Presidential Research Scholars

The Presidential Research Scholars (PRS) awards program recognizes faculty members who have garnered national and international prominence in research, scholarship and creative activity and who demonstrate clear promise for continued, significant productivity in their research/creative activity. Each award recipient will receive $3,000 to be used at the scholar's discretion as an honorarium or to support research or creative works.

For FY 2020-21, applications were solicited for Arts and Humanities and Life and Biomedical Sciences

For FY 2021-22, applications will be solicited for Social and Behavioral Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Call for Applications

Deadline for nominations: Thursday, April 22, 2021, 4:00 pm

Deadline for applications: Thursday, June 17, 2021, 4:00 pm

Click for guidelines [ Word or PDF ]

Contact: Roxanne Male'-Brune, (740) 597-1227

News

Ohio University names 2020 Presidential Research Scholars

Ohio University names 2019 Presidential Research Scholars

Morgan Vis and Brian Clark named 2018 Presidential Research Scholars

Five OHIO faculty members named 2017 Presidential Research Scholars

Five OHIO faculty members named 2016 Presidential Research Scholars

Ohio University Presidential Research Scholars
2020 Recipients

Life and Biomedical Sciences

Susan Williams is a professor of anatomy and associate dean of faculty in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. Her lab conducts experiments both in the lab and in the field to examine the functional morphology, biomechanics and physiology of feeding in vertebrates, including chewing and swallowing. The primary goal of her research is to understand how the mammalian feeding system is altered or maintained over the course of evolution, during growth and development, and in injury or disease. By leveraging the evolutionary diversity in mammal feeding, one of her next projects will focus on patterns of functional and biomechanical integration between the head, neck and forelimbs in predatory mammalian carnivores that differ in killing mode and running ability. Williams has published dozens of articles in top research journals; contributed to Feeding in Vertebrates – Evolution, Morphology, Behavior Biomechanics, a book edited by leaders in the field; and has received both National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to support her work.

Shiyong Wu is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences, a member of the Molecular Cellular Biology program, and director of the Edison Biotechnology Institute. He is internationally known for research contributions on the mechanisms of non-melanoma skin cancer formation. His lab has received approximately $4.2 million in grant awards, including three from the NIH, and published more than 80 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. His work probes the fundamental molecular mechanisms of skin cancers caused by ultraviolet light exposure and helps identify potential therapeutics for prevention and treatment. His lab has made major contributions in the field of photochemistry, photobiology and photo-carcinogenesis. Wu has given seminars and invited talks around the world.

Arts and Humanities

Devika Chawla is a professor of communication studies in the Scripps College of Communication. Her research focuses on communicative, performative and narrative approaches to studying family, home, and social identity. Specifically, she examines how people transform themselves in the relationships that surround them and with the social, political, economic resources available to them. In 2007, she embarked on an oral history project about cross-generational familial experiences caused by the division of British India into independent India and Pakistan. After conducting three years of oral history fieldwork with three generations of refugees in North India, Chawla published a book-length monograph, Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition (Fordham University Press), which won the 2015 Outstanding Book Award from the Ethnography Division and the International and Intercultural Division of the National Communication Association. She has also edited and co-authored books and more than 50 essays in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies.

Robert G. Ingram is a professor of history in the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the George Washington Forum on American Ideas, Politics and Institutions. His research concerns religion and society in post-revolutionary Britain and its empire. In particular his scholarship grapples with the Reformation’s long-term effects on the English-speaking world. He has authored two books, four edited collections, and 19 book chapters and articles. He also has organized nine scholarly conferences, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has held visiting fellowships at Durham University and Oxford Brookes University. His most recent book, Reformation Without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England, followed God in the Enlightenment and Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era and Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England.

Kevin Mattson is the Connor Study professor of contemporary history in the College of Arts & Sciences. He is a cultural and intellectual historian of international repute who has authored and edited 14 well-regarded books and more than 200 articles in the field of American history. His research focuses on the intersection of ideas and politics in the 20th century, including participatory and deliberative democracy. In his most recent book, We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, Mattson utilized extensive archival research to document how the punk rock movement produced ideas and modes of expression that defied the basic assumptions of the time, with lasting cultural and political importance. His other books probe political rhetoric, and include Just Plain Dick: Richard Nixon’s Checkers Speech and the “Rocking, Socking” Election of 1952, and What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?: Jimmy Carter, America’s Malaise and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country.

2019 Recipients

Arts and Humanities:

Christopher Fisher is a professor of music in the College of Fine Arts. He is the co-author of Piano Duet Repertoire (Indiana University Press, 2016) and author of Teaching Piano in Groups (Oxford University Press, 2010). The latter work is the only comprehensive group piano pedagogy book of its kind and is used as a textbook at universities and conservatories internationally. As a result of the book’s critical acclaim, Fisher has delivered lectures throughout the world on the topic of group piano pedagogy, including recent engagements at the Juilliard School in New York and in the United Kingdom. In addition, he has published compositions and arrangements and contributed to the recording of Samplings: New Recordings for Bassoon and Piano. Fisher currently is working on two new manuscripts for the Oxford University Press.

Katarzyna Marciniak is a professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences and is affiliated with the College of Fine Arts. Over the past 20 years, she has contributed to the development of transnational cinema and postsocialist media studies in relationship to Eastern European cultures. Marciniak’s most cited work is Alienhood: Citizenship, Exile, and the Logic of Difference (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), which examines globalization. The essay collection she co-edited, Transnational Feminism in Film and Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), has been recognized as a groundbreaking contribution to transnational feminist media studies. Due to the critical acclaim for her work, in 2010 Palgrave appointed Marciniak the lead editor of their book series, Global Cinema, which has published 19 volumes to date. That same year, she won the MLA Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship. In 2016 Marciniak co-edited a collection of essays, Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy (Routledge), which explores the opportunities and challenges of teaching unfamiliar audiovisual texts. She currently is working on a book commissioned by the Oxford University Press on refugee cinema.

Social and Behavioral Sciences:

Michael Geringer is the O’Bleness Professor of International Strategy in the College of Business. He has been globally recognized for his research on the creation, management and growth of international businesses. His work on how Japanese, European and North American companies can compete in international markets has generated 2,000 citations and attracted grant funding to expand the studies to Indian firms. In addition, Geringer’s research on human and technological resources in multinational corporations helped launch the widely cited Best Practices in International Human Resources Management project that involved scholars from more than 20 nations. He has authored or edited 47 books and monographs and is currently working on the second edition of International Business (McGraw-Hill Education) for a 2020 release. Geringer has garnered several teaching and research awards, including the Decade Award for most influential article from the Journal of International Business Studies.

Kimberly Rios is an associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. With funding from entities such as the John Templeton Foundation, Rios has researched people’s responses to threats to their self-concepts and social identities, with a focus on majority and minority group identities. Historically, social psychology has emphasized tendencies toward conformity, but Rios’s work focuses on the notion that people are driven not only to fit in but also to be unique and distinctive from their peers . Rios has contributed new research findings to the social psychology field that illuminate why white Americans may respond negatively to multiculturalism and how those perceptions can change. In addition, she has studied why Christians and Muslims may consider religion and science as incompatible and the factors that can impact those views over time. In 2019, Rios received the Outstanding Early Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity.

Jeff Vancouver is the William C. Byham Chair in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on self-regulation—the processes individuals use to maintain or achieve needs and goals—to understand human behavior, and he has attracted funding from entities such as the National Science Foundation for his work. Vancouver’s research on the nature and effects of self-efficacy was groundbreaking, as it challenged previously held beliefs. In addition, he is considered a thought leader on the use of computational modeling as a tool to advance Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychological research. His work, published in high-impact journals in the psychology discipline, is highly cited. Vancouver’s accomplishments have garnered him fellowship status in the Association of Psychological Sciences and the Society of I-O Psychologists.

Physical Sciences and Engineering:

Carl Brune is a professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research—both experimental and theoretical—investigates how atomic nuclei react when they collide. Brune’s studies provide a greater understanding of astrophysical nuclear processes, such as those occurring in the cores of stars, during the big bang in the early universe, and in explosive environments such as supernovae. His work also has practical applications for nuclear power production. Brune has published findings in high-impact journals such as Nature Physics, frequently gives talks at national and international conferences, and has led several international collaborations. He has received $12.7 million in external funding since joining the university in 2001 and was the primary investigator on $9.6 million of those awards. Brune has also helped secure funding from the National Science Foundation for equipment upgrades to Ohio University’s internationally renowned Edwards Accelerator Laboratory. Brune is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Peter Harrington is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is an expert in chemometrics, a subdiscipline of analytical chemistry that focuses on maximizing the information gained from chemical experiments. As there is a shortage of this expertise in the United States, Harrington has focused his research on designing automated, smart methods that can be used by scientists untrained in chemometrics to obtain accurate test results. In 1996, he developed and popularized the Copiosity Principle, which has become an important computational approach in the chemometrics field. Harrington employs his research methods and expertise to characterize botanical medicines, including cannabis. He has a long-standing collaboration with the USDA to develop automated chemometric methods for chemotyping foods and dietary supplements. Harrington won the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemometrics in 2019.