faculty

Faculty recognized for critical research efforts during the pandemic

April 13, 2021

These GCSC faculty affiliates were recognized for their efforts on critical health and social justice issues brought on, or exacerbated by, the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

The following is excerpted from a story by Rebecca Walsh in At the U.

Some of the best long-term, basic research is often made immediately relevant by current events.

The COVID-19 pandemic and social justice disparities have transformed everything from the way Americans buy groceries to how we work and play. University of Utah faculty are responding with innovative projects that explore virus transmission, unequal access to healthcare, and how members of our community talk about their lives during a time when the country faces critical social issues.

With those forces in mind, University of Utah Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Reed has named a new cohort of Banner Project recipients—nearly two dozen researchers, teachers and librarians who are working to generate new knowledge and document this extraordinary time in human history.

“The faculty members working on these projects deserve recognition for taking on some of the thorniest problems facing our society,” Reed said. “This scholarly work will help us improve COVID-19 treatments; weather this global health crisis; expand access to health care; and bridge the social, economic and racial differences that divide us.”

The Banner Project recognizes mid-career faculty who are intellectual and thought leaders, not only at the U, but also in the community. “The goal is to put faces to the world-class scholarship, groundbreaking discoveries, unique innovations and creative works generated by our scholars,” Reed added.

John Lin named Earth Leadership Program Fellow

January 26, 2021

GCSC faculty affiliate John Lin, professor of atmospheric sciences, has been named a 2021 fellow of The Earth Leadership Program. The program recognizes mid-career academic researchers who focus on environmental and sustainability issues and provides them with an opportunity to develop as global leaders to bring their expertise to effect positive change. Dr. Lin will join a global network of scientists, researchers, and innovators engaged in transdisciplinary research that will be needed to support rapid transformations towards sustainability.

Lin has been an innovative and collaborative researcher since being recruited to the U of U (with the help of the GCSC) in 2012. His Land-Atmosphere Interactions Research (LAIR) group studies phenomena that impact climate and the environment such as air quality, greenhouse gases, and wildfire emissions.

Lin says his selection as a fellow reflects the quality of research at the U in studying climate change and air pollution. “As importantly,” he says, “the Earth Leadership Program recognizes the potential for work at the U to provide solutions to these issues by working with stakeholders and the public at large.  This is testament to the efforts in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences as well as the many, many wonderful members of the Global Change and Sustainability Center across campus.” (quoted from an article in @theU. Click link to read further.)

 

This leadership training program “provides opportunities for Fellows to learn leadership skills and to practice them in a dynamic setting. The network of trainers, mentors, and peers promotes relationships that are meaningful and may lead to new professional opportunities. The value for each Fellow is in building these connections and in becoming inspired and confident that our research has purpose and impact on the world.” Sharon K. Collinge, Executive Director of the Earth Leadership Program.

 

GCSC seminar: disaster resilience in an unjust world

August 25, 2020

By Maria Archibald, Sustainability Office

As climate-induced wildfires rage across the West and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to threaten our communities, many of us have disaster on the mind. How will we respond when disaster strikes close to home? How will we recover? How can we build our communities to be resilient in the face of crisis?

In her upcoming Global Change & Sustainability Center seminar, “A Grassroots View of Disaster Recovery,” Dr. Divya Chandrasekhar will explore these questions, as well as examine what it means to be disaster resilient in a complex, uncertain and unjust world. Chandrasekhar, associate professor in City & Metropolitan Planning and an urban and regional planner who has studied disasters across the globe, is particularly interested in the importance of community autonomy to the recovery process.

Because disasters impact every dimension of our lives, from our collective economy to our individual psychology, disaster recovery must happen at the grassroots level—from the bottom up.

“When you say a community has recovered, it means every individual in that community should have recovered in some meaningful way,” Chandrasekhar says. This can only happen when individuals have agency and power in their own recovery process, so she cautions fellow urban planners and other eager outsiders to take care in their recovery work. Without a deep understanding of the community’s needs and capacities, their efforts will be irrelevant or even harmful, she says. Her call to action? Engage communities in deciding their own futures.

