Achievements

Faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences are continuously producing and sharing creative art, receiving fellowships, and securing research grants from notable organizations.

Below are some recent highlights. You can also view recent publications or search for all types of scholarship, expertise, and other faculty activities through ScholarWorks.

Division of Creative Arts | Division of Humanities | Division of Science | Division of Social Sciences

Division of Creative Arts

Fine Arts

Tory FairInstallation, (Wild Knoll Garden, York, ME, 2024)

Muna Güvenç AuthorThe City Is Ours: Spaces of Political Mobilization and Imaginaries of Nationhood in Turkey (Cornell University Press, 2024)

Aida WongArt Exhibition CuratorInventive Brush: Calligraphic Echoes from China, Japan and Korea, Pao Arts Center, Boston (July-October 2024) and also published “Sacred Mountain and Lee Chun-Yi’s Planetary Order,” in Mountain Moved Heard Moved: The Art of Lee Chun-Yi (Taipei: Mingshan Art Collection Co. Ltd, 2024). 

Music

Yu-Hui ChangMusic Composition, "Mind Like Water" (New Focus Recordings, 2024)

Karen DesmondBook ChapterComposers in the Middle Ages (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

Neal Louis HamptonMusical Performance, "Sense & Sensibility, The Musical: performance at the Minack Theatre, Cornwall UK" (6/17/2024-6/21/2024)

David RakowskiMusic Composition, "We Music, We Eat" (10/2/2024)

Theater Arts

Cameron Anderson, Set DesignThe Library Lion, Boston Public Library, 9/2024

Mitsu Salmon, Solo PerformanceDesert Turtle (Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago, IL, 3/2024 and Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Philadelphia, PA, 9/2024)

Dmitry TroyanovskyDirectorRomeo and Juliet, Prague Shakespeare Company, July 2024

Robert WalshPerformance, A Winter's Tale, Shakespeare on the Common (Boston, MA, 2024)

Division of Humanities

Awards & Fellowships

Jonathan Sarna (NEJS), 2024 Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award, American Jewish Historical Society. Read More.

Paola Servino (Romance Studies/Italian), 2024 Teacher of the Year, American Association for Teachers of Italian and Massachussettes Italian Teacher Association

Pu Wang (GRALL/Comparative Literature), Visiting Professorship, Institute of Advancement Studies of Chongqing University

Grants & Publications

Irina Dubinina (GRALL), Co-editor, Russian as a Heritage Language: From Research to Classroom Applications (Routledge, 2024)

Matthew Fraleigh (GRALL/EAS), Co-author, The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran (Columbia University Press, 2024)

Caren Irr (English), Editor, Environmental Futures: An International Literary Anthology (Chicago University Press, 2024)

Xiwen Lu (GRALL) co-authored a chapter entitled " Save Your Strokes: Further Studies on the Efficiency of Learning Chinese Words Without Hand-Writing" to Transforming Hanzi Pedagogy in the Digital Age: Theory, Research, and Practice (Routledge, 2024)

Sophia Niehaus (French and Francophile Studies) was awarded an Albertine Cinémathèque Festival Grant by the Albertine Foundation and Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. Read more.

Division of Science

Awards & Fellowships

Alex Bisson (Biology) was elected to be the incoming chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Plant and Microbial Cytoskeleton

Grace Han (Chemistry) received the prestigtious ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Read More. Grace also received a Scialog Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Kavli Foundation. This is the first year in a 3-year initative that aims to spark advances in mining, design, manufacutre, and disposal of materials needed to achieve a more sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

Piali Sengupta (Biology), 2024 inductee to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Sebastian Kadener and Alex Bisson (Biology) are included in the online atlas of inspiring Latin and Hispanic scientists

Harry Mairson (Computer Science), Harvard-Radcliffe Fellowship in 2023-2024

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grants

Anne Berry (Psychology), Aging, Activity Diversity, and Brain Health

Paul Garrity (Biology), Molecular and Cellular Determinants of Drosophila larva thermotaxis

Leslie Griffith (Biology), Regulation of Intrinsic Plasticity in Neural Circuits

James Haber (Biology), DNA Damage Response and Repair of Broken Chromosome

Lizbeth Hedstrom (Biology and Chemistry) and Isaac Krauss (Chemistry), Ubiquitin-Independent Targeted Protein Degradation (Transformative Research)

Sebastian Kadener (Biology), Uncovering the Origin and Mechanisms of Ultradian Rhythms in the Drosophila BrainSystematic and Mechanistic Assessment of the Roles of circRNAs in Alzheimer's Disease

Julia Kardon (Biochemistry), Dynamic Control of Mitochondrial Function by the Protein unfoldase CLPX

