Tag: University of Vermont

The Gund Institute for Environment at UVM announced $200,000 in Gund Catalyst Award seed grants for five interdisciplinary teams today.

The awards, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, will catalyze new research and action on urgent environmental issues, including city parks’ influence on happiness and well-being, sustainable cashmere in Asia, urban agricultural design, conserving traditional crop varieties in Mexico, and refugee farming communities in Vermont.

The five teams receiving Gund Catalyst Awards for 2018-19 are: 

Chris Danforth (Complex Systems) and Jarlath O’Neil Dunne (Rubenstein) will explore how urban parks influence human happiness. Focusing on six U.S. cities, the study will use social media and UVM Spatial Analysis Lab tree canopy data to quantify links between nature and measures of well-being. A goal of the project is to justify expenditures in greenspaces to meet cities’ sustainability goals and improve quality of life.

Jon Erickson and Jed Murdoch (Rubenstein) will pilot a sustainable certification approach for the multi-billion-dollar cashmere industry. Used in luxury clothing, cashmere production has increased unsustainably, damaging fragile ecosystems in China and Mongolia, and threatening the iconic snow leopard and other species. With collaborator Pablo Bose (Geography), and colleagues from Mongolia and Denver Zoo, the project aims to help standardize Earth- and farmer-friendly practices.

Stephanie Hurley (Plant and Soil Science) will use iconic urban farms in Italy to explore sustainable agricultural design and planning. Working with UVM and Italian colleagues, Hurley will investigate the design and benefits – both ecological and social – of historic urban farms to understand and inform future urban agricultural projects that are culturally-engaging, environmentally sustainable, and stand the test of time. 

Yolanda Chen (Plant and Soil Science) and Dan Tobin (CDAE) will study farmers’ use of traditional and hybrid crop varieties, and the impacts of these decisions on insect and microbe biodiversity. Working with UVM and international partners in historically significant regions in Mexico, the team will explore farmers’ motivations for conserving traditional “landrace” crop seeds, which can influence biodiversity and reduce farmers’ reliance on water, fertilizer and pesticide inputs.

Eric von Wettberg (Plant and Soil Science) and Travis Reynolds (CDAE) will study seed and crop diversity among refugee farmers in Vermont. The team will explore seed access and genetic diversity, and their effects on adaption to Vermont’s changing climate, farmer livelihoods, and nitrogen and water use. Collaborators include UVM Extension and New Farms for Americans. 

The five grants will catalyze new collaborations by 27 UVM faculty and students from four colleges/schools and five departments. At least 6 external partners from 4 countries will participate, including collaborators from North Carolina State University, Italy and Mexico.

“As a campus-wide institute, we are delighted to support these exciting new interdisciplinary research efforts,” says Taylor Ricketts, Director of the Gund Institute for Environment. “Each project shows great promise to advance knowledge, address critical real-world issues, and attract additional funding and recognition to UVM.”

Each of the five funded projects connect multiple Gund themes – climate solutions, resilient communities, sustainability agriculture, and health and well-being. By echoing UN Sustainable Development Goals, these themes connect UVM scholars to global priorities and increase opportunities to impact policy.

This is the second Gund Catalyst Awards competition. In two years, the program has funded over $400,000 in interdisciplinary scholarship, supporting 10 interdisciplinary teams and 50 UVM scholars from across UVM. 

Proposals are evaluated on five criteria: intellectual merit, interdisciplinary reach, strength of team, potential for impact, and potential for growth. Additional priority is given to new UVM collaborations with external partners and opportunities for students. Proposals are reviewed by UVM and external evaluators.

The next Catalyst Awards competition will be announced this summer.

Learn more about Gund Catalyst Awards and past recipients.

About the Gund Institute 

The Gund Institute for Environment catalyzes environmental research, develops real-world solutions to global issues, and connects UVM with leaders in government, business and beyond. Based at the University of Vermont, the Gund Institute is a newly expanded campus-wide center, where more than 150 faculty, global affiliates, post-docs, and graduate students collaborate widely to understand the interactions among ecological, social, and economic systems. 

