UW–Madison celebrates selection of 11 Fulbright U.S. Scholars for 2024–2025

The U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board have selected 11 scholars from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as Fulbright U.S. Scholars for the 2024-2025 academic year. These distinguished scholars will teach and conduct research in collaboration with institutions abroad, representing a wide spectrum of disciplines including astronomy, biology, communication sciences and disorders, engineering, English, kinesiology, law, medicine, and political science.

The UW-Madison Fulbright U.S. Scholars will be located in Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Chile, Ghana, Iceland, India, Rwanda, and Spain. Through their participation, they will engage in innovative research, expand their professional networks, and develop collaborations that often continue beyond the academic year. These experiences lay the groundwork for future partnerships between institutions.

Upon their return, Fulbright Scholars enrich campus life by sharing experiences, fostering international connections, and often becoming advocates for inviting foreign scholars to campus. These individuals encourage colleagues and students to pursue international opportunities, thereby enriching the academic environment at UW-Madison.

"It is outstanding to see so many from UW-Madison selected for these prestigious awards," said Frances Vavrus, International Division vice provost and dean. "The research and teaching that will take place during the coming academic year will enrich communities and further dialogue around the globe. Congratulations to UW-Madison's newest Fulbright Scholar Award recipients!"

The Fulbright Scholar Program at UW-Madison is supported by Fulbright Coordinator Mark Lilleleht, who supports seven different Fulbright & Fulbright-Hays programs that are available to incoming and outgoing students, scholars, and alumni. For more information about the Fulbright program at UW-Madison, interested individuals can visit the program website or attend a virtual information session on August 13.

Learn more about recipients and their plans for the coming semester:

Libby Hladik, Department of Kinesiology and the Occupational Therapy Program

Czech Republic

Research project-Moving Towards Cultural Community Participation for Czech Children with Developmental Disabilities

Hladik will work with Czech families who have children with developmental disabilities to first understand what is important to them about their participation in museums, libraries, and historical sites. Then, she will develop a Czech version of "The Accessibility and Inclusion Toolkit for Cultural Institutions," which was developed at UW-Madison during her time in the Ausderau Lab with the Madison Children's Museum.

Anthony Ives, Department of Integrative Biology

Iceland

Research project-As Winter Recedes and Summer Arrives: Changes in the Ecology of Lake Mývatn

Lakes worldwide are valuable resources, providing food for humans and wildlife. In winter, lakes are not dormant, and ecological changes under the ice may have large impacts in the following summer. Mývatn is the third-largest natural lake in Iceland and is an important breeding site for waterfowl that feed on non-biting midges (mýfluga). Mývatn is unusual among the world's northern lakes: due to springs, it does not freeze entirely in winter. Ives' proposed research will dissect the effects of ice cover from the other factors that affect Mývatn in winter. Understanding what happens in winter should help explain why midge abundances and algal blooms are so unpredictable in summer.

Heinz Klug, UW Law School

Ghana

Research project-Constitution-Making, Constitutionalism, and Democracy in Ghana

After years of military rule, Ghana adopted a new constitution in 1992 and continues to be a vibrant African democracy. The goal of Klug's research project is to develop an understanding of the role constitution-making and constitutionalism has played in sustaining democracy in Ghana since 1992. Based on his prior research in Southern Africa, he plans to engage in archival research as well as interviews with academics and other participants in Ghana's constitution-making process to explore the factors that helped to produce a successful constitution-making process and have sustained Ghana's democracy over the last 30 years.

During his time in Ghana, Klug will be teaching 50 percent and conducting research 50 percent.

Benjamin Parrell, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Spain

Parrell will be conducting research on speech in Spanish speakers with ataxia, a neurodegenerative disease caused by degeneration of the cerebellum. Speech symptoms in this disorder have been well documented in English and German, but little work has examined how speech is affected in Spanish speakers. Given the significant differences between these languages, it is unclear whether and to what extent our current knowledge will generalize to Spanish.

Pavana Prabhakar, Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

India

Research project - Enabling Green Composite Materials for Sustainability and a Circular Economy

Prabhakar's Fulbright-Nehru project is conducting fundamental research toward enabling greener and more sustainable solutions for next-generation composite materials, particularly natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites (FRPC), a critical study and opportunity area. There has been a significant growth of synthetic FRPCs in the aerospace and wind energy industries, which are piling up in scrapyards worldwide, including India, upon reaching their end of life. This is highly unsustainable and poses a severe challenge for the future of polymer composites. This project will establish the fundamental process-structure-property relationships of natural FRPC materials, accelerating their widespread use and durability.

Jessica Schmidt, Department of Emergency Medicine
Rwanda

Research project-Improving Diagnostic Accuracy Using Point of Care Ultrasound for Children with Suspected Pneumonia

Schmidt will be conducting research alongside partners at the University of Rwanda to evaluate children with difficulty breathing. This will incorporate her research interests in lung ultrasound and healthcare in limited resource settings. Schmidt is excited to be returning to Rwanda as she was able to spend a short period of time as an invited ultrasound instructor for the newly created emergency medicine residency in Kigali several years ago.

Howard Schweber, Department of Political Science

Austria

Schweber will be teaching two courses and researching the relationship between rule of law and democracy in today's Europe. Democracies are under threat all over the world. The view from Europe and the view from the U.S. can each inform the other in important ways.

Sarah Ann Wells, Department of English

Brazil

Research project-The Labor of Images: Strike Films in Brazilian and World Cinema

Wells will be conducting archival research and collaborating with scholars and others working at the intersection of cinema and labor studies in Brazil. This four-month residency in São Paulo, Brazil, will allow Wells to complete her academic book manuscript on the representations and labor practices of filming strikes in Brazilian and world cinema, titled The Labor of Images. Her research interweaves qualitative and formal analyses of films with historical documents, engaging the fields of visual cultures and film studies, labor studies, political theory, and Brazilian cultural history. A key premise of her research is that Brazil-with its singular history of labor resistance on- and off-screen-illuminates broader transformations in both cinema and labor regimes, as well as their understudied connection.

Ryan Westergaard, Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine

Rwanda

Westergaard will be assigned as a technical advisor to the Rwanda Ministry of Health, where he will provide support to their ambitious plan to expand their healthcare workforce to meet the WHO recommendation of at least four health care providers per 1,000 people. He will also support the creation of the country's first infectious diseases fellowship training program for physicians.

Additionally, Bradley Singer, Department of Geoscience, and Alexandre Lazarian, Department of Astronomy both received Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards that will allow them to pursue research and instruction in Chile.

About the Fulbright U.S. Scholars Program

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. Notable Fulbrighters include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, 41 heads of state or government, and thousands of leaders across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Over 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program annually. In addition, over 2,000 Fulbright U.S. Student Program participants-recent college graduates, graduate students, and early career professionals-participate in study/research exchanges or as English teaching assistants in local schools abroad each year.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.

In the United States, the Institute of International Education implements the Fulbright U.S. Student and U.S. Scholar Programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit fulbrightprogram.org.

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