for tens of millions of proteins from all living organisms. The resource receives over 8 million pageviews per month from a million unique sites worldwide. Wu is also an elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for her contributions to computational biology and data science, and an elected Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions to bioinformatics, computational biology, knowledge mining and semantic data integration. 

Kathy Murphy, associate director of the Institute for Public Administration (IPA) in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration was recently elected president of the Delaware ACE Women’s Network (DAWN). Joy Jordan, assistant policy scientist in IPA, was elected secretary. DAWN is the state chapter of the American Council on Education (ACE), which is focused on mobilizing the higher education community to shape effective public policy and foster innovative, high-quality practice. DAWN serves as the state’s premier organization dedicated to supporting and advancing leadership opportunities for Delaware’s women in higher education. For more than 25 years, the organization has provided information and counsel to constituencies within the higher education community regarding policies, issues, education, and research that influence women’s equity, diversity, and advancement. The DAWN Executive Committee is made up of women from the University of Delaware, Goldey-Beacom College, Delaware Technical Community College, Widener University - Delaware Law School, Delaware State University and Wilmington University. Each year DAWN hosts a variety of professional development and networking events for its members. At the annual Leadership Summit held in March, DAWN raised $1,400 for I Am My Sister’s Keeper, a local nonprofit that provides leadership development and entrepreneurial skills training to girls ages 6 to 18. Murphy is a long-time member of DAWN and has participated in their events as an attendee and a presenter. She joined DAWN’s Executive Committee in 2020 and became the president-elect in 2022. Murphy is the past president of the Delaware Association for Public Administration (DAPA) and the Delaware Conflict Resolution Network (DCRN). As the Associate Director of IPA, she leads IPA’s strategic staff development and climate initiatives by creating opportunities for staff to gain new skills and create more effective teams. She also oversees the Conflict Resolution Program that is housed in IPA. This program is dedicated to building the capacity of individuals and organizations to use collaborative approaches to resolve conflict. Jordan joined DAWN’s Executive Committee in 2021. She served on their statewide Leadership Summit planning committee in 2023. As an Assistant Policy Scientist in IPA’s Conflict Resolution Program, Joy serves as a mediator and facilitator for Delaware’s statewide special education dispute resolution program known as SPARC.