The end of January brings additional recognition and awards for UT faculty and alums: Researchers from the Tickle College of Engineering win Best Paper Award; UTIA leaders honored by APLU; School of Art professor wins NEH award; Two CEHHS alums received Teacher of the Year honors.
Robotic Decontamination Collaboration Wins Best Paper Award
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Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor (CEE) Qiang He and Assistant Professor Shuai Li, along with Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering Professor Jindong Tan recently received the Best Paper Award from Building and Environment for their paper entitled, “Segmenting areas of potential contamination for adaptive robotic disinfection in built environments,” published in October, 2020.
The research collaboration seeks to integrate robotic decontamination and infrastructure design, which could help mitigate the threat of pathogens like COVID-19 in buildings of mass gatherings, such as airports, offices, and restaurants.
Two UTIA Leaders Honored by APLU
Two leaders from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) were recently honored by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). Neal Schrick, head of the Department of Animal Science and interim head of the Department of Food Science, and Hongwei Xin, dean and director of UT AgResearch, are among a cohort of twenty-five Fellows of the Food Systems Leadership Institute (FSLI) for 2020. The Fellows were recognized for their accomplishments in completing the FSLI executive leadership development program and for contributions to their individual organizations and the broader higher education and food systems.
Wood Receives National Humanities Fellowship
Kelli Wood, assistant professor of art history, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support her research on Renaissance board games. The NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication provides Wood $60,000 towards digitizing her research on early board games, and she plans to digitize two dice-based board games from 16th century Italy into video game interactives. Wood chose the video game format because of its ability to provide higher quality and higher quantity of the board’s complex imagery, which would not be possible in a print format.
CEHHS Alums Named Teachers of the Year
Two UT alums have been named Teacher of the Year at their schools. Amanda Hodges (‘13) was named Mount Olive Elementary School Teacher of the Year. Hodges graduated from the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences (CEHHS) in 2018 with her Master’s degree in Elementary Education. Laura Boyd was named Poplar Grove Middle School Teacher of the Year. Boyd graduated from CEHHS a Master’s degree in World Languages.