Eight honored with 2024 Research and Creative Works Leadership Awards

Eight University of New Mexico researchers in fields ranging from music to data science are the 2024 recipients of the Research and Creative Works Leadership Awards, announced by the Office of Academic Affairs.

The Research and Creative Works Leadership Awards honor recently promoted faculty who have accomplished outstanding research or creative works in their respective career stage. The recipients were honored this fall at a ceremony at University House.

The 2024 recipients are:

Jeremy Hogeveen, associate professor, Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences
Hogeveen's work combines cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology. Using a wide range of methods, he studies how the brain creates emotions and makes decisions. His work uses self-report questionnaires, brain imaging, performance-based behavioral tests, non-invasive brain stimulation, and computational modeling to explore how neurodevelopment, brain injury, or psychiatric disorders affect motivation, emotions, and decision making. His research findings include the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on the motivation centers of the brain.

Yu Yu Hsiao, associate professor, Department of Individual, Family and Community Education in the College of Education and Human Sciences
Hsiao is an educational psychologist who specializes in the refinement and application of quantitative methodologies. His research evaluates the properties of psychological and educational instruments, producing innovations in hierarchical linear modeling and structural equation modeling. He is noted for several methodological advances, as well as his commitment to collaborative research in a wide range of areas that include education, exercise science, treatment of substance-use disorders, and resilience and brain injuries.

Cármelo de los Santos, professor, Department of Music, College of Fine Arts
De los Santos is an internationally recognized violinist who has given more than 100 solo performances in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. He is known for consistently achieving the highest levels of artistry, as well as performing and recording some of the most technically demanding pieces in classical music. He performs an extraordinarily wide repertoire and has premiered new music by living composers. In addition to his solo and chamber music achievements, he serves as concertmaster for the New Mexico Philharmonic.

Abdullah Mueen, professor, Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering
Mueen is a data scientist whose work focuses on creating efficient algorithms for data mining and machine learning. Applications of his work include renewable power systems, identifying opinion manipulation and misinformation bots on social media, detecting small seismic events, sequencing rare immune cells, and monitoring high-performance computing operations. He is the recipient of multiple awards for the novelty of his work, and he is widely respected for his commitment to open science principles and ethical applications of computer science.

Vanessa Svihla, professor, Department of Organization, Information and Learning Sciences in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences
Svihla is a learning scientist whose work focuses on how people learn as they frame design problems. She measures how students are affected by the opportunity to make consequential choices about how to frame problems, rather than solving pre-defined problems. Her work is highly collaborative, involving curricular experiments and measurements of student learning and agency. Her work has contributed to innovations in instructional design, engineering education, health education and organizational learning. She is noted for the practical applicability of many of her findings, as well as for sharing her coding tools and protocols.

This year, UNM Health Sciences Center faculty were also included in the awards. Those recipients are:

Julie In, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, UNM School of Medicine. Her scholarship, which focuses on intestinal host-environmental toxicant interactions and ion transport and host-pathogen interactions, is being advanced through multiple National Institutes of Health grant awards. She is a leader in education through her course redesign and role as the lead instructor for the Organoids in Research block in BIOM 522: Methods in Molecular and Cellular Biology. She also is an American Gastroenterological Association congressional advocate for New Mexico.

Alicia Bolt, associate professor in the College of Pharmacy. Her research focus is on the toxicity of tungsten to help many in enhancing the diagnosis, understanding and management of tungsten-related cancer. Her lab's work on this relatively rare toxicant has the potential to further knowledge of cancer biology research. Her leadership in this area, including many publications and other dissemination products and activities, is helping improve education and service to health outcomes both locally and nationally. In 2020, she was selected as a UNM Regents Lecturer.

Andrew L. Sussman, professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, UNM School of Medicine. His research, which focuses on the cancer control continuum, will continue to help enhance the management of cancer survivors, particularly in rural areas of New Mexico. He is recognized as an institutional leader in qualitative and mixed methods research, and numerous residents, fellows, and faculty in clinical departments across HSC have benefited from his consultation and expertise in their research studies. His leadership role in RIOS Net, HSC's practice-based research network, has served HSC, as well as hundreds of primary care clinicians statewide across diverse community and institutional settings.

The Research and Creative Works Leadership Awards were created in 2020 upon a recommendation of the Faculty Senate Research Policy Committee to acknowledge faculty, who at the time of promotion to associate or full professor, have achieved especially significant impacts in their field.

As part of the review process, candidates are nominated by the Provost's Advisory Review Committee. They are selected by the provost following a rigorous external review that looks at the quality and impact of candidates' scholarly and creative achievements.

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