2023 GRO Academy Cohort

Candice Askwith, PhD is an associate professor and vice chair of research in the Department of Neuroscience. The Askwith lab is focused on understanding how factors in the extracellular environment work through ion channels and G-protein coupled receptors to control neuronal signaling and cell death. Changes in the interstitial environment of the brain control behavior and neurological injury. Understanding how neurons sense and respond to signals within this extracellular space is critical for developing novel therapeutic strategies to treat mental illness and neurological disease. Specifically, the lab is investigating how the acid sensing ion channels and extracellular pH fluctuations change neuronal signaling to control cell death following cerebral ischemia or injury. The lab focuses on dissecting the cellular signaling pathways that control acid-dependent cell death and determining how activation of specific G-protein coupled receptors can interfere with these processes to mediate neuroprotection.

Harmony Bench, PhD is associate professor of dance and author of Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). Her research addresses practices, performances, and circulations of dance in the contexts of digital and screen media. For nearly a decade, she has collaborated with Kate Elswit to bring the digital humanities and dance history into greater dialogue through computational analysis and data visualization with projects such as Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry (www.dunhamsdata.org; winner of the 2021 ATHE/ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship), and Visceral Histories/Visual Arguments:Dance-Based Approaches to Data. From 2014-2019, she co-edited The International Journal of Screendance with Simon Ellis, and in 2021, she guest-edited the special issue This Is Where We Dance Now: COVID-19 and the New and Next in Dance Onscreen with Alexandra Harlig. For 2022-23, she is a Fellow with the Global Arts + Humanities at Ohio State.

E. Leigh Bonds, PhD, associate professor and digital humanities librarian, consults with faculty and students on applying digital humanities (DH) approaches to their research and teaching, teaches DH praxis and pedagogy, collaborates on projects, and leads the campus DH network. After six years in this role, Bonds understands the importance of engaging the DH community and leveraging existing resources in coordinated, collaborative efforts to develop and sustain a dynamic, multifaceted support network. To inform those endeavors, she follows emerging trends, tracks new projects and initiatives, learns new methodologies and tools, and actively serves and contributes to conversations in her professional field. She is a DH practitioner and pedagogue with training in specific methods and best practices, and experience working on collaborative project teams. As an active member of the broader digital humanities community, Bonds chairs the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s DH Group and reviews proposals annually for the Association of Digital Humanities Organizations’ and the Association for Computers and the Humanities’ conferences. At Ohio State, she serves as a GAHDT faculty fellow, co‐ leads the University Libraries’ digital scholarship strategic initiative, and serves on University Senate, Faculty Council and University Research Committee. Bonds holds a PhD in English from Texas Tech University.

Jordan Clark, PhD, studies novel ways of providing for environmental control, energy efficiency and power demand management in commercial, residential and agricultural buildings. His research interests include modeling of buildings and indoor environments, sensor hardware, HVAC systems, and interaction of buildings with larger energy systems. He has contributed to development of several hyper-efficient cooling and dehumidification products and volunteers for efforts around standardization of testing and rating of hardware for smart control of indoor environments at ASHRAE and HVI. He is currently leading the US Department of Energy Connected Communities project at Ohio State and serves as Chief Technology Officer for CoolYield Labs, LLC. Clark received his PhD and MS from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Building Energy and Environments Research Group. Before Ohio State, Clark held postdoctoral appointments at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Clark is a native Ohioan and lifelong Buckeye fan.

Jessica Cooperstone, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the departments of Horticulture and Crop Science and Food Science and Technology, as well as part of the Foods for Health Discovery Theme. Working at the intersection of plant, food and nutritional sciences, her goal is to develop fruit and vegetable varieties that are purposefully designed for enhanced human health, backed up by clinical trial data and worthy of government supported health claims. Her interdisciplinary research group works to better understand how genetic and environmental factors affect the biosynthesis of phytochemicals in crops and how these compounds affect human health. Projects in the Cooperstone Lab combine analytical chemistry (both through traditional chemical analyses, and broader untargeted chemical profiling) with plant genetics/genomics, transcriptomics, microbiome data, sensory science, and measures of health outcomes and utilizes bioinformatics-based approaches.

