Enrique R. Vivoni, professor with the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, has been named associate dean of graduate initiatives in the Graduate College at Arizona State University.

Vivoni replaces Brian H. Smith, who returned to his full-time faculty position at the School of Life Sciences in December. Smith was instrumental in advancing graduate international initiatives and partnerships. “We want to thank Brian for his service and dedication, and wish him the best,” said Alfredo Artiles, dean of the Graduate College. Enrique Vivoni was named as associate dean for the Graduate College. Download Full Image

As the associate dean, Vivoni will lead international initiatives at the Graduate College to enhance ASU’s global presence, further develop the Postdoctoral Affairs Office and broaden knowledge mobilization initiatives.

“Enrique has been deeply engaged in graduate education,” said Artiles. “His impressive and expansive experiences will serve him well as associate dean and I am confident he will bring strong leadership and innovative initiatives to our college.”

Vivoni has been at ASU since 2009. Before that, he was an associate professor with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

His research is on interactions of water in the lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere, with his scientific and engineering work conducted in urban and natural settings of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico.

“I hope to bring the spirit of innovation to initiatives at the Graduate College focused on student and postdoctoral scholar mentoring, international engagement and knowledge mobilization,” said Vivoni. “Through these efforts, we will make ASU a more welcoming place for students and scholars from around the world who value interdisciplinary endeavors that impact local and distant communities.”

In previous work, Vivoni spent a year in Baja California, Mexico, conducting climate change research with the support of the Fulbright Garcia-Robles Award and CONACYT sabbatical programs. Vivoni expanded his long-term collaborations with institutions in Mexico to gain cross-border knowledge on water resources and the effects of changing land cover and climate conditions.

Vivoni earned a PhD in hydrology in 2003 and a MS in environmental fluid mechanics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998.

“I consider that my upbringing in Puerto Rico and my academic and family life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have greatly broadened my worldview,” Vivoni said. “This leads me to be comfortable and curious when interacting with other cultures and to seek working relationships built upon equality and inclusion.”

As of 2016, Vivoni has been a Fulton Faculty Exemplar for two years, was nominated for the ASU Graduate College Outstanding Mentor awards in 2017 and has been a PLuS Alliance Fellow.

Vivoni has published over 145 papers in prestigious journals including Water Resources Research, Geophysical Research Lettersand the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Vivoni assumed his new duties in January.

Combining the artistic space of a traditional residency with the teaching and professionalization of an academic fellowship, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University is proud to announce the Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence: a new, yearlong, full-time, benefits-eligible position presented in partnership with ASU’s Department of English and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ humanities division.

The inaugural Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence is Bojan Louis, an indigenous writer and Arizona native who graduated from the MFA program in 2009 with a focus in fiction. Bojan Louis (2009 MFA in fiction) is the inaugural Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence. Photo by Sara Sams Download Full Image

As a writer, educator and community organizer, Louis is uniquely qualified to serve as the center’s first fellow-in-residence. Widely published in multiple genres, Louis’ debut collection of poems, "Currents," received the American Book Award in 2018. Louis also has diverse and comprehensive experience in the classroom, having taught across the Valley since 2012. Throughout, Louis has given back to the community through extensive volunteer and organizing work, playing foundational roles in journals like Waxwing and RED INK while connecting and advocating for indigenous writers in the state of Arizona and the national field. 

While the position has some analogues and other points of reference in the academic and creative writing fields — the Stegner fellowship at Stanford University for one — the Piper fellow-in-residence is unique in spirit and design, reflecting and embodying the values of outreach, inclusion, public service and social embeddedness that distinguish ASU and its creative writing program.

Over the course of a year, the Piper fellow-in-residence will teach one creative writing course a semester to undergraduate students through the Department of English and present talks, readings and other programs for the public through the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Candidates for the fellowship are drawn exclusively from alumni of ASU’s MFA in creative writing program. 

“The English Department is delighted to welcome Bojan Louis as the inaugural Piper fellow-in-residence,” said Department Chair Krista Ratcliffe. “His teaching will support our creative writing students interested in writing poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.”

Louis’ class, “The Narrative and Poetic Forms of Work and Apprenticeship” is a multi-genre creative writing and English literature undergraduate class exploring the narratives, themes and poetics of what it means to work. In modern society, Louis explains, it’s easy to forget the people who build and design the products and experiences we enjoy.

