Research - [ Researcher Highlights ]
September 2008's Researcher of the Month: Dr. James A. Dunne, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Jim Dunne is an Associate Professor at Mississippi State University. His initial appointment in 1998 as an Assistant Professor was a five year bridged faculty position with the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, which if funded by the US Department of Energy. He received a Ph.D. degree from the American University in 1995. Prof. Dunne is performing research funded by the US Department of Energy at a rate of $342,000 for three years. Recently, he and his collaborators published [Phys. Lett. B 665 20-25 (2008)] measured production rates of charged pions from both proton and deuteron targets. This follows up on three 2007 publications of their related research in the best letters journal in physics [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 132003 (2007) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 142301 (2007) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 022001 (2007)]. They have found a notably non-zero transverse asymmetry in the proton spin structure study, which up to now has lacked precise measurements. Prof. Dunne has one graduate student and one undergraduate student working on this sponsored research. In addition, he also is deeply involved in K-12 education, serving from 2008-2011 on the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Committee on Physics in Pre-High School Education, funded starting Feb. 2008 by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning $82,000 Teacher Quality Improvement Grant (with Prof. Elder from Ed. Psych.), and taught a summer physics course for teachers (PH 4013/6013).
November 2008's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Lynne Cossman (center), Associate Professor of Sociology
Dr. Lynne Cossman, is an Associate Professor of Sociology, as well as the Director of Gender Studies and a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center. She is also the Director of the North East Mississippi Area Health Education Center and is President Elect of the Southern Demographic Association. Professor Cossman's research has examined critical issues facing our current health care institutions including: Malpractice; HIV/AIDs; physician workforce depletion in rural areas; racial and geographic mortality patterns; Medicaid; malnutrition, and the relationship between our health care system and the economy. To date, Dr. Cossman has published 30 peer reviewed articles, secured over $3 Million in competitive extramural funding, and has produced voluminous research products and materials. Professor Cossman's research has been published in some of the very best journals in the field including: The American Journal of Public Health; Social Problems; Population Research and Policy Review; and The Journal of Death and Dying. Her research contributions have been recognized this year by naming Professor Cossman as a 2008 Dean's Eminent Scholar.
October 2008's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Shirley A. James Hanshaw, Assistant Professor of English
Shirley A. James Hanshaw is an Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University. After thirty years in academia and the Federal government, Shirley A. James Hanshaw joined the Mississippi State University faculty in 2005. Specializing in twentieth century American and African American literature, as well as technical writing, she has taught in colleges and universities in Delaware and Mississippi. In 1980 Dr. Hanshaw was awarded a six-year Associateship for Outstanding Teaching in the Sciences and Humanities by the Danforth Foundation. Later, during a six-year hiatus from academia, she served as the first African American technical writer/editor for the Coastal Engineering Research Center, Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, MS, where she garnered numerous commendations and awards. Her diverse academic research interests have led to scholarly presentations throughout the US and across the Diaspora from Senegal and Ghana in West Africa to the University of the Virgin Islands and the University of Hawaii. Her articles appear in edited collections and a variety of journals, including the Journal of the African Literature Association, The Literary Griot, and the Journal of Cases in Information Technology. Under contract, she is currently writing two books: Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa (University Press of Mississippi) and Re-membering and Surviving: Representation of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath in African American Fiction (Michigan State University Press). Her degrees - B.A., Tougaloo College; M.A., Temple University; and Ph.D., University of Mississippi - are all in English with a minor in French. The Hanshaws are parents of a daughter, Dr. Nneka T. Hanshaw Breaux (Chemist, Dow AgroSciences, Indianapolis, IN), and a son, Dr. Okera S. Hanshaw (Medical Resident, Anesthesiology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI).
