Alumni Profiles

Benny Freeman Distinguished Chair

Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation (Sponsored by CSIRO)

Benny Freeman is the Richard B. Curran Centennial Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1988. In 1988 and 1989, he served as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI), Laboratoire Physico-Chimie Structurale et Macromoléculaire in Paris, France. Dr. Freeman’s research is in polymer science and engineering specifically in mass transport of small molecules in solid polymers. His laboratory focuses on gas and liquid separations using polymer and polymer-based membranes, developing and characterizing new materials for hydrogen separation, natural gas purification, carbon capture, water/ion separation, desalination, and fouling resistant membranes. His research is described in 395 publications and 22 patents/patent applications. He has co-edited 5 books on these topics.

He has won numerous awards, including the PMSE Distinguished Service Award (2016), Fellow of the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Division of ACS (2014), AIChE Clarence (Larry) G. Gerhold Award (2013), Joe J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award from The University of Texas (2013), Society of Plastics Engineers International Award (2013), Roy W. Tess Award in Coatings from the PMSE Division of ACS (2012), the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science (2009), AIChE Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology (2008), and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Project of the Year (2001). He is a Fellow of the AAAS, AIChE, ACS, and the PMSE and IECR Divisions of ACS. He has served as chair of the PMSE Division of the ACS, chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Membranes: Materials and Processes, President of the North American Membrane Society, chair of the Membranes Area of the Separations Division of the AIChE, and chair of the Separations Division of AIChE.

Benny’s interests in new materials design for separations important for clean water, clean energy, and manufacturing process intensification aligns synergistically with the world-leading materials science and characterization research at CSIRO. He will work closely with colleagues at CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and other institutions across Australia to lay the groundwork for a long and productive, bilateral collaboration to develop, characterize and understand, at a fundamental level, disruptive, over the horizon, separations membranes for applications such as air separations, desalination, high value materials recovery from waste (e.g., waste to energy), toxic materials separation from waste and recycle/recovery of critical and strategic materials and metals. Benny has a strong interest in seeing results from fundamental research reduced to practice, which is also a topic of common interest with his Australian colleagues.

On a personal front, Benny is intensely interested in exploring the historical and cultural heritage of Australia, discovering the extraordinary natural beauty of Australia and sailing with current and new-found friends and colleagues.

Linda Fetters Senior Scholars

Linda earned a BS in Physical Therapy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a MS in Physical Therapy from Boston University and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Brandeis University. She is Professor and Sykes Family Chair in Pediatric Physical Therapy, Health and Development, Division of Biokinesiology & Physical Therapy and Department of Pediatrics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. She directs the Development of Infant Motor Performance Laboratory where her research focuses on improving the quality of life for infants and children with movement difficulties due to neurological insults including the impact of cerebral palsy, in-utero drug exposure on sensori-motor development and most recently on the coordination of infants born prematurely. She developed very early physical therapy treatments using an innovative computerized mobile paradigm for those infants who are at risk for developing cerebral palsy. Linda teaches development, motor control, pediatric physical therapy and evidence-based physical therapy practice. She is Editor-in-Chief of Pediatric Physical Therapy, the journal of the Section on Pediatrics, American Physical Therapy Association and a member of the Editorial Board of Revista Brasileira De Fisioterapia (Physical Therapy Journal of Brazil). Professor Fetters is co-author of the textbook Evidence for Physical Therapy Practice, published by FA Davis, 2012.

She received the Research Award from the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and the Pediatric Section Research Award of the APTA. She served on the Scientific Review Committee of the Foundation for Physical Therapy. Linda is a Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the APTA, the highest honor the association bestows upon its members. She has taught and given scientific presentations throughout the United States and Sweden, the Netherlands, Tanzania, Taiwan, Japan and Brazil.

Linda will work with an international team, headed by Professor Iona Novak of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute to collaboratively develop an international clinical practice guideline for the identification, assessment and treatment of infants (birth to 2 years) who are at risk for or diagnosed with cerebral palsy. She plans to visit educational programs and clinical environments that serve infants and children who have developmental challenges. This is Linda’s first experience in Australia and she plans to explore the culture, communities and passions of Australia.

Melvin Christopher Jenks Senior Scholars

Chris teaches and writes on the law of armed conflict. He is the co-author of a law of armed conflict textbook, co-editor of a forthcoming war crimes casebook, and served as a peer reviewer of the Talinn Manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare.

