The Academic Minute for 2019.07.08-07.12

The Academic Minute from 07.08 – 07.12

Monday, July 8th
Jason Delborne – North Carolina State University
Forest Biotech
Jason A. Delborne joined NC State in August 2013 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) and an associate professor of science, policy and society in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. He also serves on the executive committee of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. Delborne’s research focuses on highly politicized scientific controversies, drawing upon the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society (STS). He engages various qualitative research methodologies to ask questions about how policymakers and members of the public interface with controversial science.

Tuesday, July 9th
Sonja Duempelmann – Harvard University
Street Trees
Sonja Dümpelmann joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design in July 2019.

Dümpelmann’s research and writing focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century landscape history, and contemporary landscape architecture in the Western World, with a particular focus on the urban environment in Germany, Italy, and the United States. Her work explores the transatlantic transfer of ideas, the role of politics, technology and science, and the work of women in the field. Of special importance to her work are the relationships between the inside and the outside, i.e. the relationships between architecture and landscape, core and periphery, theory and practice; those in power and those subjected to that power; intent and contingency; and the relationships between social and political processes and landscape transformation.

Wednesday, July 10th
Rajesh Kana – University of Alabama at Birmingham
Autism Biomarkers
Dr. Rajesh Kana is an associate professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Kana is also the director of the Cognition, Brain and Autism Research Lab, and Co-director of the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program. Dr. Kana has more than 15 years of experience in conducting research in the field of autism spectrum disorders, with training in neuroimaging from UCLA and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Kana’s research studies use multimodal neuroimaging techniques to understand the brain in children and adults with autism. He has published extensively on the neurobiology of autism and has mentored many graduate and undergraduate students in research.

Thursday, July 11th
Sarah Mountz – University at Albany
Challenges of Transgender and Gender Expansive Youth in Foster Care
Sarah Mountz’ research focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ youth in child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and among homeless youth populations. Her most recent research project, From Our Perspectives, used a community based participatory research (CBPR) framework to look at the experiences of LGBTQ former foster youth in Los Angeles County through qualitative interviewing and photovoice methods. Participants’ photos were featured in a traveling art installation that participants helped curate, as well as on an interactive website, and in a mini-documentary series.

Friday, July 12th
Stephen DiDomenico – SUNY New Paltz
Technology and Everyday Interactions
Stephen M. DiDomenico, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Communication at SUNY New Paltz. His research broadly focuses on the moment-by-moment dynamics of everyday talk. In particular he uses conversation analysis to examine the situated communication practices that participants use to construct activities, identities, and relationships in a variety of ordinary and professional settings. Specific topics of interest include mental health help seeking and support services, technology use and embodiment in ordinary conversation, and genres of oral narrative in LGBTQ communities. His work has been published in top scholarly journals across a diverse range of fields including Communication Studies (e.g., Communication Research, Research on Language & Social Interaction), Sociolinguistics (Language in Society), and Linguistic Anthropology (Language & Communication). His work has also been published in the edited volumes Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media (2013) and the Handbook of Verbal Communication (2016).