2022 College/School Research Awards

The Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science researcher of the year is Bob Bass. Professor Bass received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 2004, where he developed terahertz superconducting heterodyne receivers for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. From 2004, he was an associate professor of Renewable Energy Engineering at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Portland, where he developed the nation’s 1st BS and MS renewable energy engineering degree programs.  He joined the Portland State University Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2011, where established the Power Engineering Group. The group's research addresses the engineering challenges to the electric power system that arise from large-scale societal issues such as natural disasters, climate change, and cyber-physical security threats.  The group’s projects have included developing a distributed energy resource aggregation system, a distributed trust model system for ensuring energy transaction trustworthiness, distribution system modeling, high-power electric vehicle charging impacts on distribution systems, grid service dispatch using aggregated distributed energy resources, and cybersecurity threat detection.

Dr. Bass has graduated 19 MS thesis students and one Ph.D. student, published 65 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers, attracted over $4M in research funding, and developed collaborative research partnerships with multiple companies within the regional electric power industry, including Portland General Electric, the Bonneville Power Administration, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Kitu Systems, and Quality Logic, among others. In 2022, he received the MCECS Wedge Vision professorship.

The 2022 College of Liberal Arts & Sciences researcher of the year is Dr. Eva Thanheiser. Dr. Thanheiser is a professor of mathematics education. Her research lies at the intersections of mathematics education, social justice, and critical theory. She applies a critical lens to mathematics education both with respect to who gets to participate in mathematics and the content of mathematics curriculum. Dr. Thanheiser collaborates with teachers, students, parents, and community members to develop and implement anti-bias mathematics education that allows students to connect mathematics to their worlds. In particular Dr. Thanheiser is collaborating with teachers at a local elementary school to develop and implement mathematics tasks that allow the student to learn both mathematics and about the world. Preparing engaged democratic citizens requires supporting students in learning to use mathematics to understand the world around them. However, teachers and mathematics teacher educators often find it difficult to teach mathematics connected to the world around them.  In another project Dr. Thanheiser is working on implementing anti-bias mathematics by attending to intersectional identities and focusing on how to build on the brilliance of all children in the classroom. In a third project Dr. Thanheiser focuses on examining how minoritized faculty in STEM experience being faculty at PSU and what can be done to address that. Dr. Thanheiser has been featured in The World, The Oregonian, and on OPB. She is currently working on two books focused on teaching math for social justice.

The 2022 College of Urban & Public Affairs researcher of the year is Kris Henning. Henning is a Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Portland State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont in 1995, leading to early work counseling prison inmates and conducting forensic assessments. His current research and community service focus on helping criminal justice agencies improve decision-making through data analysis and implementation of evidence-based practices. Major accomplishments in this regard include partnering with the Portland Police Bureau to develop an automated risk assessment system, conduct community surveys, and evaluate various policing strategies. Other recent projects include public safety surveys (e.g., Bend, Springfield, White City), the development of risk assessment scales for the Oregon Department of Corrections, research with the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission looking at the impact of sentence length on recidivism, and research with Deschutes County on illegal marijuana market enforcement. Dr. Henning’s research has been supported by federal (e.g., National Institute of Justice, U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance) and state agencies (e.g., CJC, DOC). He consults regularly with a broad range of criminal justice organizations including law enforcement, district attorneys, and correctional agencies.

The 2022 School of Business researcher of the year is Julia Freybote. Freybote is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Real Estate in The School of Business at Portland State University. One of her research interests is in investor behavior, information environment, and asset pricing in the REIT and commercial real estate market. Another interest focuses on climate risk and ESG in the context of commercial real estate. Her work has been published in leading scholarly real estate journals such as Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and Journal of Real Estate Research. She previously received the William N. Kinnard Scholar Award from the American Real Estate Society (ARES), which recognizes outstanding real estate scholars early in their academic career. She also received multiple best paper/manuscript awards from ARES. In the most recent annual Real Estate Academic Leadership (REAL) ranking, she achieved rank 9 (tied) based on her publications in the top three real estate journals over the period of 2017 to 2021. This makes her one of the top 16 real estate scholars worldwide. Prior to joining academia, Dr. Freybote gained industry experience in corporate real estate consulting and institutional real estate investment.

