UND Discovery

UNDDiscovery SPRING 2015

Dimensions of Discovery

Proven past, promising potential

“Write it right, write it tight, and write it tonight!”

I am pleased to welcome you, the reader, to another issue of UND Discovery.

You will see as you read through this magazine that there is a lot of interesting research and creative activity going on at UND. In this issue, we spotlight faculty members who have led by accomplishment into new and sometimes unique areas of research. We spotlight the work of Drs. Geiger and Chen on HIV and its role in neurodegeneration. Recently, they received their second NIH-funded R01 grant. Given the current budgeting constraints, this is an impressive accomplishment and an indication of the importance of their work as recognized by their peers. Similarly, we focus on Crystal Alberts, who has taken over the annual UND Writers Conference — one of the premier cultural events on campus. The Writers Conference was initiated by John Little 46 years ago and has given the campus and community the opportunity to interact with some of the leading writers in the country. In Dr. Alberts’ capable hands, the Conference continues to introduce new and established writers to our extended community.

Dr. Ken Ruit, faculty mentor, and Dr. Haris Ali, a recent graduate working with Dr. Ruit, have introduced a new way of thinking about teaching and learning anatomy. By researching the way students learn anatomy, their work serves as the basis for revising the teaching of medical students here and at other institutions.

Other faculty members highlighted in this issue include those who have received our New Faculty Scholar Awards and have leveraged their awards to obtain nationally competitive funding; and faculty members who have organized major multiple investigator and discipline groups to obtain external funding.

Finally, we recognize the faculty members who were recognized recently at UND’s annual Founders Day banquet for their award-winning work on UAS research and research mentoring. I hope you enjoy reading about our talented faculty and students.

Barry Milavetz Interim Vice President for Research and Economic Development

I’m going to try to keep this short.

Yeah, right — easier said than done. But that’s exactly what we tried to do throughout this edition of UND Discovery magazine. We packed it with more information about more UND researchers and creative thinkers than we ever have in any of our past 17 editions. To do this, we had to emphasize brevity without sacrificing important substance.

I’m a former newspaper guy raised on the tradition that we had to “Write it right, write it tight, and write it tonight.” Well, in the case of magazines, the breakneck deadlines of the daily news cycle aren’t a big issue, but the part of that old credo which points to accuracy and conciseness is just as paramount. The latter carries even more weight when you are attempting to do what we did in this edition. Getting to the point with an eye toward economy of word was the mission and the vision.

So, over the next 20 or so pages, you’re going to find interesting profiles on UND faculty researchers, artists and students, in each case, detailed in fewer than 450 words — sometimes fewer than 100.

We’re not trying to shortchange anyone; rather we are trying to tell you more about more people in more digestible chunks in the same smart and compelling style we always have.

It wasn’t easy; in fact, it would have been far less daunting to write longer. But we didn’t and I think the experiment proved successful in the end.

We hope you agree!

David Dodds Editor, UND Discovery

ON THE COVER Wearing a special electrode cap linked to a computer, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Reza Fazel-Rezai prepares to guide a small robot through a course by commands sent directly from his brain. Assisting him is electrical engineering student Amelia Gagnon. Fazel-Rezai is also the graduate program director for the Department of Electrical Engineering. His research interests include biomedical engineering and instrumentation, neural engineering, brain-computer interface (BCI), biomedical signal and image processing, and human performance evaluation. See the article on Page 9. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

IN THIS ISSUE OF

UNDDISCOVERY SPRING 2015

IN MEMORIAM

The Art and the Science

For 38 years, Robert Nordlie was dedicated not only to research at UND but also to the success of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (now part of the Department of Basic Sciences).

Nordlie died on Jan. 8, 2015, in Grand Forks. He was 84.

We at UND Discovery are honored to dedicate this issue to the memory, life and research of Nordlie, one of the school’s pioneering medical scientists. He brought international recognition to UND with his research on glucose-6-phosphatase, an enzyme that regulates blood glucose levels and that has proven helpful in subsequent studies on diabetes, cancer and other diseases.

A native of Willmar, Minn., Nordlie obtained his master’s (1957) and Ph.D. (1960) in biochemistry from UND. He moved on to conduct his postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he developed a keen interest in enzyme research. Then, in 1962, Nordlie — still a post-doc researcher — was lured back to UND with an agreement that he would be hired as a full professor, a move that even today is almost unheard of. At the time, UND officials recognized that Nordlie, though a relatively green scientist, “was somebody who was going to make a difference.”

Nordlie served at UND for nearly four decades, attaining the rank of Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor and serving as chair of his department. His mentorship over the years to younger scientists, such as current Interim Vice President for Research and Economic Development Barry Milavetz and Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Roxanne Vaughan (whose work is profiled in this issue on Page 19), was instrumental to the success of the department.

His impact went beyond research, as he also was known as an outstanding lecturer for UND medical students.

Nordlie retired from UND in 2000, and maintained a residence in Grand Forks up until his death.

UND Discovery is published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, with assistance from the Division of University and Public Affairs. Editor: David Dodds. Contributors: Juan Miguel Pedraza, David Dodds, Brenda Haugen, Denis MacLeod, Amy Halvorson, Christalin Casinader, John Harju, Mike Holmes, and John Kay. Principal photography by Jackie Lorentz and Shawna Noel Schill. Please send inquiries and comments to the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, University of North Dakota, 264 Centennial Drive Stop 8367, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8367. UND is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.

UND.edu/research

PAGES 2 – 9 Susan Felege employs high-tech tracking in wildlife research … Angela Schmaltz explores the art and science of singing … Crystal Alberts is the latest in the long line of scholars nurturing the UND Writers Conference … Meet Theatre Arts’ Ali Angelone … “Ric” Ferraro updates his book on cross-cultural psychology … Jerome Delhommelle uses computers to calculate what actually happens in chemical processes … Marcia Mikulak’s new book relates the harsh life of children in Brazil’s slums … Afua Blay explores “the melody of speech” … Alena Kubatova is a student-focused research … Tami Carmichael and Ryan Zerr plan case studies for the STIRS initiative … Meet the English Department’s Sheila Liming … “Theory Survivor” engages students in learning music … Greg Vandeberg examines the impact of water runoff on wildlife environments … Meet Art and Design’s Nathan Rees … Collaboration supports research on children with speech disorders … William Caraher seeks to revolutionize academic publishing with the Digital Press.

Spirit of Innovation PAGES 9 – 16 Reza Fazel-Rezai pushes the potential of brain-computer interface …

Carbon dioxide poses both challenges and opportunities for the state’s energy industry … An interdisciplinary team is recognized for its research in aviation engineering and human factors … Al Frazier heads efforts to incorporate UAS technology in law enforcement … International students will cruise with “SandSharks” … Gretchen Mullendore is exploring the interaction of thunderstorms and air pollution … Haochi Zheng’s research blends economics with the environment … UND joins an effort to build entrepreneurial awareness among engineering students …

New equipment will bring “pro-level” training for weather broadcasting students … Mark Askelson takes snowflake portraits with a purpose …

Ghana native Kwasi “Daniel” Adjekum trades a military career for one promoting aviation safety.

Health and Well-Being PAGES 17 – 21 Pakistan native Haris Ali explores ways to improve medical education … Jonathan Geiger and Xuesong Chen receive a second top-level NIH grant … Six Ph.D. students in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences present at the annual Scholarly Forum … Gary Schwartz, Donald Jurivich named to head Medical School departments … Roxanne Vaughan and Keith Henry study the molecular components of cocaine addiction …

Mikhail “Misha” Golovko explores a new mechanism to protect the brain against stroke … Tick-borne Lyme disease crosses the river into North Dakota … Nursing, Social Work and Psychology faculty collaborate on substance abuse research … Melanie Sage pursues research on the state’s child welfare laws and programs.

Teaching, Learning, and Living PAGES 21 – 24 Robert Stupnisky studies factors affecting careers in teaching … Eric Johnson brings a wide-ranging background to his law teaching …

Nikolaus Butz seeks ways to make distance learning as vivid as the traditional classroom … Meet the Law School’s Tammy Pettinato … Patti Alleva is named as one of the nation’s best law professors.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 1

The Art and the Science

High-tech tracking adds new dimensions to wildlife research UND biologist Susan Felege is an avid outdoors enthusiast who loves to hunt and fish with her husband, Chris, another UND biologist.

Felege, a native of Mercer, Penn., brings that passion for the outPHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

Susan Felege sets up a trail camera to record wildlife behavior.

The art and science of singing Music graduate student Angela Schmaltz targets the sound and physiology of blending voices in choral settings In high school, Angela Schmaltz knew she had an aptitude for music and science.

The former was a passion, while the latter seemed like a better career choice. She had no idea that one day she would be able to pursue both at the same time.

“I was very sure I was going into optometry or some other medical profession,” she says, reflecting on her days at Devils Lake High School in North Dakota.

Today, Schmaltz is a graduate student in the Schmaltz UND Department of Music, studying voice performance and pedagogy under the mentorship of Anne Christopherson. Her current goal is to become a college professor, spreading the joy of song to both music and non-music majors.

At UND, Schmaltz also has been able to find a way to combine her talents for math and science with her passion for music. Her research PAGE 2 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

doors to her research at UND. Her study of wildlife and its response to management actions, landscape changes and climate changes is as plentiful as it is wide ranging — centering on everything from sharptailed grouse to muskrats to diving bufflehead ducks and more.

A sampling of her research includes using miniature surveillance cameras at nest sites of federally threatened and endangered birds to learn about basic behaviors that have never been studied. A separate project takes her to western North Dakota’s oil-and-gas-producing region, where she’s researching potential impacts to the nesting behavior of sharp-tailed grouse and their predators. She uses minimally invasive miniature surveillance cameras, like those people use for security, to monitor nests. To help weed through the enormous digital datasets that the cameras generate, Felege has teamed with UND computer scientist Travis Desell, an expert in the field of “computer vision” methods, which help sort through data and recognize the animals being researched.

Felege’s not done there. Soon, she will be using her nest cameras and sound recorders to understand behaviors of nesting waterfowl in northern Manitoba where climate change is altering timing of predators, such as polar bears, on the nesting grounds.

Also, Felege’s team recently used a New Faculty Scholar Award from UND to collect preliminary data and to collaborate with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the expanding breeding range of the bufflehead duck.

“We were able to capture and be among the first to radio-mark buffleheads, as well as document breeding activity of this bird in several locations across northern Minnesota, where historically they were not known to breed,” said Felege, who did her undergraduate work at Penn State (Behrend College in Erie, Penn.), and received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Athens.

The project proved effective in showing biologists and wildlife managers the kind of research UND is capable of, and facilitated expanded opportunities for UND students in the field. Felege currently has five graduate students and about a dozen undergraduates involved in research in her lab at UND. – By David Dodds

focuses on why “nonvibrato,” or pure non-oscillating singing, blends better in choral settings, whether it is physically healthier at the laryngeal (voice box) level, and ways to achieve it. The idea is contrasted with characteristics of “vibrato,” or a larger, wave-filled voice common among operatic soloists. The contention is that people who sing vibrato have a more difficult time blending in to a choral setting.

“Especially in the Midwest, being in a choir or a band is a huge part of a person’s exposure to music,” Schmaltz said. “If a person has a hard time blending with a choir, their experience will not be as positive as it can be. This is where my research comes in. It will benefit anyone involved in a situation like this: the singer, the singer’s teacher, or the choral conductor.”

Schmaltz, who also got her bachelor’s degree in voice performance from UND, says she looks forward to a career of teaching people about music and unlocking doors to a world that goes beyond what is currently playing on Top 40 radio. And because of her research background, she’ll be able to do it without abandoning her gift for science.