While one might think that a person who spends her life studying disasters would feel rather pessimistic, Chandrasekhar says she finds great hope in her work. While disasters inflict trauma and tragedy, they also present an important opportunity.

“Disasters shake up existing structures,” Chandrasekhar says. “They don’t just destroy your building, they smash government structures. They smash patriarchy.” If a community is ready to address these underlying issues, the recovery process presents a good opportunity to demand justice and build resilience, she says. Climate change and COVID-19, which have hit communities of color and under-resourced communities the hardest, demonstrate that oppressive structures like racism and colonialism cause the effects of disaster to be felt disproportionately.

“The process of going from recovery to resilience requires addressing those larger structural issues,” Chandrasekhar says. “There can be no resilience unless there is social justice.”

So, amidst the grief, the anger, and the loss that disaster brings, Chandrasekhar finds hope—hope for healing, for a more just future and for resilient communities that can withstand disaster.

Whether you’re an organizer doing mutual aid in your neighborhood, an urban planner hoping to better engage communities in your work, or an individual searching for hope in this trying time, Chandrasekhar’s talk will have something for you. Join us from 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, September 1 at https://tinyurl.com/gcsc-disaster as she explores the complexity of disaster recovery and calls for social justice as the only path to true resilience.

GCSC Affiliate Faculty Recognition 2019-2020

May 13, 2020

At the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, the University of Utah recognized several GCSC faculty affiliates for their contributions to research and education.

  • Robin Kundis Craig was named Distinguished Professor of Law in the S.J. Quinney College of Law.
    Dr. Craig researches the law and policy of “all things water,” including water rights, water pollution, and ocean and coastal issues, as well as climate change adaptation, the intersection of constitutional and environmental law, and the food-energy-water nexus. She has authored, co-authored, or edited 11 books, 21 books chapters, and over 100 articles in both law and scientific journals.
  • Dave Bowling, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, received a Distinguished Research Award. The Bowling lab group studies how environmental and climate change affect the carbon and water cycles of forests, grasslands, and shrublands of the mountain West.
  • Shelley Minteer, Professor, Department of Chemistry, received a Distinguished Research Award. Her research focuses on improving the energy efficiency of energy conversion and storage devices.

Two faculty affiliates were named “Career Champions of the Year” for their contributions to student career and internship success:

  • Peter Lippert, Associate Professor, Department of Geology and Geophysics
  • Kody Powell, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering

Three GCSC faculty affiliates were awarded NSF CAREER Grants, awards that support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors in the context of their organizations’ missions. They are:

GCSC Affiliates Contribute to COVID-19 Research

April 20, 2020

The University has awarded seed funding to support critical research to better understand and respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. GCSC affiliate faculty engaged in these efforts are shown below.

Frederick Adler, Departments of Mathematics and Biology: Mathematically modeling the impact of viral interactions and evolution on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Divya Chandrasekhar, Department of City & Metropolitan Planning: Effectiveness of multi-hazard response planning for concurrent disasters (Case study: COVID-19 and post-earthquake response in the Salt Lake City Metro Region)

Sarah Grinkeski, Department of Sociology, and and Tim Collins, Department of Geography, Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Multi-institutional Study

Alexander Hohl, Richard Medina and Neng Wan, Department of Geography: A Geospatial Big Data Platform for Understanding Population Sentiment Toward the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States

Monisha Pasupathi, Department of Psychology: College, Interrupted: Individual differences in freshmen college student mental health, identity, and retention in college as a function of covid-19 disruptions to education across four institutions

Jennifer Weidhaas and Ramesh Goel, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Municipal wastewater monitoring based surveillance and prediction tools for community level occurrence and spread of COVID-19. 

“Urban waterways could potentially provide a major transport pathway for deadly viruses such as COVID-19. The goal of this project is to determine the presence of COVID-19 in Salt Lake City sewer lines using our newly developed molecular biomarkers. The data will be used to estimate risk assessment towards human health using microbial risk assessment tools.” Read more about this project in the news.