December 2008/January 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Seong-Gon Kim, Associate Professor of Physics, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Seong-Gon Kim is an Associate Professor of Physics as well as the Associate Director of the Center for Computational Sciences of the High Performance Computing Collaboratory. Before joining the faculty of Mississippi State University, Prof. Kim developed his career as a research scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC and a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Kim received his B.S. degree in Physics from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Michigan State University. Prof. Kim is a recipient of 2002 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. He is the co-author of two articles in the journal Science with Prof. Richard Smalley of Rice University, the winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and he also authored more than 33 research publications in highly regarded reference journals. Prof. Kim's main research interest is the application of modern first principles computational techniques of condensed matter physics and materials science to the study of the electronic and structural properties of nanostructures, semiconductors and metals. His research also includes the study of surfaces, interfaces and defects in semiconductors and metals. Prof. Kim collaborates actively with researchers from many different disciplines including mechanical engineering, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science and engineering. He is also very active in the development of new numerical algorithms, computational techniques, and large-scale first principles simulation codes for massively parallel computers. Currently, Dr. Kim is leading several large research projects funded by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Recently, the college of Arts and Sciences recognized Prof. Kim's research contributions by naming him as the 2008 Henry Family Dean's Eminent Scholar.
February 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Peter Messer, Associate Professor of History
Dr. Peter C. Messer is an Associate Professor of History as well as the department's Graduate Coordinator. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University, where he studied with the prominent historian Thomas Slaughter. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Oregon. There he was selected to Phi Beta Kappa in addition to receiving other honors. Dr. Messer has published nearly 500 pages of peer-reviewed research in journals and in books during his time at Mississippi State. His first and much heralded book, Stories of Independence: Identity, Ideology, and History in Eighteenth-Century America, explored how 18th century colonials writing about their shared experiences created an American identity that made the independence from England appear a reasonable course. His latest major project, "Revolution by Committee: Law, Language and Ritual in Revolutionary America," takes up the next part of the story. It argues that American Revolution-Era colonists developed strategies and policies to refute the British crown and that those consensual arrangements, framed in opposition, provided the basis for what became government's legitimate authority after the revolution. In sum, it was the experience and strategies of the Revolution that were embodied in the U.S. Constitution and that persist to this day. This project is so full of promise that the American Philosophical Society, David Library of the American Revolution, New England Regional Consortium, Massachusetts Historical Society, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and American Antiquarian Society have already awarded fellowships and grants-in-aid to Dr. Messer. He is now deciding on a publisher for this project. Oxford University Press and Cornell University Press are among the presses vying for the honor. Recently, the College of Arts and Sciences recognized Dr. Messer's outstanding scholarly contributions by naming him as the 2008 Beverly B. & Gordon W. Gulmon Dean's Eminent Scholar.
March 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Andrzej Sygula, Associate Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Andrzej Sygula has been an Associate Professor of Chemistry since joining Mississippi State University in 2003. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where he studied under Professor Julian Mirek. In 1985, he joined Dr. Peter Rabideau's laboratory as a Postdoctoral Fellow where he began working on metal reduction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In 1988, Dr. Sygula received the Jagiellonian University Chancellor's Award for Achievements in Science. Dr. Sygula's research interests are in the general areas of Organic and Physical Organic Chemistry with an emphasis on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons having curved surfaces. His research encompasses almost the whole range of Organic Chemistry from synthetic methods to spectroscopy and computational methods, and he has established an international reputation in the area of supramolecular synthesis and "Buckyball and Buckybowl" chemistry. Since joining the faculty at MSU, he has published 10 papers in high impact journals and brought in more than $950,000 in external research funding. His most recent award of $405,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences Division, was received in February of 2009. Recent publications of his "Buckybowl" work in J. Am. Chem. Soc. and research notes featured in Chemical & Engineering News, Nature, and Nature Nanotechnology as well as Wikipedia references to his work in "Stacking within supramolecular chemistry..." and "Molecular tweezers..." have brought very positive attention to Dr. Sygula and to the Department of Chemistry at MSU. Even before the most recent recognition for his work in the "Buckybowl and Buckyball Catcher" area, Dr Sygula had developed a reputation as an outstanding synthetic organic chemist and computational chemist. He has published 68 peer reviewed journal articles, with most of his earlier work highly cited in the current synthetic organic literature. A paper co-authored by Dr. Sygula in 1994 has been cited more than 100 times and even more recent papers (e.g. published in 2000 and 2003) have been cited more than 50 times each.
