In 2024, Nithyanand joined fellow UIowaCS faculty Peng Jiang as one of only four IOWA NSF CAREER Awardees for that calendar year.
He was subsequently named an Emeriti-Faculty Scholar, recognizing this prestigious award and his leadership role in the SPARTA lab. His research is emphasized on privacy and social computing.
In November, he was the Graduate Research Symposium Keynote with a talk entitled "The Quest for Transparency and Accountability in the Online Data Ecosystem."
Join us in congratulating him for this momentous achievement!
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has announced the recipients of its prestigious awards for faculty who received a promotion to tenured associate professor and full professor, and to associate professor and full professor of instruction.
Eight faculty members will receive the college’s esteemed Dean’s Scholar, Collegiate Scholar, Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction, and Distinguished Professor of Instruction awards.
CLAS Dean’s Scholar Award
The Dean's Scholar Award recognizes faculty candidates for promotion who excel in both teaching and scholarship or creative work. The two-year award carries a one-time financial award. The following faculty were selected among those promoted to associate professor with tenure:
Jamel Brinkley, Department of English and Creative Writing
Brinkley is an accomplished author and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His 2023 short story collection, Witness: Stories, was the winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, and his short story collection A Lucky Man received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
Kristi Hendrickson, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Hendrickson’s research focuses on how listeners and readers recognize spoken and written words, how they attach words to meaning, and how they use words earlier in a sentence to predict upcoming words.
Rishab Nithyanand, Department of Computer Science
Nithyanand’s research is broadly in the areas of privacy and social computing. His research aims to improve transparency and accountability in the online data ecosystem.
CLAS Collegiate Scholar Award
The Collegiate Scholar Award was inaugurated in 2008 to recognize mid-career faculty for exceptional achievement. The award carries a financial award to support the recipient's teaching and research initiatives. The following faculty were selected among those promoted to full professor:
Kaveh Akbar, Department of English
Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr! landed on the New York Times Best Seller list and Top 10 Books of 2024. The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Akbar is an accomplished author who has also had his poetry published in the The New Yorker, PBS NewsHour, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and The New York Times.
Drew Kitchen, Department of Anthropology
Kitchen is an anthropological geneticist with interests in human population history and the origins of human infectious disease. He uses an evolutionary perspective to investigate the processes that have produced observed, modern distributions of human genetic and pathogen/parasite diversity.
CLAS Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction Award
The Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction Award recognizes candidates who excel in teaching, institutional and professional service, and their record of publications at the time of advancement. The two-year award carries a one-time financial award.
Kelly Danaher, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Danaher’s research interests include self-stereotyping, stereotype threat, and performance in stereotyped domains. Her research has been featured in publications across the country.
Anna Morrison, Department of Cinematic Arts
Morrison is a writer, filmmaker, and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first book of poems, Long Exposure, was published in 2023 and won the Moon City Poetry Prize.
CLAS Distinguished Professor of Instruction Award
The Distinguished Professor of Instruction recognizes candidates who excel in teaching, institutional and professional service, and their record of publications at time of advancement. The two-year award carries a one-time financial award, which may be used for research and teaching initiatives.
Cinda Coggins-Mosher, Department of Rhetoric
Coggins-Mosher's scholarly interests include critical thinking, uses of propaganda, hypertext fiction and theory, and more. Among her faculty teaching awards are the Hubbard-Walder Award for Excellence in Teaching and President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence.