The Academic Minute for 2019.07.22-07.26

The Academic Minute from 07.22 – 07.26

Monday, July 22nd
Scot Miller – Johns Hopkins University
Methane Emissions
Scot M. Miller, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering, studies the emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. His lab, the Greenhouse Gas Research Group, uses observations of greenhouse gases collected from airplanes, towers and satellites to estimate emissions across individual states to continents.

His recent projects focus on global change in the Arctic, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and emissions from energy industries (such as coal, oil, and natural gas). Miller’s work also utilizes statistics, high performance computing, and tools for big data. A 2019 paper he coauthored in Nature Communications demonstrated that China’s coal mine methane regulations have not had a detectable impact on the country’s emissions.

Tuesday, July 23rd
Mariana Sanchez – Florida International University
Latinos Found to Drink Less after Immigrating to U.S.
Mariana Sanchez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a Research Associate at the Center for Research on U.S. Latino HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse (CRUSADA) in the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work at Florida International University. She has over 20 years of experience in conducting longitudinal research with youth and young adults in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her program of research seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the cultural mechanism that influence health behaviors, particularly alcohol misuse, and its related consequences among Latinos. To date, the bulk of her research has focused on examining how sociocultural determinants impact alcohol and HIV risk behaviors among particularly vulnerable Latino populations including recent immigrants, unauthorized immigrants, and farmworkers. Dr. Sanchez is also primary department faculty for a new graduate track in Health Disparities housed in the Department of Health Promotion & Disease Prevention. The goal of this concentration is to train doctoral students and expand FIU’s capacity to conduct health disparities research in HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and obesity among African Americans, Latinos, Haitians, and other underserved communities in South Florida and the Caribbean region. Dr. Sanchez has been an investigator on 5 National Institutes of Health funded studies. She is currently a co-principal investigator of a mixed methods study funded by the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism aimed at understanding the environmental, demographic, and sociocultural factors influencing drinking and driving trajectories among recent Latino immigrants. Ultimately, she aspires to apply knowledge gained from her research towards developing culturally relevant evidence-based interventions that target identified vulnerability factors and take advantage of key protective factors in preventing substance use and other related health disparities among minority populations.

Wednesday, July 24th
Sarah Stitzlein – University of Cincinnati
Hope and the 2020 Presidential Election
I am a Professor of Education and Affiliate Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. As a philosopher of education, I explore and clarify key concepts within and purposes of education from the perspective of social and political philosophy.  Additionally, I work to uncover problems in education and envision better alternatives.  I am especially interested in issues of political agency, educating for democracy, and equity in schools.

Thursday, July 25th
Ernesto Castaneda – American University
New Type of Mexican Migrants
Ernesto Castañeda is the author of A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (Stanford University Press, 2018); coauthor with Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood of Social Movements 1768–2018 (Forthcoming Routledge, 2018); editor of Immigration and Categorical Inequality: Migration to the City and the Birth of Race and Ethnicity (Routledge 2018); coeditor with Cathy L. Schneider of Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change: A Charles Tilly Reader (Routledge, 2017).

Ernesto Castañeda conducts research on migration, urban issues, health disparities, vulnerable populations, and social movements. He compares immigrant integration and ethnic political mobilization in the U.S. and Western Europe. He has conducted surveys and ethnographic fieldwork in the United States, France, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Algeria, and Morocco; and published on remittances and development; integration and transnationalism; hometown associations and diaspora organizations; urban exclusion; the border fence; transnational families and the children of migrants left behind; health disparities within immigrant, public housing, and homeless Hispanic populations.

Friday, July 26th
Teresa Mares – University of Vermont
Migrants and the Other Border
Teresa Mares is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont and is affiliated with the Transdisciplinary Research Initiative in Food Systems. She received her B.A. (Summa Cum Laude) in Anthropology and Foreign Languages and Literatures with a concentration in Spanish from Colorado State University (2002), and her M.A. (2005) and Ph.D. (2010) in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington. She also completed a graduate certificate in Women Studies at the University of Washington.