S&T CASE May Newsletter

Dear friends and alumni,

The 2025–26 academic year concluded with wonderful commencement ceremonies held May 15–16. I congratulate each of our graduates on their accomplishments and wish them every success in their future endeavors. They now join the proud alumni community of Missouri S&T.

At our college-wide meeting on April 30, College faculty selected our new tagline, “Driven by Curiosity. Defined by Discovery.” The winning submission was proposed by Jennifer Harrell, a Ph.D. student in the biological sciences department.

I also extend my heartfelt thanks to CASE faculty, staff and alumni for their unwavering support of our students. Your contributions are essential to the strength and success of our community.

Wishing everyone a restful, rejuvenating summer.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Ph.D.
Vice Provost and Dean

Nearly 30 students in CASE’s First Year Research Experience (FYRE) program presented their posters in a lively symposium held on Tuesday, May 5. Pictured above left is a group biological sciences photo; above right is a group photo of physics. Students from seven CASE majors successfully completed and presented their semester-long research projects.

The event was well attended by faculty, staff, students and family. It was encouraging to see the parents who showed great interest in their own students’ work but also the work of other students. The dean’s office sincerely appreciates the dedication and mentorship provided by the FYRE faculty mentors who play a pivotal role in shaping students’ learning experiences. Because of their dedication, many students applied to continue their projects through the Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experiences (OURE) program next academic year. CASE remains committed to expanding participation in the FYRE program and supporting the next generation of researchers.

This year’s Shi/Ma Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research recipients are Egor Baiarashov and Chikadibia Edward. Mentored by Dr. Shelly Minteer, Egor, a Ph.D. student in the chemistry department, is developing a bienzymatic biosensor that uses redox polymers. Under the guidance of Dr. Risheng Wang, Edward, also a Ph.D. student in chemistry, is leveraging DNA origami as a multifunctional platform for drug delivery, cancer therapy, and biosensing. Both projects have demonstrated strong feasibility through published research and robust quantitative data. These awards were established by Dr. Honglan Shi, research professor emeritus of chemistry at S&T, and her husband, Dr. Yinfa Ma, Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry, former associate dean for research and external relations in CASE and former director of the Center for Biomedical Research at S&T.

Biology Ph.D. student Alex Andes was awarded the Trans World Airlines Scholarship for 2026-2027 for his environmental work on canopy arthropod ecology.

Elijah Brakensiek, Ashton Matthews, Jacob Harl, and Andrew Miget are the winners of the 2026 Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research. First prize was awarded to Elijah Brakensiek for his work on Generation of Dipolar Supersolids through a Barrier Sweep in Droplet Lattices (advisor: Dr. Simeon Mistakidis). Second prize was awarded to Ashton Matthews for his project Single Crystals of Novel Materials and their Transport Properties (advisor: Dr. Halyna Hodovanets). The third prize was awarded to Jacob Harl for his research on Generation of Quantum Vortices in Dipolar Supersolids (advisor: Mistakidis) and to Andrew Miget for his project From Damage to Self-Healing: Ab Initio Simulations of 100-eV Alpha-Particle Impact on Amorphous In-Ga-O Structure (advisor: Dr. Julia Medvedeva). Sixteen projects were entered in the competition. The annual Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research honors the memory of Dr. Harold Q. Fuller, former chair of the physics department.

Celia Freed, (pictured below) a junior in psychology, (under the direction of Dr. Clair Reynolds Kueny) presented her poster titled "Interrupting Bias: A Case Study in Improving Faculty Evaluation Processes" at the national Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology annual conference in New Orleans. This is a primarily graduate student and professional member conference with few undergraduates in attendance. Additionally, the psychological science department supported 12 graduate students (pictured above) to attend the conference as well.

Congratulations to the Psychology Club for receiving S&T Student Council's Outstanding New Student Organization of the Year Award for 2026. During the pandemic the club had gone dormant, but thanks to committed psychology majors it is back and better than ever.

