The Office of the Vice President for Research will honor six research faculty members from across the University of Michigan for their significant contributions and leadership in fields ranging from firearm injury prevention and multi-scale computation to Earth remote sensing and molecular imaging.
Alauddin Ahmed, Hugo Carreno-Luengo and Hsing-Fang Hsieh will receive the Research Faculty Recognition Award, while Jason Goldstick, Kathryn Luker and John Nees will receive the Research Faculty Achievement Award. All six will be recognized at the President’s Faculty Awards event this fall.
“The University of Michigan is uniquely positioned to address some of society’s most pressing and urgent needs, and this is due in large part to the dedication and commitment of our talented research faculty,” said Arthur Lupia, interim vice president for research and innovation.
“As leaders who are at the forefront in advancing research, scholarship and creative practice, our faculty are steadfast in their resolve to tackle complex challenges impacting communities across Michigan, the nation and globe.”
Research Faculty Recognition Award
The Research Faculty Recognition Award is presented to research assistant professors or assistant research scientists based on exceptional scholarly achievements, as evidenced by publications and other activities in an academic field of study.
Alauddin Ahmed joined the College of Engineering as an assistant research scientist in 2018, and his research focuses on energy storage and sustainable solutions.
Ahmed has developed groundbreaking metal-organic frameworks for hydrogen and natural gas storage that set global benchmarks. He has also led the development of methods for interpretable machine learning.
Hugo Carreno-Luengo joined U-M in 2019 as an assistant research scientist in CoE, working in the research areas of atmospheric and climate sciences, as well as instrumentation and observational methods.
Carreno-Luengo has made innovative contributions to Earth remote sensing through the NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System mission and has led the development of airborne and spaceborne instruments.
Hsing-Fang Hsieh joined U-M’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention as a research assistant professor in 2022, and her research focuses on exploring health disparities in firearm injury outcomes, particularly those resulting from structural racism and exposure to violence among Asian Americans.
Hsieh serves as co-director of the Institute’s Training and Education Core, and she also leads its evaluation of community-based implementation of prevention strategies.
Research Faculty Achievement Award
The Research Faculty Achievement Award recognizes research associate professors, research scientists and associate research scientists who have made outstanding scholarly achievements, as represented by significant contributions to an academic field of study over time, a specific outstanding discovery, or the development of innovative technology or practice.
Jason Goldstick is a research associate professor in Michigan Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine, co-director of the Data and Methods Core at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, and director of the statistics and methods section at the Injury Prevention Center.
He has led and contributed to high-impact research, most notably the first report that found firearm injuries are the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. His research interests include violence and substance-use epidemiology, overdose surveillance and estimating behavioral intervention treatment effects.
Kathryn Luker is an associate research scientist in Michigan Medicine’s Department of Radiology and also serves as a core member of the Biointerfaces Institute, a collaborative faculty consortium composed of members from CoE, the Medical School, School of Dentistry and College of Pharmacy.
Her work focuses on the discovery of how cell surface receptors for chemokines and growth factors regulate breast cancer metastasis, and how they are regulated by the tumor microenvironment and metabolic environment.
John Nees serves as a research scientist at the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences within CoE.
He has led the laser design, construction and commissioning of the National Science Foundation’s Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System facility, and his investigations focus on the use of extremely high-optical fields in driving matter into the relativistic domain.
The six award recipients were selected by Lupia, following recommendations from this year’s selection committee: Trachette Jackson, Brad Orr, Lisa Prosser and Geoffrey Thün.