Source: UVM News

The Office of the Vice President for Research has announced the 2018-19 winners of the REACH Grant Program.

This year’s winning grants and award winners are:

• Flight and Concealment: Surviving the Holocaust Underground in Munich and Beyond. PI: Susanna Schrafstetter. Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences. $12,000
• Monastic Attitudes to Islamophobia in Northern Thailand — Islamophobia or Not? PI: Thomas Borchert. Department of Religion, College of Arts and Sciences. $10,700
• Biomechanical Factors Six Months Post-ACLR with Meniscal Resection. PI: Niccolo Fiorentino. Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. $29,664
• Data Privacy for Deep Learning via Language Design. PI David Darais, Co-PI Joseph Near. Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. $29,409
• What happens next? Predictive abilities during linguistic and visual narrative comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. PI Emily Coderre, Co-PI Neil Trevor.  Department of Communication Science and Disorders, College of Nursing and Health Sciences.  $29,485
• DNA Damage Response to PARP and PARG inhibitors in Glioblastoma. PI: Delphine Quenet.  Department of Biochemistry, Larner College of Medicine. $25,000

REACH grants are designed to promote innovative research, scholarship and creative projects that enhance UVM’s reputation as an incubator for cutting-edge ideas; encourage faculty members to reach the next level of achievement in their scholarly trajectory; and leverage institutional investment by providing the building blocks to support applications for competitive extramural funding.

Source: UVM News

Timothy Treuer, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Gund Institute, is the winner of UVM’s first Pitch It, Fab It competition for faculty and staff.

Pitch It, Fab It invites participants to pitch product ideas related to their research to a judging panel. The winner earns the opportunity to work with the staff and use the equipment at UVM’s Instrumentation and Model Facility to take their rough concept to the working prototype stage. Similar contests are held for UVM students and for entrepreneurs in the Vermont community.

Treuer pitched a novel way to combat malaria by using a modified, commercially available bat roost to attract bats to communities at risk for malaria. The roost features an ultrasonic speaker that plays bat calls that will attract those bat species researchers have found to be the most mosquito-hungry. A solution like Treuer’s is needed. After years of decline, malaria is again on the rise as mosquitoes become resistant to pesticides that had previously controlled them.

Treuer was awarded $5,000 in materials and services to develop the prototype with the IMF.

The judges were Richard Galbraith, vice president for research, Linda Schadler, dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences and Jake Kittell, a research engineer at the Instrumentation and Model Facility.

There were six presentations in all at the event, held on April 18 in the Davis Center.

Source: UVM News

The National Academy of Sciences has announced the election of Mark Nelson, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Vermont, as a member, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Nelson joins 100 new members and 25 foreign associates elected April 30, 2019 to the National Academy of Sciences. 

Nelson is the first and only UVM faculty member to be elected as a member in the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, his membership is in Section 23: Physiology and Pharmacology. George Pinder, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Engineering, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

A member of the UVM faculty since 1986, Nelson is internationally recognized for his research on the molecular mechanisms and cellular communication involved in blood flow. He is a Fellow of both the American Heart Association and the Biophysical Society, and received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and an NIH MERIT award. 

Nelson’s extensive research contributions have been recognized with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and more than 360 invited lectureships since 2000, including the Paul M. Vanhoutte Lectureship in Vascular Pharmacology by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. In addition, he is the recipient of the Annual Reviews Award for Scientific Reviewing from the American Physiological Society and University Scholar honors from UVM.

“Election to the National Academy of Sciences is among the greatest honors that a biomedical researcher can receive,” said UVM Larner College of Medicine Dean Richard L. Page, M.D. “Dr. Nelson richly deserves this recognition, based on a body of work that has provided major discoveries in the field of blood flow regulation to the brain. The Larner College of Medicine and the entire UVM community are proud to celebrate his outstanding accomplishment.”

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and—with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine—provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations. View the list of members elected on April 30, 2019.

