Fellowships, Grants & Other Achievements

Assistant Professor of Geology Natasha Sekhon has been awarded a grant to carry on an expedition in the Summer 2025 to explore caves in northwest India as potential sites to investigate changes in the Indian Summer Monsoon. Following the mission goal, Sekhon will carry a WINGS Flag to remote landscapes in the Himalayas. Their support will help her start a project in India where she hopes to bring students.

Prof. Sekhon has also been awarded two National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Grants:

1. The Drivers of Regionally Coherent Meridional Variability Across the Australian and Asian Monsoons Over the Common Era
2. RUI: Constraining Tropical Hydroclimate Responses to Periods of Abrupt Hydrological Changes Using Cave Deposits, Cave Monitoring, and Model Outputs

Professor of Kinesiology Stuart Rugg was awarded the Honorary Alumni Seal Award for Emeriti Faculty by the Occidental College Alumni Association who recognizes inspiring alumni who represent the values and spirit at the core of the Oxy experience. Stuart joined the Occidental faculty in 1987, and will retire this June after 38 years at the College. His research interests focus on musculoskeletal mechanics and their application to human performance. A five-time recipient of the Donald R. Loftsgordon Memorial Award for Outstanding Teaching, he also received the College's Linda and Tod White Teaching Prize in 2008. Stuart has worked as a design consultant for exercise and sports equipment companies. See the Oxy Story here.

Assistant Professor Vivian Wenli Lin was selected for the ASIANetwork AAPI Voices and Stories: Community-based Digital Storytelling grant from the Mellon Foundation. Lin will work alongside four students to provide media workshops for API Rise, an organization supporting those formerly incarcerated or detained Asian immigrants/refugees, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

Associate Professor of the Theater and Performance Studies, Will Power, has been awarded the Keely Lake Advocacy Award from the American Classical League.   This acknowledgement is shared with Carl Cofield for their contribution (writer and director) on Power's play, Memnon. The award "is intended to recognize significant and meaningful advocacy for the study of Classics from leaders out."

Professor of American Studies and Director of the Writing Center, Julie Prebel's co-edited and co-written collection Disruptive Stories: Amplifying Voices from the Writing Center Margins, has received the Council of Writing Program Administrators 2025 Book Award. Using a unique activist editing methodology, the book explore how marginality affects writing centers, the people who work in them, and the scholarship generated from them.

MAC Professor Aleem Hossain's Desi-Futurist short film "Do Bangladroids Dream of Electric Tagore?" won Best Narrative Film at the 2025 AI Filmmaking Academy Awards. The honor underscores AI's potential to broaden inclusion and creativity, even as Hossain says his experimentation with this technology deepened his concerns about its impact on IP, labor, and climate.

Professor of Chemistry Michael Hill recently received the Award for Distinguished Creative Activity and Research Mentoring in 2025.

Kudos to Associate Professor of Geology, Darren Larsen for his National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Grant "Warming and drought in the critical headwaters of the Snake, Colorado, and Missouri rivers since the last deglaciation"! 

Kudos to Assistant Professor of Biology, Frank Macabeta for his National Institutes of Health grant "Nonautonomous control of substrate morphogenesis by migrating cells"! 

Professor of Black Studies Erica L. Ball has been elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), a 212-year-old national research library and community of learners dedicated to discovering and sharing a deeper understanding of the American past. Professor Ball joins a distinguished roster of more than 1,100 members from forty-eight states, the District of Columbia, and five other countries. Elected for their achievement in academic or public life, AAS members range from scholars, collectors, and librarians to artists, writers, and history enthusiasts.  Since the Society’s founding in 1812, fourteen United States presidents, more than seventy-five Pulitzer Prize winners, scores of Bancroft Prize winners, many Guggenheim fellows, and several MacArthur Award winners have been elected to membership.

Assistant Professor of Physics, Sabrina Stierwalt is among 16 outstanding teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy from 16 different institutions named recipients of Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s 2025 Cottrell Scholar Awards. Each award is $120,000 for research and science education. The award includes a component to introduce community-based learning in introductory physics classes and involve students in innovative astronomical research. 

Assistant Professor of Politics Isaac Hale presented his paper "Amateurs in the Senate Folkways? The Decline of Candidate Experience in U.S. Senate Elections, 1980-2022" at a recent USC workshop. The presentation was reported on for USC's website. 

Professor of Biology Dan Pondella spoke to the Santa Clarita Signal about the wildfires' impact on marine ecosystems. 

Moore Lab Director John McCormack was invited to give a keynote talk at the British Ornithologists' Union meeting in London in November. 

Associate Professor of Math, Treena Basu, has been selected as a 2025 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. She will serve at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an Artificial Intelligence Fellow, helping shape national standards for trustworthy AI. Please join us in congratulating Treena on this incredible honor and opportunity!

