From innovators on the frontiers of engineering, physics and health, to a biologist who studies giant squid, to the author of an award-winning children鈥檚 graphic novels, meet USF鈥檚 top faculty researchers.
TAMPA, Fla. 鈥� Nineteen 黑料网吃瓜爆料 faculty members whose research set standards in a wide array of disciplines are the new recipients of the university鈥檚 2020 Outstanding Research Achievement Award.
鈥淯SF鈥檚 faculty continue to pursue innovative research that inspires our students and benefits the communities we serve,鈥� 黑料网吃瓜爆料President Steven Currall said. 鈥淚 am proud to recognize this year鈥檚 recipients for their outstanding achievements and impactful discoveries.鈥�
The annual awards nominations are submitted by deans, department chairs and center and institute directors and are reviewed by members of the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Senate Research Council. Each faculty member receives $2,000 with the award in recognition of their achievements for the 2019 calendar year.
Meet this year鈥檚 awardees:
Tammy Allen, PhD
Distinguished University Professor
Department of Psychology
College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Allen is an international leader in the study of the intersection between work and family, employee career development, and occupational health. During 2019, she published and had accepted 10 peer-reviewed journal articles, including two in the prestigious Journal of Applied Psychology. Her work was cited 3,462 times in 2019 alone. An article of Dr. Allen鈥檚 was selected as a top three publication in Personnel Psychology. Dr. Allen was also the co-PI on a newly awarded National Science Foundation research grant to examine boundary management and career wellbeing. In 2019, she completed a two-year term as the President of the Society for Occupational Health Psychology and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Neuch芒tel in recognition of her achievements. She was awarded visiting Fellowships at the University of Canterbury (Erskine Fellow), the University of New South Wales, and the University of Coimbra (Erasmus Mundus).
Michelle Arnold, PhD, AuD
Assistant Professor
Communication Sciences and Disorders
College of Behavioral and Community Sciences
Dr. Arnold is a principal investigator for the Auditory Rehabilitation and Clinical Trials laboratory. Dr. Arnold鈥檚 research focuses on increasing access to hearing healthcare for older and vulnerable adults. In 2019, her work was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, the top-ranked journal in her discipline. Her article on hearing aid use among Hispanic/Latino adults in the U.S. was also featured in a dedicated JAMA Network podcast in April 2019. Dr. Arnold also submitted two major extramural grants as PI: An Early Career Research R21 to the National Institutes on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and another to the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Gil Ben-Herut, PhD
Associate Professor, Religious Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Ben-Herut鈥檚 research interests include pre-modern religious literature in the Kannada language, South Asian bhakti (devotional) traditions, translation in South Asia, and programming for Digital Humanities. Ben-Herut鈥檚 book, 艢iva鈥檚 Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Harihara鈥檚 Raga岣積ga岣穟 (Oxford University Press), was awarded the Best First Book Award by the Southeastern Medieval Association in 2019 and went on to win in 2020 the Best Book Award from the Southeastern Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Other major research accomplishments in 2019 include receiving a Carnegie-Whitney Grant from the American Library Association and submitting a co-edited book, Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia: Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers.
Jean-Francois Biasse, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Biasse鈥檚 transdisciplinary work spans across number theory, quantum information science and computer security. His research applies to the design of cryptographic schemes that will resist attacks from powerful quantum computers in the future. In 2019, Dr. Biasse received an NSF CAREER award. Last year, Dr. Biasse had four papers accepted or published in top-tier venues and engaged in very ambitious transdisciplinary collaborations with the colleges of Engineering, the Arts and Education. In 2019, Dr. Biasse was invited to join the editorial board of the International Journal of Computer Mathematics: Computer Systems Theory. He also was invited to serve in the committee of the MathCrypt 2019 conference and participated in exclusive invitational workshops at the American Institute for Mathematics, and at Dagstuhl Schloss, one of the world鈥檚 premier meeting centers for informatics research.
Jianfeng Cai, PhD
黑料网吃瓜爆料Preeminent Professor
Department of Chemistry
College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Cai conducts research in chemical biology and bioorganic chemistry, with the focus on the development of a new class of unprecedented peptidomimetics, 鈥淎Apeptides鈥�, for their biological applications. In 2019, in addition to two ongoing two National Science Foundation grants and two National Institutes of Health grants, Dr. Cai received new funding as the principal investigator in a five-year NIH award of more than $1.8 million to develop novel polymer biomaterials combating C. difficile infection, a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. Additionally, in 2019, Dr. Cai published 21 high-profile peer-reviewed papers.
