Faculty/staff honors: Grants for STEM equity, HIV prevention; innovation award — and a White House honor for engineering mentoring

Recent honors and grants to University of Washington individuals and units have come from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Marconi Society — and the White House.

White House honors UW engineering professor, associate dean Eve Riskin

Eve Riskin, professor and associate dean in the UW College of Engineering, has been named a recipient of a 2019 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

The White House announced its annual awards in science, mathematics and engineering on Aug. 3. There were 15 recipients of the mentoring award — 12 individuals and three organizations, representing 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Riskin also is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the College of Engineering’s associate dean of diversity and access. She is the faculty director of the UW’s ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change, where she works on mentoring and leadership development programs for women faculty in STEM areas.

The White House established the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, or PAESMEM, in 1995; the award is administered by the National Science Foundation on behalf of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Each recipient receives a $10,000 award and a commemorative presidential certificate.

Previous UW recipients of this award include Daniel Schwartz in 2016, Michelle Williams in 2009, Richard Ladner in 2004, Denice Denton in 2003, the Women in Engineering Initiative (WIE) in 1998 and the UW-based Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) program in 1997. Watch a video about these presidential awards.

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National Science Foundation renews grant for UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity

The National Science Foundation has renewed a three-year grant for the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity, totaling $376, 535. The grant is aimed at bringing change and greater inclusion to engineering and computer science.

Cara Margherio, a research scientist in sociology, is principal investigator on the grant with Elizabeth Litzler, affiliate assistant professor of sociology. Litzler directs the center and Margherio is assistant director.

The UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity conducts its research in tandem with the Making Academic Change Happen team at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, in Terra Haute, Indiana, which received $243,560 from the NSF. The UW center works with recipients of NSF “Revolutionizing Engineering Departments” grants working to broaden participation in engineering, improve student outcomes and build more inclusive educational environments.

The project team is called Revolutionizing Engineering Departments Participatory Action Research, or REDPAR for short. Read a recent paper from the project that tells more about its research agenda, and a news release about the work.

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Kenneth Mugwanya of global health and team awarded $3 million by National Institutes of Health to study HIV prevention in Kenya

Dr. Kenneth Mugwanya, a UW assistant professor of global health and public health, and his team have been awarded a five-year, $3 million grant by the National Institutes of Health.

The grant is for Mugwanya and the team to study the effectiveness of integrating methods of HIV prevention into sexual and reproductive health services for women in Kenya.

“Ensuring that young women seeking access to effective contraceptive methods in Kenya specifically, and Africa in general, are also able to protect themselves from HIV is critical for women empowerment and ending the HIV epidemic,” said Mugwanya, who is a physician-epidemiologist by training.

“Our hope is that providing family planning and HIV prevention services in a one-stop location will minimize barriers that women face in accessing HIV prevention services, including lack of time, cost and potential stigma of visiting a facility solely for HIV prevention.”

Other members of Mugwanya’s research team are John Kinuthia, Kristin Beima-Sofie, Bryan Weiner, Deborah Donnell, Jared Baeten and Ruanne Barnabas, all of the Department of Global Health, which is part of the UW School of Medicine and the School of Public Health.

Read more at the School of Public Health website.

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Doctoral student Vikram Iyer honored by Marconi Society

Vikram Iyer, a UW doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering, has been named one of three recipients of the 2020 Paul Baran Young Scholar Award by the Marconi Society.

The society is a nonprofit group named for Italian inventor and electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) and “celebrates, inspires and connects innovators building tomorrow’s technologies in service of a digitally inclusive world.” Iyer works in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering’s Networks & Mobile Systems Lab.

The society’s Paul Baran Young Scholar Awards, named for a computer engineer and developer, recognize young scientists and engineers who show great capability as well as the potential to bring about digital inclusivity.

The Marconi Society honored Iyer for “creativity in developing bio-inspired and bio-integrative wireless sensor systems.” Iyer’s contributions, the society writes, “enable traditionally stationary Internet of Things devices to move, putting a new and scalable category of data collectors into the world to help us understand our environment at scale and with a fine degree of detail.”