April 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Janet Rafferty, Professor of Anthropology & Middle Eastern Cultures
Janet Rafferty joined the faculty of MSU in 1977, achieving Professor status in 1992. Janet received both undergraduate (1969) and Ph.D. (1974) degrees in Anthropology from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. Rafferty has been one of the leading archaeologists on Mississippi prehistory since her arrival at MSU. She has directed excavations at North Bonneville, Washington (a pithouse village), at a Late Woodland-Mississippian site in southern Illinois, and at several mound sites in Mississippi, including Ingomar Mounds in Union County, Owl Creek Mounds in Chickasaw County, and Pocahontas Mound A in Hinds County. She also has directed 15 MSU survey field schools in northeast Mississippi. She participated as an Area Supervisor in the Lahav Research Project excavations at Tell Halif, Israel in 1987. In May-June, 2009, she will direct a survey field school, to occur partly in the Yazoo Basin. Currently she oversees a cultural resources project for North American Coal, organizing and leading a major field effort to record archaeological sites in a 31,000 acre area slated for development. She is currently also PI on another externally funded project with the US Forest Service.
Dr. Rafferty has published extensively, most significantly on prehistoric settlement pattern change. Her work includes 42 articles, chapters, and technical reports, in addition to co-editing a volume of essays, Time's River: Archaeological Syntheses from the Lower Mississippi Valley (University of Alabama Press, 2008). This book is a compilation of papers by some of the most eminent scholars in North American archaeology. In addition to being Principal Investigator on the cultural resources survey project for North American Coal in Kemper and Lauderdale counties (funded at $415,000), Dr. Rafferty has been awarded grants and contracts equaling $890,217.
Recent publications include lead authorship on a refereed article, "The Spread of Shell-Tempering in the Mississippi Black Prairie" (Southeastern Archaeology 27:253-264), co-authorship on a refereed article, "Using Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to Source Shell in Shell-tempered Pottery: A Pilot Study from North Mississippi" (Southeastern Archaeology 26:319-329), and a chapter in Time's River entitled "Settlement Patterns, Occupations, and Field Methods."
May 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Bethany Stich, Assistant Professor of Political Science & Public Administration
Bethany Stich is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration who joined MSU in 2006. Dr. Stich specializes in transportation policy as it relates to long-range planning, corridor planning, citizen engagement, community development and environmental compliance. At MSU she is also a Fellow at the GeoResources Institute. She holds a PhD in Public Administration from Virginia Tech. She has a Master of Public Administration from Kennesaw State University and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from North Georgia College and State University.
In 2009 alone Dr. Stich has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for four externally funded grants with a total value of almost $1.2 million. One grant through the Southeast Regional Research Initiative (SERRI) seeks to explore the positive effects of combining Homeland Security issues with regional transportation infrastructure decision-making and economic development potential within the State of Mississippi and southeast region. This combined approach provides a geographically specific, but highly transferable demonstration of a solution relevant to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which integrates currently disparate geospatial and transportation analysis and modeling systems with policy and decision-making.
Three other grants from the Delta Regional Authority, the Appalachian Regional Authority and the Mississippi Department of Transportation will allow her to provide the economic development and transportation system data, workforce analysis, community involvement, and preliminary engineering necessary to begin the restoration and revitalization of 93 miles of the Columbus & Greenville (C&G) rail line from West Point, MS to Greenwood, MS.
Dr. Stich has presented and published numerous articles related to transportation planning Recent publications include co-authored articles on "Leveraging a Flat World with Intermodal Hubs." (Global Horizons; Volume 2 Issue 2, Spring, 2009), and "Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework to Understand Freight Transportation Policy Change." (Public Works Management and Policy; 13:62-74).