“I have never regretted my decision,” Schmaltz said. “My time in graduate school has only confirmed that path. My current research has allowed me to delve into science again anyway! What I’m studying now involves both physics and physiology.”

– By David Dodds

PHOTO BY SHAWNA NOEL SCHILL

The Art and the Science

Carrying on a

Literary Legacy Crystal Alberts is the latest in a long line of scholars who have nurtured and transformed the annual UND Writers Conference into one of the region’s signature events.

You will most likely find Crystal Alberts standing or sitting along the back wall of the Memorial Union Ballroom during any given session of UND’s annual Writers Conference.

Don’t mistake that for disinterest or apathy — no, quite the contrary.

As director of this year’s conference, which took place in March, and a director or co-director of four of the past five events, Alberts, an assistant professor of English, lives and breathes the Writers Conference year-round. But during the week of the event, she likes to bask in the background and let the featured authors and their work take center stage.

“Because it’s not about me as an individual director; it’s about the conference and the amazing opportunities that it has been creating for 46 years and counting,” said Alberts, a native of Clearbrook, Minn., not far from Grand Forks.

Although the Writers Conference is quite well known by the public and among authors, Alberts admits she didn’t know anything about it when she arrived at UND as a senior lecturer in 2007, despite having grown up in the area.

While photocopying handouts for a class, she noticed the framed posters hanging around the English Department of past Writers Conferences, and several names got her attention: William H. Gass, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, N. Scott Momaday, Joseph Brodsky and Tim O’Brien, among many others.

“My area of specialization is post-1945 American literature and culture, so I was floored to discover that many of the people that I read, study and teach had been here at UND,” Alberts said. “I almost immediately went over to (UND) Special Collections to find out whether or not there was an archive of the conference, only to discover that, through the foresight of past conference directors, presentations and panel discussions were recorded, basically, since the beginning.”

Alberts, a digital humanist, started collaborating with UND’s Chester Fritz Library in building the UND Writers Conference Digital Collection. With the help of National Endowment for the Arts grants and internal funding, she and library staff members have preserved about half of the estimated 600 hours of past conference footage, of which around 117 hours are freely available online for scholarly, educational and historical use.

Eventually in the spring of 2009, Alberts took on the role of primary co-director of the 41st UND Writers Conference (2010), with Kathleen Coudle-King serving as co-director and English Department colleague

Heidi Czerwiec, who had led previous conferences, providing advice along the way.

Alberts is the latest in a line of UND scholars — dating back to event founder John Little — who have taken on the arduous but rewarding task of shepherding the Writers Conference each year since 1970. It has evolved into one of the region’s signature literary events.

“For me, directing the UND Writers Conference is an opportunity to link my research to my teaching, all while making literary history, being part of an incredible tradition and giving back to the community,” Alberts said. “I take great joy and satisfaction from seeing the crowds gather at readings, hearing old and new friends exchange stories about the conference, watching students get exciting about meeting an author they studied in class, and enabling students and community members to work with these authors to improve their own art.”

For Alberts, organizing a Writers Conference begins about 20 months prior to the actual event when her first grant application is due.

It is at that point that she settles on a theme.

She constantly surveys the literary landscape and reads works by emerging and exciting authors as she envisions future conference lineups. She also listens to others who might have writer suggestions.

Late spring through the summer months, she starts contacting writers and agents, and negotiating contracts. The fall is spent writing grant applications, averaging one a month from September through January, and finalizing the lineups as money is secured.

January through March is consumed by scheduling, travel logistics, and marketing.

(Literary legacy, continued on Page 4) UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 3

tor and professor. I was extremely lucky to have worked with them. My primary area of focus is movement and musical theatre. I also direct and choreograph here at UND, as well as other colleges and universities around the country. Last year, I was fortunate enough to be able to work at a very well-known American theatre called “Arena Stage” in Washington, D.C., on a production called “Mother Courage and Her Children,” with celebrity Kathleen Turner. It was one of the best experiences of my life!”

The Art and the Science

(Continued from Page 3)

Literary legacy

– By David Dodds

More about Ali:

Meet Ali Angelone, assistant professor of movement and musical theatre “I am originally from a little town in the smallest state in the U.S. called Bristol, R.I. — about 45 minutes outside of Boston. I double majored in theatre performance and English secondary education at Rhode Island College, and then received my Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Va., in theatre pedagogy with an emphasis in movement and musical theatre.

During my time at VCU, I assisted Broadway veteran Patti D’Beck on several productions. I owe so much of my academic success to her and my mentor, David Leong, a Broadway fight direc-

Angelone, who this summer will take on a directing and choreography position at the famed Stagedoor Manor program in New York, recently took a group of UND theatre students to the Region V Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Minneapolis. There, eight UND students were selected to compete in the festival’s preliminary round, along with hundreds of student actors and actresses from across the Midwest.

Four UND students made it to the semifinals, and one, Daniel Johnson, Ray, N.D., finished in the top 16. Angelone, along with UND Theatre Arts colleagues Kathleen McLennan and Emily Cherry, led the group in Minneapolis.

“The fact that UND had eight students invited to compete in the preliminary round shows the level of talent we have on our campus,” Angelone said.

Angelone has taught several courses and workshops at schools and festivals throughout the country, including Berea College, Dean College, Roger Williams University, Bridgewater State College, Fitchburg State University, Manchester College, and The Walnut Hill School for the Arts.

At UND, Angelone has been involved in nine productions as a fight/movement choreographer, choreographer and/or director: “Waiting for Godot,” “The Glory of Living,” “Into the Woods,” “A Chorus Line,” “Scapino!,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Time Stands Still,” “Assassins,” and “Urinetown: The Musical.”

In addition to teaching, Angelone also works as a freelance director, choreographer, and acting/ musical theatre/dance coach. She spent this past spring break working choreography for a musical production at Berea College in Kentucky. Her website can be found at www.ali-angelone.com.

By request By popular request of his peers in psychology, UND Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Psychology F. Richard “Ric” Ferraro put together a second edition of his book about issues in cross-cultural psychology.

With all new contributors — 25 total — and new chapters, reflecting new perspectives on the subject, Ferraro, also a Fellow of the National Academy of Neuropsychology, edited the volume about what’s being done in this field from a neuropsychological perspective.

The book addresses the complex subject of testing across cultures and how a question that works in one culture may be totally inappropriate in another culture.

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

PAGE 4 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

BOOK NOTES

“Then, it’s the week of the conference,” she says. “The month after the conference is spent writing final grant reports and ‘Thank You’s.’

And by May, I start the process all over again.

It’s a year-round-thing two-to-three-conferences-ahead type job.”

Several factors are considered when deciding which writers to invite: (1) They need to fit the theme of the conference. (2) They must be available during the conference. (3) A speaker’s fee must fit within the conference budget. (4) They have to be comfortable with the conference format, which is completely free and open to the public. (5) No ghostwriters are invited. (6) Finally, the authors must be willing to make personal appearances.

In recent years, the Writers Conference has received an outpouring of support from many alumni, community members and people on campus, including gifts to the John Little Memorial Endowment and a “Match Challenge,” which has generated about $20,000.

New funding sources also have been established, such as the Kemen/Randall Family Writers Conference Endowment, the Jackie McElroy-Edwards and Tom Edwards Writers Conference Endowment, and an annual gift from the estate of Alice Lillian Carlson.

“This is great because endowments are what the UND Writers Conference needs to ensure that the organization is financially sustainable for years to come,” Alberts said. “We know that there is still work to be done, and we continue to do it.”

Alberts also appreciates UND Arts and Sciences Dean Debbie Storrs and longtime Writers Conference supporters, such as the UND Foundation, for their commitment to ensuring the tradition of the conference continues.

In addition, since arriving at UND, Alberts has been personally involved with nearly 40 grant proposals to internal and external granting agencies, requesting more than $1.9 million to support her research or related interests. Those requests have garnered nearly $490,000 over the years. A large portion of that has gone to her work and research related to the Writers Conference and the building of the Writers Conference Digital Collection.

Through all the hard work and challenges that come with organizing the Writers Conference each year, Alberts’ passion and enthusiasm is summed up in her one-word response when asked whether she plans to continue her involvement with the event in future years.

“Absolutely.”

Marcia Mikulak with her newest book.

Tackling a subject that lots of people might prefer to ignore, Marcia Mikulak’s latest book, Childhood Unmasked: The Agency of Brazil’s Street and Working Children, published earlier this year by Cognella Academic Press, argues that what we in the West consider the idealized childhood has little to do with the reality faced by children in other parts of the world.

This is especially the case for children who grow up in often violent and grindingly impoverished settings, such as the Brazilian “favela” or slum.

Mikulak, a cultural anthropologist who speaks fluent Portuguese, wrote this book after two years of fieldwork, interviewing kids and nongovernmental organizations. Also an accomplished concert pianist with degrees in music performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College in Oakland, Calif., Mikulak has several solo piano recordings to her credit.

– Story and photo by Juan Miguel Pedraza

Striking the right tone Afua Blay explores intonation —“the melody of speech” — and how it is affected in children with speech and language impairments.

Afua Blay loves to sing.

“Almost always, I have a song in my head,” she says with a smile.

Then it’s not such a stretch that her research at UND would be couched in somewhat musical terms.

Blay, a native of Ghana and a graduate student in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, is studying components of speech known as intonation and how it’s affected in Blay children with speech or language impairments. She refers to intonation as the “melody of speech.”

“Intonation is an important aspect of speech,” Blay said. “It functions to convey grammatical distinctions between declaratives and their matched echo questions,” she said. For instance, there is clear difference in intonation between the way a speaker says,

“He stole the money!” and “He stole the money?” Differences in intonation also can convey emotional (happy vs. sad) and attitudinal (rudeness) meanings.

“However, limited studies have focused on this aspect of language, thus little is known about intonation development disorders,” Blay said. Therefore, speech pathologists do not have the knowledge and skills to treat intonation disorders.

She hopes her research will contribute to the understanding and treatment of these disorders.

When Blay was growing up in Ghana, she wanted to be a pre-school teacher.

“I have always loved working with children,” she said.

Today, she is funneling her newfound passion into a drive to one day become a university professor in speech-language pathology. Her mentor at UND is associate professor Amebu Seddoh.

Blay, who majored in linguistics as an undergraduate at the University of Ghana, learned about UND during a one-year study abroad opportunity at Minot State University.

“I researched the Communication Disorders program at UND, and found it to be a perfect fit for me,” Blay said.

– By David Dodds UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 5

The Art and the Science

Jerome Delhommelle is a computational chemist.

While other scientists may be focused on the results of an experiment, Delhommelle and his group use powerful computers to calculate what actually happens during a chemical process. This work has potential for varied applications in the human body and in the environment.

“We are especially interested in understanding the formation of nanoparticles, which have important applications in medicine since these objects have been used as sensors or as vectors for drug delivery,” said Delhommelle, a native of France, who spent much of his childhood growing up in Africa.

Another area of interest for DelhomDelhommelle melle, who started working at UND in 2008 as an assistant professor of chemistry, is the use of computers to design and optimize metal-organic frameworks for gas-storage applications.

“This is extremely important for applications in the area of energy, such as when a non-fossil fuel like hydrogen is stored, or for environmental applications when a gas like carbon dioxide is captured and sequestered,” he said.

To this end, Delhommelle has secured external grants from the American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund (ACS-PRF) and from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Material Research. Funding from the latter totaled $425,000.

The seed for the external funding came in the form of a $5,000 New Faculty Scholar grant that Delhommelle was awarded by the UND Senate Scholarly Activities Committee.

