Research & Creative Inquiry

David Nagib, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was named a recipient of the 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships, a prestigious award given annually to early-career scientists from the U.S. and Canada whose achievements place them among the most promising researchers in their fields. Nagib’s fellowship is in chemistry for his pioneering research on complex organic molecule synthesis.

“This support will allow [my team] to pursue some of our riskiest ideas aimed at discovering new medicines by developing free-radical-based strategies to access novel molecular architectures.”

Ancient communities were the first to experience the problems inherent with modern urban living, according to research led by Distinguished University Professor Clark Larsen in the Department of Anthropology. Scientists studied the ruins of Çatalhöyük, a community located in modern Turkey that around 9,000 years ago was one of the world’s first large agricultural societies. The research sheds light on how humans transitioned from nomadic hunting and gathering to a more stationary lifestyle that revolved around agriculture.

“We can learn about the immediate origins of our lives today, how we are organized into communities. Many of the challenges we have today are the same ones they had in Çatalhöyük – only magnified.”

Astronomy chair David Weinberg collaborated with artist Josiah McElheny to create a sculpture that represents five ways a universe could form. The elaborate installation, “Island Universe,” is a visual interpretation of a theory called eternal inflation, in which the universe consists of many universes with different properties. Each of the five elements in the installation represents a potential one of these universes and incorporates calculations developed by Weinberg.

“I want people to have the experience of coming into this installation and trying to figure out for themselves what’s going on. And that’s partly an artistic or aesthetic experience, but it’s also a scientific experience.”

Harmony Bench, associate professor of dance, is examining the global movements of legendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham, whose 30-year global touring career introduced African American modern dance to the international stage with “Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry.”

“This project is trying to have a 360-degree view of this one person. We’re literally reconstructing on a day-to-day basis where she was, where she was performing, what she and her company members were performing, how many shows they had in a single day.”