Dr. Stich is an active member of the National Academies serving as part of the Transportation Research Board's Intermodal Freight Committee and Committee on Transportation and Economic Development. Additionally, Dr. Stich on the executive board of the American Society of Public Administration's Section on Transportation Policy & Administration.
Previously, Dr. Stich has worked as Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate employed by the Center for Transportation Policy located at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and as an Environmental Compliance Planner with the Georgia Department of Transportation.
June 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Scott Crossley, Assistant Professor of English
Dr. Scott Crossley is an Assistant Professor of English as well as the Director of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program at Mississippi State University. He is also a senior researcher at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. Professor Crossley's primary research focuses on corpus linguistics and the application of computational tools in second language learning. He is currently interested in the development of second language learner lexicons and the implications of computational tools in examining lexical growth and lexical proficiency. Professor Crossley also works as a senior researcher on Writing Pal, an intelligent tutoring system under development at the University of Memphis. In Writing Pal, he is responsible for the development of computational algorithms for analyzing writing proficiency and providing automatic feedback to Writing Pal users. To date, Professor Crossley has published 25 peer reviewed articles and has worked as a consultant or researcher on four federally funded grants. His research has appeared in many prestigious journals in the field of second language acquisition including TESOL Quarterly, Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, Second Language Research, and English for Specific Purposes.
July 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Keith Mead, Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Keith Mead is a Professor of Organic Chemistry and joined Mississippi State University in 1985. He received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of Southampton in England and was later a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia. Dr Mead was Head of the Department of Chemistry from 2002 -2008.
Dr. Mead's research interests involve studying stereochemistry, which is the art of chemistry in 3-D. Most biologically-active compounds are able to exert their physiological response because they have a specific 3-dimensional shape that allows them to fit into receptor sites on cell membranes. Constructing these molecules with precise configurations is therefore a challenge, and those who do this can be regarded as molecular architects. Dr. Mead has developed the total synthesis of several medicinally-active oxygen heterocycles including natural products having antibiotic and/or anticancer activity. He has discovered new chemistry in which carbon-carbon bond formation can be stereoselectively directed through use of pi-stacked donor-acceptor interactions. Currently Dr. Mead is interested in a series of polyphenol antioxidants isolated from a Chinese plant belonging to the species Alpinia blepharocalyx. These compounds have shown anti-cancer activity in two different cell lines, and his goal is to verify their structures through a total chemical synthesis.
Since joining the chemistry faculty at MSU, Dr. Mead has published 28 papers in high impact journals, graduated 4 MS and 6 PhD students, mentored 6 postdoctoral fellows, and brought in more than $1.28M in external research funding. His most recent award of $875,000 is from the National Cancer Institute at NIH. Dr. Mead has also served on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
August 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Kristine Jacquin, Associate Professor of Psychology
Dr. Kristine Jacquin is an Associate Professor of Psychology. Dr. Jacquin earned her B.A. in psychology at Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her predoctoral internship, postdoctoral work, and held her first academic position in Los Angeles prior to joining the MSU faculty in August of 2000. She was tenured and promoted in 2006. Dr. Jacquin currently serves as the Director of Clinical Training for the M.S. program in clinical psychology.
Dr. Jacquin's research is in the clinical-forensic area. Her primary research program examines the causes of sexual violence (rape, domestic violence, and sexual homicide), jury reactions to such crimes, and criminal investigations of sexually violent offenders. For example, some of her recent research showed that relationship commitment and satisfaction reduces dating partner aggression in jealousy-provoking situations. Dr. Jacquin's recent jury study showed that jurors are more likely to believe that domestic violence occurred and that a wife killed her husband in self-defense if there was pre-existing medical evidence of the domestic violence. Another of Dr. Jacquin's recent studies showed that jurors are biased against rape victims who were intoxicated prior to the assault. A follow-up study demonstrated that education about rape myths reduces juror bias in such cases. One other recent research project showed that college students with no crime investigation experience are more effective at determining the characteristics of a sexual homicide offender after they completed psychologically-based training. In addition to studying sexual violence, Dr. Jacquin's research also examines other types of risky behavior (prescription drug abuse and risky sex) as well as the causes and treatment of severe weather phobia.
Dr. Jacquin's research is regularly published in well-respected national and international journals. In addition, she frequently presents her research at national and international conferences. Dr. Jacquin also involves undergraduate and graduate students in her research. For example, she typically supervises 15-20 undergraduates working in her research lab each semester. In addition, she has graduated 23 M.S. students in the past five years. Last year, she took a group of 8 graduate students on a research trip to the University of Padua in Italy, where she and each of the students presented their research to the students and faculty of the university's psychology department (the photo shows Dr. Jacquin, second from the left, with some of her students in Padua).
September 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Keith Moser, Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages
Keith Moser (second from right) is an Assistant Professor and the French section chair at Mississippi State University. After finishing his M.A. in French Literature at Mississippi State University in August 2002, he completed his Ph.D. in Foreign Languages and Literatures at The University of Tennessee in May 2007. Dr. Moser became a member of the Mississippi State University faculty in August 2007. Since his arrival, he has regularly presented at prestigious domestic and international literary conferences. In June 2009, he chaired two sessions entitled "L'Extase LeClézienne" with distinguished international participants at the Conseil International d'Etudes Francophones (CIEF) conference. His recent publications include an acclaimed monograph entitled "Privileged Moments" in the Novels and Short Stories of J.M.G. Le Clézio: His Contemporary Development of a Traditional French Literary Device (Mellen Press, 2008) as well as articles in peer-reviewed publications such as Romance Notes ("Rending Moments of Material Ecstasy in the Meditative Essays of Two Nobel Laureates: Le Clézio and Camus," 2009). Dr. Moser also organized and promoted J.M.G. Le Clézio's first public appearance in the United States after the Franco-Mauritian author received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. This historic event took place at Mississippi State University from March 28-April 4, 2009. Dr. Moser delivered the keynote address for the Nobel Laureate's public lecture in front of a capacity crowd in Lee Hall Auditorium. Moreover, he is currently organizing an international colloquium with the eminent Le Clézio expert Dr. Bruno Thibault (The University of Delaware) to be held in April 2010 at Mississippi State University.
October 2009's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Pete Smith, Assistant Professor of Communication
Glenn ("Pete") Smith is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Mississippi State University. An alumnus of MSU (he completed his B.A. in Communication in 1993), he holds an M.A. in Communication from Auburn University and a Ph.D. from the School of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Smith, whose research interests include the intersections between media history and biography, film criticism, and gender studies, joined the MSU faculty in 2003 and became a tenure-track member in 2005. Since then, his first manuscript, "Something on My Own": Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956, a biography of radio and television producer and writer Gertrude Berg, was published by Syracuse University Press, and has been praised in such publications as The Journal of American History, The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, American Journalism: A Journal of Media History, Television Quarterly, and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. His research was the foundation for a critically acclaimed documentary on Berg's four decade career, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!, which is currently playing in theatres nationwide. In July, Dr. Smith was invited to the premiere of the documentary at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, where he participated in a panel on Berg in front of over 1,000 attendees. He has recently been asked by UCLA and Shout! Factory (an audio and video production company) to write the introduction and suggest special features for a DVD box set of Berg's 1950s television show, The Goldbergs (many of the episodes are housed in the UCLA Film and Television Archive).
Dr. Smith's latest article, which chronicles the career of broadcasting labor activist and blacklisted actor, Philip Loeb, will be published this fall in American Journalism: A Journal of Media History, and he is currently writing an article on Carolyn Bennett Patterson, the first woman senior editor at National Geographic. His research also has appeared in the Journal of Communication Inquiry and the Journal of Popular Film and Television.