“Thanks to this money, I hired two undergraduate students in my research group,” he said. “It also allowed those students to present their work at a national conference.”

Delhommelle, who got his Ph.D. from the University of Paris XI-Orsay in 2000, said that his students, including graduate student Aaron Koening and undergrad Andrew Owen, are an important part of his research group, having made great contributions.

He said his group recently was able to secure a new project thanks to a grant from the ACS-PRF worth $110,000. That project is scheduled to start next fall.

Mikulak’s new book details harsh conditions for children living in the “favela” of Brazil

BOOK NOTES

Bytes and elements

The Art and the Science

Alena Kubatova: a student-focused researcher This UND Outstanding Faculty Scholar maintains one of the largest research groups in the Chemistry Department.

Alena Kubatova is, quite simply, the consummate students’ professor.

Even her research is student focused. It’s what she’s here for.

In February, Kubatova, a native of the Czech Republic, was recognized for her student-centric efforts in teaching and research with The Outstanding Faculty Scholar Award from UND. David Pierce, professor and chair of the Chemistry Department, says Kubatova’ s enthusiasm extends beyond the traditional classroom curriculum. She and colleague Evguenii Kozliak recently developed a seminar to help first-year chemistry students transition to the major, as well as a new professional development course for graduate and undergraduate students she taught this spring titled “STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Outreach to the Public.”

Students consistently rate Kubatova favorably, and she continually works to improve her classes.

“Alena has always been very engaged in research,” said Jana Casey, a former student who is now a research investigator at BristolMyers Squibb. “As my advisor, she spent many

hours teaching me new techniques, exploring new possibilities, discussing progress and listening to new ideas. She was always very enthusiastic and made sure we gained valuable hands-on experience in the laboratory. We published my research in high-impact, peerreviewed journals, and I presented my work at multiple local and national conferences.”

Kubatova, an associate professor of chemistry who also holds an appointment as an assistant professor of chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Mines, maintains one of the largest research groups in the Chemistry Department. Many of Kubatova her manuscripts and presentations have been co-authored with graduate and undergraduate advisees, a sign of her outstanding mentoring.

Since 2005, she has mentored 34 undergraduate researchers, as well as 14 master’s and Ph.D. students in the past five years.

Younger budding scientists have also benefited from Kubatova’s expertise. She has worked with the College of Engineering and Mines’ “Young Scientists and Engineers Academy” to develop interactive learning modules for K-fourth grade students that teach about

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

Ryan Zerr and Tami Carmichael look for the “Aha!” moments experienced by students as they analyze information and make decisions.

PAGE 6 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

gases. She also has arranged research demonstrations for participants in the North Dakota Science and Engineering Fair.

“Probably the highest impact outreach that Dr. Kubatova has organized over the years is her very popular Air Pollution Workshop for high school students,” Pierce said. “This annual event brings over 150 students to UND from throughout the region — many from rural and tribal communities — to engage in hands-on activities and to spark interest in the STEM disciplines.”

Kubatova came to UND in 2000 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC). In 2003, she became a research scientist at the EERC and an adjunct professor in UND’s Chemistry Department. Two years later, she was named assistant professor in the department.

Before joining the Chemistry Department, she was director of the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Mass Spectrometry Core Laboratory at UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

– Adapted for UND Discovery from a version by Brenda Haugen that appeared in the UND Founders Day banquet program Feb. 26, 2015.

Zerr, Carmichael selected to develop case studies for STIRS initiative Tami Carmichael, associate professor and director of humanities and integrated studies, and Ryan Zerr, professor of mathematics, recently delivered a presentation, “Scientific Thinking and Integrative Reasoning: Solving Unscripted Problems,” about their STIRS (Scientific Thinking and Integrative Reasoning Skills) research to an attentive group of colleagues at the Chester Fritz Library as part of a recent “AH! (Arts and Humanities)” lecture.

Their topic hews close to the heart of higher education: improving undergraduates’ abilities to solve problems and make decisions through critical analysis of data and arguments. “Aha!” moments abounded as Carmichael and Zerr walked through their case studies, which they developed as scholars in the STIRS program, an initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Carmichael’s research allows her students to consider the impact of oil transmission from economic, environmental and social perspectives. Zerr’s case examines the idea of fairness, touching on history, politics and just a very small bit of mathematics.

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Meet Sheila Liming, assistant professor of English “I grew up in Seattle, Wash., but my educational career has since led me all across the United States. At the College of Wooster, in Wooster, Ohio, I exchanged a bagpiping scholarship for Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Women’s Studies, and learned appreciation for liberal arts curricula as well. I subsequently completed my graduate education at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where I taught in both composition and literature, and kept up with bagpiping on the side. I strive to communicate standards of active engagement in my courses, and I see literary scholarship as a gradual mastering of the art of inquiry. I encourage my students to be responsibly inquisitive, and to ask questions, speak up and be curious.

2014 marked the start of my teaching at UND, and I am excited to be here.”

More about Sheila: Liming currently is spearheading a project to digitize the notes, annotations and marginalia included in author Edith Wharton’s personal library

housed at The Mount Estate in Lenox, Mass. She recently received a New Faculty Scholar Award from the UND Senate Scholarly Activities Committee allowing her to spend this summer in Massachusetts completing the first phase of a project to capture digital images of the majority of 2,400 works in Wharton’s library and transfer them to a searchable Web database. The initial version of the website, tentatively scheduled to launch in the spring of 2016, will exhibit these materials.

Liming is musically talented in many ways, including voice, piano, accordion and bagpipes.

She has played bagpipes since she was 13, taking them up at the suggestion of her Scottish grandmother, and has since played in a variety of bagpiping bands and traditional Celtic ensembles. One of those bands, a group she formed in Pittsburgh called Callán, has recorded and released a variety of albums (www.callanceltic.com). She plays both highland and border pipes, and says she is on the lookout for bagpipers in the Grand Forks area with whom she may be able to collaborate.

More than a game: “Theory Survivor” PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 7

The Art and the Science

Whitney Berry (center) discusses an in-class practice example in the “Theory Survivor” game with freshman music majors Laura Warne (left) and Haley Lund. New concepts are introduced through a short lecture, and then students get the opportunity for immediate practice in their peer group “tribes.”

“Theory class” — that’s good for a collective yawn.

But not the way Whitney Berry teaches it. The UND Music Department lecturer “gamified” the concept into “Theory Survivor.”

If you didn’t see the musical notation on the whiteboard, you’d never know you were in a theory class because students are scribbling furiously in their notebooks and carrying on animated discussions.

“This was an experiment that went well,” said Berry, who’s been at UND on and off since 1998. “I was thinking back to my own music theory class — it was basically useless, with lectures and assignments. I learned best in the student lounge with my friends. I tried to mimic that kind of learning in my theory class here.”

“In ‘Theory Survivor,’ the students accumulate points on their daily work and they are competing for what I refer to as a ‘fabulous prize’ — custom T-shirts — at the end of the game,” Berry said.

“That did it,” said Berry, who’s published a paper and book chapter about the gamification of music theory class. “‘Theory Survivor’ is a gamed-based subset of active learning. It’s an engaging approach to a class that starts at 8 a.m.

“I’ve observed that the students start to care more about how their ‘tribe’ is doing in the game than how they are personally doing in the class,” Berry said. “This actually improves their grades in the class because they are motivated to work harder to help their tribe.”

Music theory gamifies well because it’s knowledge that is based on definitively “right” and “wrong” answers, Berry explains.

“It’s not like abstract learning theory, for example,” she said. “It’s more skills-based. You have to know the precise nomenclature, where notes go on the lines, what’s the name of a specific group of notes, or chord. You have to be able to recognize this stuff instantaneously or you’ll get bogged down.”

The price of runoff

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

The Art and the Science

assistant professor of art and design “I am originally from the Southwest — Utah and New Mexico. My doctorate is from the University of Maryland, College Park, and I have taught at Lincoln Memorial University in East Tennessee, and at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I find art history tremendously compelling because it brings the abstract realm of historical inquiry face to face with concrete, tangible objects from the past.

I am excited about exploring how artworks capture something of the people and cultures that produced them. One of the great things about teaching at UND is that I also get to work with UND Art Collections, researching artworks, curating exhibitions and finding ways to maximize the educational potential of our collection. A particular highlight is my Museum Practicum class, which involves students in the day-to-day operations of collections management while giving them hands-on experience curating exhibitions and contributing to a variety of display projects around the campus.”

More about Nathan Rees joined UND’s faculty in August 2014. His research focuses on the intersection of race and religion in American art. He has published works on the representation of Native Americans in the 19th century Utah Territory, and on the influence of New Age movements and their predecessors on Southwest modernists. Rees’ current focus has shifted into the emerging field of visual culture, which includes anything that was created to be viewed but isn’t considered fine art. He is investigating album covers produced for recordings of Sacred Harp singing, a form of traditional American hymnody; and how folklorists have viewed the genre as a kind of a historical relic, yet the musicians believe themselves to be an active part of the contemporary world. Rees also volunteers at the Sacred Harp Museum in Bremen, Ga., curating online exhibitions, and helps preserve and promote its unique collection of recordings.

Rees’ first trip to North Dakota was for his job interview in April 2014. There was still snow on the ground, which came as a bit of a shock to him. Since moving here, Rees has embraced the culture and everything the state has to offer. He enjoys exploring the state and has already visited 27 (more than half) of the counties in North Dakota, taking in “off the beaten path” roadside attractions.

– By Amy Halvorson

PAGE 8 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

Research on children with speech disorders emphasizes collaboration Sarah Robinson and other Communication Sciences and Disorders faculty, including Alycia Cummings, work in Montgomery Hall, where some mornings the halls echo with happy sounds of children: visiting clients.

“We help kids — and adults, say, post-stroke patients — who have language or speech disorders,” says Robinson. “We work with expressive and receptive disorders and in reading and literacy research. It’s very collaborative work; we even have a cleft palate team of physicians, psychologists, speech/language people like us, and others who meet once a year at UND.” Cummings is researching the before-andafter-treatment brain waves of children with speech disorders.

“We want to see if there are both behavioral and neural changes,” Cummings said.

Both researchers say their clinical practice shapes such research questions.

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Robinson

Cummings

PHOTO BY CHUCK KIMMERLE

Meet Nathan Rees,

Gregory Vandeberg, associate professor of geography and department chair, has taken a good hard look at the water running into wildlife areas. What he and his research colleagues are seeing tells us we’re paying a price for the meat we eat. In a recent research project undertaken with scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Vandeberg concluded that concentrated animal feeding operations and crop production in the Upper Devils Lake Basin (Towner and Ramsey Counties), N.D., have the potential to impact the water quality and wildlife in nearby wildlife refuges. The team collected and closely analyzed water samples around one of those refuges over several years. In addition to several naturally occurring chemicals, such as nitrates and phosphorous, they also found E. coli bacteria from sources upstream of the refuge. This research also suggests that agricultural operations may have an impact on regional Greg Vandeberg in the field. water quality.

The Art and the Science PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

Freedom

from

the “press” Bill Caraher uses print-on-demand technologies to revolutionize academic publishing at UND.

– By David Dodds

Through a special electrode cap linked to a computer, Reza Fazel-Rezai is able to send commands directly from his brain to guide a small robot through a course. Assisting Fazel-Rezai with this braincomputer interface (BCI) demonstration were (from left) electrical engineering students Carly Pluskwik, Kate Berg, Logan Peterson, and Amelia Gagnon.

The future is now for UND’s Fazel-Rezai Biomedical engineering specialist uses technology of tomorrow to solve the problems of today.

Reza Fazel-Rezai’s work is as ambitious as it is exciting.