Karen C. Dannemiller, PhD, directs the Indoor Environmental Quality researchgroup,whichaddressesemergingenvironmentalconcernswithin the built environment. She is an associate professor and College of Engineering Innovation Scholar with a joint appointment in Civil, Environmental & Geodetic Engineering and Environmental Health Sciences. She is also a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute and has a courtesy appointment in Microbiology. Her work aims to improve understanding of chemical and microbial processes indoors that impact health while fostering student engagement. Funding sources include NSF, NIH, NASA, HUD, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and SOCHE/AFRL. Recent awards include National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, Buckeye Engineering Women in Executive Leadership (BEWEL) Leadership in Innovation Award, the Lumley Engineering Research Award, and selection in American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists’ 2022 40 under 40.

Sean Downey, PhD, is an ecological anthropologist whose research explores the social and environmental dynamics of farming and foraging societies, past and present. His work is guided by anthropology’s traditional focus on human cultural and biological variability, which he believes can provide important insights into pressing questions about contemporary societies and the environmental sustainability. In order to achieve this potential, he develops and applies novel methods of data collection and analysis in his studies. Please see the website for the Human Complexity Lab for more information.

Laszlo Farkas, MD, was born in Budapest/Hungary and grew up in Germany, where he attended school and medical school in Regensburg. He obtained his doctorate with a dissertation defense “summa cum laude” studying endotoxin effects in lung epithelial cells. After residency training at the University of Regensburg, Farkas joined Martin Kolb and Jack Gauldie at McMaster University as postdoctoral fellow to study molecular mechanisms of lung vascular and parenchymal remodeling. Farkas joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University as instructor in 2011 with promotion to Assistant Professor in 2013. He built a nationally recognized research program studying endothelial cell and endothelial stem cell biology and inflammatory mechanisms of lung vascular remodeling at VCU. Publications include journals such as American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, and Journal of Clinical Investigation. Multiple grants from the NIH/NHLBI and the American Heart Association have supported his research program. In 2019, Farkas joined the growing Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Ohio State to expand his research program. New areas of research include the role of endolysosomal dysfunction and SARS-CoV- 2 induced endothelial dysfunction.

Erica R. Glasper, PhD, earned her bachelor's degree with honors in psychology from Randolph-Macon College and went on to earn her master's and doctorate in Psychobiology and Behavioral Neuroscience at Ohio State. Glasper’s postdoctoral studies began at Princeton University in 2006, where she was supported by fellowships from the UNCF/Merck Science Initiative and the NIH. In 2011, Glasper joined the faculty at the University of Maryland-College Park in the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor. It was there that she began her behavioral neuroendocrinology research program investigating how experiences shape our brain, behavior, and health. Following success as a researcher and educator, she was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2019. During the summer of 2021, Glasper returned to Ohio State, where she joined the Department of Neuroscience and the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research within the College of Medicine as an associate professor with tenure and the co-director of a NIH-funded postbaccalaureate program. Her successful research program is currently funded by the NIH, Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center and the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.

Matthew Grizzard, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Communication. Situated within media psychology and communication, his research program examines moral judgment processes as they relate to the consumption of media entertainment, with a primary focus on evaluations of narratives and narrative characters. For example, current projects explore how viewers come to evaluate characters as heroes and villains, how relative differences between characters can explain the appeal of antiheroes, why viewers prefer some types of narrative endings over others, and what types of narrative content elicit moral emotions such as anger and guilt. His work on moral emotions seeks to understand how media violence can elicit moral emotions and how they might serve as motivators for prosocial responses Grizzard is a member of the editorial boards for Human Communication Research, Media Psychology and Psychology of Popular Media, and he is an associate editor of Journal of Media Psychology. He is also an officer in the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association. He has appeared as an expert in various popular press outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. Grizzard earned his PhD from Michigan State University.

Jennifer Hefner, PhD, is an associate professor in the Division of Health Management and Policy. She received both her master's in Public Health and doctorate in health services organization and policy from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on applying management and organizational theories to the study of the implementation and dissemination of healthcare and social services programs. Currently, Hefner is working on projects related to 911 response to mental health crisis, food insecurity among diabetic patients, virtual teams for first episode psychosis treatment, medication treatment for opioid use disorder, and Ohio Medicaid’s Next Generation Managed Care program. Her work has been funded by grants from the NIH (NIA and NIDDK), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ohio Department of Medicaid, and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Hefner teaches in the CPH MHA program and is also the editor of the annual book series Advances in Health Care Management.

Jeffrey B. Jacquet, PhD, is associate professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources. One of the first sociologists to study the process of hydraulic fracturing, Jacquet has gone on to examine a range of renewable- and non-renewable-energy-related social and environmental systems at institutions including the University of Wyoming, Cornell University, and South Dakota State University. At Ohio State, Jacquet leads students through coursework and mentorship to examine the areas of energy, environment, and rural societies.

Rachel Louis Kajfez, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the associate chair for Graduate Studies and Research Infrastructure in her department. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in Civil Engineering from Ohio State and earned her doctorate in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. She joined the faculty at Ohio State in 2013 as an assistant professor of practice and transitioned to a tenure-track role after helping establish the Department of Engineering Education which grew out of the Engineering Education Innovation Center. She was also instrumental in creating Ohio State's PhD program in Engineering Education. Her research interests focus on the intersection between motivation and identity of undergraduate and graduate students, first-year engineering programs, mixed methods research, and innovative approaches to teaching. She is the principal investigator for the Research on Identity and Motivation in Engineering (RIME) Collaborative and co-directs the Toy Adaptation Program. She has a passion for developing processes and working on collaborative transdisciplinary projects.

Bryce Kerlin, MD, is a principal investigator in the Center for Clinical & Translational Research in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Kerlin is also director of the Joan Fellowship in Pediatric Hemostasis-Thrombosis at Nationwide Children's Hospital, director of the Blood Disease Research Affinity Group, an attending physician in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/BMT and a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State. Kerlin’s research is focused on the translational epidemiology of pediatric thrombosis, focusing on the clarification of biomarkers and clinical features linked to thrombosis, especially in pediatric kidney disease. He actively participates in clinical trials for new treatments in hemostasis and thrombosis, including new medications for hemophilia, von Willebrand disease, and blood clots. Kerlin earned his bachelor of science degree from Purdue University and his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He trained in Pediatrics at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Coagulation Physiology at the Blood Research Institute (Milwaukee). Kerlin led the Hemophilia Treatment Center at Rady Children’s Hospital where he was also an assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine before joining the faculty at Nationwide Children’s in 2004.

Zhiqiang Lin, PhD, is a distinguished professor of engineering. His research interests center around systems and software security, with a key focus on developing automated binary analysis techniques for vulnerability discovery and malware analysis, and hardening the systems and software from binary code rewriting, virtualization and trusted execution environment. He has published more than 130 papers - 51 of which appeared in the top venues in cybersecurity including IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, USENIX Security, and NDSS. He has also served on the technical program committee of these conferences many times, chaired or co-chaired ISC (2019), FEAST (2019), ASIACCS (2021), and SECURECOMM (2022). Currently, he is an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking. He was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Securing Computing, and IEEE Transactions of Mobile Computing. He is a recipient of Harrison Faculty Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, NSF CAREER award, AFOSR Young Investigator award, and Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University.

Tasleem J. Padamsee, PhD, is an assistant professor in the College of Public Health, and a faculty affiliate of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Department of Sociology. A sociologist by training, Padamsee brings theoretical and methodological tools from sociology and women’s studies to bear on public health problems. She is a scholar of health disparities and health systems, whose research program explores the intersections of social inequality, public policy, and health care. Her research has been funded by multiple federal agencies and private foundations. Padamsee leads the Daughter Sister Mother Project, which conducts multi-method studies of how diverse women at elevated risk for breast cancer make prevention decisions and how women can better be supported to manage their cancer risks. Since early 2020, Padamsee has been intensively involved in COVID-19 response, recovery, and research activities. She has helped shape Ohio’s response to COVID-19 in historically marginalized populations, co- authored Ohio’s COVID-19 Populations Needs Assessment, helped design the Wexner Medical Center’s mass COVID-19 vaccination site to advance regional health equity, and co-leads the C3-REACH research team (Committed to Communities Collaborative: Research and Engagement to Advance beyond COVID to Health Equity).

Shaurya Prakash graduated with a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Following a stint at Rutgers University, he joined the faculty in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State in 2009. At Ohio State, he directs the Microsystems and Nanosystems Laboratory, where his team pioneers scientific discovery to enable novel technologies for applications in healthcare, energy systems, and water purification. Prakash has published several papers, including a book titled “Nanofluidics and Microfluidics: Systems and Applications.” He is currently the co-lead for the Microbial Communities area for Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute. His multi-disciplinary research is funded by diverse government and industry sponsors. 

Carolyn J. Presley, MD, MHS, is an assistant professor on the tenure track in the Division of Medical Oncology/Department of Internal Medicine, the Comprehensive Cancer Center and The James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and her medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School. She completed residency in Internal Medicine and combined fellowship in Geriatric Oncology and Hematology at Yale University. She completed a master's in Health Sciences, also at Yale, within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program sponsored by the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. She is an active member of the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Program, The American Geriatrics Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She has been a long-time member of the international Cancer and Aging Research Group (CARG). Presley currently leads studies focused on maintaining functional independence among older adults with lung cancer. These studies incorporate geriatric assessment, embedded palliative care, and interventions to improve risk factors for treatment toxicity and functional decline. She has been funded by the National Institute of Aging, the BMS Foundation, the Rising Tide Foundation, and is one of the first two women to ever receive the preeminent Paul Beeson Emerging Leaders in Aging Career Development Award at Ohio State and received the National LEAD Rising Star Award for Women in hematology and oncology.

Kelly Purtell, PhD, is an associate professor of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Education and Human Ecology. She is a faculty associate at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Population Research. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research centers on understanding how contextual factors shape health and development among low-income children and adolescents, and on how policies and programs can enhance the developmental trajectories of these youth. Many of her current projects focus on policies and practices related to early childhood education and their influences on children’s development. The primary themes of her current work are: developing a comprehensive understanding of the classroom ecologies that children experience from preschool to grade 3 and the policies that influence them; examining the ways in which classroom age composition influences children’s learning and development in preschool; and understanding the ways in which social and educational policies shape the environments experienced by children in families experiencing economic disadvantage.

Leah Pyter, PhD is an integrative biologist and an associate professor in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research and the Department of Psychiatry. She also earned her doctorate in behavioral neuroscience. She has 20 years of research experience in behavioral neurobiology, the last 15 of which have been focused on neuro-immune interactions that contribute to behavioral side effects of chemotherapy, such as fatigue, cognitive and mood deficits. Through her research, she hopes to improve the quality of life and health of cancer patients and survivors. The majority of her work has been directed at systematically identifying underlying biological mechanisms using rodent cancer models, although my lab has recently begun clinical research with breast cancer patients. Her training in integrative biology (endocrinology, neuroscience, immunology) facilitates a transdisciplinary theme in her approach to research questions, primarily how various physiological systems in the body communicate with the brain and vice versa during/after cancer. In her free time, she plays soccer, hikes with her dogs and goofs off with her kids and spouse.

