About
Research & Innovation Awards
2021 FORAA Awards & 2022 EII Awards
- 2021 Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award Recipients
- 2022 Excellence in Innovation Award Recipients
- Event Recording Video
January 24, 2022 - Virtual Award Ceremony
(Outstanding Research Achievement Awards and Excellence in Innovation Awards)
2021 Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award Recipients
The annual Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Awards are part of an open competition,
judged by the USF Research Council, to highlight professional acclaim received by
the recipients from their national and international peers for their research.
John H. Adams, PhD
Distinguished USF Health Professor and Distinguished University Professor, Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research and USF Genomics Program, College of Public Health
is an international expert in malaria research. His research focuses on host鈥恜arasite interactions and improving the understanding of infection and pathogenesis in malaria. His group is actively engaged in vaccine and drug discovery projects. In 2020, he received a National Institutes of Health grant to , the most prevalent type of malaria outside of the African continent. The project builds upon his group鈥檚 successful development of a greatly improved liver culture system for the early infective stages of human malaria parasites.
As the lead investigator on the grant, Dr. Adams brought together an international consortium from six institutions to prepare a vaccine for clinical trial. He also the lead investigator for an NIH 2020 exploratory grant to collaborate with researchers in Thailand to evaluate the pharmacogenomics of an antimalarial drug.
Ryan Carney, PhD, MPH, MBA
Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Carney , one in paleontology and one in epidemiology. In 2020, he was PI of a newly-awarded NSF proposal for more than $900,000 to fight mosquito-borne diseases worldwide using artificial intelligence. A first- and senior-authored paleobiology publication in on the iconic received substantial international recognition, including from , and ranked in the 99th percentile in global coverage by Altimetric. A second paper describing the , which is crucial to disease-control efforts, has already been cited multiple times. His collaborative research in 2020 resulted in two new invention disclosures with plans for multiple patents. Dr. Carney's dinosaur research was featured in , , and three international outreach activities with total viewership of 150,000.
, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering,
College of Engineering
Dr. Charkhgard is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering and the founder and director of the . Dr. Charkhgard published nine journal articles in 2020 in highly-ranked journals in operations research. Additionally, he has six journal articles currently under review which were submitted last year. Dr. Charkhgard is the co-PI on a working to prevent and control harmful algal blooms in Lake Okeechobee by optimizing the implementation of technologies and practices. Also in 2020, Dr. Charkhgard graduated two PhD students, applied for a U.S. Patent for his methodological invention on radiotherapy treatment planning, and submitted a scientific journal article about his invention to , which was published this year.
George Davis, MD, PhD
Professor, Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology,
Morsani College of Medicine
Dr. Davis is an . He pioneered the use of three-dimensional collagen matrices as a platform for the study of blood vessels in the lab. More recently, his research has shed light on how aberrant cell signaling can result in abnormal blood vessels. Healthy communication, or molecular signaling, inside and outside capillaries appears to play a critical role in promoting healthy tissues such as the heart, lungs and liver. Many diseases arise from abnormalities in blood vessels that fail to communicate properly with tissues. Dr. Davis has 151 publications that have been cited 762 times in 2020 alone. He published six peer-reviewed manuscripts in 2020鈥攆our as author and two as co-author鈥攁ll in outstanding journals. In 2020, Dr. Davis was the PI on three high-level NIH grants.
Richard Heller, PhD
Professor, Department of Medical Engineering, Morsani College of Medicine
Dr. Heller鈥檚 research and innovations are focused on the delivery of plasmid DNA through pulse electric fields to solid tumors, skin, muscle, liver, heart and other tissues. In 2020, he was elected as a Fellow to the National Academy of Inventors. In addition, he continued working on four NIH grants, including three in which he serves as the PI. In 2020, he published four manuscripts in top journals, including one that was in the top 5% of all research outputs as scored by Altmetric. Dr. Heller also had four new U.S. patents issued and three additional patent applications filed. He also was involved in developing a new startup company focused on the technology he invented.
Mark Jaroszeski, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Medical Engineering, College of Engineering
Dr. Jaroszeski鈥檚 research has focused on biomedical devices using pulsed electric fields for the delivery of genes and drugs, an area of research he pioneered more than three decades ago. In 2020, his efforts were focused on commercializing technology he invented while continuing to work on a recently awarded grant with a student funded by an NIH Diversity Supplement. He was part of the founding of the startup company EF Therapeutics, Inc., located in the USF incubator. Also in 2020, eight of his USF patents were licensed. He also contributed to the creation of a new general education course on the scientific process and in efforts to better prepare students for research careers.