Fazel-Rezai, an associate professor of electrical engineering, specializes in biomedical engineering techniques that provide innovative solutions for a better tomorrow, he says.

His goal is to expand and strengthen biomedical engineering at UND and, in the process, build the University’s Biomedical Engineering Research Complex into an important and well-known research hub.

“I have passion for conducting research where the human quality of life is improved and consider myself blessed to make a living conducting research in the area that I enjoy so immensely,” Fazel-Rezai said. “If there is no challenge conducting research, there is no fun.”

His projects would seem to be stuff of the future, more at home in the realm of science fiction. But for Fazel-Rezai, the ideas are very possible, very real, and in many cases, they’re already in motion.

We are talking things like brain-computer interfaces that allow people to type words without touching a keyboard, make smarthome systems even smarter, computer games more fun and lie detectors more reliable. It could also restore direct voice capabilities to people afflicted with ALS, brainstem strokes,

cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and other brain or spinal cord afflictions.

He is also trying to develop new diagnostic applications that could revolutionize epilepsy management by tapping into brain signals to predict and detect the onset of seizures much earlier. In still another project, Fazel-Rezai is working on low-power and noninvasive ways to monitor human health, such as a tiny electronic tattoo placed on a subject’s chest.

Fazel-Rezai is working with researchers in UND’s Space Studies Department to use brain and heart signals to measure how UND-developed spacesuits impact human physiological performances. He is also involved in a study on brain signal recordings and other neuropsychological assessments to more accurately determine the severity of and projected recovery time for sports-related concussions. For this study, Fazel-Rezai will work with associate professor of physical therapy Mark Romanick and athletes from Grand Forks Central and Red River High Schools.

“The University is a prime site for collaborative research that crosses disciplinary boundaries,” he said.

Fazel-Rezai received his Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba. After several years working in industry and other universities, he joined UND in 2008. He and his wife, Sima Noghanian, associate professor and chair of UND’s Electrical Engineering Department, have two sons, the oldest of whom attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

– By David Dodds UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 9

Spirit of Innovation

The Digital Press is a new faculty-led initiative to resurrect in digital form academic publishing at the University of North Dakota.

It was co-founded by the late Joel Jonientz, professor of art and design, and historian William Caraher with the idea that publishing might be a fun showcase for Jonientz’s graphic design skills and Caraher’s restless curiosity. The Working Group in Digital and New Media has provided a space and Caraher community for the incubation and critique of the Digital Press, as well as faculty-led initiatives from across the University, Caraher says.

Using print-on-demand technologies, embracing open access standards, working collaboratively with authors, and marketing through social and new media, the Digital Press is a laboratory for exploring new, sustainable models for academic publishing. In 2014, it published its first book, Punk Archaeology (edited by Caraher, Kostis Kourelis and Andrew Reinhard), to some acclaim among archaeologists and thousands of downloads.

The press has three books in various states of production: Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology (edited by Caraher and Brandon R. Olson), a translation of Karl Jacob Skarstein’s Krigen mot Siouxene

by Melissa Gjellstad and Danielle Skjelver, and The Bakken Goes Boom!, a peer-reviewed collection of recent research on the Bakken oil patch edited by Caraher and Kyle Conway.

Digital Press co-founder Caraher is a historian and field archaeologist with active research projects in the Bakken oil patch (the North Dakota Man Camp Project), on Cyprus (The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and the Princeton Polis Expedition), and in Greece (The Western Argolid Regional Project). He was trained as a historian of the fifth to 10th century Eastern Mediterranean.

CO2 Carbon capture:

Challenge and opportunity

Spirit of Innovation

The demand for power in North Dakota is ever increasing. It is estimated that 2.5 gigawatts of additional electricity will be required for power in the state by the year 2032. This poses a critical question: Will carbon capture technologies play a role in meeting that demand? The answer is yes, if all of the regional benefits are considered.

In North Dakota, coal is an abundant resource that will continue to supply affordable, environmentally sound energy to the state and

UND’s Energy & Environmental Research Center is working with industry to study the injection of captured carbon dioxide in a deep underground geological formation for long-term storage. Photo by Janet Crossland, EERC research scientist.

PAGE 10 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

beyond. North Dakota’s average electric rates are among the lowest in the United States, and more than 28,000 jobs are due to the lignite industry.

Not only is coal one of the lowest-cost options for power, it also could give the state a competitive advantage for the production of additional oil by providing CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.

Currently, development of economically feasible carbon capture technology presents one of the biggest challenges to the fossil energy Harju industry. New concepts and ideas are being generated each year, but most capture concepts are not ready for full-scale deployment. Many existing technologies are capable of capturing carbon from coal-fired power plants, but most are still too expensive and inefficient. Further development and evaluation of these new technologies are critical steps toward economical carbon capture.

The integration of such technologies could Holmes reduce the plant’s electricity output by as much as 35 percent. In fact, some smaller plants could be shut down, as the cost of additional emission control, CO2 capture integration, and the energy penalty would be too great to overcome.

That’s why the U.S. Department of Energy and UND’s Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) are committed to developing technologies to improve this situation. The Partnership for the CO2 Capture Program is evaluating several technologies that are among the most Kay advanced systems under development.

What does this mean for North Dakota? As more and more technologies are shown to cost-effectively capture CO2, emission control technologies will also be updated to accommodate them. This will lead to the creation of additional coal industry-related jobs, as utilities are able to keep using secure, low-cost fuel for power while progressing toward near-zero emissions.

But beyond that is the incredible opportunity for use of the captured CO2 in the oil and gas industry. Current demand for CO2 for enhanced oil recovery shows tremendous promise, with the potential demand of several billion tons of CO2 expected to help produce a potential of 4 billion to 7 billion barrels of additional North Dakota oil.

Expanding enhanced oil recovery seriously depends on the availability of CO2 to inject. With coal plants and other industrial facilities seeking to find a home for their emitted CO2, it becomes a matter of CO2 capture technology, economics, and mutual trust to develop joint ventures and provide a transition to next-generation energy technology. This fosters yet another huge advantage to North Dakota’s energy industry.

In short, considering the growing energy and carbon management challenges in North America, the contributions of CO2 enhanced oil recovery need to be put front and center to help drive improvements and reduce costs.

An additional 30 years or more of life in the Bakken can potentially be gained by CO2-based enhanced oil recovery. This provides valuable employment, reduces the need to develop other new fields, and greatly enhances our North American oil supply while also benefiting the nation through a secure infrastructure anchored in North Dakota.

– By John Harju, Mike Holmes and John Kay, Energy & Environmental Research Center

Spirit of Innovation PHOTO BY SHAWNA NOEL SCHILL

Raising the bar Interdisciplinary team of UND scholars honored for years of successful partnerships in aviation engineering and human factors research.

A group of pioneers from a variety of fields was recently recognized for their longstanding and pioneering efforts to further solidify the University’s place in aviation history.

For their exceptional work over the years in aviation and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) engineering and human factors research, the team of six was honored with the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Award from UND. They are F. Richard “Ric” Ferraro, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Psychology; Tom Petros, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Psychology; Glenda Lindseth, professor of nursing; Paul Lindseth professor of aviation; Ben Trapnell, associate professor of aviation; and Will Semke, professor of mechanical engineering.

“Each of these individuals had the vision to assemble a collaborative team of UND investigators that developed the state-funded Center of Excellence for [UAS] and Simulation Applications,” said Bruce Smith, dean of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences. “Collaborative research efforts in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Engineering Lab, the UAS Human Factors Core, with research conducted in the Northern Plains Center for Behavioral Research, and the UAS aviation research conducted in the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences have all contributed immensely to where the University and the state of North Dakota are today.”

Smith added that the team’s pioneering research played a large role in North Dakota’s selection as one of the six national UAS test sites designated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Paul Lindseth took the helm and ensured that the team had monthly meetings to stay abreast of each other’s efforts and of emerging opportunities.

PHOTO BY CHUCK KIMMERLE

Present at the 2015 Founders Day banquet to receive the UND Award for Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Research or Creative Work were (from left) William Semke, Ric Ferraro, Tom Petros, and Ben Trapnell. Presenting the award was DeAnna Carlson Zink (right), chief executive officer of the UND Alumni Association and Foundation.

“This coordination enabled each person to be entrusted with delivering a common path forward with a mutual respected vision,” Petros said. “The activities resulted in multiple successful partnerships and funds from industrial and government leaders.”

Among the many examples of their collaborative efforts are the establishment of a UAS Predator research and training facility at the Grand Forks Air Force Base; $5.4 million from the U.S. Air Force Research Lab to create a curriculum for medium-altitude, long-range UAS pilot training; and the creation, implementation and expansion of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Engineering (UASE) Laboratory, involving both graduate and undergraduate students.

The UASE Lab is dedicated to the design, construction, flight test and evaluation of UAS payloads for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and air-borne sense-and-avoid missions, according to Semke.

“Civilian and environmental applications related to precision agriculture, atmospheric science research, disaster — particularly flood — monitoring, and search and rescue activity are actively addressed as well,” he said.

Glenda Lindseth, Petros and Ferraro continue to serve as associate directors of the UAS Center of Excellence on Human Factors Core.

“The Human Factors Core has focused its research on flight performance issues, both manned and unmanned, such as UAS cockpit design, fatigue and health-related and behavioral issues,” Glenda Lindseth said.

The diversity of the team allowed it to delve into many different areas, all centered around UAS research.

“This team brought together the expertise to investigate the incredibly dynamic and varied fields of UAS research that are emerging in a collaborative and supportive environment,” Trapnell said. “This ability to work together in nontraditional academic teams was unique to many institutions of higher learning, significantly raising the bar at the University of North Dakota.”

– Adapted for UND Discovery from a version by Brenda Haugen that appeared in the UND Founders Day program Feb. 26, 2015.

Glenda and Paul Lindseth on the UND Flight Operations apron at the Grand Forks International Airport.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 11

Spirit of Innovation

A higher vantage

Al Frazier with a camera-equipped Draganflyer X6 unmanned aerial vehicle. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

Al Frazier heads UND efforts to provide UAS technology to area law enforcement.

Al Frazier brings a perfect mix of law enforcement and aviation expertise to his role as an Unmanned Aircraft Systems expert at UND. This fact was evident in 2013 when Frazier and the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences’ Department of Aviation were asked by the Grand Forks Police Department to assist with a criminal jury trial of a man suspected of three counts of gross sexual imposition, robbery, and terrorizing. Law enforcement asked Frazier and his team to use UAS to illustrate the proximity of the suspect’s residence to the victim’s residence. That suspect ultimately was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

“To our knowledge, it was the first time that nonfederal, UAS-derived evidence was utilized in a U.S. court,” Frazier said.

Since 2011, UND, the Grand Forks County Sheriff ’s Department and two UAS manufacturers — AeroVironment and Draganfly Innovations — have been collaborating on such efforts through the Law Enforcement UAS Research Project and the Northeast Region

UAS Unit. The unit includes members of the Grand Forks County Sheriff ’s Department, Grand Forks Police Department, and civilian pilots from UND. Previously, UND’s UAS Research Compliance Committee had approved six activities, including “crime scene documentation,” for which UND UAS could participate with area law enforcement. So far, the unit has responded to 17 incidents, ranging from disaster assessments to searches for suspects and victims, Frazier said.

Before joining UND, Frazier, 54, served 28 years as a police officer in Glendale, Calif., and two years in Smyrna, Tenn., prior to his retirement from the force in 2010. He has also worked as a National Park Service ranger and a National Park Service ranger-pilot.

Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Smyrna, Frazier received his bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University, and his master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California.

Frazier is an airline transport-rated pilot and flight instructor whose research mainly has focused on UAS in law enforcement and helicopter flight data management. He has a pending grant proposal to assist the country of Kenya with its wildlife trafficking interdiction efforts.

International students will cruise with “SandSharks” UND’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences has long been known as the trainer of the world’s best pilots.

Nations around the world have sent aspiring aviators to UND to receive the quality training for which the school is known. Now UND’s Center of UAS Research, Education and Training, a division of UND Aerospace, and Northrop Grumman, a leader in the UAS industry, have teamed up to make it possible for international students to get that same level of training in the field of unmanned aircraft.

Through a three-year cooperative agreement, Northrop Grumman has provided two SandShark™ remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) and a ground station to UND to broaden the University’s flight training program by extending training to international students.

“The international UAS training market is growing exponentially, and UND is considered a UAS training center of excellence,” said Brig.

Gen. (Ret.) Al Palmer, director of the UND UAS Center.

Palmer added that the international training will benefit from UND’s proximity to national airspace set aside for UAS training and research — one of six federally designated zones in the United States.

SandShark™ emulates manually flown RPAs, offering pilots a realistic, hands-on flying experience. The aircraft is optimized for 10 times the number of takeoffs and landings of an operational UAS RPA, providing significantly more affordable training. SandShark™ aircraft and ground terminals are based at select airfields across the nation. Pilots can fly the aircraft from anywhere in the country through a commercial broadband Internet connection or 4G cellular network.

The agreement facilitates new career development programs and employment opportunities for students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines as well as aviation programs.

PAGE 12 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

UND also will use the SandShark™ models this summer in collaborative research efforts with private-sector company Rockwell Collins, Palmer said.

Northrop Grumman and UND representatives announced a cooperative pilot training agreement at the 2014 AUVSI trade show in Orlando, Fla. With the SandSharkTM aircraft are (from left), Al Palmer, director of the UND UAS Center of Excellence; Ken Kilmurray, SandSharkTM program manager, Northrop Grumman; Mike Corcoran, deputy director of UND’s UAS Center of Excellence; and Karl Purdy, program manager with Northrop Grumman.

Thunderstorms under the microscope PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

Atmospheric scientist Gretchen Mullendore recently received a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $300,000 for a project titled “Mid-latitude Deep Convective Transport to the Upper-Troposphere and Lower-Stratosphere.” That’s a lot of words to simply say Mullendore will estimate air pollution that is carried by severe summertime thunderstorms. Deep convection, such as in the severe thunderstorms observed throughout the central United States, transports air pollution from the surface to higher than seven miles in altitude. Mullendore’s three-year study will focus, among other goals, on improving algorithms that she and her team already developed to estimate deep convective transport using radar reflectivity.

Last year, Mullendore and her colleague, Mike Poellot, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, made waves when they secured private-sector funding to study how tropical thunderstorms impact unmanned aircraft systems.

Mullendore is also known as a student advisor and for her role in launching the UND Women in Science chapter.

Gretchen Mullendore diagrams thunderstorm components.

Zheng brings environmental balance to economic research Haochi Zheng has moved all around the world, settling in smaller and relatively colder places each time.

From Tokyo to Boston to Minneapolis to Grand Forks, Zheng jokingly calls it her “journey to the frozen land.”

Speaking of land, or more precisely, ecosystem services, well, that’s Zheng’s specialty.

Zheng, a native of Shanghai, China, and assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science and Policy, currently is leading two federal projects with a combined worth of nearly $1 million.

In the first project, Zheng is evaluating how market and policy affect cellulosic biofuel production on marginal land in the Upper Midwest in the face of water sustainability issues and a changing climate. She’s working with other researchers from UND and North Dakota State University to assess these impacts.

Zheng said the study should help policy makers, landowners and society understand the environmental benefit and consequences of meeting U.S. energy policy goals for advanced biofuels.

“The project develops a coupled economic-hydrology model, with inputs derived from both satellite and field observations,” Zheng said.

In the other project, she’s collaborating with researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Minnesota on ways to enhance honeybee pollination and other ecosystem services in the

Northern Plains. The study looks at the relationship between “economic efficiency and environmental sustainability,” she said.

Multiple graduate students are funded under the two grants, providing interdisciplinary opportunities off campus, working in their fields with regional landowners and commercial apiaries, said Zheng, who received her Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota.

Zheng, who came to UND in 2010, also is involved in a multimillion-dollar UND-NDSU project to study the impacts of climate variations on regional agricultural production.

Haochi Zheng is involved in several studies examining climate variations and agricultural production. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 13

Spirit of Innovation

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Spirit of Innovation Timothy O’Keefe (left) and Brian Tande are leading UND’s participation in the Pathways to Innovation Program. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

An

EPICENTER of

INNOVATION The Pathways to Innovation Program seeks to promote entrepreneurial awareness among more students and to build a model for the region.

Timothy O’Keefe and Brian Tande want more students to think entrepreneurially in their pursuit of an education at UND. So they are leading an effort on campus to make it easier for nonbusiness majors to add entrepreneurship as a second major. The initiative stems from the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter) program, which recently selected O’Keefe and Tande to be part of its second cohort that is developing unique undergraduate experiences in engineering and entrepreneurship.

They have already started a process to allow UND mechanical engineering students to obtain dual degrees in entrepreneurship and still finish in five years or less, according to Tande, associate professor and chair of the UND Chemical Engineering Department.

“So we will continue to look for ways to mesh the two programs as much as possible,” he said.

More than dual degrees But they’re not stopping there.

“The School of Entrepreneurship is hopeful that the process we learn through the Pathways program can be replicated at other colleges at UND, and potentially elsewhere,” PAGE 14 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

said O’Keefe, who serves as the interim director of the UND Entrepreneurship School.

“Ultimately, we hope to create an environment of innovation and entrepreneurship that permeates the University. We envision UND as the epicenter of innovation and entrepreneurship — an ecosystem that encompasses the entire region.”

They are being supported by Margaret Williams, dean of UND’s College of Business and Public Administration (CoBPA), and Hesham El-Rewini, dean of the College of Engineering and Mines (CEM).

“Both deans have been very engaged in the process,” Tande said.

Other institutions chosen to participate in this program include the New York Institute of Technology, James Madison University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Washington State University and the University of Texas at Arlington. UND’s strong entrepreneurial and engineering presence on campus — exhibited primarily by its School of Entrepreneurship and Center for Innovation (both part of the CoBPA) and CEM — gives UND a solid foundation to build upon.

“We hope the program helps us take it to the next level,” Tande said. “We’ve got a great entrepreneurial culture on campus … we think there is more we could do together.”

O’Keefe, with the help of grant writer Della Kapocius from the Center for Innovation, was instrumental in UND’s selection for the Pathways program. He and Tande were notified last November.

An entrepreneurial “mindset” Tande already has successfully developed a certificate program through the Jodsaas Center for Engineering Leadership and Entrepreneurship, part of the CEM, to help engineering students develop business savvy to go along with their engineering knowledge.

He thinks initiatives like that could serve as a springboard for what they are trying to do with the Pathways Program on campus.

Still, they know not all UND students are destined to start and run successful businesses after they graduate. For those students, there’s still value in developing an “entrepreneurial mindset,” Tande said.

“What that means is the ability to find new ways of solving problems, to challenge conventional wisdom, and evaluate new opportunities — all while considering the technical, social, and financial aspects of a problem,” he said.

“Those are the skills that any employer would value and that will set our graduates apart.”

– By David Dodds

Weather in these parts isn’t just pleasant conversation.

With wild temperature swings, fast-moving storm systems, lethal wind chills, and unpredictable floods, prairie citizens need dependable weather forecasts to stay informed and prepare for the worst.

UND’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences is a key player in the state’s forecast game, with an Atmospheric Sciences Department that includes a broadcast weather training program.

“We are preparing the next generation of broadcast meteorologists,” said Fred Remer, an Atmospheric Sciences faculty member and former TV weatherperson who runs the broadcast program. “I’m happy to report that we just acquired a Baron Omni weather broadcast system, the same kind that is used by the big TV stations in markets such as the Twin Cities, New York and Los Angeles.”

The Baron Omni replaces the previous system, acquired in 2005 and now thoroughly outdated, according to Remer. Student teams use the technology, along with traditional scientific tests, to produce actual weather forecasts, or “UND Weather Updates.” Working with the UND Aerospace Network and the UND Television Center, the updates can be seen on local cable as well as a YouTube site pushed out through Facebook.

“We’re enthusiastic about this new system because it puts our students on track to learn with equipment that’s exactly what’s being used by the professionals,” said Remer, who is also a pilot and knows the value of reliable weather forecasts. “The equipment is so sophisticated at most TV stations now that we need to emulate that in our education and training program for new meteorologists.”

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Fred Remer

Spirit of Innovation

Learning on pro gear

PHOTO BY SHAWNA NOEL SCHILL

Mark Askelson (left) is assisted by Adam Gill, a senior majoring in atmospheric sciences, in setting up a specially constructed platform for photographing individual flakes of snow.

Ready for their close-ups UND winter weather expert Mark Askelson is no flake, but the stuff he loves to collect, analyze and understand certainly is.

Calling all snowflakes! We want you to be a star!

All you have to do is land in UND Professor Mark Askelson’s very cool snowflake house.

Lined with lights and sensors, this hightech box helps Askelson and his students get a closer handle on the marvelous six-pointed, infinitely variable structure of each snowflake.

A native of Detroit Lakes, Minn., Askelson, along with colleagues and his students, designed the home-made plywood-framed box with a calibrated opening on top and a gate flap on one side so they could access the lights and snow tray inside. The snowflakes fall onto a flat piece of black cloth where they are illuminated and photographed. Those images are then analyzed.

“I’m interested in learning a lot more about snowflakes and snow because they have such an impact on travel in our region,” said Askelson, who also is a weather radar expert in the

UND Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

“There are many different forms of snow — some of them really dangerous — with different impacts on drivers.”

“We want cleaner, safer roads and excellent driving conditions. That’s part of my motivation for this research,” Askelson said. “With a better understanding of snowflakes, we’ll more clearly understand how they affect visibility on the roads.”

Askelson said eventually scientists will know enough about Askelson snow to make detailed accurate predictions, allowing for the development of more enhanced “intelligent” transportation systems.

“We have a pretty good handle on snow events now to make predictions about snowfall,” he said. “The challenge for forecasters is to predict accurately where and when we’ll get blowing snow, reduced visibility, and whether or not a given snow event will develop into a blizzard.”

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 15

from Ghana

to Grand Forks

Crossing the ocean, seeking new heights Spirit of Innovation

Kwasi “Daniel” Adjekum reached the pinnacle of aviation success abroad; now he’s using that background to make skies safer for flight students in the U.S. Maj. (ret.) Kwasi “Daniel” Adjekum spent 13 years in the Ghanaian Air Force living out a boyhood dream.

Adjekum’s rise to prominence within the West African nation’s military afforded him many important aviation experiences, such as piloting presidential flights for the government and leading tactical missions into war-ravaged African countries. He also served as head of safety in the Ghana Air Force and as an aircraft investigator. In his life, he has worked as an Air Force squadron commander, a military command pilot, and a civilian airline pilot.

“I remember as a kid, I had always been fascinated by the mystery of flight and vowed to soar the surly bounds of the skies when I grew up,” said Adjekum, who was raised in Effiduase-New Juaben, a town about 55 miles northeast of Ghana’s capital city of Accra. “I remember my friends used to tease me that it was virtually impossible for me to attain my dream of flight. Since I was a boy from a rather humble background, and in Ghana, such lofty ideas of being a pilot were mere mirage.”

After attaining a degree in physics from the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana in 1997, Adjekum joined the Ghana Air Force, determined to realize the seemingly impossible dream.

“I earned my wings as a pilot in the Ghana Air Force and after almost 13 years of distinguished service, I was honorably released in

Kwasi “Daniel” Adjekum, a Ph.D. candidate in aerospace sciences, presented on his research at the 2015 Scholarly Forum hosted March 10-11 by the School of Graduate Studies. Photo by Juan Miguel Pedraza.

PAGE 16 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

2009,” he said. Along the way, he also picked up a post-graduate diploma in aviation safety management and aircraft accident investigations from the U.S. Air Force Safety School.

A workshop leads to UND Today, Adjekum is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-certified airline pilot with ratings on Boeing 737 and Fokker 27 aircraft.

Adjekum’s connection to North Dakota started in 2006, when he led the Ghana Air Force safety program and began organizing an annual safety workshop with the North Dakota Air National Guard as part of a State Partnership Program with the United States.

The program pairs state militaries (National Guard) in the United States with militaries from countries around the world to build mentoring relationships.

“I got to know key military leaders from North Dakota and, as part of my research and interaction, got to know about the wonderful aviation training and research opportunities at UND,” Adjekum said.

Adjekum was admitted to UND’s master’s degree program in aviation in 2012. At the time, he was working as a pilot for Virgin Airlines out of Nigeria. As luck would have it, his wife, Gloria, had been hired as a pediatrician at Altru Health System in Grand Forks a year earlier.

He’s now pursuing his Ph.D. in aerospace sciences at UND.

Models for predicting flight behavior At UND, Adjekum has been able to tap into his aviation safety background for a project he’s conducting with co-researchers at Purdue, South Dakota State, Lewis, and Embry-Riddle Universities on safety culture perceptions in collegiate aviation programs.

They are looking at perceptional trends of flight students in an effort to build predictive models on safety behaviors. The research could help collegiate aviation programs identify safety control measures to proactively prevent flight-training mishaps.

The research expands on existing literature on the role of organizational commitment to safety and how it influences aviation students’ perceptions of safety culture and their safety behavior. The FAA also will be able to use the research to build a comprehensive database on safety culture in collegiate aviation operations.

In addition to his research, Adjekum works in the UND Aviation Department as a graduate teaching assistant in Crew Resource Management. He is also an aviation safety consultant at Home Base International, an aviation safety consultancy company based in Grand Forks.

– By David Dodds

Health and Well-Being PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

biomedical researchers and educators. He presented as a finalist for an Educational Research Award through the American Association of Anatomists. His was named the top abstract among those selected by peer review to be presented orally.

Three manuscripts based on his work will be submitted for publication in medical education journals.

Apart from his work in medical education, Ali is an instructor of anatomy, a preceptor in clinical skills, and has served as a patientcentered-learning facilitator for the SMHS. He also has volunteered as a presenter for high school groups that tour the school.

“I am fascinated by anatomy, the way so many cells can combine to form an organ and perform a single function,” Ali says. “The human body is amazing, and there is so much to learn about how it works.”

By way of Norway, Haris Ali (left) came to UND from Pakistan and found Grand Forks to be an ideal community. Ken Ruit (right), associate dean for educational administration and faculty affairs in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, describes Ali as “unlike any Ph.D. student we’ve had before.”

Aaway HOME from home Up-and-coming UND scholar from Pakistan advances anatomy education research while finding North Dakota much to his liking.

Haris Ali has a thirst for learning.

His desire to learn has taken him around the world and brought him here to the University of North Dakota.

“I have always loved learning and, along with it, teaching others. I wanted to follow a teaching track,” said Ali, who first heard of UND while completing his master’s degree in biomedical science in Norway.

Born and raised in Pakistan, Ali was encouraged to study medicine by his father.

His interest in anatomy led him to complete his medical degree in Pakistan, and to later study abroad in Norway. It was there that he applied for UND’s Ph.D. program in anatomy and cell biology, with a research emphasis in medical education.

Ali got his Ph.D. from the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS). He has served as an SMHS faculty member in the

Department of Physician Assistant Studies.

This summer, he will begin training in the internal medicine program at the UND SMHS campus in Fargo.

“Haris was unlike any Ph.D. student we’ve had before — he was truly a unique student,” said SMHS associate dean for educational administration and faculty affairs Kenneth Ruit, who served as Ali’s advisor. “He came to UND already having significant experience.”

While at UND, Ali researched assessments of students learning in the Medical School’s patient-centered learning curriculum. Existing data showed that the way in which medical students are asked questions on exams and the format they use to answer them have a significant impact on the faculty’s ability to assess with validity and reliability whether students are learning what was intended.

“Haris’ work extended those observations and helped to establish principles for examination item writing that have caught the eye of medical educators nationally,” Ruit said.

Ali was invited to present his research at the Experimental Biology 2014 Conference in San Diego, one of the largest conferences of

“North Dakota Nice”

When he’s not conducting research or teaching, Ali spends time on his hobbies: cooking and traveling. He compares cooking to research and believes it is why he loves the study of anatomy so much.

“They both require attention to detail; you have to be knowledgeable about what you’re working with,” Ali said. “Sometimes, especially at first, it doesn’t always work out, but when it does, it’s worth it.”

As for travel, Ali likes to explore new places when he gets time off. However, he quickly finds himself yearning to come back to Grand Forks.

“It is very peaceful here,” Ali said. “I really love this community and I am glad to be part of it.”

Although he grew up in a big city in Pakistan, Ali is more at home in the quieter lifestyle and togetherness of smaller cities such as Grand Forks.

“You don’t get ‘North Dakota Nice’ everywhere; the people here are so warm and welcoming,” he added.

In fact, Ali met his wife, Courtney, a native of Reynolds, N.D., while attending UND. In the future, Ali hopes to continue his work in medical education research and contribute to the training of North Dakota’s physicians and other health science professionals.

“I am so lucky to be surrounded by brilliant and supportive colleagues, and I know they value me as well,” Ali said.

– By Christalin Casinader, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and David Dodds. A version of this story first appeared in North Dakota Medicine magazine and is adapted here for UND Discovery.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 17

Health and Well-Being

Jonathan Geiger (left) and Xuesong Chen are conducting groundbreaking research on the neurological impact of drugs used to control the AIDS virus in humans. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

Geiger, Chen win second top-level NIH R01 grant UND scientists are examining how some drugs used to control the HIV-1 virus may also be causing neurological problems.

Jonathan Geiger and Xuesong Chen are onto something big, and the national research engines have taken notice.

In a time of reduced research funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has granted more than $3 million to Geiger, a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor, and his colleague and collaborator Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Basic Sciences in UND’s School of Medicine and Health

Sciences (SMHS), to conduct groundbreaking research on neurological impacts of drugs used to control the AIDS virus in humans.

The funding stems from not one, but two five-year “R01” grants — the NIH’s top-ranking — that were recently awarded to Geiger and Chen in a span of four months.

They hope to explain through their research why HIV-1/AIDS patients are increasingly experiencing neurological complications similar to individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Our work highlights many of the good news and bad news stories associated with

HIV-1 infection,” Geiger said. “The bad news, of course, is that about 50 million people worldwide are infected with the virus and that almost half of the infected people experience learning, memory, and motor control difficulties. The good news is that anti-retroviral drug therapies continue to get better and better, and people are living longer lives. However, this also means that people are experiencing and will increasingly experience age-related disorders, and it is hypothesized that HIV-1 proteins and the drugs used to treat HIV-1 infection are pro-aging.”

Geiger and Chen are investigating how HIV-1 proteins and some anti-retroviral drugs cause neurons to be dysfunctional, as well as ways to prevent these problems.

“It is interesting and potentially very important clinically that some of the drugs used to control the virus might also be part of the problem in terms of neurological complications,” Geiger said. “We hypothesize, based on our work, that drug regimens might be identified that still control viral replication but do not accelerate aging-related problems.”

Geiger’s and Chen’s unique insights and approaches resulted in their receiving the two R01 grants in one year — a rare feat at any research institution.

“This is a huge achievement because it is so hard to get even one NIH R01 grant, let alone two,” said Malak Kotb, chair of the SMHS Department of Basic Sciences.

According to Joshua Wynne, UND vice president for health affairs and SMHS dean, the NIH currently is funding only the top 10 percent of grants.

“To receive two such grants probably puts them in the top 2 percent nationally,” Wynne said, referring to Geiger and Chen.

– Compiled by Denis MacLeod, School of Medicine and Health Sciences; and David Dodds, University and Public Affairs

Medical School Ph.D. students present at the annual Scholarly Forum Six Ph.D. students in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences presented posters about their research at this year’s School of Graduate Studies Scholarly Forum. From left to right they are Andrea Slusser, Jamestown, N.D.; Elizabeth Sandquist, Moorhead, Minn.; Jamie Van Gieson, Norwich, Kan.; Yan Ye Xuefeng, Anhui Province, China; Bethany Davis, Grand Forks and Turtle Mountain Reservation; and Swojani Shrestha, Nepal. Xuefeng is a student of Min Wu, a faculty member in the Department of Basic Sciences. The others work with Pathology faculty members Seema Somji and Scott Garrett. They are focusing on various aspects of cellular- and molecular-level genesis of heavy metal toxicity relating to cancer; biomarkers for various cancers; and on the molecular basis for pneumonia.

– Story and photograph by Juan Miguel Pedraza

PAGE 18 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences has added two new founding chairs to its cadre of faculty medical specialists to head up new divisions within the medical school.

Gary G. Schwartz will be the founding chair of the Department of Population Health. He is a scientist and educator, recognized internationally for his research on prostate cancer and on vitamin D. Since 1999, Schwartz has been the scientific director of the Prostate Cancer Center of Excellence at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., a National Cancer Schwartz Institute–designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. At UND, Schwartz will provide oversight of the new department and help shape a populationbased approach to health care delivery to North Dakotans.

Joining Schwartz as a new founding chair is Jurivich Donald Jurivich, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who recently was named the founding Eva L. Gilbertson, M.D., Distinguished Chair of Geriatrics. He is a nationally known and respected clinician who has conducted extensive research on aging and age-related diseases and their treatment. Since 1997, Jurivich has been the Vitoux Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Geriatric Medicine, as well as chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. At UND, Jurivich will work with clinical partners to meet the educational and training needs of current and future health professionals to effectively serve an aging population.

– Compiled by Denis MacLeod, UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences; and David Dodds, UND University and Public Affairs.

Health and Well-Being

SMHS adds Schwartz, Jurivich to lead new departments

Research by Roxanne Vaughan (above) and Keith Henry seeks to uncover the molecular components that create the particularly addictive effects of cocaine. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

Looking for the keys to unlock cocaine’s grip A breakthrough discovery by a team of UND scientists might help people suffering from cocaine addiction break the vise-like grip the drug has on their lives.

Cocaine targets “dopamine,” a neuron transmitter that controls the brain’s reward and pleasure pathways leading to euphoria, craving, and eventual addiction. In an October cover story in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Roxanne A. Vaughan and Associate Professor Keith Henry, in the Department of Basic Sciences in UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, announced they had discovered the binding site of a cocaine-like molecule that targets the transmission of dopamine.

Unlike heroin use, which can be treated with replacement drugs such as methadone, there are no effective drugs that prevent cocaine from latching on to dopamine transporters. Their discovery is a critical step in understanding the molecular components necessary for the addictive effects of cocaine.

Vaughan and Henry worked with Pramod Akula Bala and Babita Sharma, both postdoctoral fellows in Henry’s lab, and UND graduate student Danielle Krout. The research also was aided by Amy Newman, chief of the Molecular Targets and Medications Discovery Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse; John

Lever, a radiochemist from the University of Missouri; and James Foster, a UND molecular biologist. Funding for the research was provided through ND EPSCoR (the North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research).