, is an associate professor in the Division of Physical Therapy within the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. She is dedicated to pursuing research that empowers individuals to engage in safe and physically active lifestyles across the lifespan. She is the director for the Leading Improvement-Focused Teams for Advancing Health System Outcomes Lab (LIFT Lab). She is diversely trained in philosophies and methods for a variety of inquiry paradigms including: classic experimental and quasi-experimental designs, naturalistic/qualitative approaches, complexity science approaches (e.g., social network analysis and non-linear time series analyses), and improvement/implementation science methods. Quatman-Yates leverages systems thinking/modeling and various investigative and analytic approaches to work toward ongoing improvement of patient outcomes for a variety of injuries and conditions. She has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and has presented her work in more than 75 national and international venues. Quatman-Yates has received a number of awards related to her research including the Excellence in Research Award and New Horizon Award from the American Academy of Sports Physical Therapy and the Academy of Pediatric Physical Therapy’s Toby Long Paper of the Year Award. She was also a co-author on the now in press Clinical Practice Guidelines for Physical Therapy Evaluation and Treatment After Concussion/Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Audrey Sawyer, PhD, is an associate professor of Earth Sciences is the elected Divisional Chair of Climate, Water & Energy. She was a visiting scientist at the Spanish Research Council and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain in 2021-2022. Sawyer's research focus is surface water-groundwater interaction in streams and coastal waters. She seeks to understand how fluid flow influences water quality, its availability, and the implications for humans and ecosystems using computer models, laboratory tests, and field observations. She has authored over fifty scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Science. She is also the recipient of the Kohout Early Career Award in Hydrogeology from the Geological Society of America. Some of her recent projects include rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers, nitrogen and phosphorus fate in rivers and groundwater, and water access in the United States and East Africa. She teaches courses in hydrogeology, water issues, and introductory geology. Sawyer received a bachelor's degree in geology and environmental engineering from Rice University, a master's of science in geoscience from the Pennsylvania State University, and her doctorate in geological sciences at the University of Texas-Austin. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Delaware.

Jonathan L. Slaughter, MD, MPH, is a neonatologist and principal investigator in the Center for Perinatal Research within The Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics. Slaughter's ultimate goal is to improve outcomes important to neonatal patients and their families through research that leads directly to improvements in neonatal clinical care. His patient-centered research program focuses on comparative effectiveness research to determine which treatments work best for neonatal patients given specific clinical circumstances and patient characteristics. Slaughter’s two major NIH-funded research projects are: "Early Prediction of Spontaneous Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) Closure and PDA-Associated Outcomes" (R01HL145032);  and the PIVOTAL Trial (UG3/UH3HL161338) that focuses on treatments and outcomes related to patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) in preterm infants. He also serves as the Nationwide Children's Hospital co-investigator/alternate principal investigator for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network.

Jonathan W. Song, PhD, is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and co-director of the Center for Cancer Engineering-CURES. His research group has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and applies microtechnology, principles from tissue engineering, and quantitative engineering  analysis for studying the physical dynamics of tumor and vascular biology. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER and was named an Emerging Investigator by the Royal Society of Chemistry/Lab on a Chip. He received his bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University and his doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan. Song was a post-doctoral fellow in the EdwinL.SteeleLaboratoryforTumorBiologyatMassachusettsGeneralHospital/HarvardMedicalSchool.

Alper Yilmaz, PhD, is a professor of geoinformatics. He is a fellow of ASPRS, a senior member of IEEE, and a senior member of the NAI. Yilmaz is serving as the president of the ISPRS Technical Commission II on Photogrammetry and the Editor-In-Chief for the Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing Journal. Yilmaz's research focuses on biomimetic navigation systems for unmanned systems, mining anomalies in multi-physics and multi-dimensional geospatial data. Based on a recent study from Stanford University and Elsevier, Yilmaz is listed among the top 2% most cited researchers in the fields of “Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing” and “Geological & Geomatics Engineering” in both career-long (1960-2021) and single year (2021) categories. Yilmaz’s research has received more than $12 million in extramural funding from NASA, NSF, DOD, DOE, and industry, resulting in more than 200 publications and patents that receiving more than 12,500 citations (Google Scholar). Yilmaz has been awarded the Outstanding Service Award in 2022 (ASPRS), the Innovator of Year in 2020, Presidential citation in 2019 from ASPRS, honorable mention for the Masao Horiba Award (Japan) in 2016, the Lumley Interdisciplinary Research Award in 2015, and the Lumley Research Award in 2012. He has advised 24 doctorate and 15 master's students to completion on topics ranging from photogrammetry, machinelearning, andcomputervision whohavefoundpositions inprominent academic institutions, industry, and the government.