Personal Mention
Kim Sestili received a Staff Advocacy Award from the Office of Human Resources this past Monday for her instrumental work on the new Parental Leave program, which was developed by Human Resources and Staff Council. As chair of Staff Council’s Parental Leave Focus Group, she helped organize a campus forum and launched a university-wide questionnaire to educate the campus community and gauge its importance among staff. She then helped to draft the initial proposal for the program. “This was a true team effort between Staff Council and Human Resources with the support and backing from passionate staff and faculty,” Sestili said. “Implementing a parental leave policy supports ‘One CMU’ from the Strategic Plan 2025, enhances the reputation of the university and will help to increase staff recruitment and retention.” Sestili is a business administrator for University Libraries. Find out more about the new Parental Leave program.
Mechanical Engineering Professor Sarah Bergbreiter and Assistant Professor B. Reeja Jayan have received Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) awards from the U.S. Army. The DURIP awards support university researchers with the purchases of vital laboratory equipment for current research and the development of new ideas and techniques.
Bergbreiter leads the Micro Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon and is focused on research at the intersection of microsystems and robotics. The lab uses microsystems knowledge to design and fabricate small scale sensors and actuators for larger robots, as well as small mobile robots. Bergbreiter was funded to purchase a sensor to measure forces in these fast, small-scale systems.
Jayan’s lab synthesizes ceramic materials using electromagnetic fields and investigates how these fields influence the atomic structure and properties of these materials. To conduct her research Jayan and her team are creating a tool, called COMPACT, to monitor the structural, phase and chemical transformations in materials. The DURIP award is supporting the purchase of materials to build COMPACT. Find out more.
Colin Clarke, an assistant teaching professor in the Institute for Politics and Strategy, has recently authored a new book titled “After the Caliphate: The Islamic State & the Future Terrorist Diaspora.” In this timely analysis, Clarke takes stock of the Islamic State — its roots, its evolution and its monumental setbacks — to assess the road ahead. He argues the declaration of the Islamic State in 2014 was an anomaly. Clarke says the future of the global jihadist movement will look very much like its past with divided groups of militants dispersing to new battlefields, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, where they will join existing civil wars, establish safe havens and sanctuaries, and seek ways of conducting attacks in the West that inspire new followers. Find out more.
Men's golf coach Dan Rodgers was selected as the Golf Pride Grips/Golf Coaches Association of America Division III Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year. He won the award in 2017 as well. Rodgers led CMU to its best finish in golf this season as the Tartans finished 11th at the 2019 NCAA Division III Championships. It was the third NCAA championship appearance and second in the last two seasons for the program. This past season was highlighted by sophomore Jason Li, who became the first Tartan to be named a PING First Team All-American. Under Rodgers, Li finished the NCAA Championship in 11th place, the highest individual finish in program history. The Tartans ended the season ranked seventh in the nation by Golfstat.