– Compiled by Denis MacLeod, School of Medicine and Health Sciences; and David Dodds, University and Public Affairs

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

The research of Keith Henry (above) and Roxanne Vaughan was featured on a cover story in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 19

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

Protecting the brain against

Health and Well-Being

STROKE

Before coming to UND in 2003, Mikhail “Misha” Golovko, assistant professor and director of the Mass Spectrometry Core Laboratory at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), worked at one of the largest medical schools in Russia: the Tver Medical Academy.

His first experience at UND came as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eric Murphy, SMHS associate professor of basic sciences. After a stint as a full faculty member of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Missouri, Golovko returned to UND as a tenuretrack faculty member in 2009.

“For sure my Russian genes played an important role in this decision, as nobody in my family liked a warm Missouri winter,” Golovko joked. “More seriously, it was because of the research support and collaborative environment in our department (Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics); I had no hesitations about moving back to UND.” And UND is certainly glad he did, too.

Soon after his return, Golovko received a New Faculty Scholar Award of $5,000 from the UND Senate Scholarly Activities Committee and secured three National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. The new money supported research on brain energy metabolism and its connection to the onset of strokes, as well as similar studies on the brain related to Alzheimer’s disease and obesity.

“Although the New Faculty Scholar Award was not a big award compared with the following NIH funding,” Golovko said, “this money really helped me to develop methods and approaches to collect preliminary data for the grants applications that were later funded by the NIH.” And what were Golovko and his team able to do with that money?

Mikhail “Misha” Golovko is the director of the Mass Spectrometry Core Laboratory in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

They were the first in the world to demonstrate a neuron-specific response to ischemia injury (restriction of blood to tissues) in the brain by activating lipid synthesis.

“We are currently developing an approach to protect the brain against stroke through the activation of this novel mechanism,” he said.

Also, through a collaboration with SMHS Professor of Basic Sciences Colin Combs, he is studying alterations in the brain related to Alzheimer’s that could lead to the development of a “magic drug” that targets both neurodegeneration and obesity.

A separate NIH grant award was received as a result of Golovko’s interest in mass spectrometry. With this funding, a number of UND researchers and external users across the country are able to tap into UND’s expertise in mass spectrometry analysis.

Golovko’s work has been greatly supported by fellow UND researchers Jonathan Geiger, a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor; Combs and Murphy, as well as graduate student Stephen Brose, who started out as a laboratory assistant.

Tick-borne Lyme disease crosses the river into North Dakota A team led by UND biologist Jefferson Vaughan and School of Medicine and Health Sciences SMHS) biomedical scientist Catherine Brissette has determined that Lyme disease has likely spread to Grand Forks County.

They warn that all of the variables for contracting Lyme disease are now present in Grand Forks County, which shares its eastern border with Minnesota. The risk of contracting the tick-borne Lyme disease in Minnesota has long been considered moderate to high, based on confirmed human cases; however, few studies have been done on the migration of the disease farther west.

Brissette’s laboratory works on the causative agent of Lyme disease, the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi.

While surveying ticks and tick-borne pathogens in small rodents across North Dakota, Nate Russart, a biology graduate student in Vaughan’s lab, detected Borrelia burgdorferi DNA in deer ticks from Grand Forks County. His work recently was published in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

“We were able to isolate live B. burgdorferi from the hearts of mice and voles from the Forest River and Turtle River areas of Grand Forks County,” Brissette said. “We showed that these bacteria were indeed the Lyme disease bacterium. We were also able to show that these bactePAGE 20 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

ria were related closely to B. burgdorferi from Minnesota, Wisconsin and eastern Manitoba, demonstrating that B. burgdorferi has migrated westward.”

Lyme disease is a debilitating and significant public health problem causing about 300,000 cases a year. It can result in arthritis, heart problems and neurological impairment and disability.

While Lyme disease can be treated effectively with antibiotics, some people continue to suffer with pain, fatigue and memory problems after treatment.

Funding for the research was provided by grants from ND EPSCoR — the North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research — and grants to Brissette from UND SMHS start-up funds.

– Compiled by Denis MacLeod, UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences; and David Dodds, UND University and Public Affairs.

Vaughan

Brissette

Health and Well-Being

Team seeks enhanced identification of substance abuse, treatment An inter-professional team of faculty from UND’s College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines and College of Arts and Sciences was recently awarded a grant of more than $556,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Faculty from Nursing, Social Work, and Psychology collaborated to secure this funding, which will help North Dakota implement an evidence-based model to address substance abuse and dependence. They intend to engage in state outreach efforts to educate both inter-professional healthcare/social service teams in North Dakota and nursing and social work students at UND to use Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) techniques in primary care settings.

These teaching and research efforts will further enhance the concept of using professional teams to identify substance abuse in multiple settings, expand referral bases, and strengthen the approach to multifaceted treatment options.

The project director for the SBIRT team is Christine Harsell. She is assisted by Maridee Shogren and Jackie Roberts, Nursing; Angie Muhs and Thomasine Heitkamp, Social Work; and Joseph Miller, Psychology.

Harsell

Shogren

Roberts

Muhs

Heitkamp

Miller

American Indian children experience foster care placement at a rate proportionally higher than any other race in the United States, and these disproportionality rates are highest in the Northern Plains.

Melanie Sage, UND assistant professor of social work, addresses the causes and solutions to this problem in her child welfare system research. Through contracts with the state court system and child welfare agency, she is helping North Dakota’s Supreme Court assess its compliance with the Federal Indian Child Sage Welfare Act and provide training to stakeholders.

Sage is committed to research that informs local practice and improves services for families in North Dakota and nationally. Her other research includes investigations of best practices in family-centered child welfare responses such as Family-Team Decision Making, in which families meet together to develop plans when children are involved in the child welfare system, and in rural foster home recruitment, which helps to ensure that children who must enter care are able to stay in their hometowns. She also conducts research that informs the child wel-

fare workforce on topics such as ethical use of social media and the impact of organizational culture in the child welfare workplace.

In 2013, Sage, a native of Fontana, Calif., was recognized by the Grand Forks Herald newspaper for her efforts to expand child welfare research within the state of North Dakota. At the time, Sage was overseeing two grants totaling nearly $300,000 for first-ofits-kind research on North Dakota’s child welfare laws and programs. One of the projects was funded by the North Dakota Supreme Court, and included an audit of the state’s Indian Child Welfare Act compliance. The other grant, funded by the Children’s Bureau, focused on working toward child safety with American Indian families when they are brought to the attention of child welfare agencies. Also in 2013, Sage was honored with the Public Scholar Award as part of the UND Center for Community Engagement’s Stone Soup Awards Program for her research and work to improve services to at-risk children in North Dakota.

– By David Dodds; photograph

by Jackie Hoffarth

Stupnisky studies factors affecting careers in teaching and learning Robert Stupnisky, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Research, uses quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to study the factors that affect academic careers.

“Clear expectations for tenure and promotion, strong collegial relationships, and work/ life balance are the most commonly studied concerns of early-career professors, but these don’t directly lead to improved classroom performance, publications, or grants,” said Stupnisky, an educational psychologist. “I believe these factors increase motivation and adaptive emotional patterns, which improve Stupnisky performance, but few researchers have looked at the psychology of new faculty success.”

Stupnisky teaches educational psychology, statistics, mixed methods and structural equation modeling. He was awarded a UND New Faculty Scholar Award in 2013.

Stupnisky received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology and social/ educational psychology from the University of Manitoba in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

He received his Ph.D. in social/educational psychology from the University of Manitoba in 2009, and previously spent a year as a visiting doctoral researcher at the University of Munich in Germany.

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 21

Teaching, Learning, and Living

Sage conducts pioneering research on child welfare laws and programs

Teaching, Learning, and Living

JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF

LAW

Top 40 radio DJ, stand-up comic, inventor, intellectual property litigator, entertainment lawyer, writer, Web programmer, start-up founder and University of North Dakota law professor — there’s not much Eric E. Johnson hasn’t done or can’t do.

At UND, Johnson’s primary scholarly interests are intellectual property and the intersection of science and law. He relishes being in the classroom and teaching the next generation of lawyers about torts, intellectual property and patent law, media and entertainment law, and sports law, as well as antitrust, bankruptcy and consumer law.

Johnson’s background, both personal and professional, makes him uniquely suited for the job. After graduating from Harvard Law in 2000, Johnson, 43, was an associate in the litigation and intellectual property litigation practices at Irell & Manella in Los Angeles, where his clients included Paramount, MTV, CBS, Touchstone, Immersion Corporation, and the bankruptcy estate of eToys.com. There he worked in patent infringement in the video game industry, copyright infringement of a television series, breach of a motion picture director’s contract, and breach of a profit participation clause in a television executive producer’s contract. He later became in-house counsel to Fox Cable Networks in Los Angeles, drafting and negotiating deals for Fox Sports Net and Fox College Sports.

Spinning discs and jokes Outside his legal career, Professor Johnson, a native of Las Vegas and Reno, was a top-40 radio disc jockey, a stand-up comic, and a consultant at an early-stage Internet start-up.

“I was a disc jockey at 97.3 KWNZ FM in Reno, Nevada,” Johnson said. “That’s the station I grew up listening to, and it’s where I went to work in 1994 after college. I started out doing the overnight shift, and within a PAGE 22 / UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

few months I was doing drive-time. I loved it. I would jump out of bed at 3:30 in the morning without hitting the snooze button to head into work and get ready to do the morning show.

“I started doing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area after radio and before law school. Probably the highlight of my comedy career was doing a week-long stint at the comedy club in my hometown at the Reno Hilton.”

An inventor, too In 2005, he was awarded a patent on a headrest he invented for people, such as his father, who suffered from dementia with Parkinson’s disease.

“With his Parkinson’s symptoms, he tended to lean to one side, and his head needed lateral support for him to be able to sit upright in a chair. So I put the headrest together to help him,” Johnson said. “Getting the patent afterward was rewarding, but it wasn’t my motivation in creating the device.”

Before joining the UND faculty, Johnson taught as an adjunct professor at Whittier Law School and the Pepperdine University School of Law, teaching patent law, trademarks, and entertainment law. He also taught as a visiting professor at Texas Tech University School of Law.

Black holes and lawyers?

PHOTO BY JACKIE LORENTZ

“The students at UND are the ideal audience: They are engaged, enthusiastic, and incredibly talented.

They also challenge me and keep me on my toes.”

— Eric Johnson

Johnson’s law research and published works made international news in 2010 when he wrote about legal unknowns surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), dubbed the “Black Hole” machine, which straddles the French-Swiss border. His published works posed the question of what a court should do if ever faced with a preliminary injunction to halt LHC experiments that plaintiffs claim could create a black hole that could devour the planet. In addition, he has been active in researching behavioral economics regarding exclusive rights and their presumed role in incentivizing intellectual property development. He’s also finishing work on a major new casebook on torts, the general law of suing for injuries. Johnson’s wide-ranging academic research garnered him the Robert Johnson Research Fellow Award from UND in 2011.

“The only thing that has been a bigger rush for me than radio and comedy is teaching law. The students at UND are the ideal audience: They are engaged, enthusiastic, and incredibly talented. They also challenge me and keep me on my toes,” Johnson said. “That’s why teaching is so much better than radio or comedy — the students have me continuously learning and growing. And hopefully I’m helping them do the same.”

– By David Dodds

Born to teach

PHOTO BY JUAN MIGUEL PEDRAZA

Nikolaus Butz seeks ways to make distance learning as vivid as traditional face-to-face classrooms.

