One of the dynamic faculty development opportunities on campus, the Research & Innovation Office (RIO) Faculty Fellows program supports rising faculty who are interested in furthering their leadership skills to achieve maximum impact within and beyond the university.
Innovation means:
We asked the inaugural cohort of RIO Faculty Fellows what effects they expect from innovations in their fields. Their responses—glimpses into the future— appear below.
Innovation means:
We’ll better understand the ecological consequences of fertilizers and pesticides in large-scale agricultural systems, and help farmers optimize nutrient, pesticide and water use while reducing negative impacts to human health and adjacent ecosystems.
Eve-Lyn S. Hinckley
Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
Innovation means:
We’ll be able to use the abundance of information from the dozens of satellites capturing data about our planet to find solutions to our most pressing environmental challenges.
Jennifer Balch
Director of Earth Lab & Assistant Professor, Geography
Innovation means:
We will develop new tools and approaches to improve the health and physiology of mothers and children by better understanding how they are interconnected, within a lifetime and across generations.
Robin Bernstein
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Innovation means:
Communities of educators and researchers working together to design, practice and sustain engaging, effective instructional practices that improve literacy outcomes for students from diverse learning and language backgrounds.
Alison Boardman
Associate Professor, Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity, School of Education
Innovation means:
Interdisciplinary research on the Bible will uncover its rich history and teachings, allowing us to refine the ways in which the Bible is taught and used in the public sphere.
Samuel Boyd
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies and Program in Jewish Studies
Innovation means:
We will decode love on a molecular level, discovering the brain cells that encode love and the processes that enable us to recover from the loss of a loved one.
Zoe Donaldson
Assistant Professor, Neuroscience, MCDB & Psych/Neuro
Innovation means:
We’ll be able to harness sunlight to make and break chemical bonds, enabling the fuels and medicines of the future.
Gordana Dukovic
Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Innovation means:
We’ll better understand Earth processes and events to help address topics like the causes of topographic and landscape evolution, hydrocarbon and ore deposit exploration, and relationships between erosion and biologic change.
Rebecca Flowers
Associate Professor, Geological Sciences
Innovation means:
Strategies based on Developmentally Appropriate Musical Practices will help public school music educators foster playful music making, creativity and joyful engagement with young children as they begin formal school music instruction.
Martina Miranda
Associate Professor, Music Education
Innovation means:
Youth will engage in environmental and civic issues through performance-based methods, celebrating the voices of youth, immersing youth in joyful expression and reminding entire communities of the value of their futures.
Beth Osnes
Associate Professor, Theatre and Environmental Studies
Innovation means:
Intelligent commercial transition of gas-sensing laser technologies will transform air quality, increase homeland security, inform combustion system design and improve our energy future.
Greg Rieker
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Innovation means:
We’ll be able to address some of the most significant challenges regarding contamination of water supplies nationally and globally, thus ensuring safer water for consumers.
Fernando Rosario-Ortiz
Professor, Environmental Engineering
Innovation means:
Museums will be creative sites for communicating academic scholarship to the public and supporting indigenous peoples’ health and well-being through access to collections, repatriation and communitydirected research.
Jen Shannon
Museum Curator and Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology
