The University of Colorado Denver is proud to announce the winners of the CU Denver 2021 Pandemic Research and Creative Activities Award. These awards spotlight a mere fraction of the influential work of our faculty and staff.
CU Denver Distinguished Honor Award
For the faculty or staff member whose pandemic efforts led to outstanding service or research achievements of marked statewide or national significance.Each of the CU Denver Distinguished Honor Award winners will receive $1,000 in faculty development funds to continue their research.
jimi adams, PhD, Associate Professor of Health and Behavioral Sciences, CLAS
adams’ expertise in infectious disease diffusion led to his involvement in the team modeling SARS-COV-2 epidemiological scenarios to advise Governor Polis’ office and policy decisions in Colorado throughout the COVID-19 pandemic response. Adams used cellphone-based mobility data to assess how population-level behavioral contact patterns generate the potential for contagion spread. Based on his findings, his team was able to determine how jurisdictional boundaries should be combined for the state’s public health divisions’ response coordination.
Jennifer Reich, PhD, Professor of Sociology, CLAS
Author of Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, Reich’s expertise in vaccine hesitancy has been used in nearly every national media outlet to help our country understand why a populace devastated by the pandemic would be reticent to get a vaccine, vaccinate their children, and protect their communities.
The Pivot Award
As COVID numbers rose, these faculty and staff worked fast to make sure their research and departments addressed the emergent crisis.
Administration:
Laura Argys and Stephen Gedney (Safe Return); Stephanie Santorico and Michelle Carpenter (Lynx Together)
For ensuring the transition to remote work was done with research and creative activities in mind and determining processes to safely allow for on campus research.
Elizabeth Lee, Grant Post Award Specialist
For determining what would be needed for program continuity, helping principal investigators (PIs) (and others) prepare and continue research under the new pandemic guidelines.
Research:
Jonathan Shaffer, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Health Psychology
Shaffer assessed the impacts of social isolation in community-dwelling adults.
The Impact Award
Beyond academia, these faculty and staff partnered directly with the local, national, and global community to confront the pandemic.
Research:
Woonghee Lee, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Lee’s group published nine papers in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. The most recent has been named “New and Notable” from Biophysical Journal and the other—concerning the pH-dependent polymorphism of the 3D structure of SARS-CoV-2 nsp7—explored our understanding of the COVID-19 mechanism at the atomic level.
Andrew Friedson, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics
Friedson earned national renown for extrapolating the data of COVID-19 spread from the major events during the pandemic—Black Lives Matter rallies, Trump rallies, and the Sturgis Motor Rally—as well as the results of vaccine lotteries.
The DEI Award
These faculty exposed and spotlighted the ways in which the pandemic exacerbated our society’s existing disparities.
Sarah Horton, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Horton and her colleagues identified the gap in healthcare and healthcare access during the pandemic for Latinx immigrants.
The Perseverance Award
Amid the chaos, these teams found a way to survive and thrive.
The Hendricks Team
While continuing world class research in statistical genetics and genomics, the team also focused on moral support. Their priorities began with health and wellness, followed by education, and finally research help to give the team time to prioritize health and wellbeing. It paid off with eight graduations, the NHGRI Genomic Innovator Award for Audrey Hendricks, and the prestigious Cotterman Award for Ian Arriaga-McKenzie.
The Xiaojun Ren Lab
Just before the pandemic, Ren was awarded a $1.3 million. NIH R01 grant. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, his team has performed innovative and groundbreaking research that has earned spots in several prominent journals, including titles under Nature and Cell.
The New Faculty Award
Though new to our campus, these faculty demonstrated exceptional resilience and productivity in the face of unprecedented challenges.
Kari Campeau, PhD, Assistant Professor of English
After the vaccine became available, Campeau focused her research on vaccination and vaccine decision-making. Her current research project maps discourses about COVID-19 vaccination, with the goal of better understanding how people come to believe the things they believe.
Sneha Thamotharan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Health Psychology
Thamotharan received a five-year Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award (K23) from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her current grant submissions focus on health equity (i.e., Black maternal and newborn mortality, sexual health disparities in youth of color) and the academic representation and wellness of historically excluded students at the undergraduate and graduate level.