He has published articles on drones, child soldiers, extraordinary rendition, law of war detention, targeting and government contractors. He has also spoken on those same topics at universities and institutes in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central and South America. Chris recently served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on U.S. military security sector reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Prior to joining the SMU faculty, Chris served for over 20 years in the military. After graduating from West Point, he was commissioned as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. Chris served as a rifle platoon leader, executive officer and in battalion and brigade staff positions in the U.S., Europe, and in deployments to Kuwait and Bosnia.

Following graduation from law school, Chris transitioned to the U.S. Army JAG Corps and was assigned as the primary international and operational law advisor near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. During this assignment, he defended Status of Forces Agreement rights of American soldiers during South Korean interrogations and trials in high profile and politically sensitive criminal cases.

Following his return to the U.S. in 2003, Chris served as the lead prosecutor in the Army’s first counterterrorism case, a fully contested, classified court-martial of a soldier attempting to aid Al Qaeda. He coordinated the investigative efforts of 30 law enforcement agents from four separate federal agencies on three continents and the Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism section nominated him for the John Marshall award for interagency cooperation.

In 2004, he deployed to Mosul, Iraq and served as chief legal advisor to a unit of over 4000 soldiers. There he provided targeting advice for the employment of artillery, close air support and direct fire weapons during enemy engagements in a city of two million people. Chris also advised investigations and served as prosecutor for crimes against the civilian population, detainee abuse, and fratricide.

Before moving to Dallas, Chris was most recently stationed in Washington D.C., holding numerous positions, including attorney adviser at the Department of State and his most recent position as chief of the International Law Branch of the Office of The Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon.

While at the Department of State, Chris served at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York City and represented the U.S. during negotiations on cultural and humanitarian resolutions pending before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly

As the Army’s international law branch chief, he oversaw the foreign exercise of criminal jurisdiction over US service members, represented the Department of Defence at status of forces agreement negotiations and served as the legal advisor to the U.S. Military Observers Group, which provides military officers to United Nations Missions around the world.

Chris’ goal in working with the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law is to identify criminal responsibility norms which will help further both the discussion and reconciliation of emerging technologies and accountability under the law of armed conflict.

Dr Sally Ursula Jane Salmon Professional Scholars

Ursula’s research is into providing quantitative, scientific bases for environmental management decisions, particularly regarding issues of water quality and water resource sustainability. Ursula started on this path through studying Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney. After a final year exchange in Sweden, Ursula entered into postgraduate studies in a multidisciplinary Swedish research program on the environmental impact of mining. In 2004 Ursula returned to Australia to take up a postdoctoral project on the acidic lakes that can form after open cut mining. Since this time, Ursula has worked on a range of research and contract projects, usually in close collaboration with industry and government stakeholders, and in all cases with the aim to quantify how surface waters, groundwater, and/or soils will evolve, under either continued current conditions or changed external forcing.

Since mid-2012, Ursula has worked on incorporating environmental isotopes into regional groundwater models for water resource assessment. The large and inaccessible nature of aquifer systems means that they are difficult to characterize; this in turn introduces uncertainty into flow models. Environmental isotopes that decay or accumulate over time, such as radiocarbon (14C), are widely used as tracers of groundwater “age”. Ursula has been working on ways to incorporate the isotopic tracers directly into groundwater models. If successful, this will result in improved groundwater model predictions and resource management tools. Furthermore, as the age-ranges that environmental isotopes are valid for can be tens or hundreds of millennia, the same tools allow investigation into what climatic conditions must have been in the past in order to create the isotopic concentrations that exist today.

Ursula will work with Prof. Steven Gorelick and colleagues at Stanford to incorporate additional environmental tracers into a modelling framework that has already been developed, in order to make the method more robust. This modelling tool will then be used to produce an analysis of paleoclimate, over the last 40,000 years or more, using data from a relatively data-rich Australian case study site. The time at Stanford and visits to other institutions will link Ursula to forerunners in the relevant fields in America, and facilitate continuation of collaboration on this and other topics upon her return to Australia.

Mary Ajamian Postgraduate Students

Mary received her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience and Behavior from Barnard College, Columbia University in 2008. She received a Columbia Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in 2007 to support her neuroimmunology-related senior thesis research at the Silver Neurobiology Laboratory. Mary investigated whether the presence of mast cells, which are immune cells best known for their role in allergy, may also promote blood vessel growth (angiogenesis) in the developing central nervous system. Mary became fascinated in neuroimmune mechanisms of normal development as well as disease and desired to pursue further study in a translational research setting.

