BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:235@researchweek.unc.edu DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T153000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T170000 DTSTAMP:20240903T151933Z URL:https://researchweek.unc.edu/events/het-talks/ SUMMARY:Het Talks DESCRIPTION:Enjoy presentations by this year’s recipients of the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Scholarly Achievement. The talks will provid e an engaging look into these distinguished early career scholars’ work. \n\nThe late Phillip Hettleman\, a member of the Carolina class of 1921\, and his wife Ruth established their prestigious named award in 1986 to rec ognize the achievements of outstanding junior faculty. The recipients of t he $8\,000 prize will be recognized at an upcoming Faculty Council Meeting .\n\nThis is an in-person event.\n\n2024 Hettleman Winners\nWubin Bai\, Ap plied Physical Sciences\, College of Arts and Sciences \n\nResearch: Bai i s a rising scholar pioneering in bioelectronic technology\, especially in the realm of implantable and wearable devices and drug delivery. His broad background in materials science and biomedical engineering is backing his work on next-generation medical devices for improving health and increasi ng our understanding of living systems. He has over 65 publications to dat e — 17 of those as first author — including many high-impact works. \n \nBai combines the materials science of soft responsive materials\, biosen sing\, and autonomous dosing with advanced manufacturing\, all within a sy stem engineering perspective to make complete solutions. His lab invented a multi-modal patch for deep tissue monitoring and digitally automated dru g delivery\, developed 3D multiscale electronic scaffolds for studying org anoids\, and designed small soft robots to address challenges of medical i mplants\, all of which yielded patents to pursue translation. \n\nImpact: Bai’s goal is to create new technologies for wearable or implantable dev ices that can sense physiological quantities to deliver drugs or direct ti ssue growth and disappear when no longer needed. His developments enable d ozens of microgram-dose drugs to be actively delivered with high precision \, serving as a promising solution to improve patient compliance and adher ence to a pharmaceutical plan\, increase treatment precision\, and realize pharmaceutical intelligence. \n\n\n\nStephanie DeGooyer\, English and Com parative Literature\, College of Arts and Sciences \n\nResearch: DeGooyer ’s research examines intersections between law and literature from both historical and contemporary perspectives. By looking at eighteenth-century literature through the lens of legal and political texts\, and vice versa \, she reveals new relationships between the development of the novel and emerging concepts of nationality. \n\nDeGooyer has two monograph projects currently underway and has explored these important issues in two acclaim ed books. She has also written three book chapters\, three peer-reviewed a rticles in journals\, 14 op-eds and articles of engaged scholarship\, and appeared in 13 interviews and podcasts. She performs both academic and pub lic-engaged scholarship with an equally impressive degree of success. \n\n Impact: By exploring major issues in their sociohistorical context\, DeGoo yer brings to light unexpected continuities\, discrepancies\, and parallel s between concepts and policies of immigration\, notions of citizenship\, nationality\, refugees\, asylum in the 18th and 21st centuries. Her resear ch is revolutionary in its approach to 18th-century literature and culture but is also timely and invaluable to the current understanding of hot-but ton topics like immigration policy and law\, political refugees and politi cal asylum\, nationality\, nationhood\, and citizenship. \n\nDeGooyer is a ctively shaping public discourse on these topics through interviews and po dcasts with PBS\, The Nation\, The Guardian\, and Public Books. She also e ngages in public humanities activities that elevate the academic profile o f both the English and comparative literature department and the Universit y and demonstrates the relevance of the humanities in today’s world. \n\ n\n\nJulia Rager\, Environmental Sciences and Engineering\, Gillings Schoo l of Global Public Health \n\nResearch: Rager leads a research team aimed at unraveling relationships between environmental exposures and health out comes\, with a focus on complex mixtures — made of many chemicals whose complete composition is unknown — that are becoming more prevalent in th e environment. Her laboratory uniquely addresses this goal by coupling adv anced computer modeling methods with molecular toxicology approaches. \n\n Rager is an expert in public health and human risk assessment\, but also w ell-trained and equipped to leverage the latest tools and approaches from the disciplines of genomics\, molecular