Donald Katz (Psychology), Hippocampal-Gustatory Cortical Interactions Underlying Formation of Taste-space Cognitive Maps (with Shantanu Jadhav)

Isaac Krauss (Chemistry), A 400 MHz NMR Spectrometer and Mannosidase-Stabilized Glycan Immunogens for Elicitation of High Mannose Patch Antibodies and for Technologies for Directed Evolution of Glycoaptamers

Michael Rosbash (Biology and Neuroscience), Addressing Protein Synthesis Regulation within Small Numbers of Discrete Neurons

Maria-Eirini Pandelia (Biochemistry), How Does a Metallocofactor In The Hepatitis B Viral Protein X Orchestrate Pathogenesis and Liver Cancer

Avital Rodal (Biology), Abberior 3D-STED Microscope for Super-Resolution Imaging

Piali Sengupta (Biology), Mechanisms of Sensory Neuron Morphological Diversification, Signaling, and Functional Plasticity

Jonathan Touboul (Mathematics), Collaborative Research: DMS/NIGMS 2: Dynamical Maintenance of Left-right Symmetry During Vertebrate Development

Gina Turrigiano (Biology), Mechanisms and Function of Firing Rate Homeostasis in Cortical Circuits

Stephen Van Hooser (Biology), Thalmocortical interactions in taste perception

Yangyang Wang (Mathematics), CRCNS: Evidence-based Modeling of Neuromodulatory Action on Network Properties

National Science Foundation (NSF) Grants

Angela Gutchess (Psychology), Defining Culture in Scientific Inquiry: Interdisciplinary and International Perspective

Michael Hagan (Physics), Computational modeling to determine strategies to optimize self-limited assembly and Collaborative Research: DMREF: Synthetic Machines from Feedback-controlled Active Matter

Pengyu Hong (Computer Science), Collaborative Research: Cultivating Tomorrow's Innovators Through Exploring Planetary Images with Artificial Intelligence

Eve Marder and Piali Sengupta (Biology), NiCE: Temperature Resilience of a Feeding Oscillator (also funded by the Kavli Foundation)

Tyler Maunu (Mathematics), Wasserstein Optimization in Data Science: Recovery and Sampling

Other Recent Research Grants

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Margie Lachman (Psychology), Roybal Center for Therapeutic Optimization using Behavioral Science 

Institute of Education Sciences

Hannah Snyder (Psychology), A Multipronged Approach to Small-Teaching Interventions for Reducing Academic Procrastination: A Randomized Control Study via Terracotta

Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Jané Kondev (Physics), Collaborative CZI Theory Grant: Control Without Feedback in Cells

U.S. Department of Energy

Aram Apyan (Physics), Co-Investigator Gabriella Sciolla, Experimental Particle Physics Research at Brandeis University

Division of Social Sciences

Awards & Fellowships

Jon Anjaria (Anthropology), AIIS Long-Term Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, 2024

Yuri Doolan (History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), American Council on Learned Societies Fellowship for America’s Comfort Women: Legacies of Military Prostitution in Cold War Asia and the Pacific

Elizabeth Ferry (Anthropology), 2024-25 Visiting Fellow with The Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at University of San Diego

Charlie Goudge (Anthropology), 2024 Wenner Gren Hunt Fellowship

Brian Horton (Anthropology), 2025-26 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) summer fellowship

Shoniqua Roach (Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies & African and African-American Studies), 2024 Constance M. Rourke Prize for Best Article, “The Black Living Room” (September 2022)

Neil Swidey (Journalism), 2024 Biomedical Fellow, Logan Science Journalism Program at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory. Now in its 37th year, the fellowship program brings together a dozen science and health journalists from around the world to Woods Hole, Mass., where they get immersive, hands-on training in cutting-edge biomedical and environmental science. Swidey will work with senior scientists to do genome editing using CRISPR/Cas 9 and DNA sequencing and analysis. 

Michael Willrich (History), 2024 Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in History for American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

V Varun Chaudhry (Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies), 2024 Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars

Grants & Publications

Jon Anjaria (Anthropology), Author, Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility (University of Washington Press, 2024)

Prakash Kashwan (Environmental Studies), co-authored the publication Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Sarah Mayorga (Sociology), Co-author, A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio (Chicago University Press, 2024)

Sociology Profs. Sara ShostakRachel McKane, and Sarah Mayorga were awarded a MassHumanities grant for their project, "Building Climate Resilience via Collective Memory: An Oral History of Flooding in Waltham, MA." They will be conducting research, alongside two undergraduate research assistants, in the Hardy Pond and Charles River area.