Recent achievements for the campus community were earned by Zachary Cheek, Anna Henson, Meetpal Kukal, Bora Pulatsu, Ernest Tufuor, Judy Diamond, Melissa Gomis and David Macaulay,
Honors
A team of accounting majors won the regionals round of the Deloitte FanTAXtic Competition and will represent Nebraska in the national competition in January. The case study competition offers students the opportunity to work in teams to solve a realistic business case, role play and present their solution to Deloitte leaders. The winning team included: Samuel Gertner, junior accounting major from Monroe, Connecticut; Abigail Grimm, sophomore accounting major from Kansas City, Kansas; Audrey Kreun, sophomore accounting major from Hull, Iowa; and Hannah Rethmeier, junior accounting major from Hallam, Nebraska.
Anna Henson, Assistant Professor of Practice in Emerging Media Arts, co-authored “Exploring Hybrid Virtual-Physical Homes,” which received honorable mention at the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. This conference is the premier international and interdisciplinary conference encompassing all issues related to the design and deployment of interactive systems where designers, artists, theorists, social scientists, user experience researchers, systems engineers and many more come together to debate and shape the future of interaction systems research, design and practice. View the paper here or read more about Henson here
Meetpal Kukal, biological systems engineering, Bora Pulatsu, architectural engineering, and Ernest Tufuor, civil engineering, were awarded a $650 prize to advance their research or creative activity after quickly and creatively presenting their research during this year’s virtual Nebraska Research Days. The virtual Postdoc Science Slam invited postdocs to present and explain their research to a broad audience in five minutes or less. After video submission, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff evaluated the videos based on three criteria: entertainment, clarity and contribution to science. Each participant’s science slam is available to watch on Postdoc Science Slam 2020.
Appointments
Zachary Cheek, a junior majoring in economics and trombone performance, was recently nominated by Gov. Pete Ricketts to serve on the Nebraska Arts Council. Cheek’s term started Oct. 28.
Judy Diamond, professor, joined the University Libraries as a member of the faculty. She has been at the university for 30 years as a professor and curator at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Diamond also has courtesy appointments in Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education and in Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication. Diamond is a researcher, educator and writer, who is committed to science outreach.
Melissa Gomis, associate professor of practice, started in her position on June 1 as the Teaching and Learning Librarian with the responsibility of working with instructional technology, creating learning objects and working with OER initiatives. She has been reviewing the Libraries tutorials on the website and in Canvas Commons, updating them and creating new tutorials for just in-time learning. Gomis likes to learn new technology, use technology to teach students, and teach in the areas of information literacy and digital scholarship for a variety of disciplines and age groups.
David Macaulay, assistant professor, started on Aug. 3, as the electronic resources librarian, dealing with the complexities involved in acquiring and managing online material such as databases, electronic journals, and e-book packages. He collaborates closely on negotiating licenses, making sure the resources work as planned so that access and use are as seamless as possible for Nebraska faculty and students. Macaulay is excited to join the University of Nebraska for the great opportunity to work at a prominent research institution. His current focus is on the process of acquiring and renewing various online resources and on developing data-driven approaches to assessing their relevant value to the University.
Publications
Jennifer Davidson, assistant professor of practice in economics and president of the Nebraska Council on Economic Education, talked with Smart Women Smart Money magazine about her research on savings behaviors between the sexes. Read more here.
Yunxia (Peter) Zhu, assistant professor of supply chain management and analytics, co-authored the article, “A Framework for Analyzing Influencer Marketing in Social Networks: Selection and Scheduling of Influencers,” which has been accepted in Management Science. He and his co-authors developed a data-driven optimization framework to help a firm successfully conduct short-horizon and long-horizon influencer marketing campaigns using two models to maximize the firm’s benefit. The models are based on the interactions with marketers, observation of firms’ message placements on social media, and model parameters estimated via empirical analysis performed on data from Twitter.
This column is a regular feature of Nebraska Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515.