Source: UVM News

Down in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, five students from UVM’s Sustainable Innovation MBA program harnessed their inner Rocky Balboas as they took on some of the country’s top business schools at the Total Impact Portfolio Challenge finals on May 1–2. The team beat out 25 other teams from schools like Wharton, Columbia, Yale and Georgetown, among others, to win first place at the impact investing competition.

The inaugural competition, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Social Impact Initiative, Good Capital Project and Bank of America, is designed to challenge future wealth managers, portfolio managers and investment advisors to build financial portfolios that not only make their clients a profit, but make the world a better place.

UVM’s team—comprised of Alyssa Stankiewicz, Peter Seltzer, Emily Klein, Maura Kalil and Andrew Mallory, all students in the Princeton Review-ranked number one Green MBA program—built a lucrative $100 million investment portfolio for a fictional family office looking to support underserved communities, gender equity, sustainable food and agriculture, impact investing infrastructure, and mitigate climate change.

“When we started this competition back in the fall, if you had told us we were going to win, I think we would have been pretty surprised. The nature of our program is more sustainability focused and we thought we might be a little bit behind compared to other schools in terms of hard financial skills and hard portfolio management skills,” admits Mallory. “But once we started going and really started to utilize our sustainability learning and embed that into our impact analysis and into our portfolio—and with the help of professor Chuck Schnitzlein, our fearless leader—we definitely gained more confidence as the project went along.”

A growing financial trend, impact investing considers how strategic investments across asset classes can be used to improve societal, governance and environmental issues, all while being financially competitive. “It’s trying to do good, but also do well at the same time,” explains Kalil. “Impact investing matters because you can make a financial return on something that’s really bad for the planet or for society, which can have a negative impact on the whole world. I think impact investing is putting an impact lens on the investment industry as a whole.”

While the four other schools that advanced to the finals—Yale, Columbia, Boston University, and Fordham—were strong competitors, their approach to the competition and portfolio were drastically different from UVM’s. “Our entire coursework here is centered in sustainability and I think we entered the competition with a much different perspective than the other universities because of how embedded sustainability is into our coursework,” says Seltzer.

“The way that we looked at impact investing was moving beyond just screening out tobacco stocks or what they call ‘the sin stocks’ from your portfolio. It’s moving toward something that creates net positive impact and allows you to track, within your investments, the positive outcomes and outputs in society and environmental issues that you’re trying to impact,” explains Stankiewicz.

The UVM students stood out among the competition for going above and beyond the challenge. Not only did they create a diverse portfolio of public and private loans and assets, including investment in farmland and timber, they created their own proprietary framework to measure their impact. The SIMBA Score—aptly named after their program—quantifies, on a scale of zero to 100, how well a fund invests in companies that are tackling sustainability issues most material to their industries.

“Multiple people asked us if we had a patent on the framework while we were there,” says Seltzer, who designed the framework when the team noticed that there weren’t many evaluation tools available to help measure impact. The students plan to dive deeper into the viability of their framework over the summer.

Because the competition was incorporated into the Good Capital Project’s Total Impact Philadelphia Conference, the students had an opportunity to network with other teams and industry experts, as well as attend conference discussions and events. They noticed the way speakers, presenters, panelists and professionals in the industry spoke about impact investing and why it matters, and were pleased to see how well-aligned their approach to the portfolio was with thought leaders’ ideas. “It was really validating for the hard work we put into it,” says Kalil.

“All of the teams did a great job explaining the financial analysis that pertained to their proposals. The SI-MBA team displayed creativity and passion. It was such a pleasure to work with this delightful group of students!” says professor Charles Schitzlein, the team’s adviser.

Source: UVM News

On a lunchtime run, colleagues and researchers Mark Nelson and David Warshaw head down Spear Street. It’s a ritual the pair has kept nearly every work day since 1995. It’s more than just a daily workout. It’s a grant-writing workshop, staffing discussion, and science seminar. And as anyone who has run in Burlington knows, it’s a whole lot of hills. 