Autar Kaw, PhD
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
Dr. Kaw鈥檚 current research focuses on the impact of personalized and active learning on improving student achievement and on developing sustainable and quality open education resources. During 2020, he was a PI and co-PI on three highly competitive National Science Foundation grants. In one of the grant-funded programs, he is leading four universities鈥擴SF, Arizona State University, Alabama A&M University, and University of Pittsburgh鈥攊n investigating the effectiveness of personalized learning in flipped classrooms and using learner data to design early and successful interventions for struggling students. Additionally, he gave a keynote speech at the January 2020 International Symposium on Fusion of Science & Technology conference in Faridabad, India. Also, last year he published two peer-reviewed articles on personalized engineering education and presented two papers at the American Society for Engineering Education conferences on the impact of variable grading, cumulative tests, and practice examinations on improving blended learning. Dr. Kaw has been and internationally for his creative and effective teaching methods reaching engineering and mathematics students around the world via and .
Lynn B. Martin, PhD
Professor, Global Health and Infectious Disease Research Center, College of Public Health
Dr. Martin is an in disease ecology and invasive species. In 2020, he was awarded a $1.5 million, four-year to fund an international project on the molecular genetics of one of the world鈥檚 most invasive species, the house sparrow. The research will take him, postdocs and students to Senegal, Vietnam, Norway, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand to study how the sparrows became one of the most broadly distributed animals in the world. He also submitted several other large grant proposals in 2020 which are still pending decisions. In 2020, he and his trainees and collaborators published 10 papers in high-profile journals including American Naturalist, eLife, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and Bioscience. Two of those publications were invited (eLife and Bioscience), and all but two papers included a student or postdoc from his lab. Dr. Martin is also the co-creator and co-host of the popular podcast, .
Sunil Mithas, PhD
Professor and World Class Scholar, School of Information Systems and Management, Muma College of Business
is a Senior Editor of , and Department Editor of Production and Operations Management, and Management Business Review. In 2020, he contributed nine published or forthcoming articles, of which seven are on a highly selective list of business journals considered in the University of Texas at Dallas and Financial Times ranking of top business schools. In the summer of 2020, Dr. Mithas began a three-year assignment as Visiting Professorial Fellow at the School of Information Systems, Technology and Management at the . Dr. Mithas was the Muma College of Business' first World Class Scholar when he joined the college in 2018.
Mehran Mozaffari Kermani, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Dr. Mozaffari Kermani's focuses on the creation of novel hardware-oriented cyber-security techniques through post-quantum and lightweight cryptography to secure critical cyber infrastructures and computer hardware systems. He is the director of , and his research in 2020 resulted in more than $1 million in funding and grants where he served as either PI or Co-PI. In 2020, Dr. Mozaffari Kermani and his PhD students published five top journal papers (IEEE/ACM Transactions), three flagship conference papers, and . Dr. Mozaffari Kermani has served as the associate editor of three prestigious journals in the field, editing more than 40 journal papers. Moreover, he was the publications chair for two prestigious conferences in the field, the and , in 2020.
Dr. Ivan Oleynik, PhD
Professor, Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences
is a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of American Physical Society and American Vacuum Society, is best known for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of computational materials science that led to predictions of new materials phenomena and behavior of matter at conditions. In 2020, Dr. Oleynik was awarded a highly competitive and prestigious , which provides access to Summit, the most powerful computer in the world, with computing time equivalent to $3 million. In 2020, he also led an international team of researchers that received another competitive and peer-reviewed award that grants access to at the Sandia National Laboratory, the most powerful radiation source in the world, to perform groundbreaking experiments to uncover properties matter at extreme conditions. The award was the equivalent of $1.2 million.
Matthew Pasek, PhD
Professor, School of Geosciences, College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Pasek鈥檚 research focuses on . He recently received a highly selective for work that advances "the study of goal-seeking phenomena in nature," related to his work in origins science. Dr. Pasek also authored the article 鈥淭hermodynamics of Prebiotic Phosphorylation鈥� in Chemical Reviews, which has the highest impact factor of all chemistry journals. Additionally, Dr. Pasek published six more papers in 2020 and had two other papers accepted for publication. This work is in addition to ongoing NASA and NSF grants totaling more than $1.6 million over three years. Dr. Pasek鈥檚 expertise is routinely quoted in leading publications such as and .
