Brandeis Magazine

A team of Heller School for Social Policy and Management researchers received a four-year $2.7 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study an integrated-care model for treating opioid use disorder. Principal investigator Sharon Reif, PhD’02, senior scientist and deputy director of Heller’s Institute for Behavioral Health, is leading this look at Washington state’s Hub and Spoke model, which provides treatment at centralized “hubs” and ongoing maintenance care through “spokes.”

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, a consortium of scientists who captured the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole, received the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which includes a $3 million award. Professor of astrophysics John Wardle, an expert on radio astronomy, serves on four of the 23 working groups that make up the consortium. Wardle helps analyze the polarization of the black hole’s radio emissions, which will enable study of the black hole’s surrounding magnetic fields. He also serves on the working group that shepherds papers through the writing, reviewing and publication process.

Biology professor and department chair Piali Sengupta has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. She was among the 443 members of the Washington, D.C.-based AAAS who received the distinction in 2019. Sengupta’s research in the area of sensory neuroscience focuses on understanding how animals sense such environmental cues as chemicals and temperature, and how this information translates into changes in development and behavior.

Marketing exec Monique Nelson is a new member of the Brandeis Board of Trustees. She serves as chair and chief executive officer of UWG, the country’s longest-standing multicultural marketing agency, whose clients include Ford Motor Company, Colgate-Palmolive, The Home Depot, Bacardi USA, Coca-Cola and the U.S. Marines. Nelson also sits on the Advertising Week Global Board and the Adweek Diversity and Inclusion Council.

The doctoral dissertation Yasser Kureshi, MA’14, PhD’18, wrote at Brandeis was awarded the American Political Science Association’s 2019 Edward S. Corwin Award for the best dissertation in public law. His research examines whether courts can challenge politically powerful militaries and bring them under civilian control in authoritarian and post-authoritarian states, focusing primarily on Pakistan. Kureshi, a native of Karachi, is a senior teaching fellow with the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford.

Lois Stanley has joined Brandeis as vice president for campus operations, overseeing such activities as facilities services, public safety, dining services, environmental health and safety, emergency management, and sustainability. Previously, she was director of campus and capital renewal planning at Tufts, where she was instrumental in that university’s first comprehensive five-year capital planning process.