Assistant Professor of Physics Sabrina Stierwalt was awarded 180 hours of time on the Very Large Array to study the gas kinematics of interacting dwarf galaxies. The award comes for significant funding for students, including the Oxy undergraduates working with Stierwalt who were co-authors on the proposal.

Assistant Professor of UEP Claire Cahen was awarded two grants! She won the Labor Researchers and Action Network Early Career Research Grant, which includes funding to study school district debt, fiscal crisis, and their effects on teachers' unions currently organizing for fully-funded, well-resourced public schools.

She was also selected as one of eight fellows who will participate in the Summer Institute in Economic Geography this summer in Singapore. There were over 300 applicants for the fellowship, which includes funding to cover travel, room, and board, and brings early career scholars into conversation with renowned economic geographers from across the globe.

Associate Professor of History Jane Hong has won a John Randolph & Dora Haynes Foundation faculty fellowship to support her next book project, "Orange County's Political Paradox: How Im/migrants of Color are Changing U.S. Conservatism and Race." The book explores political polarization among communities of color since the 1970s, with a focus on Asian American and Latinx/a/o conservatives.

Professor of Religious Studies, Kristi Upson-Saia was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to fund her research on teeth in the ancient Mediterranean. Building on her previous study of bioarchaeological evidence of dental pathologies and medical sources' discussions of dental ailments and treatments, this grant will fund her study of dentition (teething).

Assistant Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs, Syeda ShahBano Ijaz, has been awarded the prestigious American Association of University Women (AAUW) Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship. This fellowship will provide support for her book project on "Aiding Accountability: The Politics of Last-Mile Access in Pakistan" during the AY 2025-26.

Broderick (Brody) Fox, James Irvine Professor of Media Arts & Culture, has been awarded a Fall 2024 residency fellowship at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. During his residency, Fox looks forward to completing principal editing on his latest documentary Through Flood and Fire, in which a group of queer American teenagers seek out LGBTQ+ community elders to imagine more inclusive futures. 

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Teddy Pozo and co-PI Dr. Ari Gass were awarded an ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant to pilot a new digital publication, the Trans Games Digital Zine Project. This project is a platform co-designed by transgender, nonbinary, genderfluid, and gender non-conforming game developers, scholars, and gamers, to share and create games and games criticism.

Assistant Professor of Geology Nikki Seymour and her collaborators have been awarded an NSF grant to study the metamorphic history of the Pelona-Orocopia-Rand schist, an enigmatic rock found in the Mojave Desert. She and Oxy undergraduates will use the mineral garnet to better understand the geologic history of the western United States.

She was also awarded along with co-PI Jay Chapman (UT El Paso) an NSF grant to study igneous rocks across the Mojave Desert. They will use a novel combination of analyses on zircon crystals formed in melts to probe the composition in the deep Earth, looking for subtle isotopic shifts to map the presence recycled sediments not exposed at the surface.

Additionally, Prof. Seymour also been awarded a New PI grant to study the factors that lead to the breakup of continents. She, along with two Oxy students, will travel to southern Italy to sample the deep crust brought to the surface by rifting. They will then apply geochemical techniques to determine whether and to what degree increased heat flow aided in the breakup process.

Professors Dan Pondella (Biology), Amber Stubler (Biology), and Darren Larson (Geology) were awarded a $539,140 grant by the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program to purchase high-resolution multi beam sonar system for sea and lake-floor mapping. This system will be used on Oxy's three research vessels for both scholarly research and undergraduate coursework in Biology and Geology. 

Amber Stubler, Dan Pondella, and Joseph Schulz (Biology Dept) have been awarded an National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant ($341,830) to purchase a microCT scanner. The microCT will be transformative for our Oxy faculty and student research endeavors and will enrich the undergraduate STEM and art curriculum. Primary users will be from the Biology, Geology, and the Art & Art History departments.

Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy Karla Peña has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowship to support three months of fieldwork research in Ecuador in summer 2025. Professor Peña's fieldwork will build on her on-going research on bananas and climate justice and the subsequent shifts to clean energy infrastructure and sustainability along the supply chain.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Jeff Cannon was awarded a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study chemical reactions driven by harvesting energy from visible light. The grant will support the study of fundamental chemical reactivity as well as the involvement of undergraduates in synthetic organic chemistry research.

The Chemistry Department has also been awarded a Jean Dreyfus Lectureship for Undergraduate Institutions. This award will bring a distinguished chemist to campus to provide two seminars, one that is aimed at the general public. During their visit, the lecturer will also interact with Occidental faculty and students around interests and topics in chemistry.