But no hill compares to the one Nelson just climbed. On April 30, Mark Nelson, chair of Pharmacology and a University Distinguished Professor, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the greatest honors a scientist can achieve.

It’s the latest in a string of honors he’s received over his career – from the National Institutes of Health, the American Society for Pharmacology, and the American Physiological Society, among others. He’s internationally recognized for his contributions to our understanding of the control of blood flow within the brain.  

How do blood vessels ensure the brain’s hard-working neurons get the nutrients they need? One area of Nelson’s focus is the role calcium plays in the complex communication happening among neurons, smooth muscle cells, and other cells.

The “information currency,” Nelson says, of these cells is calcium. “If we can understand what it’s doing, we’ll be able to come up with some new ideas for treatments,” of vascular diseases like strokes and dementia.

Throughout his career, he’s mentored dozens of scholars and researchers. Among them are Osama Harraz, who has worked as a postdoctoral associate in Nelson’s lab for four years and counts himself among Nelson’s grateful trainees, noting Nelson’s continued passion for the work and the “unparalleled scientific environment” in his lab. “He is amazed by how blood vessels deliver what the brain needs for a lifetime,” Harraz says. “One discovery after another, this excitement never fades away, it increases.”

His running and research counterpart David Warshaw, chair of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, was a champion of his election to the National Academy of Science. Candidates must be nominated by an existing society member, and Warshaw’s contact with several members helped lead to Nelson’s election. 

“Mark’s discoveries have set the investigative direction for researchers around the world,” says Warshaw, a collaborator with Nelson on research to better understand the smooth muscle cells that operate without conscious control in the brain and the heart. “His sustained level of top-flight science is evidenced by over 30,000 citations of his work in the most prestigious journals. As a friend and colleague, it was obvious that his international reputation and science was worthy of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Source: UVM News

A machine learning algorithm can detect signs of anxiety and depression in the speech patterns of young children, potentially providing a fast and easy way of diagnosing conditions that are difficult to spot and often overlooked in young people, according to new research published in the Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.  

Around one in five children suffer from anxiety and depression, collectively known as “internalizing disorders.” But because children under the age of eight can’t reliably articulate their emotional suffering, adults need to be able to infer their mental state, and recognise potential mental health problems. Waiting lists for appointments with psychologists, insurance issues, and failure to recognise the symptoms by parents all contribute to children missing out on vital treatment.

“We need quick, objective tests to catch kids when they are suffering,” says Ellen McGinnis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families and lead author of the study. “The majority of kids under eight are undiagnosed.”

Early diagnosis is critical because children respond well to treatment while their brains are still developing, but if they are left untreated they are at greater risk of substance abuse and suicide later in life. Standard diagnosis involves a 60-90 minute semi-structured interview with a trained clinician and their primary care-giver. McGinnis, along with University of Vermont biomedical engineer and study senior author Ryan McGinnis, has been looking for ways to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make diagnosis faster and more reliable.

The researchers used an adapted version of a mood induction task called the Trier-Social Stress Task, which is intended to cause feelings of stress and anxiety in the subject. A group of 71 children between the ages of three and eight were asked to improvise a three-minute story, and told that they would be judged based on how interesting it was. The researcher acting as the judge remained stern throughout the speech, and gave only neutral or negative feedback. After 90 seconds, and again with 30 seconds left, a buzzer would sound and the judge would tell them how much time was left.

“The task is designed to be stressful, and to put them in the mindset that someone was judging them,” says Ellen McGinnis.

The children were also diagnosed using a structured clinical interview and parent questionnaire, both well-established ways of identifying internalizing disorders in children.

The researchers used a machine learning algorithm to analyze statistical features of the audio recordings of each kid’s story and relate them to the child’s diagnosis. They found the algorithm was highly successful at diagnosing children, and that the middle phase of the recordings, between the two buzzers, was the most predictive of a diagnosis.