After learning that she had a sensitivity to gluten and enrolling in Columbia University’s Institute of Human Nutrition for graduate study in 2011, she connected with Dr. Armin Alaedini, PhD who was also interested in studying the immune response to gluten and other food-related, bacterial, or self-antigens in different patient populations, including those with non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), psychiatric illness, and neurological disease. Mary began working in Dr. Alaedini’s Laboratory and Columbia University’s

Celiac Disease Center for her master’s thesis work, which received Honors. Mary’s first master’s project explored serological markers of Lyme disease in children with autism; her work was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Mary’s second master’s project aimed to investigate a potential immune response to exorphins, which are products of gluten and casein digestion in the intestinal tract, in patients with autism and schizophrenia. Mary will be continuing exorphins-related research as a Fulbright Scholar in Australia. Since beginning work at the Alaedini Laboratory as a master’s student and after graduation as laboratory manager and researcher, Mary has contributed to the publication of 4 peer-reviewed articles, including 3 first-authorships, and 3 conference abstracts with several more publications currently under review or in preparation.

Mary has also volunteered in Armenia between college and graduate school. She provided research support and non-invasive clinical care to patients at a local hospital as well as engaged in NGO work to provide medical access for an underserved community in the de-facto state of Nagorno-Karabakh.
When Mary is outside the laboratory, she enjoys volunteering in her local community, traveling, hiking, dancing, and cooking.

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) is gaining global awareness, yet there is a great lack of scientific knowledge about this condition. Individuals with NCGS have reported positive behavioral health benefits of following a gluten-free diet. Exorphin peptides derived from the digestion of gluten in the gut are a possible explanation of food’s ability to modulate brain function. These peptides exert marked effects on stress response, anxiety, memory, and emotionality as evidenced by behavioral tests in animal models, yet little is known about their role in human systems.
Mary’s Fulbright project will investigate gluten and casein’s role in the neurobehavioral and extra-intestinal symptoms of NCGS. Mary will perform immunoassay-based experiments as well as analyze data from experimental dietary and drug interventions conducted by Dr. Peter Gibson, MD and Dr. Jane Muir, PhD ‘s team at Monash University Central Clinical School/The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. Mary’s Fulbright experience will allow her to continue exorphins-related research that she started for her master’s thesis as well as connect two leading research groups at the forefront of characterizing an emerging disease entity.

Like the US, Australia experiences a deficit of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially at higher levels of academic or institutional seniority. Australia also faces educational iniquities for students of indigenous descent. As part of her community engagement, Mary seeks to mentor students from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in STEM fields, particularly female students and those of indigenous descent. She hopes to encourage a new generation’s curiosity in stem fields, bolster confidence, inspire action to reach out to potential career mentors, and understand challenges from a different cultural perspective.

Steven Burroughs Postgraduate Students

“Malaria is one of the most disruptive diseases on the planet, affecting almost a billion people worldwide and killing over 700,000 every year. The extent and impact of this crippling disease is believed to be a significant contributor to economic and political instability in the Third World.”

Mr Steven Burroughs is a recent graduate of The United States Military Academy. Through his Fulbright he will pursue a Masters in International Public Health at the University of Queensland. His particular area of interest is malaria.

“Southeast Asia is known as the world’s hotspot for drug resistant strains of Plasmodium, the group of organisms responsible for malaria, and Australia stands at the forefront of the battle to quickly identify, isolate, and track the spread of these strains,” Mr Burroughs said.

“It leads the world in these efforts as it is literally on the frontlines, but unlike other nations who primarily track and study malaria, Australia has embarked on an effort to eradicate malaria.”

“Australia is in a unique position as it is a developed Western nation that has dealt with and successfully eradicated malaria within its borders despite being neighbors with countries where malaria remains endemic.”

Steven plans to plan to learn as much as possible from Australia about what actions the United States could take to effectively contribute resources to the campaign to eradicate malaria.

“As a future Army officer, I hope to bring back the policies and techniques used successfully by our Australian counterparts and applying these procedures to our government’s operations in malaria stricken countries. If the U.S. gains an increased understanding of operating in malaria endemic environments, it can control the disease more effectively and provide aid more efficiently, thus saving lives. The experience with malarial control policy cannot be mimicked anywhere else, as no other country has been as active and as successful as Australia has been in controlling malaria at an international level,” Mr Burroughs said.

Steven has a B.S. in Life Sciences and Psychology from The United States Military Academy. He also is a member of the Gamma Sigma Epsilon (Chemistry Honor Society) and the Phi Kappa Phi (All-Discipline Honor Society). In his free time he enjoys orienteering, is a member of the Catholic Catechists and the American Chemical Society and he has worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Justin Hartley Postgraduate Students

“This scholarship will give me the opportunity to expand the service offered throughout Australia.”

Justin Hartley is a Commerce and Economics graduate from the University of Queensland, from which he received a Postgraduate Bachelor of Economics with first class honours. From July 2014, Justin will study a Mid-Career Masters in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

He will focus on public sector leadership and public policy, examining a range of healthcare issues in Australia, with a view to promoting better brain health and memory improvement, particularly in its application to the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (a very personal area of interest); and improving and expanding the quality of health care in paediatric chronic pain.

“I am a co-founder of Support Kids in Pain (SKIP); which provides free education and support to children living with chronic pain and their families. This scholarship will give me the opportunity to expand the service offered throughout Australia and more broadly, improve outcomes for children living with chronic pain through advocacy, collaboration and education.”

Laura Hayward Postgraduate Students

Laura began her research career in the Fall of 2011, in the Synthetic Biology laboratory of Dr. Stephen Fong in VCU’s Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, and since then she has had access to many opportunities. Laura participated in VCU’s Honor’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program in the summer of 2012, presented her research at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) National Conference in San Francisco in November 2013, and was published in the journal: Frontiers in Synthetic Biology for her work on “Ex Vivo DNA Assembly” in October of 2013. Over the past three years, Laura has worked on various projects including creating a promoter parts library for cyanobacteria, characterizing various cell penetrating peptides, a novel DNA assembly method and, most recently, a targeted delivery mechanism for HIV Type I treatment. Laura graduated Summa Cum Laude, and was presented with the student excellence award for her department at graduation. When Laura is not in the lab, she enjoys volunteering her time as a student ambassador for the School of Engineering. Laura went to local high schools promoting the fields of engineering, and giving tours to prospective students. Laura spends her free time running and training for 5k and 10k races, and hopes to one day run a marathon. Laura enjoys almost any outdoor sport including softball and soccer. Although these sports are some that she is most familiar with, Laura loves to learn new ones. Recently she has learned paddle boarding and is excited to one day learn more water sports including surfing and wakeboarding. Laura is also a certified scuba diver, enjoys skydiving immensely, and is an amateur photographer.

Laura plans to create a versatile cancer diagnostic probe that she hopes will increase the personalization of a patient’s treatment. Upon return to the United States, Laura hopes to enter an MD/Ph.D program and this experience will help to transition from synthetic biology to using research for medical applications. Laura wants to one day continue to contribute to the field of personalized medicine with more targeted treatments and diagnostics, and with the help of Dr. Matt Trau she hopes to build the foundation needed to accomplish this goal.

Shraddha Kashyap Postgraduate Students

Shraddha is currently a PhD candidate and a Provisionally Registered Psychologist completing a Master of Clinical Psychology, at the University of Western Australia. Shraddha’s doctoral study involves the translation of psychological research into clinical practice. Her work in the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia has involved a collaboration with Perth Clinic; a private mental health facility. She found that continuously measuring individuals’ psychological distress during treatment, rather than once at the beginning and once at the end of treatment, can improve precision in predicting adverse health outcomes, such as risk of self-injury. For example, it is often thought that all individuals who report high initial distress would be at the highest risk of self-injury. However, she has published work finding that individuals who report an early improvement in psychological distress are at a lower risk of self-injury despite beginning with high initial distress. This novel approach of continuous monitoring has the potential for more individualized, nuanced and precise risk assessment techniques that extend beyond inpatient mental health facilities and could be used to enhance mental health outcomes more broadly. Shraddha grew up in Kenya, and had lived in Jordan for one year before migrating to Australia with her family in 2002. Prior to commencing her PhD, Shraddha won a scholarship to study in Lille, France, and has since travelled around Europe, South America, North America and Asia.

Shraddha has a keen interest in refugee mental health, and hopes to find meaningful ways of helping displaced peoples begin new lives despite suffering from previous trauma.  The Fulbright Scholarship will allow Shraddha to apply her doctoral research to an asylum seeker and refugee population.  She will investigate resilience among individuals undergoing treatment at the NYU/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture.  Specifically, she will examine whether multiple measurements of psychological distress over time can help pinpoint groups of individuals who may improve more rapidly than others, and study factors associated with this resilience.  These factors would include a combination of individual and community characteristics, as well as factors related to their treatment.  Identifying these factors through quantitative and qualitative measurements would allow clinicians to isolate the most helpful aspects of treatment, and improve outcomes for more individuals.

Robert Marshall Postgraduate Students

Robert hopes to gain the skills and knowledge needed to contribute to government health policy design and implementation through a Master in Public Policy during his Fulbright program. He aims to combine his interests in clinical medicine and public policy in order to improve Australia’s health systems and reduce health inequities in disadvantaged populations. In particular, he is committed to closing the gap in Indigenous health outcomes and improving the delivery of healthcare services in rural Australia.

