University names 2019 Presidential Research Scholars

Seven faculty members have been named 2019 Ohio University Presidential Research Scholars for excellence in arts and humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and physical sciences and engineering research.

The awards program recognizes mid-career faculty members who have garnered national and international prominence in research, scholarship and creative activity. Each award recipient will receive $3,000 to be used at the scholar’s discretion as an honorarium or to support research or creative works.

“This year’s recipients demonstrate the breadth and excellence of Ohio University’s contributions to the creation of knowledge. We are pleased to recognize the singular achievements and impact of these outstanding faculty members,” said Joseph Shields, vice president for research and creative activity and dean of the Graduate College.

The 2019 recipients are:

Arts and Humanities

Christopher Fisher is a professor of music in the College of Fine Arts. He is the co-author of Piano Duet Repertoire (Indiana University Press, 2016) and author of Teaching Piano in Groups (Oxford University Press, 2010). The latter work is the only comprehensive group piano pedagogy book of its kind and is used as a textbook at universities and conservatories internationally. As a result of the book’s critical acclaim, Fisher has delivered lectures throughout the world on the topic of group piano pedagogy, including recent engagements at the Juilliard School in New York and in the United Kingdom. In addition, he has published compositions and arrangements and contributed to the recording of Samplings: New Recordings for Bassoon and Piano. Fisher currently is working on two new manuscripts for the Oxford University Press.

Katarzyna Marciniak is a professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences and is affiliated with the College of Fine Arts. Over the past 20 years, she has contributed to the development of transnational cinema and postsocialist media studies in relationship to Eastern European cultures. Marciniak’s most cited work is Alienhood: Citizenship, Exile, and the Logic of Difference (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), which examines globalization. The essay collection she co-edited, Transnational Feminism in Film and Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), has been recognized as a groundbreaking contribution to transnational feminist media studies. Due to the critical acclaim for her work, in 2010 Palgrave appointed Marciniak the lead editor of their book series, Global Cinema, which has published 19 volumes to date. That same year, she won the MLA Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship. In 2016 Marciniak co-edited a collection of essays, Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy (Routledge), which explores the opportunities and challenges of teaching unfamiliar audiovisual texts. She currently is working on a book commissioned by the Oxford University Press on refugee cinema.

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Michael Geringer is the O’Bleness Professor of International Strategy in the College of Business. He has been globally recognized for his research on the creation, management and growth of international businesses. His work on how Japanese, European and North American companies can compete in international markets has generated 2,000 citations and attracted grant funding to expand the studies to Indian firms. In addition, Geringer’s research on human and technological resources in multinational corporations helped launch the widely cited Best Practices in International Human Resources Management project that involved scholars from more than 20 nations. He has authored or edited 47 books and monographs and is currently working on the second edition of International Business (McGraw-Hill Education) for a 2020 release. Geringer has garnered several teaching and research awards, including the Decade Award for most influential article from the Journal of International Business Studies.

Kimberly Rios is an associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. With funding from entities such as the John Templeton Foundation, Rios has researched people’s responses to threats to their self-concepts and social identities, with a focus on majority and minority group identities. Historically, social psychology has emphasized tendencies toward conformity, but Rios’s work focuses on the notion that people are driven not only to fit in but also to be unique and distinctive from their peers. Rios has contributed new research findings to the social psychology field that illuminate why white Americans may respond negatively to multiculturalism and how those perceptions can change. In addition, she has studied why Christians and Muslims may consider religion and science as incompatible and the factors that can impact those views over time. In 2019, Rios received the Outstanding Early Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity.

Jeff Vancouver is the William C. Byham Chair in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on self-regulation—the processes individuals use to maintain or achieve needs and goals—to understand human behavior, and he has attracted funding from entities such as the National Science Foundation for his work.

Vancouver’s research on the nature and effects of self-efficacy was groundbreaking, as it challenged previously held beliefs. In addition, he is considered a thought leader on the use of computational modeling as a tool to advance Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychological research. His work, published in high-impact journals in the psychology discipline, is highly cited. Vancouver’s accomplishments have garnered him fellowship status in the Association of Psychological Sciences and the Society of I-O Psychologists.

Physical Sciences and Engineering

Carl Brune is a professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research—both experimental and theoretical—investigates how atomic nuclei react when they collide. Brune’s studies provide a greater understanding of astrophysical nuclear processes, such as those occurring in the cores of stars, during the big bang in the early universe, and in explosive environments such as supernovae. His work also has practical applications for nuclear power production. Brune has published findings in high-impact journals such as Nature Physics, frequently gives talks at national and international conferences, and has led several international collaborations. He has received $12.7 million in external funding since joining the university in 2001 and was the primary investigator on $9.6 million of those awards. Brune has also helped secure funding from the National Science Foundation for equipment upgrades to Ohio University’s internationally renowned Edwards Accelerator Laboratory. Brune is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Peter Harrington is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is an expert in chemometrics, a subdiscipline of analytical chemistry that focuses on maximizing the information gained from chemical experiments. As there is a shortage of this expertise in the United States, Harrington has focused his research on designing automated, smart methods that can be used by scientists untrained in chemometrics to obtain accurate test results. In 1996, he developed and popularized the Copiosity Principle, which has become an important computational approach in the chemometrics field. Harrington employs his research methods and expertise to characterize botanical medicines, including cannabis. He has a long-standing collaboration with the USDA to develop automated chemometric methods for chemotyping foods and dietary supplements. Harrington won the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemometrics in 2019.

These faculty members will be honored at a public ceremony to recognize Presidential Research Scholars, the Presidential Teacher Award, and the Provost Award for Excellence in Teaching at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21 in the Baker Center Ballroom.

Nominees for the Presidential Research Scholars awards must be tenured, full-time faculty from one of Ohio University’s campuses. Scholars must have been employed by Ohio University for at least three years.

Applications from nominated individuals are reviewed by the Council for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (CRSCA) and previous Presidential Research Scholar recipients, with recommendations for selection given to the Vice President for Research and Creative Activity for final approval.

All faculty of Ohio University may submit nominations; faculty also may self-nominate. The next nomination deadline will be in April 2020.

For more information about the nomination and application process, visit www.ohio.edu/research/funding.cfm.