College of Arts, Sciences and Education

Dear friends and alumni,

This summer, I had the privilege of spending four weeks as a senior visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The experience provided a valuable opportunity to advance my research through extensive work at the libraries of LSE, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the British Library.

Immersing myself in archival collections and consulting sources in the vernacular languages central to my project was both intellectually stimulating and deeply rewarding. It also served as a timely reminder of the vital role research plays in expanding knowledge and deepening our understanding of the world around us.

Research is rarely a straightforward endeavor. It often proceeds through unexpected discoveries, dead ends and new questions that emerge along the way. As biologist Marston Bates once observed, “research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.” His words capture the essence of scholarly inquiry: a willingness to explore the unknown, challenge assumptions and pursue understanding wherever the evidence leads.

Across the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, our faculty, students and alumni engage in this process every day. Their work advances discovery, fuels innovation and enriches public life. In this issue, you will read about several examples of that commitment to research and creative activity. I am grateful to all those whose scholarship continues to expand our collective knowledge and strengthen the impact of our college, university and communities.

Thank you for your continued support of the research, teaching and service missions that define CASE.

Sincerely,

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Ph.D.
Vice Provost and Dean

The CASE dean’s office experienced several staff changes this summer following the departures of Kim Courtney, Cassie Liscombe and the upcoming departure of Jackie Sansone. We thank them for their many contributions and wish them continued success in their future endeavors.

We also welcome Claire Smith, who has joined the office as a student worker, and Anna Love, who has assumed interim business officer responsibilities for CASE.

In addition, we are pleased to welcome Pujiastuti (Tuti) Yudhanto (pictured above) as the new senior finance and accounting specialist in the CASE office. Tuti brings extensive experience from her previous role as a business analyst at KAUST, where she specialized in budgeting, forecasting and research fund management. She is excited to apply her expertise in finance and higher education to support the college’s mission and operations. Outside of work, Tuti enjoys traveling, watching movies and collecting traditional handwoven textiles.

Himanshu Bhatia, a doctoral candidate in chemistry, defended his dissertation on June 11 titled “Synthesis of First-Row Transition Metal Complexes Supported by Tetraaza and Tetraamido Macrocyclic Ligands: Catalysts in Nitrene Transfer Chemistry.” His advisor is Dr. Pericles Stavropoulos.

Aiden Pickett, (pictured above) a psychology and computer science major, has been named a 2026 recipient of the Remington R. Williams Award from the University of Missouri System. 

Patrica-Ivy Agorsor, (pictured above)  a Ph.D. student in Dr. Eze’s group, was awarded the American Chemical Society’s Younger Chemists Conference Travel Grant. She will give a talk at the ACS Fall 2026 Meeting taking place in Chicago, IL on Aug. 23-27. 

Pictured above: AMO Physics group members at the 2026 APS DAMOP conference. From left to right: Farhana Bristy, Elijah Brakensiek, Shruti Majumdar, George Bougas, and Simeon Mistakidis.

Members of the Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Physics group participated in the 2026 APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) annual conference, one of the premier international meetings in the field of quantum science and technology. The department was represented by the graduate students Farhana Bristy and Shruti Majumdar, the undergraduate student Elijah Brakensiek, the postdoctoral researcher George Bougas, and the faculty member Dr. Simeon Mistakidis.

Bristy presented a poster titled “Shock and Rogue Waves in Quantum Droplets,” while Brakensiek presented “Generation of Supersolids Through Barrier Sweeps in a Droplet Lattice.” Majumdar delivered both an oral and poster presentation on “Continuous Pump-Probe Experiment to Observe Zeeman Wave-Packet Dynamics.” Bougas presented an oral contribution, “First-Order Phase Transition in Atom-Molecule Quantum Degenerate Mixtures with Coherent Three-Body Recombination,” as well as a poster, “Multi-Component Bose Gases as a Platform for Controllably Creating Peregrine Solitons and Breathers.” Mistakidis delivered an invited talk titled “Droplet-Gas Phases in Particle-Imbalanced Mixtures” and chaired the invited session “Non-Equilibrium Phenomena in Ultracold Atoms.” Their participation highlights the department’s active engagement in cutting-edge research of quantum matter and technologies.

