Research and Honors, April 2026

Research and Honors is a monthly column of the Illinois State Report newsletter, celebrating recent Honors, Publications, and Presentations of faculty and staff.

Honors

Jay Solomonson, AGR, was named as Illinois' Postsecondary Golden Owl Award® recipient.

Elahe Javadi, IT, was selected to serve as a national ambassador for advancing AI education through the NAIRR Pilot Classroom and the NAIRR Pilot Classroom Expansion AI EDU Research Coordination Network (RCN).

Presentations

Kendra Paitz, University Galleries, co-presented "Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect" at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She also interviewed interdisciplinary artist/researcher Dario Robleto at the Normal Theater following a public screening of his film "Ancient Beacons Long for Notice."

Lindsay Marshall, HIS, delivered a talk titled "Sharing History with Horse Nation" for The Native American House's "Dinner On Us" lecture series at University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign.

Tanya Scott, ART, presented "Activating Local Artifacts: Curriculum Design Rooted in Museum Collections" and co-presented "Art in Action: Empowering Young Artists Through a School-Gallery Partnership" at the National Art Education Association Convention in Chicago.

Elahe Javadi, IT, will represent Illinois in the inaugural cohort of 25 National Science Foundation (NSF) NAIRR AI Education Fellows.

Jason Whitesel, WGS/ SOA, presented a paper titled "The Artwork of Fat Gay Men from Girth & Mirth Clubs" at the Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Mo.

Publications

Somnath Lahiri, MGT, published a co-authored paper titled "Embracing outward FDI while continuing exports? The impact of heterogeneity and vulnerability in family firms" in Long Range Planning.

Timothy Lash and Gregory Ferrence, both CHE, co-authored "Synthesis of Phenaliporphyrin, an Aromatic Benziporphyrin Derivative, from an Acenaphthene-fused Cyclopropane Dialdehyde" in The Journal of Organic Chemistry 2025.

• Timothy Lash, CHE, also separately co-authored "Towards Novel Porphyrinoid Architectures: Synthesis of Porphyrin Analogues with Two Six-membered Exocyclic Rings" in Tetrahedron 2026.

Winfred Avogo, SOC, published a paper titled "Intergenerational Hypertension Transmission Before and After South Africa's Democratic Transition" in SSM - Population Health.

Kelly Reddy-Best, FCS, co-authored "Authentic Style-fashion-dress consumption of lesbian married couples on their wedding day" in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Consumption (Edward Elgar Publishing).

Samantha McDonald, KNR, co-authored:

• "Exercise FITT-V in Pregnancy with Obesity: Preliminary Findings for Infant Adiposity and Intergenerational Obesity Risk" in Physiological Reports, February 2026.
• "Exercise FITT-V During Pregnancy: Dose-Dependent Reduction in Infant Cellular Lipid Content and Whole-Body Fat" in Journal of Applied Physiology, February 2026.

Charles Bell, CJS, published a book titled No Restraint - Disabled Children and Institutionalized Violence in America's Schools, New York University Press.

Qi Zhang, IT, co-authored "Robust multilabel ECG classification under class imbalance using augmentation and adaptive iterative training" in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, January 2026.

Gabriela Fonseca Pereira and Elke Altenburger, both FCS, co-authored a book chapter titled "Navigating the Space between Soft Lead and Mixed Reality with Design Students" in The Routledge Handbook for Interior Architecture Research.

Max Deutz, FCS:

• co-authored an article titled "Oral Multienzyme Supplementation Alters Postprandial Plasma Nutrient Concentrations after a Mixed Meal in Healthy Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover Trial" in The Journal of Nutrition, February 2026.
• published an article titled "Human plasma extracellular vesicles as an exercise mimetic to preserve skeletal muscle plasticity during disuse" in npj Microgravity, March 2026.

Abdelmounaam Rezgui, IT, published an article titled "Scaling the Internet to the Things: Combining Named Data Networking, Software-Defined Networking, and AI to Support the Next 50 Billion IoT Devices" in IEEE, February 2026.

Catherine Sun, FCS, co-authored an article titled "Navigating retail automation: the impact of perceived autonomy support on frontline employee digital adaptive performance" in The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, March 2026.

Luke Russell, FCS, co-authored a book chapter titled "Family systems and family relationships: Family subsystems across diverse families" in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships.

Janice Jayes, HIS:

• published an op-ed titled "My Turn | Is this the kind of world, or country, you want to live in?" in The News-Gazette.
• published an article titled "The Venezuela Raid: Venture Capitalism in a Gunboat" in The Public i.

Touré Reed, HIS, published an essay on Ryan Coogler's film, "Sinners," titled "Sinners Offers a False Vision of Empowerment" in Current Affairs Magazine and also appeared on the This is Revolution podcast in an interview on his essay.

Allison Harris, PHY, co-authored a paper titled "Twisted Electron Collisions Enhance the Production of Circular Rydberg States" in the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics.

Susan Sprecher, SOC, edited The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, 3rd edition.

Megan VanGorder, HIS, book review of Michael deGruccio's The Strange and Tragic Wounds of George Cole's America: A Tale of Manhood, Sex, and Ambition in the Civil War Era was published in the American Historical Review. There also was a news story published on the Illinois State news hub about the book.

Lindsay Marshall, HIS, co-authored a book chapter titled "Teaching 'Divisive Concepts': The Destructive Impacts of a University Culture of Censorship" in The Campus Crisis Toolkit: Strategies and Solidarity for the Rest of Us.

For questions, please contact Valerie Welsh in Media Relations and Strategic Communications at [email protected], or [email protected].