Francesca Bordogna’s (PLS) current book manuscript, The Pragmatist Hotel, examines a group of European, especially Italian, philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, visual artists, novelists, journalists, and politicians, who in the early decades of the twentieth century endorsed the philosophy of pragmatism and entertained complex relationships with William James and Charles S. Peirce. She is also working on an essay on the relationships between mathematics and metaphysics in William James’s late metaphysical works, for an Oxford University Press volume. Her article “‘Unstiffening Ideas’: The Italian Magic Pragmatists and William James” will appear in Worlds of US History (James Kloppenberg, Joel Isaac, and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen eds., Oxford University Press, in press). She gave an invited lecture at the University of Chicago’s Fishbein Center for the History of the Human Sciences and presented papers at various conferences, including HOPOS 2014, S-USIH 2014, and SAAP 2015.
Kevin Bowyer (Computer Science and Engineering) served as General Chair of the Eleventh IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2015) held in Ljubljana, Slovenia in May of 2015. He is also serving as General Chair of the IEEE Seventh International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS 2015), to be held in Arlington, Virginia and is serving as Chair of the Research and Innovation Track at the Biometrics 2015 conference, to be held in London in October 2015.
Michael J. Crowe (PLS, emeritus), though retired, continues to be active in research and publication. Most recently, he co-edited with Nicholas Ayo a collection of ten papers by Fred Crosson titled Ten Philosophical Essays in the Christian Tradition (Notre Dame Press, 2015). He has published two essays on aspects of the history of the extraterrestrial life debate, the longer co-written with Dr. Matthew Dowd, an HPS graduate and a manuscript editor at Notre Dame Press. In the last two years he has presented papers at various conferences at Notre Dame and gave a talk to the physics department at the University of Chicago on the history of vector analysis.
Michael Desch (Political Science) published “Technique Trumps Relevance: The Professionalization of Political Science and the Marginalization of Security Studies” in Perspectives on Politics Vol. 13, No. 2, “What Do Policymakers Want From Us? Results of a Survey of Current and Former Senior National Security Decision-makers” in International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2, “Response to Comments on ‘Technique Trumps Relevance’” in Perspectives on Politics Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 2015), “The Church of St. Andy” in The National Interest No. 155, and (with Paul Avey) "But If You Try Sometime, You (Might) Get (Some of) What You Need: A Response to Goldgeier, Weaver, and Peterson" in International Studies Quarterly online forum. You can find his essay “Show Some Restraint” in the Spring 2015 issue of Notre Dame Magazine, and his op-ed “Is MH 17 Disaster Result of Tragic Blunder?” on CNN. In October, he served as the conference director for The Liberty Fund's “Liberty and Responsibility in the Nuclear Age” conference in White Sulphur Springs, WV, and gave talks on “Fostering Greater Scholarly Relevance: The Perspective From Higher Education Leaders and the Philanthropic Community” for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and “Is A Grand Strategy of Restraint Politically Viable?” at the Charles Koch Grand Strategy Lecture Series in Washington, DC. You can find his television interview “Former President George H.W. Bush and the Israel-Palestine Conflict” on al-Jazeera/America. Most recently, he gave the inaugural lecture “Privacy in a Free Society” at The Liberty Fund in Washington, DC in May 2015.
Jean Dibble (Art) was invited to exhibit her work at the 7th International Printmaking Biennial of Douro – 2014 at the Douro Museum in Lamego, Portugal in 2014.
Celia Deane-Drummond, Thomas Stapleford, and Darcia Narvaez were awarded a grant for their project titled "Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science." This is a three-year, $3.1 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust for a multi-disciplinary study of the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dispositions that are fostered in daily practice of laboratory research in biology.
Agustin Fuentes (Anthropology) and Celia Deane-Drummond (Theology) won a $1.8 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to co-direct the transdisciplinary Human Distinctiveness Project, which seeks to advance research at the intersection of theology and evolutionary anthropology. Fuentes also published a response to Nicholas Wade's book on race and biology. On Slate and Savage Minds he commented on extraterrestrial life and the events in Ferguson, Missouri.
Christopher Hamlin (History) published More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). He also delivered the James Bryne Lecture at Depaul University on April 9 titled "Turning over the Right Rocks: Finding Legacies of Catholic Environmentalism" and the Robert P. Hudson lecture at the University of Kansas Medical School on May 7 titled “How Malaria became a disease -- and what that disease was.”