The 2026 CASE Curriculum Development Grants were awarded to the following faculty teams:

Drs. Michael Eze (chemistry) and Robin Verble (biological sciences) received support to develop a team-taught course, “Principles of Environmental Chemistry,” scheduled to launch in Fall 2027. The course will explore key topics including atmospheric chemistry, energy and climate change, water chemistry and pollution, toxic organic compounds, and solid waste management.

Drs. Alexey Yamilov (physics), Daniel Fischer (physics), and Mina Esmaeelpour (electrical and computer engineering) received funding to develop a team-taught course, “The Science of Light: Information, Imaging, and Photonics.” Designed to make optics and photonics accessible to a broad student audience, the course will introduce fundamental concepts and applications while serving as a gateway for students interested in emerging technologies and photonics-related careers.

The arts, languages, and philosophy department (ALP) has been an integral part of S&T since the mid-1960s. Originally housed within a broader humanities division, these disciplines were consolidated into the Philosophy and Liberal Arts Department in the early 1980s before being renamed ALP in the early 2000s to reflect its expanding academic portfolio and commitment to communication, creativity, and human understanding. Today, ALP serves as S&T’s interdisciplinary humanities department, enriching the educational experience of students through philosophy, ethics, modern languages, visual arts, film, music and theatre. Read more. 

Dr. Joshua Stafford received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. After a brief stint as a post-doctoral fellow and junior research faculty in the department of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University, he joined Missouri S&T in 2025 as an assistant research professor in biological sciences. Read more about Stafford.

Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, CASE dean, was interviewed by Adnkronos newspaper (Italy), Swiss Radio and Television and the New York Times.

Dr. Irina Ivliyeva received a Title VIII in-person Associateship at the 2026 Summer Research Laboratory (SRL), sponsored by the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As an SRL Associate, Ivliyeva will receive support from the Slavic Reference Service (SRS), including access to specialized digital resources, databases, and Slavic, East European, and Eurasian collections. Her project, “Toward Universal Principles of Russian Sound-Verb Synthesis: A Morphological and Corpus-Driven Matrix Model,” bridges linguistics, digital humanities and computational research. By applying combinatorial optimization to linguistic databases and corpora, the project advances methods for extracting and analyzing information from lexicographic resources and multilingual text collections. 

Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics, published an article titled “Phases and Dynamics of an Impurity Immersed in One-Dimensional Quantum Droplets” in the special issue “Quantum Dynamics in Hybrid Systems” of the journal Entropy, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Hamburg, Germany. The study advances understanding of quasiparticle physics in liquid-like quantum systems and demonstrates how impurities can be used to probe and manipulate quantum fluctuations. Mistakidis also published a second article, “Pattern Formation in Ring Condensates Subjected to Bichromatic Driving,” in the APS journal Physical Review A, with collaborators from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. This research presents novel driving protocols for the controlled generation of complex nonlinear patterns in quantum fluids and highlights fundamental connections between pattern formation in quantum matter and analogous phenomena in classical fluid systems.

Dr. Vadym Mochalin, associate professor of chemistry, was nominated for membership in Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society.

Dr. Ross C. Reed, assistant teaching professor of philosophy, published an essay in The Conversation. He was also interviewed by David Cooper on David Cooper and The Last Show, a NYC and Canadian radio and podcast co-production, on April 13, 2026. The topic was friendship and self-knowledge, and why it is necessary to have good friends to really know yourself. Here is a link to the podcast.

Dr. Daniel B. Shank, associate professor of psychological science, was a guest on the podcast Notes & Things, discussing, "AI Companions Are Junk Food for Loneliness: Why Fast Relationships Leave Us Emptier Than Before."

Dr. Pablo Sobrado, the Richard K. Vitek/FCR Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, received a $528,560 grant from NIH for a project titled “Mechanism, Structure and Inhibition of N-Monooxygenases”.

The support of our donors is instrumental in advancing our college. Your contributions play a vital role in meeting our diverse needs. Whether it's assisting students facing challenges or investing in faculty development initiatives, your generosity significantly enriches the educational experience we provide. Support CASE by contacting Michelle Shults, the Senior Development Officer for CASE, at shultsm@mst.edu; telephone: 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.

College of Arts, Sciences and Education

Missouri University of Science and Technology

118 Fulton Hall
301 W. 14th St., Rolla, MO 65409
573-341-4687
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