EVANSTON, Ill. --- Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology, and Otolaryngology, is the recipient of The Alumnae of Northwestern University’s 2022 Alumnae Award. As a biologist and amateur musician, she thinks about sound and brain health. Kraus is a role model for women in science and technology. Through her diverse partnerships, her work on the effects of music experience on the nervous system has targeted African American and Latino children living in low-income areas. Her research on HIV takes place in under-resourced communities in China and Tanzania.

Her latest book, Of Sound Mind – How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World, which was written for the intellectually curious, has received national recognition. When talking about her book, Kraus notes in the Evanston Round Table: “This is my love-letter to sound, how sound connects us, its biological impact on making us us, and how it affects the world we live in. Sound is an underrecognized, powerful force in our lives. The hearing brain engages how we think, feel, move and integrate our other senses.” A Wall Street Journal review of the book notes: “Of Sound Mind offers a deeply scientific yet often poetic look at the hearing brain and provides an in-depth narrative about why such explorations are important.”

EVANSTON, Ill. --- The Alumnae of Northwestern University has selected eight students to receive 2022-2023 Alumnae STEM scholarships, which are awarded to students who excel in a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Criteria for selection include academic excellence, honors achieved, and financial need.

Click here to read the complete news release about these outstanding students:  Victoria Chung, (WCAS), Emilya Ershtein, (WCAS), Miriam Hansen-Erraziqi, (WCAS), Hassan Mohammad, (WCAS), Mariya Nemesh, (WCAS), Katelynn Nguyen, McC, Lili Pope, (WCAS), and Jeongyoon Yeo, (WCAS).

The Alumnae of Northwestern University has selected four recipients to receive its 2022-23 Graduate Fellowships for graduate-level tuition. The fellowships are awarded to full-time students in terminal master’s degree programs who show promise of achieving distinction in careers that will serve the public good. Criteria for selection include quality of scholarship, leadership, community service, professional experience, and financial need. The Alumnae Graduate Fellowship Committee’s chair, Erin Leddon, notes: “The Alumnae is extremely proud to support these outstanding Northwestern graduates as they work to complete their master’s degrees.” Click here to read about the new Alumnae Graduate Fellows: Julia Odden, Rwan Ibrahim, Sally (Chan Mi) Jung, and Tanieshaa Shrestha.

The Alumnae's Centennial Endowment funds undergraduate research grants for twelve students for 2022.  Click here to read the news release about the students, their sponsors, and the research projects.

The Alumnae honors retiring Sarah Pritchard, Dean of Libraries and Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian, at its luncheon meeting, May 16, 2022.  

Read here about Sarah Pritchard's many accomplishments as Dean of Libraries.

The Alumnae of Northwestern University has awarded funding for seven projects that will bring guest artists and distinguished scholars to campus to enhance the undergraduate experience in 2022-2023. The grants, totaling more than $26,000, are funded with earnings from the Academic Enrichment Endowment, established in 1990 as one of The Alumnae’s 75th Anniversary gifts to the University. These grants help facilitate faculty-sponsored projects that address important and timely issues related to the visual and performing arts, environment and climate change, religion and politics, astronomy, indigenous literature, and peace activism in Korea. Some of the upcoming programs will also be of interest to graduate students, faculty, other Northwestern community members, and, in a few cases, the general public

Click here to read the complete news release about the recipients of The Alumnae's 2022 Academic Enrichment grants and their projects.

The following received grants:  MARY AND LEIGH BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART, McCORMICK SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE, WEINBERG COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, and SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION.  

Alessandro F. Rotta Loria is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering. Rotta Loria will deploy a wireless temperature sensing network in underground environments across the Chicago Loop district that will become a living laboratory for his class “Energy Geostructures and Geosystems” (EGG – CIV_ENV_353). 

This network will provide a large set of real-world data that students in the EGG course will use to design innovative projects that can harvest renewable geothermal energy and waste thermal energy through the subsurface to meet buildings’ heating, cooling and hot water needs. These projects will be developed virtually but could be realizable immediately, with significant implications for the decarbonization of cities and the building sector at large. In support of this undertaking, Rotta Loria will provide students with cross-disciplinary competence in mechanics, energy and data science.

Rotta Loria’s research is at the intersection of geomechanics, energy and environmental sustainability. His goal is to understand the properties and behavior of soils, rocks, concrete and system thereof in the context of geological energy production and storage.

Alessandro F. Rotta Loria is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering. Rotta Loria will deploy a wireless temperature sensing network in underground environments across the Chicago Loop district that will become a living laboratory for his class “Energy Geostructures and Geosystems” (EGG – CIV_ENV_353). 

This network will provide a large set of real-world data that students in the EGG course will use to design innovative projects that can harvest renewable geothermal energy and waste thermal energy through the subsurface to meet buildings’ heating, cooling and hot water needs. These projects will be developed virtually but could be realizable immediately, with significant implications for the decarbonization of cities and the building sector at large. In support of this undertaking, Rotta Loria will provide students with cross-disciplinary competence in mechanics, energy and data science.

Rotta Loria’s research is at the intersection of geomechanics, energy and environmental sustainability. His goal is to understand the properties and behavior of soils, rocks, concrete and system thereof in the context of geological energy production and storage.

Heather Pinkett, the Irving M. Klotz Research Professor and associate professor of molecular biosciences at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will create modules with students that highlight the professional stories of scientists with diverse backgrounds, particularly emphasizing scientists currently working in the field. 

Pinkett’s work will build on an existing biochemistry class, giving students additional opportunities to teach and learn from their classmates as well as implement changes to future curricula.

The project, called the Northwestern University Teach One Reach One project, or NU-TORO for short, promotes inclusion in STEM curriculum and gives students agency to reform STEM curriculum alongside their professor. By implementing a resource that highlights new connections between textbooks and contemporary research that traditional coursework may not allow, NU-TORO offers students different perspectives on the feasibility of careers in STEM.

Pinkett also will launch the NU-TORO website nationwide as a template for other educators to increase their own curriculum inclusivity, providing references and other resources.

The Pinkett lab looks at the way nutrients, antibiotics and chemotherapeutics are transported into and out of the cell, with an interest in ABC transporters, proteins that use ATP hydrolysis to move substrates across cell membranes.

Pinkett is an expert in ABC transporters, transcriptional regulation and host-pathogen interactions, and is also a member of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute.Pinkett is an expert in ABC transporters, transcriptional regulation and host-pathogen interactions, and is also a member of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute.

Northwestern Now, January 31, 2022 | By Lila Reynolds

Heather Pinkett and Alessandro F. Rotta Loria have been named the 2022 recipients of The Alumnae of Northwestern University’s Award for Curriculum Innovation.

The award seeks to support faculty members offering undergraduates innovations that enhance their curriculum through new courses, methods of instruction and new components to existing classes.

The recognition comes with $12,500 in award funding to be split between innovation development ($7,000), stipend ($5,000) and the faculty member’s home department ($500). 

Pinkett will use the award to work with students to develop a national resource to increase curriculum inclusivity and address representation in STEM, and Rotta Loria will create massive real-world datasets that allow students to realize virtual geothermal energy projects with potential to impact the city.

Read the updated news release for the 2021-2022 Graduate Fellows