biology\, and computational scienc es. She has produced 90 publications — 22 of which she led as last autho r\, and 14 of which included students in her lab as first authors. \n\nImp act: The primary mission of Rager’s lab is to integrate data from next-g eneration technologies into the regulatory arena to better protect public health. Her findings highlight the importance of regulating human exposure s to chemicals based on the best available science enabled through a biolo gical analysis method that combines multiple datasets to study complex bio logical processes. \n\nShe has worked on some of the most challenging ong oing environmental chemical issues including arsenic\, hexavalent chromium \, perfluorinated chemicals\, and wildfire emissions. Her work has been ci ted extensively and has been considered in a formal risk assessment proces s at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. \n\n\n\nCarl Rodriguez\, Ph ysics and Astronomy\, College of Arts and Sciences \n\nResearch: Rodriguez is an emerging leader in a field that is in its infancy — black holes a nd gravitational waves. This year\, he was selected by the American Astron omical Society for the Warner Prize\, the highest national award given to early-career astrophysicists. He won for groundbreaking work on the astrop hysical origin of the gravitational-wave sources detected by the Laser Int erferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). \n\nRodriguez’s work on the dynamical formation of merging black hole binaries from young star clusters\, stellar triples\, and globular clusters — millions of stars tightly bound together — has been key in the community's analysis of the se events. His 96 peer-reviewed papers\, 19 of which he led as first autho r\, have garnered over 10\,000 citations. \n\nImpact: By carefully studyin g the full catalogs of gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime caused by large moving objects like black holes — that will be discovered over the coming decades\, Rodriguez can learn not only about how black holes f orm\, but how stars\, star clusters\, and even galaxies are born and die a cross cosmic space and time. \n\n\n\nMark Shen\, Psychiatry\, School of Me dicine \n\nResearch: Shen discovered an early biomarker for autism — the presence of excessive cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume in the brain — t hat is detectable by 6 months of age in certain babies\, which is two year s before they develop autism. His research since then has focused on how C SF cleans the brain of neuroinflammation and how problems with that proces s can lead to the development of autism in the first years of life. He has led the world’s literature in this field. \n\nShen is now PI of a five- year\, NIH-funded study of early CSF pathophysiology\, the brain’s lymph atics\, and its downstream effects on brain development\, using neuroimagi ng in infants with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDDs) and mechanistic studies in corresponding mouse models of these NDDs. His NIH grant is the first study of brain lymphatics in children. Shen has published 40 peer-re viewed papers\, including eight that were recognized by the NIH as finalis ts for “the most significant advances in autism research.” He was also named the Early-Career Investigator of the Year by the International Soci ety for Autism Research. \n\nImpact: Behavioral symptoms of autism emerge in the latter part of the first or second years of life\, and therefore d iagnosis is not currently made until 2-4 years of age. Shen has demonstrat ed that enlargement of CSF volume emerged in the first six months of life in infants who later developed autism\, allowing for the possibility of a new\, earlier method of diagnosis. \n\nIn 2018\, Shen founded the clinical trials program within the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabiliti es\, which tests novel genetic therapies in children with NDDs. The over-a rching goal of Shen’s research is to identify early biological markers a nd therapeutic targets for NDDs including autism\, fragile X syndrome\, Do wn syndrome\, and Angelman syndrome. His research is unique because it is fully translational between preclinical models\, clinical research\, and c linical trials. ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://researchweek.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/ 2024/08/het-talks-photoswithlogo-scaled.jpg CATEGORIES:Featured Event,In-person Event,Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research LOCATION:Wilson Library\, Pleasants Family Assembly Room\, 201 South Road\, Chapel hill\, North Carolina\, 27515\, United States X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=201 South Road\, Chapel hil l\, North Carolina\, 27515\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Wils on Library\, Pleasants Family Assembly Room:geo:0,0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR