Tag: Sarah Burke-Spolaor

  • West Virginia University Announces Recipients of 2024 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Awards

    West Virginia University Announces Recipients of 2024 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Awards

    West Virginia University has named three excellent faculty members as the 2023-24 Benedum Distinguished Scholars for their exceptional research and intellectual activities.

    Honorees include:

    • Nina Assimakopoulos is an associate professor of flute in the School of Music, College of Creative Arts.
    • Melissa Blank is an associate professor of psychology at the Department of Psychology at Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and
    • Sarah Burke-Spolaor is an associate professor of astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Eberly College.

    The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation funds the Benedum Distinguished Scholars Awards, which are given annually to faculty members who conduct “creative research” in up to four categories: behavioral and social sciences, biosciences and health sciences, humanities and the arts, and physical sciences and technology. This year, remarkable academics were recognized in three of the four categories.

    “As in previous years, this group of Benedum Distinguished Scholars is extraordinary,” Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Maryanne Reed stated. “These outstanding faculty members are transforming how we perceive art, comprehend the cosmos, and safeguard our most vulnerable people from health threats. They inspire their students and colleagues to push the boundaries of knowledge and do meaningful work.”

    Assimakopoulos received the 2023-24 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award in the Humanities and Arts. She is well-known for her performances and recordings of new compositions and sonorities including underrepresented composers, such as American women composers, and for combining classical music techniques with flute works from many music cultures throughout the world. Her efforts have resulted in almost 100 new pieces, including world premiere recordings and performances, nine compact disk publishing, and 206 solo concerts.

    Assimakopoulos is widely recognized for her contributions to the vanguard of contemporary flute performance, particularly her pieces that highlight contemporary non-traditional playing approaches known as extended techniques. Her recordings in this growing genre of modernist music encompass the whole range of extended methods employed by flutists and composers. Her work is so important that it has been recognized with numerous grants, including two from the Aaron Copland Fund for New Music Recording. A recent CD release, “Bending Light: Sonic Prisms for Solo Flute,” earned two international prizes – a Global Music Award and a Music and Stars Award for best instrumentalist. To make these techniques available to flutists and composers all across the world, Assimakopoulos has taught over 100 workshops and master classes.

    She is also a well-known international pioneer in multimedia performance and experimental composition, where she uses global flutes made from wood and works that combine improvisation, organic matter instruments, narrative, and eco-performance themes as entry points. “The Legend of SkyWoman” reflects her distinct compositional approach and received a bronze prize for experimental music in the 2023 Global Music Awards. Her choreography of 20 works for flute performance and movement, as well as her more recent eco-performance works — “Sonic Bloom: Breath, Branch, Song” and “Fallen Angels, Voices from the Forest” — that combine West Virginia field recordings and musical instruments made with organic matter, are also included in this category of interdisciplinary and multimedia artistic experiences.

    Blank has been named the 2023-2024 Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Behavioral and Social Sciences for her study on the link between e-cigarette usage and dependence in vulnerable kids and young adults. In 2014, Blank questioned whether these items could lead to nicotine dependence in populations unfamiliar with nicotine or tobacco.

    Blank has spent the last ten years, with $4.6 million in external funding as a principal investigator or co-investigator, evaluating the interaction between e-cigarette design features and user behavior to better understand how these products deliver nicotine. This research is critical for establishing e-cigarettes’ effectiveness as a smoking cessation therapy. Blank also discovered that withdrawal symptoms for cigarette and e-cigarette/vape abstinence are highly similar—and similarly bad—and that reliance on e-cigarettes is distinct (i.e., more reinforcing) than dependence on nicotine patches or gum. Furthermore, her research has found that young adults who use newer e-cigarette models have the highest levels of dependence; that white, rural youth are the most likely to use e-cigarettes; and that many of those who begin with e-cigarettes subsequently consume cigarettes.

    Blank has translated this study into 23 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals in her profession, and she is well-known for encouraging rigorous research methodologies, devotion, and enthusiasm in her graduate students. She has also put her studies into practice through teaching materials and preventative activities. For example, she is a contributing author to the 2016 Surgeon General’s Report on E-cigarette Use, the first federal agency report to systematically detail the impact of e-cigarettes on the health of teenagers and young adults. In 2018-2019, she worked with the American Lung Association to create the INDEPTH Program, which provides an alternate option to kids suspected of violating school policies prohibiting tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes. Blank also worked with the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health Division of Tobacco Prevention in 2020 to develop a vaping toolkit and has delivered numerous community lectures about the dangers of vaping.

    Burke-Spolaor is recognized as the 2023-2024 Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Physical Sciences and Technologies. Her pioneering work on rapid radio bursts and supermassive black hole binaries has earned her national and worldwide acclaim. SBHBs are the universe’s largest and most destructive objects, yet their “darkness” makes it nearly impossible to discover and analyze them using traditional electromagnetic waves (light from material surrounding black holes). SBHBs are vital to discover and comprehend because of their significance in galaxy evolution and the unknown, intense physics that occurs within them.

    While gravitational radiation was first detected in 2015, locating black holes requires a different, longer gravitational wavelength. Burke-Spolaor is a key member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which employs a network of stars known as “pulsars” spread across our galaxy to detect small vibrations in the fabric of spacetime created by SBHBs’ distant gravitational waves. Burke-Spolaor’s study in low-frequency gravitational wave astrophysics has created the groundwork for the next generation of advancements in pulsar timing array science, clearing the way for the discovery of the first SBHB in the near future.

    Burke-Spolaor’s work has been acknowledged with a Jansky Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Global Scholarship. She has produced or co-authored 83 refereed articles with over 18,000 citations, and as a principal investigator or co-investigator, she has secured more than $20 million in external funding. Burke-Spolaor established the Gravitational Wave Astrophysics Working Group under NANOGrav, has presented 25 invited speeches since 2018, and is frequently interviewed by major media sites like The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.

    Each Benedum Distinguished Scholar will receive a $5,000 professional development award. The scholars will be honored at a faculty and staff awards ceremony at Blaney House in April and showcased in next year’s Benedum Distinguished Scholars Showcase. Details regarding the event will be announced later in MOUNTAINEER E-News.