“So the texts I had in mind are these people who are involved in work and have sort of vainglorious dreams of becoming something more, or not. Maybe they don’t want to, or maybe they’re just stuck. The poetic stuff is getting into the language of work and how we use terminology and words, (and) how they affect not just the person working with them but the audience or people they’re directed at. So through this I want my students to then become apprentices of taking apart these stories to sort of write their own.”

As a nontraditional student from a working-class background — Louis spent years working as a general contractor and electrician before entering the MFA program at the age of 26 and continued with the profession throughout graduate school and his own teaching — he hopes the class will create a haven for people who may not feel comfortable in academic spaces. 

“There’s such a disconnect between this working class and intellectualism,” Louis said. “Especially with this sort of presidency, this divide has gotten really big. Sometimes we throw all of these terms around in the academy like equity and unity and diversity and intersectionality, and at some point it stops meaning anything once you get outside of the academic circle.”

While Louis is still thinking about his programs, he’s already figuring out ways to empower young people, particularly those who come from community colleges or are otherwise nontraditional students. 

“How do we create conversations with people who might feel invisible?” he asked. “And before that, how do we get to students who are interested in community college and don’t know what to do? A lot of this comes with self-reflection, so giving them a moment or a workshop where they can self-reflect, so it’s not me telling them what to do or being all motivational, but asking them who they are and what they see.”

Louis is also thinking about a translation project with the Navajo Nation as a way to continue and advance his work with Native American communities. 

Whatever they end up being, Louis’ programs will be developed organically as the fellowship unfolds, as Louis and the center assess various community needs.

“His initiatives are by purpose designed to be new to the world,” explained Alberto Ríos, a Regents’ Professor of English who directs the Piper Center. “They’re going to, I hope, startle us in the obviousness of how good they are — they’ve been right in front of us all this time, and now we get to act on them. It’s rare today to be able to get the wherewithal to do something that isn’t already being done. They’re going to take some thinking through.”

Jeffrey Cohen, dean of humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is excited about the new fellowship's possibilities.

“I believe that the best future for the humanities involves working to ensure that the field better resembles and resonates with the students attending universities like ASU — students who represent the future of the United States,” he said. “They deserve a humanities that attends to them — and talented writers like Bojan Louis are creating exactly that.”

Arizona State University Assistant Professor Tiffany Bao won best paper for her collaborative research on cyberwarfare at the NSA’s sixth annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition.

Bao, a new faculty member in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of the six schools in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, partnered with Fulton Schools Assistant Professors Yan Shoshitaishvili and Ruoyu Wang, and collaborations from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Santa Barbara on the research. Arizona State University Assistant Professor Tiffany Bao. Download Full Image

The research paper, “How Shall We Play a Game? A Game-theoretical Model for Cyberwarfare Games,” explored ways of finding, exploiting and patching vulnerabilities to prepare for a strategic cyberbattle. Game theory allows researchers to model situations where decision-makers interact in a competitive activity. In the context of cyberwarfare, the decision-makers try to protect themselves or attack an organization’s information systems for strategic or military purposes.

Currently, players or decision-makers develop strategies manually, which slows down developments in the field. ASU researchers have created a new, more comprehensive cyberwarfare model that considers a greater number of decision-makers, actions and choices. Every action, including attacks and defensive maneuvers, reveals information to adversaries about vulnerabilities and choices. The new strategies aid both humans and computers in making decisions about previously unknown vulnerabilities in their own systems.

“Our model is capable of finding better solutions than previous work within seconds, making computer-time strategic reasoning a reality,” the researchers wrote in the recognized paper. “We also provide new insights, compared to previous models, on the impact of optimal strategies.”

Using this approach and strong scientific methods, the authors developed an improved cyberwarfare strategy and tested it on a previous Cyber Reasoning System entered into the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge. In that competition, teams designed computer systems to identify flaws and protect their host systems.

“Our paper highlights the importance of making the right move in cybersecurity,” Bao said. “It reminds people that a software security technique has its practical merit only to the extent it can be used to achieve a security goal, such as protecting national computing resources.”

For the original paper, which was presented at the 30th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium in 2017, Bao and five other researchers from across the country applied game theory toward advancing the human decision-making process.

Their winning paper was selected from 28 nominations of published papers in 2017.

“This is exactly the type of high-impact cybersecurity research we are conducting at ASU,” said Adam Doupé, associate director for the Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics. “It shows the strength of our new faculty.”

For Jay (a pseudonym), a fifth-year doctoral student originally from China, the road to academic and interpersonal success has been a long one. Originally starting on his doctoral journey in 2010, first at smaller Midwest and East Coast research institutions and finally at Arizona State University, Jay faced numerous challenges. 