David Hernandez's (Classics) archaeological research in Butrint, Albania is featured on the ND website here, along with a video on location. He returned to teaching in 2015 after receiving a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and a fellowship from Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library Foundation.
Don Howard (Philosophy) had a number of his papers on Einstein and quantum theory translated into Italian and published as Anche Einstein gioca a dadi La lunga lotta con la meccanica quantistica (Carocci, 2015). He is currently working with Maj. Gen. Robert Latiff on a project to produce educational modules based upon the DARPA-NRC report titled "Emerging and Readily Available Technologies and National Security: A Framework for Addressing Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues." Powerpoints, videos, and other materials will be posted on the Reilly Center website this summer.
Bruce Huber (Law School) published in The Georgetown Law Journal an article called, "The Durability of Private Claims to Public Property," as well as an op-ed on CNN about the ruptured oil pipeline in Santa Barbara ("Pipeline rupture a warning of spills to come?", CNN, May 21, 2015). In March, he delivered a Distinguished Lecture in Energy for the Center for Sustainable Energy at Notre Dame called “The U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan.” He also delivered presentations about various matters in environmental law in Tel Aviv, Dublin, London, and at Arizona State, University of Georgia, Washington University, University of Florida, and Denver University. In November of 2014, he organized a workshop on “Valuation, Institutions, and Environment: Global Perspectives,” at the Notre Dame London Global Gateway.
In Spring 2015, Lynn Joy (Philosophy) taught for the first time her new course on Women and Philosophy, which asks what roles a philosopher's own life and personal identity should play in defining and evaluating his or her philosophical achievements.
Janet Kourany (Philosophy) was an Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently organizing a conference with Kevin Elliott (HPS Ph.D., 2004) and Anjan Chakravartty (Philosophy) called "The Collaboration Conundrum: Special Interests and Scientific Research" to take place at ND November 5-6, 2015, for which she received a 2015 Large Henkels grant of $10,000. She gave papers this year in Waterloo (in August), Chicago (a symposium paper at PSA in November), Ghent (also in November), Edinburgh (in March), and Dubrovnik (in April).
Marya Lieberman's (Chemistry) paper analytical device (PAD) project in Kenya, the low-cost test which helps identify counterfeit and low quality pharmaceuticals in the field, was featured on the BBC Worldwide show HealthCheck.
J. Nicholas Laneman (Wireless Institute) is part of an interdisciplinary team offering a MOOC (massive open online course) on edX, titled Understanding Wireless: Technology, Economics, and Policy. Unlike other MOOCs, Understanding Wireless offers students in the U.S. and Canada an opportunity to receive $5,000 to implement their project plan to use wireless technology to improve their local community based on what they learned from the course.
Routledge Press (Oxford, U.K.) has just published a new Handbook on Military Ethics, edited by Visiting Scholar George Lucas, featuring a lead essay by Notre Dame's famed philosophy professor (Emeritus), Alasdair MacIntyre, and a Foreword by the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey.
Robert (Jay) Malone, Executive Director of the History of Science Society, based at Notre Dame, was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February 2015. He continues to serve as the HSS delegate to AAAS’s Section X (Societal Impact of Science and Engineering), is active in Section L (History and Philosophy of Science) and serves as HSS delegate to the National Humanities Alliance (which advocates for the humanities in the U.S.). He is also a member of the Conference of Administrative Officers of the American Council of Learned Societies and represents the HSS at the American Historical Association (the HSS is formally affiliated with AAAS and the AHA). He continues to work on the field diaries of B.L.C. Wailes who, in the 1840s, conducted one of the earlier state geological surveys in the U.S.
Kate Marshall (English) was awarded the 2014 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture for her book Corridor: Media Architectures in American Fiction. The award, presented by the Media Ecology Association, honors works that focus on the ethnographic or intercultural analysis of communication, perception, cognition, consciousness, media, technology, material culture, and/or the natural environment. She also earned tenure in May.