Professor of Biology John McCormack and students and staff of the Moore Lab uncovered the evolutionary history of an elusive groups of jays that made an incredible journey to South America and back starting 5 million years ago, including the description of a new species in Mexico. In a trio of new articles, Dr. McCormack and colleagues (including two former students) published complete genomes of three California bird species--the Yellow Warbler, the California Scrub-Jay, and the Steller's Jay--as part of a collaboration on the UC system's California Conservation Genetics Project. Dr. McCormack also joined with over hundred scientists from across the world in a paper describing the fundamental insights gained from biodiversity specimens and the need for their continued collection in a changing world. Finally, Dr. McCormack joined forces with Mexican collaborators to describe variation in plumage patterns in a elusive wood-partridge of conservation concern, finding evidence for distinct evolutionary lineages in Mexico's different mountain ranges.

Assistant Professor of Physics Sabrina Stierwalt gave a Distinguished Lecture for the Math & Physical Science Division at the headquarters for the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her lecture highlighted results from her research into galaxy mergers, including the work of Oxy students, and the importance of female & first generation role models in STEM.

In July, Associate Professor of History Jane Hong  led a 2-week National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Institute for 6th-12th grade teachers, titled "Pacific Crossings: Asian American and Pacific Islander Histories, 1870s to the Present." Selected from a pool of 325 applicants, the 36 participants hailed from the continental US, Alaska, American Samoa, and Hong Kong and included four state teacher of the year honorees. This was one of the first NEH seminars hosted by Oxy  and the second K-12 teachers' history institute Hong has brought to Oxy in partnership with the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.

Professor Hong was also one of 28 U.S. historians appointed to the Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program. The program spotlights cutting-edge scholarship that gives context to many of today’s significant national and global issues. Prof. Hong will serve a three-year term as Distinguished Lecturer.

Associate Professor of Economics Bevin Ashenmiller participated in a Panel titled, "Social and behavioral considerations for recycling participation" for the Costs and Approaches for Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Programs a Committee of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine.

Professor Clair Cahen has been appointed as a research fellow for the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive climate and policy think tank. She will work with the institute to draft a policy report with recommendations to encourage declining school districts to hold on to their "excess" properties and convert these to green social housing. 

Assistant Professor of Sociology Ben Weiss has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to examine why Lithuania lags other European nations in addressing gender-based violence (GBV). During his time in the Department of Criminology at Vilnius University, Professor Weiss will interrogate the role Lithuanian non-governmental organizations play in bridging state and supra-state GBV prevention and intervention efforts.

Visiting Assistant Professor Chris Blakley has been awarded two  travel grants! First, Professor Blakley will use the History of Medicine Collections at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Duke University. They will be conducting research on the histories of race science, Manifest Destiny, and sensory knowledge in the U.S. Exploring Expedition, which mapped the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands between 1838 and 1842. Then, they will  conduct research at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Here, they will be researching the military-scientific expeditions during the 19th Century, including the Raynolds Expedition, the Hayden Geological Survey, and the work of pioneer and scientist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.

Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affair Igor Logvinenko has won the award for Best Book in International Political Economy by the International Studies Association for 2021-2023. His book, Global Finance, Local Control: Corruption and Wealth in Contemporary Russia, sheds light on the intersection of global finance and the fights over property rights in post-Soviet Russia. 

How do pop-culture themes increase engagement and academic achievement among students and faculty? Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Susan Geffen and coauthor have been awarded a grant from the Association for Psychological Science’s Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science. Abigail McLaughlin (‘23) will contribute to the project, entitled "Assessing Student and Faculty Outcomes of Themed Courses."

Professor of Psychology Andrew Shtulman was elected the 51st president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology , the premier scientific and educational organization for philosophically interested psychologists and psychologically interested philosophers.

 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Alec Arellano gave a lecture entitled "Continuity and Change: John Dewey on Navigating Democratic Identity" at Southern Oregon University. Professor Arellano’s May 2023 lecture contributed to SOU's annual campus theme speaker series. His talk highlighted how the vision of post-Christian spirituality elaborated in Dewey's book "A Common Faith" contains a valuable yet under-explored component of Dewey's account of the dispositions of character that are requisite for democratic citizenship.

Assistant Professor of Physics Sabrina Stierwalt gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the main professional society for astronomers in the United States. She highlighted the student research being done in the Oxy Galaxy Group and received a standing ovation from the ~3,000 people in the audience.

Professor of Biology John McCormack has been selected as a 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow, a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community. 

 

Professor of History Marla Stone was elected to the Accademia dei Lincei in November 2023, one of the most prestigious scientific and scholarly institutions in Europe (the Italian equivalent of the US National Academy of the Arts and Sciences). Kudos!