Atop the strenuous research and academic expectations, Jay faced the additional challenges familiar to any stranger in a new country and culture. Mentors and mentees from the HUES LGBTQ+ mentor program receive the Catalyst award. Download Full Image

And on top of that, Jay had a small secret: He’s gay.

An unmet need

Perceiving an unmet need within an underrepresented graduate student population, the Graduate College launched the HUES LGBTQ+ Mentoring Program in August 2017. Partnering members of the LGBTQ+ faculty, staff and graduate student communities with self-identified LGBTQ+ undergraduate and graduate students, HUES offers one-on-one mentoring, community engagement, and programming to foster support in identity navigation and community building.

With national statistics estimating between 6 and 10 percent of current college-going students identify as LGBTQ+, a potential 6,000 to 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students at ASU identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. 

“It is important that the navigation of multiple identities be a part of any larger conversation around the academic support and retention of our graduate students,” said Alfredo J. Artiles, dean of the Graduate College. “At ASU and through the Graduate College, we are fostering the development not only of world-class scholars and future knowledge leaders but are having conversations institutionally around resilience, culture and community membership as key to the successful navigation of these identities.”

HUES is part of the mentoring suite that is one of the cornerstones of the Graduate College’s community-engagement portfolio. HUES serves both undergraduate and graduate student populations, though graduate students currently constitute the majority of mentee applicants. 

“At the undergraduate level,” said Zachary Reeves-Blurton, HUES creator and program manager within the Graduate College, “our LGBTQ+ students have so many opportunities for connection, support, advocacy and leadership. A perennial issue faced by many graduate students here is something of a disconnect from our university-wide student engagement initiatives. As a university, we are very adept at engaging our undergraduates in community-building initiatives and programming. As a graduate student, you are often slightly more isolated.”

Finding a new continent — Jay's story

For many graduate students in HUES, this is their only university engagement outside their own department. 

“Everybody I hang out with is in my academic program,” Jay said. "Beyond that, I have some friends I have met at academic conferences or when I did my internship, as well as people I met at other universities I have been to.”

Like many graduate students from underrepresented communities, ASU wasn’t Jay’s first graduate institution. Previous to his arrival in 2012, he was admitted to and started doctorate work at two other institutions. But Jay didn't have anyone within his limited, mostly academic circle with whom he could share and confide in. As a gay man struggling to reconcile his sexual orientation with the cultural expectations of both his home country and his adoptive one, Jay transferred to another institution within a year.  

“I had a great [research] adviser who came to ASU,” Jay said. “So I came here.”

Despite his close academic working relationship with his adviser and finding support after coming out to peers in his program, Jay, a computer science student, still struggled to find others in his primarily heterosexual, male-dominated field with whom he could discuss matters of identity. 

“I always felt alone,” he explained. “It’s really hard, right? You have nobody to share (identity-related fears or challenges) with. You sometimes really feel desperate.”

When he learned about HUES in fall 2017, Jay signed up, eager to begin making meaningful connections within the ASU LGBTQ+ community.

Finding that community and commonality was groundbreaking for Jay. 

“It’s like you find a new continent,” he said. “Like you find a new area … something you’ve never known about before.”

Over the course of their mentoring relationship, Jay and his mentor met twice a month — or more, occasionally — to discuss everything from Jay’s hesitation to come out to colleagues once in the workplace to the best ways to meet friends and explore non-academic interests. When community events came along that Jay might be interested in — like Phoenix’s Rainbows Festival or community performances — his mentor often went out of his way to include Jay. Jay’s mentor was at his doctoral defense in October and invited Jay along for a flight-seeing tour of the Phoenix area guided by his partner, a licensed pilot.

Now, after three semesters working together, Jay and his mentor are parting ways: Jay is completing his degree and taking a position in California, and his mentor is pursuing a career opportunity on the East Coast.

Asked if he and his mentor had plans to keep in touch, Jay was enthusiastic. 

“Yeah, yeah!” he said. “We will visit each other.”

Finding a family here — Bea's story

At her previous institution in a fairly liberal state, Bea (also a pseudonym), a doctoral student, found a supportive and visible community of allies and advocates in her academic department, including fellow LGBTQ+ students and faculty. This was instrumental in her decision to begin the process of coming out.