Robert has worked in a number of challenging clinical settings both within rural and remote Australia and overseas, including as a volunteer in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti and more recently helping to develop medical education and training in Somaliland. He is a passionate advocate for improving Australia’s health systems and has held leadership and advocacy positions as the National President of the Australian Medical Students’ Association, member of the Australian Medical Association Taskforce on Indigenous Health and Junior Clinical Lead for the Western Australian Department of Health’s clinical service improvement unit.

As a leader in health technology and research in the Asia-Pacific region, Robert believes that Australia will also play an important role in the future of global health development. He hopes to foster strong research connections between Australia and the United States during his time as a Fulbright Scholar and to some day be involved in the development of equitable and sustainable health systems in low- and middle-income countries.

As an undergraduate student Robert completed a combined Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree and spent a year on student exchange studying at l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. It was his time at Sciences Po that sparked his interest in the interplay between health policy, health economics and political reform to drive better clinical care.

Craig William McCormack Postgraduate Students

Craig is a PhD candidate at The University of Western Australia (UWA), in Perth, Australia. He holds an Australian Postgraduate Award, allowing him to research the discipline of Space Architecture and how the built environment in outer space is situated within and impacts the terrestrial discipline of architecture. Craig received an NVQ Level IV in Music from The London Music School in 1999, a Bachelor of Arts (Art) from the Curtin University of Technology in 2006, a Bachelor of Environmental Design from UWA in 2009, and a Masters of Architecture with High Distinction from UWA in 2011. As well as teaching and lecturing at UWA for the past six years Craig is also a director of felix. laboratories, a multi-disciplinary architecture and design practice that, as part of Felix, Giles, Anderson & Goad, were creative directors of the Australian Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibition, Augmented Australia 1914-2014, utilised augmented reality technology to realise significant, yet unbuilt contemporary and historical Australian architecture.

When not teaching and researching at university or designing within felix., Craig enjoys the outdoors leading an active lifestyle, and is an avid runner and climber. Widely travelled, he has climbed Mont Blanc and Mount Kilimanjaro in recent years. He believes that as an academic and a designer it is important to be active and involved in the world in order to design for it and write about it. Recently Craig has taken up the sport of motorcycle racing where he intends to qualify for his race license in the near future and add a little adrenaline to his weekends.

For his Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, Craig will conduct research at the University of Houston, in the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. The project will examine the feedback loop between the space industry and popular culture, such as film, through a study of relevant institutional and private archives, to articulate the cultural role that space exploration has played upon modern culture, and reciprocally, the impact that ideas stemming from popular culture as the ‘imagining’ of a future, or multiple futures has had upon programs of scientific research into manned exploration of space, and which has spawned new fields of research, such as ‘space architecture’. Combining archival, primary, and contemporary research through an ambitious theoretical framework, Craig intends to conceptualise the ‘space project’ within Western culture’s tradition of utopian thought.

Katherine Truss Postgraduate Students

“Among teachers, there is a lack of understanding of best practice in addressing and discussing issues such as depression, anxiety and family breakdown. This leads to reactive approaches and it is often only after tragedy that issues like suicide and depression are addressed and then it is often, unfortunately, too late.”

Ms Katherine Truss, the Curriculum Leader for English at Redeemer Lutheran College is the 2012 recipient of the Fulbright Queensland Scholarship, sponsored by the Queensland Government and Universities. Through her Fulbright, Katherine will undertake a one year Master of Education in Human Development and Psychology, focusing on developmental psychology, risk and resilience. She will use this to improve her ability to meet the needs of her students and to allow her to develop programs to enhance skills of Queensland teachers.

“Given the time young people spend at school, and the trusting relationships they develop with their teachers, schools are uniquely positioned to support young people as they deal with developmental, psychological and emotional issues,” Katherine said.

“However, the opportunity is often lost due to a lack of knowledge and practical skills in this area among teachers.”

“I think that it is essential for teachers to receive training in the area of risk and resilience from a developmental psychology perspective. This will allow schools to take a proactive approach to the prevention of negative social and educational outcomes for students, and enable schools to act more effectively in response to tragedy,” Katherine said.

In the U.S. Katherine will take courses in adolescent social, emotional and cognitive development; risk and resilience in social contexts; prevention science; intervention strategies; and basic counselling practices.

Katherine has a BEd and a BA from the University of Queensland, and spent a year at the University of Virginia on a scholarship exchange. She has won awards and prizes including the Dean’s commendation for high achievement for four years, being a school prefect and a UQ Abroad Scholarship. In her spare time she engages in community service through the Lutheran church, she sings in a choir and plays netball and frisbee.