Mark McKenna (Law School) gave a talk at the University of Washington School of Law in April titled "Campbell’s Unfortunate Legacy for the Right of Publicity, Fair Use in the Digital Age: Understanding the Impact of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose’s Transformative Use Test." He also served as a commentator at "Creative Production Without IP, Innovation Law Beyond IP 2" at Yale Law School in March, and participated in the NYU School of Law's Innovation Policy Colloquium, the University of Illinois College of Law IP Colloquium, the St. Louis University School of Law's Faculty Workshop, and Florida State University College of Law's Faculty Workshop, all in 2015. In October, he presented "Qualitative Studies of Consumers Becoming Confused During Shopping" at the NYU Empirical IP Research Conference, and "Trademark Year in Review" at the Houston Institute on Intellectual Property Law. Most recently, he presented "Substitute or Complement?," at the ETH/NYU Conference on Transatlantic Innovation Scholarship, "Design Protection → Design Innovation?" on June 11 in Zurich.
Phil Mirowski’s (College of Arts & Letters) book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) has been issued in German and Spanish translations this year. His next book, with co-author Edward Nik-Khah, will be The Knowledge we have Lost in Information: a history of the economics of information, (Oxford) which will be accompanied by a video lecture series from INET. He also gave an invited lecture to the Copenhagen Business School on the topic. He was an invited speaker at the New York Review of Books conference on “What’s Wrong with the Economy—and Economists” and you can find the video of this talk at: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2015/mar/29/whats-wrong-with-the-economy/
John Nagle (Law School) wrote an op-ed on the scenic value of the Everglades for Fox News and spoke on his national park law article "How National Park Law Really Works" at the University of Colorado Law School.
The Psychonomics Society (the leading organization for cognitive psychology) has awarded Jessica Payne (Psychology) with their young investigator award. She also gave a keynote address at the International Association for the Study of Sleep and Dreams titled "Stress, Sleep, and Emotional Memory Consolidation.”
Laurel Riek (Computer Science) published almost two-dozen papers this academic year, and became Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Human Machine Systems and Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Her research has been featured on Phys.org and CBC’s The Spark podcast, and she was featured as one of 20 under 40 faculty doing unique research in engineering in Prism Magazine (the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education). She even served as the inspiration for a fictional robotics professor in James Patterson’s new YA novel House of Robots. Along with Reilly Fellow Don Howard, Riek worked on a code of ethics for human-robot interaction practitioners this year. They presented their work at the We Robot conference and it was later featured on NBC News and the Robots podcast.
John Sitter (English) gave the annual humanities lecture in April at Otterbein College on the subject, "Teaching the Future: Liberal Education in the Anthropocene Academy" and met with a faculty discussion group focusing on the environmental humanities.
Phillip Sloan (PLS, emeritus) continues his work with the Center and the HPS program. He has recently published “Molecularizing Chicago, 1945-1965: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the University of Chicago Biophysics Program” in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (44: 364-412). He has also completed a major revision of his entry, “Evolution to 1872” for the Stanford On-Line Encyclopedia of Philosophy. With former Reilly Center Director Gerald McKenny, and former Reilly Center Research Coordinator Kathleen Eggleson, he has recently published Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) that came from the Reilly-Center sponsored conference commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Tom Stapleford (PLS) received two major grants. The first, "Economic Statistics and the Challenge of Democratic Control," is a $100k grant from the NSF that will allow him to be on leave in AY 2015-2016. The second grant is for a large project on which he is co-PI with Celia Deane-Drummond and Darcia Narvaez titled "Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science."
Jim Turner (History) retired in 2015 and was honored with a conference titled "Humanities & Divinity: Reckoning with Intellectual and Religious History."
Laura Walls (English) has departed a bit from science studies to finish a biography of Henry David Thoreau, supported originally by a Guggenheim fellowship and now by an NEH fellowship. One recent spin-off from this work is an essay on Thoreau and the philosophy of measurement titled "Of Compass, Chain and Sounding Line: Taking Thoreau's Measure," forthcoming in Reasoning in Measurement, edited by Alfred Nordmann and Nicola Mößner (Pickering and Chatto, 2015).
Michael Wiescher developed a new course for science and engineering majors in the spring titled The Physics of Climate. Topics included climate history and development, solar energy transfer and budget, principles of ocean and atmospheric physics, climate models, and climate change. He also gave a talk at the Indiana Historical Society in May entitled "From marbles to mummies: on scientific methods in history research."