Achievements | Honors, awards, publications for Oct. 6

Recent accomplishments by the campus community were earned by Nicole Buan, J. L. Callett, Mikaela Cashman, Myra Cohen, Dipra Jha, Christine Kelly, Massimilian Pierobon, Helen Raikes, Zahmeeth Sakkaff and Janos Zempleni.

Faculty/Staff

• Dipra Jha, assistant professor of practice in hospitality, restaurant and tourism management, traveled to Thailand Sept. 10-17 to deliver invited lectures on innovation in the tourism and hospitality industries. The talks were hosted by two of the country’s most prestigious institutions, the National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand’s top university for graduate education at its campuses in Bangkok and Phuket; and by Prince of Songkla University in Phuket. All three sessions were well attended by students, university faculty and industry representatives from hotel, events, tourism and restaurant sectors. Citing global trends in tourism and hospitality, Jha shared examples of world-class innovation in built environment, technology, exclusivity and personalization and how these could be adapted to be effective in local environments. Learn more about Jha’s lectures.

• Helen Raikes, Willa Cather Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies, and her late husband, former Nebraska State Senator Ron Raikes, will be recognized Oct. 10 with the Grace Abbott Award from the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. The honor will be presented at the Nebraska Children and Family Foundation’s Changemakers luncheon at the Embassy Suites in La Vista, Nebraska. The award honors the Raikes vision for the Sixpence Early Learning Fund, which for 10 years has brought high-quality early childhood education to vulnerable families in Nebraska. Helen and Ron worked hand in hand to fight for additional funding for early childhood education in Nebraska. Learn more about Raikes and this award.

• Janos Zempleni, professor of nutrition and health sciences, organized and chaired a session, “Dietary Exosomes and their Cargos,” at the 22nd International Conference by the Functional Foods Center, Sept. 22-23 in Boston, Massachusetts. The session was recognized with the Best Session Award. In the presentation, Janos discussed “The Communication of Animal and Bacterial Kingdoms through Exosomes and their RNA Cargos in Bovine Milk,” which was co-authored by Nebraska faculty, staff and students, Fang Zhou, Di Wu, Jiang Shu, Henry Paz, Juan Cui and Samodha Fernando.

Departments/College/Units

• Students and faculty from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering received the best paper award during the ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication. The paper, “End-to-End Molecular Communication Channels in Cell Metabolism: An Information Theoretic Study,” was written by graduate students Zahmeeth Sakkaff, Mikaela Cashman and J. L. Callett, along with faculty Massimilian Pierobon, Myra Cohen, Nicole Buan and Christine Kelly. The paper was the result of an interdisciplinary, National Science Foundation-funded research project between biochemistry and mathematics departments. A portion of the research came from Sakkaff’s master’s thesis, which was named the Department of Computer Science and Engineering’s 2017 Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award. Learn more about this honor.

Courtesy photo

This column is a regular Friday feature of Nebraska Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit their achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515