“The algorithm was able to identify children with a diagnosis of an internalizing disorder with 80 percent accuracy, and in most cases that compared really well to the accuracy of the parent checklist,” says Ryan McGinnis. It can also give the results much more quickly – the algorithm requires just a few seconds of processing time once the task is complete to  provide a diagnosis.

The algorithm identified eight different audio features of the children’s speech, but three in particular stood out as highly indicative of internalizing disorders: low-pitched voices, with repeatable speech inflections and content, and a higher-pitched response to the surprising buzzer. Ellen McGinnis says these features fit well with what you might expect from someone suffering from depression. “A low-pitched voice and repeatable speech elements mirrors what we think about when we think about depression: speaking in a monotone voice, repeating what you’re saying,” says Ellen McGinnis.

The higher-pitched response to the buzzer is also similar to the response the researchers found in their previous work, where children with internalizing disorders were found to exhibit a larger turning-away response from a fearful stimulus in a fear induction task.

The voice analysis has a similar accuracy in diagnosis to the motion analysis in that earlier work, but Ryan McGinnis thinks it would be much easier to use in a clinical setting. The fear task requires a darkened room, toy snake, motion sensors attached to the child and a guide, while the voice task only needs a judge, a way to record speech and a buzzer to interrupt. “This would be more feasible to deploy,” he says.

Ellen McGinnis says the next step will be to develop the speech analysis algorithm into a universal screening tool for clinical use, perhaps via a smartphone app that could record and analyze results immediately. The voice analysis could also be combined with the motion analysis into a battery of technology-assisted diagnostic tools to help identify children at risk of anxiety and depression before even their parents suspect that anything is wrong.

Other study co-authors include Steven P. Anderau and Reed D. Gurchiek at the University of Vermont and Reed D. Gurchiek, Nestor L. Lopez-Duran, Kate Fitzgerald and Maria Muzik at the University of Michigan.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont has announced three new recipients of its Distinguished Professor Award, the highest academic honor that the university can bestow on a faculty member. University Distinguished Professors are recognized as having achieved international eminence within their respective fields of study and for the truly transformative nature of their contributions to the advancement of knowledge. 

Faculty receiving this award in 2019 are:  

• Mark E. Bouton, Professor of Psychological Science and the Robert B. Lawson Green and Gold Professor of Psychology. Bouton is considered among the most outstanding experimental psychologists of his generation working on animal learning. Throughout a 39-year career at UVM, he has conducted pioneering research into the role of context in the learning and memory process, resulting in over 130 publications, including some of the most highly cited research papers in the discipline. He is one of the leading experts on associative learning—a core type of learning and memory—and considered by colleagues as the foremost expert on extinction, a learning process that has been demonstrated to be fundamentally important to learning and to the treatment of a number of clinical disorders. 

• Tina Escaja, Professor of Romance Languages and Linguistics. Escaja is recognized as the foremost scholar of the works of Delmira Agustini, a Uruguayan poet from the early 20th century, and Ana Rosetti, a contemporary Spanish poet. The breadth of her pioneering research and trans-cultural scholarship, in several genres, is displayed in over 100 works that include books, book chapters, journal articles, reviews, encyclopedic entries, anthologies, and other venues. Professor Escaja is internationally known for her creative and groundbreaking work integrating poetry and technology (electronic literature), and for her digital exhibits at museums and galleries around the world.

• Russell P. Tracy, Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Biochemistry. Tracy is an international leader in the field of biomarkers. His research, over the span of 34 years at the Larner College of Medicine, has produced over 700 publications describing the etiology of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, other complex chronic diseases of aging, infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the process of aging itself. Professor Tracy is among the top 1 percent most highly cited researchers of 2018 in his discipline, and has also been recognized as one of the 400 most highly influential biomedical researchers. He has a distinguished record of service at UVM, including ten years as Senior Associate Dean for Research and Academic Activities for the Larner College of Medicine.