Taken under the wing of a fellow LGBTQ+ student, Bea remembers that “something just hit me … like hope.” She said, "You need to be confident in yourself because I really wasn’t confident in myself at the time. She sort of believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, she made me realize (I was) OK.”

The encouragement and support she received in navigating both her identity and her academic pathway eventually led Bea, who was struggling in both areas at the time, to continue on to doctoral work. 

At ASU, Bea immediately found a supportive and inclusive environment in her academic department and research group, though none were members of the LGBTQ+ community. Bea was drawn to HUES by the opportunity to expand her own limited LGBTQ+ network.

“I don’t know a lot of (LGBTQ+) people,” said Bea. “(Strong interpersonal relationships) are something I haven’t quite had since I moved here. Because my family’s out of state, my mentor is like a mother figure. I feel like that would be exaggerating, but I feel like I have a family here now.”

Like Jay, Bea’s mentor has introduced her to a wider network within the ASU LGBTQ+ community, and this, in turn, has provided her with inspiration and a renewed confidence that impacts her academic focus. “It’s great seeing who the LGBTQ+ faculty and community members are and that they can be really confident being gays and lesbians. And they’re so accomplished — it’s quite amazing.”

As it did for Jay, seeing other LGBTQ+ academics helped normalize an experience that has been a somewhat isolating one, up to this point. 

“She’s been just a great example,” Bea said of her mentor. “It helped me visualize a life, you know?” 

Catalyzing change

The ASU Catalyst Awards, an annual recognition ceremony by the Committee for Campus Inclusion (CCI) and the Office of Inclusion and Community Engagement, recognizes the impact HUES mentors have had for students like Jay and Bea.

“The work of inclusivity is woven into so much of what we do at ASU as a part of its charter,” said Stanlie James, vice provost for inclusion and community engagement. “The mandate of CCI is to educate around issues of inclusion and raise the visibility of efforts university-wide to create a sustained ecosystem of inclusivity and equality.”

Zachary Reeves-Blurton shows off the Catalyst award bestowed to the HUES LGBTQ+ mentor program by the Committee for Campus Inclusion and the Office of Inclusion and Community Engagement.

That’s where the Catalyst Awards come in. With inclusivity embedded within so much of what the institution does, the Catalyst Awards are CCI’s way of acknowledging and recognizing efforts to inspire and ignite social transformation and inclusion beyond the scope of expectation.

“It’s about acknowledging a job well done,” James said. “It’s about, at the end of the day, saying, ‘Hey, this team isn’t giving 100 percent; they’re giving 110 percent!’”

“It’s such an honor to be nominated,” said Shannon Lank, a HUES mentor and frequent panelist at HUES community programming. “And it was an even bigger surprise to receive the award.”

For Reeves-Blurton a defining moment was watching the mentors walk to the podium to shake hands with James and receive the award while their mentees cheered in the audience. “This is an exceptional group of mentors,” said Reeves-Blurton. “I’ve talked to the mentees in the hallways after panel discussions and it's clear the impact the mentors are having on their students is tangible.”

Jay and Bea's stories, as well as numerous other HUES participants, are Reeves-Blurton’s motivation as he pushes to expand HUES. 

“Some of the stories I hear are just incredible,” he said. “I’m so proud of what these mentorships are accomplishing. These mentors, in sharing their experiences, incorporating these students into their larger networks, giving them a shoulder to lean on here at ASU — it’s fantastic.”

For now, the bulk of HUES programming and mentoring partnerships are based on the Tempe campus. 

“We’re just starting to connect mentors and mentees downtown,” said Reeves-Blurton, “and I’m excited to start seeing interest picking up at West and Poly, too.” 

By next year, he hopes to see HUES programming taking place across all four campuses.

“Inclusion is more than just talking about creating opportunities for our students,” he said. “It’s about actually doing the work. That’s a long process, and sometimes it’s a rough road, but receiving this award tells us that we’re at least on the right track.”

The HUES program is one of two mentoring programs operated out of the Graduate College. For more information or to apply to be a mentor or mentee, visit graduate.asu.edu/professional-development/mentoring.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of profiles for fall 2018 commencement. Read about more graduates. 

Karthik Subramaniam set out to solve a problem that had never been attempted before. He just didn’t know what that problem was. Karthik Subramaniam. Download Full Image

Luckily for him, his graduate advisor, Professor Kaushal Rege, had one ready for him to tackle: to affordably and easily verify the dosage of radiation delivered to cancer patients.

Subramaniam is the recipient of the spring 2019 Dean’s Dissertation Award for his dissertation “Radiation-induced nanoparticle formation as novel means of in vivo/in vitro dosimetry.”

