Faculty Fellowship Program
The Office of Research supports the WSU land-grant mission by partnering with the University community and other stakeholders to advance, extend, and apply knowledge across the full range of scholarly disciplines pursued at WSU. The Office of Research also serves the University community by supporting the research infrastructure needed for discovery to flourish and for researchers to collaborate effectively across campuses and disciplines. To aid in this support, the Office of Research encourages those interested in leading and contributing to WSU research initiatives to submit their name for consideration for the Fellowship Program.
The Fellowship Program provides opportunities for individuals to grow and develop their leadership skills while promoting OR activities and objectives. The program will provide participation and responsibility in the Office of Research.
Fellows will:
- Learn and shape OR-related procedures;
- Provide leadership for specific OR initiatives;
- Work collaboratively with WSU research leadership, faculty, and staff to develop and articulate OR goals, objectives, and strategy;
- Foster participation by faculty and academic units within OR;
- Raise OR visibility across the WSU system, including interacting with key stakeholders;
- Contribute to overall OR success.
The Fellowship Program (ORFP) will provide faculty with participation and responsibility in Office of Research programs. Fellows will play a vital role in the Office of Research’s constant improvement, identifying strategic opportunities, innovation, and enhancements to research administration.
The ORFP will provide opportunities for growth and development of leadership skills while supporting Office of Research activities and objectives. OR Fellows will receive compensation that is negotiable based on scope and context of the assigned activities.[1]
OR Fellows will participate in meetings with the designated OR unit and senior leadership, university administration, and college leadership, as needed. Required time allocation will be determined upon assignment to the selected OR unit and scope of project and/or activities. Fellowship appointments are on a per year basis, as needed.
For questions about the program or to submit your name for consideration, please contact Scott Steiger, at scott.steiger@wsu.edu or (509) 335-7065.
Asaph Cousins – Office of National Laboratory Partnerships, Distinguished Graduate Research Program
Asaph Cousins, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences School of Biological Sciences, serves as a liaison between WSU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the WSU-PNNL Distinguished Graduate Research Program.
Cousins’ research focuses on molecular biology techniques with plant physiology and mathematical modeling of photosynthesis to understand the mechanistic processes dictating plant-environment interactions.
Brian French – Innovation and Research Engagement Office
Brian French, Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the College of Education, provides support to the Innovation and Research Engagement Office, where he is working with faculty in the college to explore, frame and develop translational structures for their research products.
French focuses on the application of psychometric methods of gathering score validity evidence for instruments. Additionally, he looks at the use of methodological studies to evaluate and improve methods for efficiency and accuracy used to gather test score validity evidence.
Ashley Boyd – Office of Research Advancement and Partnerships
Ashley Boyd, associate professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English, partners with the Office of Research to lead the Working Group on Advancing Arts and Humanities Research. In this role, Ashley is working collaboratively with multiple stakeholder groups to enhance, support, and evaluate research, scholarship, and creative production in arts and humanities at our land-grant institution.
Ashley’s research examines practicing secondary teachers’ social justice pedagogies and their critical content knowledge and explores how young adult literature is an avenue for cultivating students’ critical literacies. Drawing on frameworks from cultural studies, critical theory, and social justice education, Dr. Boyd addresses educational inequities and opportunities for social action through qualitative research and analysis.
Tor de Vries – Office of Research Advancement and Partnerships
Tor de Vries, assistant professor in the Digital Technology and Culture Department, partners with the Office of Research to develop a new web and social media strategy for the OR. In this role, Tor is working collaboratively with OR leadership and staff to develop and articulate a strategy that enhances the communication efforts of the OR.
Tor’s teaching focus is web and digital technology, and for this he draws on decades of professional work in web production, art direction, user experience (UX) design, graphic design, programming, fundraising, server management, and more for a variety of organizations, from international nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies. His current personal research develops hand-coded algorithms to create abstract art inspired by Piet Mondrian’s De Stijl movement and Vera Molnár’s pioneering generative art.
Nairanjana “Jan” Dasgupta – Office of National Laboratory Partnerships, Data Sciences and Analytics
Jan Dasgupta, Regents Professor and Boeing Distinguished Professor of Science and Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics provides leadership for developing collaborative data science and analytics programs including collaborations with national laboratories. She was the WSU 2022 Woman of the Year
Dasgupta’s research interests include but are not limited to genomics and bio-informatics, dealing with large scale multiplicity in genomic, proteomic and metabolomic data sets, dealing with dependencies in binary and ordinal data, and modeling growth and bloom phases of WA apples. Dasgupta is passionate about making the WSU data analytics program accessible to different types of learners and to people of different interests.
Assefaw Gebremedhin – Office of Research, AI
Assefaw Gebremedhin, associate professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, partners with the Office of Research to lead the Working Group on Advancing Artificial Intelligence. In this role, Gebremedhin will work collaboratively with WSU leadership, faculty, and staff to develop a strategic approach to advancing AI research at WSU. This includes spearheading a working group, made up of faculty systemwide, that will produce a roadmap of WSU’s research strengths and areas for prioritization and investment to advance AI research at WSU that aligns with WSU’s strategic priorities and land grant mission.
Gebremedhin’s research interests include data science and AI, high-performance computing, and cybersecurity. Applications his research explores range from biomedical and health informatics to computational epidemiology to energy systems. The Scalable Algorithms for Data Science (SCADS) Laboratory that he leads conducts research at the intersection of algorithms, data analytics, and computational science and engineering. Gebremedhin is also the lead PI and director of the VICEROY Northwest Institute for Cybersecurity Education and Research (CySER) and has led the effort to launch a new BS in cybersecurity degree program at WSU.