UTSA Academy of Distinguished Researchers recognizes innovators

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 — The UTSA Academy of Distinguished Researchers (ADR) has recognized the accomplishments of 12 faculty, including four new inductees and eight award winners.

The new inductees are:

• Michael Cepek, UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts
  
  
• Ruyan Guo, Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design
  
  
• Harry Millwater, Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design
  
  
• Sandra B. Morissette, UTSA College for Health, Community and Policy

Chaired by Hamid Beladi, the Janey S. Briscoe Endowed Chair in Business and professor of economics in the Carlos Alvarez College of Business, the academy recognizes UTSA researchers who excel in their disciplines each year.

“To meet the challenges of the future, faculty are being called upon to prepare students to innovate, think critically and be able to bring leading-edge ideas to their chosen fields of interest,” Beladi said. “Top scholars create a transformational environment based on a passion for learning and the latest research-based theoretical and empirical intelligence within their area of expertise. Through a rigorous nomination process, the ADR selects members who foster the highest quality of research and scholarly activity. Research excellence is a win-win strategy for students, faculty and academic institutions.”

Members of the ADR may be nominated by their college dean or the vice president for research. They are prolific scholars and must submit three recent publications for consideration.

“To meet the challenges of the future, faculty are being called upon to prepare students to innovate, think critically and be able to bring leading-edge ideas to their chosen fields of interest.”

The UTSA Academy of Distinguished Researchers recently recognized the accomplishments of 12 faculty, including eight award winners and four new inductees. The new inductees (from left to right; sitting behind their certificates) are Ruyan Guo, Michael Cepek, Sandra B. Morissette and Harry Millwater.

Cepek is an anthropology professor, scholar and advocate. He is president of the Cofán Survival Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports the land rights, health care and educational initiatives of Ecuador’s indigenous Cofán Nation. Cepek has helped secure over a million dollars in support for the Cofán Survival Fund. Since joining UTSA, Cepek has received support through several fellowships and grants, including two Wenner-Gren Foundation Post-Ph.D. Research Fellowships, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Engaged Anthropology Grant, a Fulbright Core U.S. Scholars Grant, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Guo is a recognized expert in electronic and optoelectronic materials and devices. She specializes in interdisciplinary materials research and electronic device engineering. Her recent work focuses on designing and synthesizing smart electronics utilizing advanced ferroelectric, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and multiferroic materials and their nanocomposites for applications in sensors, actuators, modulators and energy conversion. She has authored or co-authored roughly 380 journal publications. She has served as director of the UTSA Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Advanced Materials Engineering since 2012. Guo's leadership roles extend across several professional organizations. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, The American Ceramic Society, and the International Society for Optics and Photonics. She is also an Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics.

Millwater’s research focuses on computational mechanics, with a specialization in applying probabilistic and sensitivity methods to structures and materials to analyze durability. He has been involved in over 50 grants at UTSA and served as principal investigator on 32, with total funding exceeding $48 million from agencies including the Department of Defense and National Science Foundation. Millwater has contributed to the development of several structural mechanics codes that are used worldwide. Darwin, which won an R&D 100 award, calculates the probability of fracture of aircraft engine disks. The FAA-funded Smart|DT program computes the structural integrity of airframe components. Millwater is also the originator of the hypercomplex finite element method, ZFEM, and author of over 250 publications.

Morissette is the director of the UTSA Trauma Health Research In Veterans’ Experiences (THRIVE) laboratory. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division 56 (Trauma Psychology). Morissette researches the impact of trauma exposure, focusing on complex co-occurring conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders and addictive behaviors to better understand risk and resilience factors that affect recovery. She has been involved in research projects worth more than $14.2 million from agencies including the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health. She has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has presented her research over 300 times at professional organizations and venues.

This year, the academy introduced new awards to recognize authors whose papers are deemed impactful and distinguished in each college annually. High-impact papers have a significant influence in their field and a large number of citations while distinguished papers are published in prestigious journals. College deans may nominate up to two papers per year, one in each category. The awards were created to extend the mission of the ADR and foster exceptional research at UTSA.

The 2024 High-Impact Research Paper Award winners are:

• “The tangled webs we weave: Examining the effects of CEO deception on analyst recommendations” by Eric Bachura and Richard Gretz, Carlos Alvarez College of Business (ACOB)
  
  
• “On-demand chemomagnetic modulation of striatal neurons facilitated by magnetic nanoparticles” by Gabriela Romero Uribe, Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design (Klesse College)
  
  
• “Glucocorticoid exposure predicts survival in female baboons” by Fernando Campos, UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts
  
  
• “Child maltreatment during the COVID-19 pandemic: Consequences of parental job loss on psychological and physical abuse towards children” by Monica Lawson and Megan Piel, UTSA College for Health, Community and Policy

The 2024 Distinguished Paper Award winners are:

• “A Cross-Sectional Machine Learning Approach for Hedge Fund Return Prediction and Selection” by Wenbo Wu, ACOB
  
  
• “Personalized Federated Learning With Differential Privacy” by Yanmin Gong, Klesse College

UTSA established the ADR in 2015 to recognize outstanding faculty scholars, to commemorate UTSA’s commitment to research excellence and to promote the institution’s growth as a premier public research university.

The academy is dedicated to fostering a culture of exceptional research practices at UTSA and creating a collective of faculty advocates. It comprises 30 faculty members representing various disciplines in the arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, business and sciences.

— Audrey Gray