Ten 2015 Doctoral Scholars Named to Dow Fellows Program

By: 
H D Abed
Release Date: 
7/20/2015
 
Ten doctoral scholars have been selected to join the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program this fall. 
Their research areas span the social sciences, humanities and the natural, physical and engineering sciences.  They will be joining the program’s current masters and professional degree fellows, and the incoming post-doctoral scholars to address some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges. 
 
All fellows will be mentored by designated faculty members in their home academic units during their two-year appointment.
 
“The selected scholars offer diverse perspectives on the sustainability challenges facing our planet and will be crucial to bringing the collaborative nature of the program together to help develop real solutions,” said Professor Don Scavia, special counsel to the president for sustainability, who directs the program on the university's behalf. 
 
The doctoral fellows, their U-M academic units, and research topics are as follows:
 
  1. Maryam Arbabzadeh will be assessing sustainability and design principles for grid-scale energy storage at the School of Natural Resources and Environment. 
     
  2. In the School of Public Health’s Environmental Health Sciences Department, Kevin Boehnke will be using an integrated assessment approach to find sustainable solutions for waterborne Helicobacter pylori transmission.
     
  3. Kevin Fries will be exploring sensing for sustainable development of water resources in developing megacities in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the College of Engineering. 
     
  4. Paul Glaum in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology within the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will be focused on urban agriculture as an avenue of support for threatened native pollinators. 
     
  5. Anna Harrison is based in the School of Natural Resources and Environment and she is interested in managing for multiple stressors in human dominated aquatic ecosystems.
     
  6. Neil Lewis Jr at the Psychology Department within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts is studying social psychological Intervention to Increase sustainable behavior. 
     
  7. At the School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology, Velma Lopez is investigating barriers to reducing diarrheal disease, focussing on the impact of compliance on intervention effectiveness. 
     
  8. Christina Reynolds is interested in finding a sustainable approach to reducing carbon emissions from vehicles; she will be based in the College of Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. 
     
  9. Brad Smith will be exploring magno-electric charge separation at the Department of Applied Physics within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. 
     
  10. At the College of Engineering, in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Hamidreza Tavafoghi Jahromi will be investigating how dynamic market mechanisms behave under uncertainty within the context of the Smart Grid. 
 
In addition to conducting their sustainability related research, the doctoral fellows will participate in the program’s co-curricular activities, such as skills building workshops, seminars, and collaborative research presentations.  
 
Support
Made possible by The Dow Chemical Company, the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program at the University of Michigan supports full-time graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at the university who are committed to finding interdisciplinary, actionable, and meaningful sustainability solutions on local-to-global scales. The program prepares future sustainability leaders to make a positive difference in organizations worldwide.   Click here for more information about the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program.