Max Tucker, a chemistry Ph.D. student in Dr. Greg Tschumper’s research group, published his second peer-reviewed journal article of 2026 as first author in ChemPhysChem that provides insight at the molecular level into the transition from hydrated hydrogen chloride to aqueous hydrochloric acid. Tschumper also published another peer-reviewed paper with a former Ph.D. student in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

Missouri S&T has officially joined the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) collaboration. Physics students can now be part of this collaboration and work alongside scientists from over 90 institutions around the world. The new observatory will be located in Atacama Astronomical Park, Chile, at an altitude of 4,770 m.

On May 8, biology and environmental science students (pictured above) in the Missouri S&T ichthyology course spent an afternoon learning fish collecting field techniques on the Little Piney Creek at Newburg. Leading the session was Nick Girondo, with assistance from Nick Lamey, both fisheries biologists with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Also participating was Richard Mayden, Saint Louis University emeritus professor, and prominent fish phylogeneticist.

Physics department graduate students Sachin Gunasekara, Deeshari Mitra, Jayashani Wickramashinge, and Charlie Wilborn; and Drs. Marco Cavaglia, Halyna Hodovanets, Hyunsoo Kim, Hasti Khoraminezhad, Xiaojie Wang, and Yanyan Zheng took part in the yearly Truman Carnival in April at Truman Elementary School in Rolla. General public played hockey with a superconductor, looked at elements from the periodic table and "rolled around" the moon and the sun. This marks the third major community outreach for the physics department this year. The other two were: SciFest at St. Louis Science Center and STEAM night at Rolla Middle School in February.

From foundational calculus courses serving thousands of students each year to advanced research in data science, machine learning, and computational modeling, Missouri S&T’s mathematics and statistics department continues to play a central role in the university’s academic and research mission. Department faculty continue to distinguish themselves through research, teaching, and student mentorship. The department’s research focus on computational and applied mathematics is unique in Ph.D. granting mathematics departments in Missouri and aligns with the scientific and technological focus of Missouri S&T. Read more.

Dr. Grant Kolar joined Missouri S&T in 2025 as a research professor of biological sciences. Kolar’s research focuses on the spatial context of the expression of RNA transcripts and proteins in tissue. He applies these studies to the development and management of diabetes and rare diseases employing a national network of clinical and commercial collaborations. His group continues to use and develop cutting edge techniques to understand the architecture of diseased and health tissue and what that means for pathophysiology and treatment. Read more about Kolar.

Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, CASE Dean, was interviewed by NPR Weekend Edition, Deutsche Welle, and Global News Canada.

Hamilton College welcomed Dr. Shane Epting, associate professor of philosophy, to campus in April. He delivered a public lecture titled “Moral Responsibility in the Age of Extreme Weather: Cities and the Ethics of Resilience Planning” and also served as a guest lecturer in a seminar on environmental justice.

Dr. Margret Grebowicz, Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professor of Humanities, published an article titled "A Tired Dog Is a Good Dog: Interspecies Exhaustion and the Social Animal" in Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

Dr. Irina Ivliyeva, chair and Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of arts, language, and philosophy, in collaboration with Perry Koob, information security officer, published in Scholars’ Mine the new installment of research data "Multi-dimensional scaling of web-scraping results from the A.A Zalizniak Grammatical Dictionary and the Russian National Corpus. Creating a corpus fragment of all possible word-forms of modified Russian sound verbs using web-scraping methodology. Compilation of a summary table for the participle forms" (2026). This study investigates the development of multi-dimensional morphological profiles of Russian verbs of sounds, namely their participles, by integrating web-scraping methodologies and advanced digital visualization tools that is convenient and effective for a linguistic researcher. The findings contribute to multiple fields, including language education, lexicography, and corpus linguistics, by providing scalable methods for analyzing and visualizing nuanced linguistic data. This work is supported by the Intelligent Systems Center and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society.

Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics, received a $344,849 three-year research grant from the Atomic and Molecular Physics sector of the Army Research Office (ARO) for a project titled “Quantum simulation of multi-component droplets: Many-body phases and correlated non-equilibrium dynamics.” He also delivered an invited talk titled “Observation of soliton gases in multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates” and chaired a session at the workshop Nonlinear Waves: From Theoretical and Computational Advances to Experimental Observations held at ICERM, Brown University.

Dr. Matthew Ng, assistant professor of psychological science, served as a panelist on two sessions and presented research in a symposium at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana (April 29-May 2). His panel discussions addressed promoting well-being in graduate programs and examining how academic evaluation expectations influence engagement in work that reflects the scientist-practitioner model. The symposium presentation is part of a broader research project led by Drs. Ann Schlotzhauer, Clair Reynolds Kueny, and Ng, which explores shifting perceptions of proactive and adaptive workplace behaviors during periods of uncertainty.

Dr. Ross Channing Reed, lecturer of philosophy, published a paper titled "Existential Philosophical Counseling: Clinical Observations, Part I: Circumscribed Self-Disclosure, Moral Discourse, and Moral Presence" in Philosophical Practice. The article focuses on the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, Kierkegaard and Aristotle.

Dr. David Samson, associate teaching professor and director of bands, was selected by S&T Students to receive the 2026 I Love Your Class Award for his course "The Heart of Rock 'n Roll: A History of Popular Music in American Culture (1950-2000)." The award was presented by the Division of Student Success at their awards luncheon on Friday, May 22.

Dr. Michelle Schwartze, associate teaching professor of education, mentored Grace Sheahan, a student in the environmental science program, on a FYRE project. Grace analyzed elementary student data collected through the NSF-funded project “Getting Your Feet Wet: Geoscience Education Using Water-Based Field Experiences.” Her research compared students’ understanding of geoscience concepts before and after a field trip to evaluate whether place-based field experiences strengthened their knowledge in this area.

Dr. Thomas Schuman, professor of chemistry, was a co-pi on a $819,234 grant from the Department of Energy for a project titled “Innovative Particle Gels for Controlling Preferential Fluid Flow in Geothermal Reservoirs to Enhance Heat Recovery.”

Dr. Kris Swenson, professor of English, published an essay titled "Trollope's unprotected females in the East" in the collection Re-examining nineteenth-century Easts: Gendered narratives of encounter (Manchester University Press, 2026). The essay concerns the 19th century explorer and naturalist, Ida Pfeiffer, and the fiction of Anthony Trollope.

Dr. Robin Verble, professor and director of the environmental science program, attended the American Institute of Biological Sciences Congressional Visit Days in Washington, D.C. this April. As a delegation member, she advocated for NSF and NIH support with regional representatives and senators.

CASE expresses its sincere gratitude to Charles Schroeder, Chem’73, and Martha Schroeder for their generous gift of $75,000 in support of the Charles and Martha Schroeder Scholarship endowment. Their continued commitment to this fund strengthens the scholarship’s ability to support students pursuing studies in chemistry.

This meaningful contribution enhances the long-term impact of the endowment, increasing financial support and expanding opportunities for current and future chemistry students. The Schroeders’ generosity plays a vital role in fostering academic excellence and helping students achieve their educational goals.

The support of donors is instrumental in advancing the college. Your contributions play a vital role in meeting diverse needs. Whether it's assisting students facing challenges or investing in faculty development initiatives, your generosity significantly enriches the educational experience CASE can provide. Support CASE by contacting Michelle Shults, senior development officer, at shultsm@mst.edu or 573-341-4380.

Disclaimer: CASE does not endorse the arguments presented in any of the essays listed in this section of the newsletter. We share them solely as "food for thought" and encourage our enlightened audience to form their own opinions on the subjects discussed.