Radiotherapy is one of the most commonly employed forms of treatment for cancer. One of the big challenges during radiation treatment is the ability to verify the radiation dose delivered to the patient.

“Available sensors for radiation dose measurement are either expensive, cumbersome to operate, require trained professionals for operation and/or lack post-irradiation stability,” Subramaniam said. “What we set out to accomplish was to develop a sensor that is easy to fabricate and operate.”

This sensor, upon exposure to radiation, changes color and the change in color is proportional to the amount of radiation the sensor was exposed to.

“What we have accomplished so far, and there is still a long way to go in advancing what we have done, is unique,” said Subramaniam. “That was exciting enough for me to keep on going and pursue this as my thesis work.” 

He won second place in the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum poster session at the 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineering Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

One of Subramaniam’s best memories associated with ASU happened before he even arrived on campus.

“It was the moment I received the offer from ASU to pursue a doctoral degree there,” he said. “I still remember as clear as day how happy I was after I got the offer.”

Subramaniam’s passion for engineering started early; his father is a professor of chemical engineering in his native India. That passion steered him toward ASU as he wanted to pursue his own research goals.

“The biggest reason for me to enroll at ASU was the ambition shown by the university to grow and develop into one of the top research-oriented schools in the country,” he says. “Since 2012, when I began my doctoral degree in chemical engineering, the number of faculty recruited has steadily gone up, justifying my choice of school.”

Subramaniam mentored undergraduate students at ASU on their Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative projects and master’s degree students for their theses.

“My mentees had varied educational backgrounds and I had to adapt and relearn things so that they could all constructively contribute to the growth of the project,” he said. “But the times when they start attempting creative experiments independently or suggest inventive ideas for my thesis made it all worth my time and effort.”

After he graduates, Subramaniam is looking into postdoctoral positions with aspirations of teaching.

“I am looking to gain a different set of expertise to complement the skills I already have, which will be useful in a potential career in academia,” he says. “My long-term career aspiration is to be a faculty member. I dream of a life where I can create an environment where people can be curious, just like kids.” 

His advice for his fellow students and researchers is to not dismiss a “failed” experiment.

“Learn from them about why it ‘failed,’” Subramaniam said. “I learned a lot from my numerous failed experiments.”

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of profiles for fall 2018 commencement. Read about more graduates. 

Growing up, Sylvia Faszczewski had an affinity for math and hands-on projects. This skill set drew her to the field of engineering. Sylvia Faszczewski. Download Full Image

“As many other college students can relate to, I struggled to decide upon a specific area in engineering to pursue,” said Faszczewski, a construction engineering major in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. “But I saw the most growth and opportunity to make an impact through engineering.”

After receiving valuable advice from Kristen Parrish, an associate professor of construction engineering, Faszczewski discovered the perfect fit. She found the undergraduate program offered a rigorous engineering challenge and also gave her the freedom to choose a career in engineering design or construction management.

“It was the best of both worlds,” says Faszczewski. “I could not see myself in any other degree program.”

Faszczewski’s hard work reflected her passion for the field, earning her the Robert J. Wheeler Memorial Scholarship and the Charles and Nancy O’Bannon Scholarship for Construction to support her academic studies.

Faszczewski found most professors in the construction engineering program had industry experience or were currently working in industry. One example is Chase Farnsworth, a faculty associate in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment who serves as a senior project development manager at the construction company Mortenson.

“Some of the most valuable information I’ve received is advice based on true industry experience from professors,” said Faszczewski. “The information isn’t something students would be able to find in a textbook, which makes it priceless.”

Outside of the classroom, Faszczewski focused on supporting aspiring female builders with a “we can do it” mentality. She served as co-president of ASU’s Advancing Women in Construction initiative, an industry-led mentorship and grant program aimed at increasing the number of women in the construction management program and seeing them successfully graduate.

The women in the program also serve as role models for K-12 students at education outreach events, such as the Annual Wagon Build or Girls-Make-A-Thon.

“I’ve been given the privilege to create a strong and positive impact on the female construction community,” said Faszczewski. “My AWIC team has been able to reach (from) top construction female executives to young elementary school girls. We’re spreading the message that although we may be a minority in a male-dominated field, we can do it, and we can do it exceptionally well.”

After graduation, Faszczewski has accepted a full-time position with Mortenson Construction's Wind Energy Group. She’ll be traveling around the country building wind turbines.