The Academic Minute for 2021.08.09-2021.08.13

The Academic Minute from 08.09 – 08.13

Monday, August 9th
Maura Pavao – Worcester State University
Fermenters as a Model System to Study the Lung and Gut Microbiomes
Native of Massachusetts, BS In Biotechnology from WPI and PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Rutgers University as a NIH Biotechnology Training Fellow. Postdoctoral fellow at the Shriners Hospital/MGH and then working as a scientist in the biotechnology industry before my present position. I conducted sabbatical work at Blue Sky Biotech (Lake Pharma), Avatar Pharmaceuticals and at the Brigham and Women Hospital Host Microbiome Facility with Lynn Bry, MD, Ph.D.

Tuesday, August 10th
Ian Stephens – Worcester State University
The Formation of Stars and their Planetary Siblings
Ian Stephens was born and raised in Wichita Falls, TX. He received his bachelor’s in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, and he received his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Illinois. From there, he did research in astrophysics at both Boston University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. In 2020, he started his position as Assistant Professor of Physics at Worcester State University.

Wednesday, August 11th
Kathryn Frazier – Worcester State University
The Power of Female Sexuality?
Kathryn Frazier is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Worcester State University. She earned her Master’s and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Clark University. Before joining WSU, she was selected to serve as Visiting Scholar in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, where she also lectured in the department of Psychology.

Thursday, August 12th
Bryant Sculos – Worcester State University
Learning From Basic Income Pilots
Dr Bryant William Sculos is a transdisciplinary international political theorist and currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dept. of History and Political Science at Worcester State University. He is the co-editor (with Prof. Mary Caputi) of, and contributing author to, Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century (Studies in Critical Social Sciences: Brill 2019/Haymarket 2020). Dr. Sculos is also the Politics of Culture section editor for the open-access journal Class, Race and Corporate Power and the founding curator and editor of LeftHooked, published monthly with the Hampton Institute. He is the author of “Dialectical Ends and Beginnings: Why Barbarism at the End of Capitalism Means Barbarism Beyond Capitalism” in Postcapitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope (co-edited by Drs. Adam Fishwick and Nicholas Kiersey, with Pluto Press) and of the forthcoming book The Dialectics of Global Justice: From Liberal to Postcapitalist Cosmopolitanism (with SUNY Press).

Friday, August 13th
Alessandra Bazo Vienrich – Worcester State University
Place Matters: Access to College for Undocumented Students
Alessandra Bazo Vienrich is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Worcester State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where in 2020 she was awarded the James E. Blackwell Prize for rigorous research and scholarship. In her current research projects she focuses on undocumented youth-turned-young-adults and how institutions, policies, and practices in their communities impact their experiences with belonging and exclusion as they navigate the high school to college pipeline. Her book project, Conditioned to DREAM: Undocumented Immigrants’ Road to Inclusion Through Education, traces the educational experiences of Latinx undocumented college students ages 18-30 during the years following the implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).