The 2022 College of the Arts researcher of the year is Jumgmin Kwon. Kwon is an associate professor of digital culture and film studies in the School of Film at Portland State University. She earned her Ph.D. in media and communication studies from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research and teaching interests include digital culture, film and media, gender and sexuality, media industry, fans and audiences, and Korean and East Asian popular culture. In 2020, she won the New Investigator Award from the National Communication Association’s Critical/Cultural Studies Division and the Encouragement Award from the College of the Arts Dean’s Council Awards for Research, Scholarship & Creativity at PSU. Her work has been published in academic journals, including Television & New Media, International Journal of Communication, and Journal of Fandom Studies. Dr. Kwon is the author of Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies (2019). The book investigates the ways in which the relationship between female fans equipped with digital technology and the film and media industry in Korea has led to sociocultural changes. Currently, Dr. Kwon is writing her second book, titled The (In)Visibility Dilemma: Queer Media Cultures and Voices in Contemporary South Korea. Based on in-depth interviews with 50 queer-identified people and a critical analysis of diverse media content, the book aims to report the current status and implications of queer popular culture in Korea and the culture’s impact on Korean society. It has received support from the Academy of Korean Studies and the PSU Faculty Development Grant.

The 2022 College of Education researcher of the year is Torrey Kulow. Kulow is an assistant professor in the college’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction specializing in secondary mathematics education. Kulow taught middle school mathematics in Massachusetts prior to getting her master’s degree and PhD in curriculum and instruction (in the area of mathematics education) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Prior to working at Portland State University, she was a postdoctoral researcher on the Investigating Proportional Relationships from Two Perspectives (InPReP2) project funded by the National Science Foundation. Her research currently focuses on supporting teacher candidates and mentor teachers in collaboratively learning how to enact equity-focused mathematics instruction as they work together in the clinical experience. She explores how tools (such as protocols used by the teachers) can help teacher candidates and mentor teachers collaboratively design, lead, and reflect on math lessons that draw on and leverage student assets in service of increasing student participation and engagement. To support her research, Kulow has received a PSU Dean’s Fund for Excellence Grant, PSU President's Diversity Mini Grant, Oregon Department of Education Math in Real Life grant, and is currently collaborating on a cross-institutional NSF grant. Her teaching at PSU includes courses on mathematics teaching methods and the clinical experience in the secondary Graduate Teacher Education Program (GTEP). Kulow has also worked with local teachers to develop real-world and social justice math lessons and is currently partnering with local school districts to redesign the clinical component of secondary GTEP (as part of work with the US PREP grant in the College of Education).

The 2022 School of Social Work researcher of the year is Ericka Kimball. Kimball's scholarship is critically focused in the domains of domestic violence and healthcare to understand and develop alternatives to current practices. The typical mainstream responses are mostly focused on secondary and tertiary intervention on an individual level (e.g. shelter, protective orders, healthcare screening, etc.). My work is informed by the wicked problems framework, which basically says that social problems are so complex that they are virtually unsolvable and interactions between systems are so complex that to address one creates a new interaction which may cause a cascade of other problems. I try to examine the formulation of a problem and develop alternative responses at the highest intervention level possible. This means moving away from targeted, individual level interventions to challenge definitions of complex social problems, systems of control used in response to these definitions, and the need for professionalized interventions. 

The 2022 OHSU-PSU School of Public Health researcher of the year is Lynne Messer. Messer is a first-generation college student who trained to become a social, reproductive/perinatal and environmental epidemiologist whose substantive work focuses on the social-structural determinants of maternal and child health inequities within the developmental origins of health and disease framework. Her research explores the intersection of social-environmental justice and residential segregation in exacerbating maternal and child health disparities among vulnerable populations. She serves her University as the Assistant Dean for Graduate Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the Oregon Health and Science University – Portland State University School of Public Health. She returned home to Oregon in 2012 following four years at Duke University. Prior to that, she completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Environmental Protection Agency (2008), her Ph.D. from the Epidemiology Department (2005) and her MPH from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (1995) at the University of North Carolina.

The 2022 Honors College researcher of the year is Olyssa Starry. Starry is an associate professor at Portland State University where she teaches urban ecology and other related courses in the Honors College. She’s advised numerous honors thesis projects and is also co-PI on an NSF-funded S-STEM scholarship program that supports PSU’s EAGLES (Engagement Achievement and Graduation for Low-incomE Students) scholars to consider research on environmental pollution.  Professor Starry studies ecoroofs as model systems for understanding how design and management decisions affect the ecological, social, and political functions of urban open spaces. More specifically, her recent externally funded projects address how ecoroof design can affect human health by influencing air quality, and by providing horticultural therapy.  Previous publications, in journals such as Ecological Engineering and Urban Ecosystems, have explored local and global patterns of ecoroof biodiversity using beetles as indicator species as well as the role of plants in the ecoroof water cycle.  Locally, she serves as a member of the Green Roof InformationThinktank (GRiT) Board of Directors, and as an organizing committee member of the Urban Ecology Research Consortium. She has also co-authored an ecoroof coloring book: Growing up in the city: a greenroof activity book. Professor Starry holds a doctoral degree from the University of Maryland and has also held positions in State government (in PA) and non-profit organizations before returning to academia.