News
Nigerian Cropland Expansion
UD assistant professor and DSI Resident Faculty member Kyle Davis (center) and doctoral candidate, DSSA Vice President and DSI Fellow Bhoktear Khan (center right), recently had a paper published in Sciences Advances that focuses on cropland expansion in Nigeria. Davis and Khan traveled to Nigeria to conduct fieldwork in 2024. During that time, they visited farmers’ fields and interviewed farmers about their farming practices.
Cultures Converge
More than 50% of graduate students in the Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences in UD’s College of Health Sciences are international students. DSI Training Working Group member Esther Biswas-Fiss, MMSC Professor and Department Chair, attributes the department’s diversity to students’ dedication to their professional goals.
For the Record
DSI Faculty Council member Jennifer Horney, founding director and professor of the epidemiology program in the College of Health Sciences and core faculty with UD’s Disaster Research Center, has been awarded a more than $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award, a first of its kind for UD, will allow Horney and her team to focus on translation and engagement around research on how the social service system adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Animal Bait and Switch
New research by DSI Affiliated Faculty member Josh Neunuebel found male mice who are being chased use female mice to distract their aggressors. Neunuebel’s group studies how communication shapes social behaviors, and what neural circuits process this information.
Caregiving Takes a Toll
A new study in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship from DSI Affiliated Faculty member Jean-Philippe Laurenceau and colleagues has shown that fear of cancer recurrence may be associated with cortisol levels of partners of breast cancer survivors. It’s an important line of study, given that partners are known to have poorer physical health outcomes than the general population.
Call for Fintech Papers
The Fintech and Financial Institutions Conference will be April 9-11, 2025. Organizers are excited to welcome submissions of high-quality theoretical and empirical research papers that explore aspects related to fintech trends.
“The idea of two complementing tracks is a unique feature of our conference, and to the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first events to attempt to bring together two domains, engineering and economics, in such a way,” said DSI Affiliated faculty member Nektarios Tsoutsos (left), co-director of UD’s FinTech Innovation Hub.
For the Record
DSI Affiliated faculty member Harry Wang received the 2024 Informs Information System Society Haim Mendelson Teaching Innovation Award in “Recognition of Being an Outstanding Information Systems Academic Who Has Made Significant Pedagogical Contributions to the Discipline.”
For the Record
DSI Faculty Council member Rodrigo Vargas, professor of ecosystem ecology and environmental change, has been elected as the next president-elect of the Biogeosciences section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The section encompasses interactions between biological, geological, hydrologic and atmospheric systems that govern diverse functions of the Earth system (and other planetary systems).
Transforming Biotech Training
Mohamed Swaraldahab, a senior digital PCR field application specialist with QIAGEN, shows students in the Basic Recombinant DNA Techniques class how to use the new digital PCR instrument that QIAGEN donated to UD CHS’ Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences. DSI Training Working Group member Esther Biswas-Fiss is chair of the MMSC Department.
Decontaminating Toxic Tires
University of Delaware researchers from the Center for Plastics Innovation and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, led by DSI Affiliated Faculty member Dion Vlachos, Unidel Dan Rich Chair in Energy, have developed a method to tackle end-of-life tire decontamination from a molecule known as 6PPD, which provides UV protection to help the rubber found in tires last longer.