Christopher Passaglia, PhD
Professor, Department of Medical Engineering, Morsani College of Medicine and College of Engineering
Dr. Passaglia investigates in both normal and diseased conditions in his . He uses his findings to engineer new technologies for monitoring and treating ocular disorders. In 2020, he published five papers in top journals such, as Scientific Reports and Journal of Physiolog, that were highlighted by vision experts, covered by national media outlets, and featured on the . Additionally, Dr. Passaglia was awarded two high-level NIH grants in 2020 totaling approximately $2 million, one as co-investigator examining the effectiveness of assorted drug cocktails at promoting optic nerve regeneration and the other as a PI examining pressure fluctuations in normal and glaucomatous eyes and their effect on optic nerve health and function. He was issued in 2020 based on devices that his lab created for measuring and controlling pressure within the eye or other organs.
Manh-Huong Phan, PhD
Professor and Director of Advanced Materials and Sensors Laboratory, Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences
In 2020, published 23 peer-reviewed ISI papers in top-ranked journals, including Advanced Materials, Advanced Science, and Materials Horizons, highlighting the new discoveries of atomically thin quantum magnetic materials and the Giant spin-Seebeck Effect, an interaction that allows heat to move magnetic information, that will potentially revolutionize quantum information technology and the Internet of Things. During 2020, he was one of the most highly cited researchers in his field, with more than 1,600 citations, and was featured in the list of the . As the managing editor, Dr. Phan successfully led the Journal of Science-Advanced Materials and Devices to achieve its first high impact factor of 3.8 in 2020. He has secured a continuing Department of Energy grant of $563,247 to exploit novel nanomaterials for spintronics. In 2020, he was selected for an Honorary Doctorate Degree Award by Vietnam National University 鈥� Hanoi.
Lindsey Rodriguez, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg Campus
Dr. Rodriguez鈥� play in substance abuse and in developing and evaluating interventions for addictive behaviors. In 2020, she published 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts in high-impact journals. Her on alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic received news coverage from several outlets, including , the , and the , the American Heart Association, and the , among others. Dr. Rodriguez was co-investigator on four new grants totaling $200,000 in 2020. She is an action editor for Addiction Research and Theory and the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. She presented at eight symposia and 18 posters. She also continued her funded work on three grants from the NIAAA focusing on reducing hazardous alcohol use.
Brad Seibel, PhD
Professor, College of Marine Science, St. Petersburg Campus
In 2020, Dr. Seibel investigated the response of marine animals to ocean warming and deoxygenation. He published a on the novel quantitative relationship between the oxygen and temperature sensitivities of marine animals that had gone unrecognized, despite nearly a century of study. He used this relationship to determine whether a habitat is metabolically available and how it will shift with changing climate. It precisely measures the decrement in metabolism and the scope available for growth and reproduction with declining oxygen and increasing temperature. It was used to publish a new method for determining oxygen supply capacity in animals and led to new investigations of other marine species and ecotypes, such as ram ventilation in sharks, extreme temperature sensitivity in vertical migrators, gill development in larval fishes, and the success of invasive lionfishes. Dr. Seibel published in and additionally is investigating bioluminescence, exercise physiology, and the effects of ocean acidification in marine animals with funding from NSF, the Office of Naval Research and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
Patriann Smith, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literacy, Ed.D., Exceptional Education & Physical Education, College of Education
Dr. Smith pursues a transdisciplinary research agenda situated at the intersection of linguistics, immigration and migration, and race in literacy education. She for literacy and language instruction and assessment for Black immigrant students and educators. In 2020, Dr. Smith published 15 refereed articles including one in the and another in , the leading global journal in literacy. In 2020, she received contracts from Cambridge University Press and Teachers College Press for sole-authored and co-authored books, and was featured on and authored blog posts for the United States Association for Public Policy. In 2020, Dr. Smith was elected to the Board of Directors of the national Literacy Research Association (LRA) and was a co-presenter of the report, commissioned by the LRA. Earlier this year, Dr. Smith was awarded a three-year, $3.6 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development to partner with the University of the West Indies Cave Hill in Barbados in creating an educational research center to help support decision making and policy in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.