The University Distinguished Professor Award, founded in 2009. Only ten individuals may hold an active appointment as University Distinguished Professor at any one time. Faculty holders of this honor may use the title University Distinguished Professor throughout their career at the University of Vermont and wear a medal with their academic regalia signifying this distinction. They will also serve as an informal advisory body to the leadership of the university and receive an annual professional expense stipend to support their scholarly endeavors until retirement or departure from UVM.

Bouton, Escaja and Tracy join the following faculty in the program:  

• Ralph Budd, University Distinguished Professor, director of the Vermont Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases.

• Rex L. Forehand, Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher Professor of Psychology and University Distinguished Professor, director of Clinical Training.

• Major Jackson, Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor of English.

• Wolfgang Mieder, University Distinguished Professor of German and Folklore.

• Brooke T. Mossman, University Distinguished Professor of Pathology.

• Mark T. Nelson, Chairman and University Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology. 

• George F. Pinder, University Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

The three new faculty in the program will be honored at the 2019 Commencement ceremony.

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont has announced three new recipients of its Distinguished Professor Award, the highest academic honor that the university can bestow on a faculty member. University Distinguished Professors are recognized as having achieved international eminence within their respective fields of study and for the truly transformative nature of their contributions to the advancement of knowledge. 

Faculty receiving this award in 2019 are:   

• Mark E. Bouton, professor of Psychological Science and the Robert B. Lawson Green and Gold Professor of Psychology. Bouton is considered among the most outstanding experimental psychologists of his generation working on animal learning. Throughout a 39-year career at UVM, he has conducted pioneering research into the role of context in the learning and memory process, resulting in over 130 publications, including some of the most highly cited research papers in the discipline. He is one of the leading experts on associative learning—a core type of learning and memory—and considered by colleagues as the foremost expert on extinction, a learning process that has been demonstrated to be fundamentally important to learning and to the treatment of a number of clinical disorders. 
• Tina Escaja, professor of Romance Languages and professor of Gender and Women’s Studies. Escaja is recognized as the foremost scholar of the works of Delmira Agustini, a Uruguayan poet from the early 20th century, and Ana Rosetti, a contemporary Spanish poet. The breadth of her pioneering research and trans-cultural scholarship, in several genres, is displayed in over 100 works that include books, book chapters, journal articles, reviews, encyclopedic entries, anthologies and artistic productions. Escaja is internationally known for her creative and groundbreaking work integrating poetry and technology (electronic literature), and for her digital exhibits at museums and galleries around the world.
• Russell P. Tracy, professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Biochemistry. Tracy has played a prominent role in illuminating the hematologic aspects of cardiovascular disease. His research, over the span of 34 years at the Larner College of Medicine, has resulted in major discoveries in the molecular, cellular and genetic epidemiology of blood coagulation, fibrinolysis and inflammation. He has produced over 700 publications that have been cited more than 110,000 times, numbers that placed him among the top 1 percent of the most highly cited researchers of 2018. For the period 1996 to 2011, he was recognized as one of the 400 most highly influential biomedical researchers. He has a distinguished record of service at UVM, including ten years as senior associate dean for research and academic activities for the Larner College of Medicine.

The University Distinguished Professor Award was founded in 2009. Only ten individuals may hold an active appointment as University Distinguished Professor at any one time. Faculty holders of this honor may use the title University Distinguished Professor throughout their career at the University of Vermont and wear a medal with their academic regalia signifying this distinction. They will also serve as an informal advisory body to the leadership of the university and receive an annual professional expense stipend to support their scholarly endeavors until retirement or departure from UVM. 

Bouton, Escaja and Tracy join the following faculty currently in the program:  

• Ralph Budd, University Distinguished Professor, director of the Vermont Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
• Rex L. Forehand, Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher Professor of Psychology and University Distinguished Professor, director of Clinical Training.
• Major Jackson, Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor of English.
• Wolfgang Mieder, University Distinguished Professor of German and Folklore.
• Brooke T. Mossman, University Distinguished Professor of Pathology.
• Mark T. Nelson, chairman and University Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology. 
• George F. Pinder, University Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. 

The three new faculty in the program will be honored at the 2019 Commencement ceremony. 

Source: UVM News