Nikolaus Butz’s research focuses on “synchronous, Web conferencing course delivery systems” that could give distance learners experiences virtually equivalent to those of on-campus students.

systems.” This modern means of teaching provides the pedagogical freedom to reach distance learners around the world, increasing societal access to education, he says. But, Butz is interested in making this technological interface between teacher and students even better — as vivid and seamless as if they shared the same classroom.

“In contrast to the asynchronous discussion board systems that most people think of,” Butz said, “synchronous formats offer a two-way, live audio and video feed that does not sacrifice the affective features of face-toface instruction, such as body language, facial

expressions, and voice inflection.”

Butz credits a number of mentors and advisors at UND for helping him get to where he is today, including Robert Stupnisky in the Department of Educational Foundations and Research, Kathy Smart in the Department of Teaching and Learning (both in the College of Education and Human Development), and Dennis Elbert and John Vitton from the College of Business and Public Administration.

Butz successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on March 2, and is set to graduate in May. – By David Dodds

Meet Tammy Pettinato, assistant professor of law Tammy Pettinato got her start in the legal profession as a law librarian and lecturer at the UCLA School of Law. She started teaching law at the La Verne College of Law in Ontario, Calif., before taking on a two-year gig as a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Louisville. The Harvard Law School graduate started her tenure-track position at the UND School of Law as an assistant professor in the fall of 2013.

Pettinato A native of western Pennsylvania, Pettinato specializes in the employment rights of ex-offenders.

“Currently, I’m focusing on a comparison of such rights in the United States versus in the

European Union,” she said. In addition, she is co-authoring a book on North Dakota legal research, as well as researching the experiences of law students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Pettinato also does some creative writing on the side.

“I write fiction for fun and have published a short story in a Detroit-area magazine called The Current,” she said. “The story was called ‘Right of Way’ and was about a law student and a cab driver getting into an altercation on a night when they both felt out of place in their respective worlds. They both learn something about privilege and cross-cultural understanding.”

– By David Dodds

UND DISCOVERY / SPRING 2015 / PAGE 23

Teaching, Learning, and Living

Teaching is in Nikolaus Butz’s genes.

Before he even graduated from high school, the son of college teachers got his first shot at carrying on the family legacy as an instructor of an elective business course in desktop publishing.

“This experience was my first memorable teaching moment, which laid the foundation for my future career path,” Butz said.

He went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in secondary business education, with a minor in computer science, from Dickinson State, where his father is a professor of business and his mother once taught math. His undergraduate years were a bit of a feeling-out process.

“I spent my first two years as a computer science major,” Butz said. “I loved the technical aspect of working with computers and writing code; however, I became dissatisfied with some of the solitary aspects of being a programmer. As the child of two teachers, I decided to try education.”

Next, after some encouragement from his father, Butz decided to pursue his Master of Business Administration degree at UND, which was his father’s alma mater.

“He has always spoken with great pride of the education he received at UND,” said Butz, who grew up in a bilingual household in Dickinson. His father, a native of Mainz, Germany, spoke German to him until Butz was in high school. His mother is a native English speaker. The family also summered each year in Germany.

At UND, Butz began working as a teaching assistant in the Department of Management — a position he still holds today. This experience only reinforced his ambition to one day become a university educator. In 2012, he taught a summer management course at UND’s sister school in China, The University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, where he received positive feedback from students.

Butz eventually enrolled in the Ph.D. program in UND’s Teaching and Learning Department. He said his previous studies in computer science helped him in his research at UND. His current research focuses on “synchronous, Web conferencing course delivery

Spirit of Innovation

Teaching, Learning, and Living

UND’s Alleva listed among nation’s best law professors UND’s Patti Alleva is among the nation’s best law professors, according to a new Harvard University Press publication called What the Best Law Teachers Do. Alleva, the Rodney and Betty Webb Professor of Law at UND, is one of just 26 law professors included in the book, which is the result of a four-year study undertaken by prominent legal scholars who set out to identify the methods, strategies, and personal traits of professors whose students achieve exceptional learning.

Her pedagogical prowess has long been celebrated at home, too. She is a two-time recipient of UND’s Lydia and Arthur Saiki Prize for Graduate or Professional Teaching Excellence, a former UND Bush Foundation Teaching Scholar, and a multiple winner of UND’s outstanding student organization advisor award.

Alleva serves as the Faculty Mentor for Teaching and Learning Enhancement at the UND School of Law. She teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Advanced Civil Litigation, and Professional Visions — an innovative capstone law and literature course that she designed to explore professional identity and judgment, in part by turning literary characters into hypothetical clients.

A leader in curricular reform at the UND School of Law, Alleva played a primary role in conceiving — and now cocoordinating — a new faculty team-taught first-year course: Professional Foundations, especially created to help law students cultivate the habit of professional self-reflection. Alleva also has conducted law and literature sessions with practicing lawyers, as well as federal and state judges, to help reinforce the importance of mindfulness, no matter the legal context.

Atmospheric Sciences faculty receive research awards for forecasting, climate data projects

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Pedagogy and legal education reform are hot-button issues on which Alleva presents nationally. Most recently, she has spoken at the UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis, and the annual conference of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in Washington, DC. And her recent appointment as program cochair of the AALS’ Teaching Methods Section finds her co-designing an innovative program on the pedagogy of Civil Procedure as part of next year’s annual AALS conference in New York.

Her scholarship likewise contributes to the national dialogue on legal education. A recent law review article that Alleva co-authored with University of Denver Sturm College of Law Associate Professor Laura Rovner,

Xiquan Dong, Aaron Kennedy and Matthew Gilmore, all of UND’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, recently received a two-year National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant for close to $500,000 to transfer critical weather forecasting research and to increase the accuracy of weather forecasts, including predictions of severe local storms. Such storms cause billions of dollars in property damage each year, along with injuries and loss of life.

In a separate development, Dong and Baike Xi, also a faculty member in Atmospheric Sciences, received a Group Achievement Award

titled “Seeking Integrity: Learning Integratively from Classroom Controversy,” was featured on The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog.

And Alleva’s latest piece, an invited essay titled “Respect Is Key to Teaching, and Also to Learning,” appears in the National Law Journal’s September 2014 special report on law schools.

Prior to joining the UND faculty in 1987, Alleva, who graduated from Hofstra Law School after serving as articles editor of the law review, practiced law at a major law firm in New York. Before that, she clerked for a federal trial judge.

“I enjoyed practice immensely, and learned from some of the best. It was difficult to leave practice, but to ignore the call of the academy would have been even more difficult,” she recently told a reporter from Hofstra University profiling her accomplishments.

“I wanted to become a professor, in part, to help change the way law was traditionally taught. This meant exploring the interpersonal and emotional sides of professional being in addition to the logical and analytical sides that had long been the focus of legal education. It also meant teaching students to become more self-reflective and other-aware, which are keys to empathy and, in turn, to a more humanistic approach to lawyering.”

Asked by her alma mater what advice she has for those students considering law school, Alleva offered these observations: “Studying law is a serious and noble undertaking. Come prepared to think deeply and deliberately, to work hard, and to re-examine who you are in light of the professional goals and obligations lawyers assume and aspire to. The ultimate reward — that law degree — should be evidence of newfound capacities to problemsolve and make a difference for the people you represent — a difference that sometimes only a lawyer can make.”

– Compiled from original sources and information supplied by Hofstra University and the UND School of Law.

from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for “sustained excellence and innovation in developing and validating the Cloud Retrieval Systems for CERES Editions 2 and 4 Climate Data Records.” CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) contributes to the long-term climate data record of the Earth’s energy budget by measuring the amount of reflected sunlight and emitted heat that determine Earth’s climate.

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Group studies ways to attract research funding from nontraditional sources

– By Juan Miguel Pedraza

Members of the UND Music Department who took part in the recent tour of China included (from left) Simona Barbu, Nariaki Sugiura, Michael Wittgraf, Ronnie Ingle, Royce Blackburn, and Anne Christopherson.

Across the Pacific UND faculty traveled to China to establish, promote valuable cultural exchanges through the international language of music UND Music Professor Nariaki Sugiura and five of his colleagues at the Hughes Fine Arts Center spent a week on a musical and goodwill tour of Shanghai, China.

The group included Sugiura, who specializes in piano performance, along with Michael Wittgraf (chair of the Department of Music and a composer of electronic music), Royce Blackburn (baritone), Anne Christopherson (soprano voice), Simona Barbu (cello) and Ronnie Ingle (trumpet). They departed from Grand Forks on March 13, bound for their first stop at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST). The visit strengthened longstanding connections that have existed between UND and USST. During the trip, the UND faculty members took part in solo and ensemble performances of American compositions, as well as a demonstration of electronic music by Wittgraf, Sugiura said.

They also held workshops on instrumental and vocal music, and presented lectures on musical composition and American music history.

Along the way, the group spread the word about UND with the help of the international language of music.

The group also made an official visit to Shanghai Jianping High School, which is considered the best high school in Shanghai. This high school often produces high-caliber music students.

Sugiura said the tour was a chance for Chinese music students to learn and receive comments from UND Music faculty professionals, providing important cultural exchanges. At the same time, it was a valuable opportunity for UND faculty members to interact with Chinese students.

The Art and the Science

Higher education leaders agree: Universities need more money — and from a broader spectrum of sources than the traditional federal agencies.

That includes closer collaboration with the folks at higher ed foundations who focus on nontraditional sources of support in addition to cash, such as in-kind donations and corporate expertise and know-how, and funding from private foundations. The UND Alumni Association and Foundation recently hired a development officer focused on corporations.

“There’s no doubt that we need a stronger income stream from sources outside campus and beyond the federal government,” said Alice Brekke, UND vice president for finance and operations and a key organizer of a working group that met three times over the last year to converse about this vital topic.

Brekke said the working group comprises staff from the University’s Grants and Brekke Contracts Administration Office, the UND Alumni Association and Foundation, the Provost’s Office, the Office of the Vice President for Finance and Operations, the Energy & Environmental Research Center, deans such as Margaret DiLorenzo Williams of the College of Business and Public Administration, and, of course, faculty from across the campus.

“We are seeing collaborations that we’ve never thought of before,” Brekke said. “The primary focus is how do we increase the size of the resource pie? This is not about how do we divvy it up differently; it’s about how we develop greater support for the full spectrum of research and scholarship that’s going on across the institution.”

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Thomas DiLorenzo said at one of the working group meetings that the University is focused “on building world-class faculty through innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.”

“We want to clearly understand how the institution can help with this process,” he said.

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UND Concert Choir wins American Prize in Choral Performance UND’s Concert Choir is singing a sweet tune after winning a huge national honor: the 2014 American Prize in Choral Performance.

The prize recognizes only the best chorus performances in the nation, based on submitted recordings to competition judges.

“It’s an incredible honor,” said Joshua Bronfman, director of UND’s Concert Choir. “We rehearse almost every day, and sometimes the daily grind of fixing this little thing or that can get to you. To be recognized for our work really puts things in perspective.”

This choir has been representing UND throughout the United States and around the world since 1961. In 2012, the Concert Choir was selected to perform at the North Dakota and North Central American

Choral Directors Association conferences, receiving standing ovations at both. The group also recently traveled to Cuba and performed with the National Choir of Cuba and Coro Exaudi.

The Concert Choir comprises 50 talented vocalists, about 60 percent of whom are music majors. The other 40 percent study subjects such as aviation, education and engineering.

“It really speaks to the world-class music-making that is going on here,” said Bronfman.

One judge commented, “The Concert Choir’s consistency and ability to so perfectly maneuver a series of complex cluster-chords with such grace and poise is a testament to their musicianship.”