Dr. Susan Elswick Named as Chair of the School of Social Work

Interim Dean Emmert is pleased to announce Dr. Susan Elswick as the new Chair of the School of Social Work, beginning Fall 2025.

Dr. Elswick joined the University of Memphis in 2012, serving as a clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work. Since that time, she has held various faculty and administrative positions within the department. Currently, Dr. Elswick is a professor in the School of Social Work, where she focuses on leading the university in developing programs to support student workforce development and expanding partnerships and direct services for the community.

Dr. Elswick also serves as faculty director for three programs on the University of Memphis (UofM) campus: the Interprofessional Community Health Clinic (ICHC), the Institute for Interdisciplinary Memphis Partnerships to Advance Community Transformation (iIMPACT), and the Supporting Mental Health Access to Resources through Telehealth (SMART) Center. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS).

Dr. Elswick has over 20 years of clinical mental health experience and is the author of more than 35 peer-reviewed journal publications and two monographs. She has over thirty referred conference presentations and has received more than $3 million in internal and external grants to date.

Dr. Gary Emmert Named as CAS Interim Dean

Effective May 16, Dr. Gary Emmert will serve as interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS). Emmert is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and the director of the Mobile Analytical Monitoring and Miniaturization Laboratory. 

CAS comprises 24 academic units, the ROTC and multiple research centers. One of its primary missions is to provide a strong general education in the humanities, the social sciences, mathematics and the natural sciences, and to focus on strengthening the breadth and depth of its departmental major programs

Dr. Huang Receives Willard R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award

The University of Memphis recognized its 2025 Faculty Award recipients on May 1 at the Maxine A. Smith University Center. This year's recipient of the Willard R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award, the highest honor for a faculty member at the UofM, is Dr. Xiaohua Huang from the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences. 

Huang joined the University in 2010 and has spent the last 15 years primarily focused on cancer nanomedicine. Her interests revolve around developing technologies to better detect, monitor and treat cancer. To go along with her work, Huang is a Top 2% World's Most Cited Scholar, with over 40,000 citations on her publications, and is frequently invited to serve on the review panels for the National Cancer Institute. 

Dr. Charles Langston Named 2025 Recipient of the Harry Fielding Reid Medal

Charles Langston, professor emeritus at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis, is the 2025 recipient of the Harry Fielding Reid Medal. The Harry Fielding Reid Medal, SSA’s highest honor, is awarded no more than once a year for outstanding contributions in seismology or earthquake engineering. Read more.

UofM Receives Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Grant

The University of Memphis (UofM) has been awarded a significant $4,999,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a transformative paid internship program for undergraduate humanities and humanistic social sciences majors, directly addressing critical barriers faced by students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, in securing high-quality internships. Read more.

UofM Researchers Decoding the Mystery of Aquic Soils

Using an Atlas X micro-XRF system, UofM researchers in the lab of Dr. Gary Stinchcomb are working to understand the complexities of aquic soils, which are groundwater-saturated soils containing little to no oxygen. Read more. 

Dr. Susan Elswick Named a SPARK Award Honoree

Congratulations to Dr. Susan Elswick with the School of Social Work on being named as a 2024 SPARK Award Honoree by cityCURRENT for her work and impact as an educator. The SPARK Award celebrates outstanding and organizations igniting change in the Greater Memphis Area. Read more. 

Generating Single Photons - UofM joins Others Who Have Generated and Detected Single Photon

The Electronic and Photonic Nanomaterials Lab (Department of Physics and Materials Science) has demonstrated the ability to generate and detect individual photons in an ambient environment. This marks the first time such a capability has been demonstrated on the UofM campus, paving the way for groundbreaking research opportunities in quantum optics and quantum technology at our university.

A photon (smallest possible packet of light) has no mass, carries energy and travels in waves at the speed of light. Flipping a light switch and producing trillions of photons might seem simple, but generating and detecting a single photon at a time is far more challenging. A comparison suggests generating and detecting a photon is as tricky as taking a picture of a candle with a cell phone from 3 miles away. Read more. 

Center for Earthquake Research and Information Featured in Daily Memphian

Using a network of more than 150 sensors, scientists and students at CERI monitor seismic activity in the region, primarily the New Madrid fault zone that runs 150 miles from Illinois down to West Tennessee. CERI is also part of a more extensive network that monitors seismic events roughly in the country's eastern half. Read more

IEAA Interim Co-Directors David Dye and Matthew Gaynor 

The College of Communication & Fine Arts and the College of Arts & Sciences are pleased to announce the appointments of David Dye, PhD and Matthew Gaynor, MFA, BA, as Interim Co-Directors for the Institute for Egyptian Art and Archaeology (IEAA).

The Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, founded in 1984, is a component of the Department of Art & Design at The University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee (USA), and is a Tennessee Center of Excellence. It is dedicated to the study of the art and culture of ancient Egypt through teaching, research, exhibition, and community education.

College of Arts & Sciences Partners with Riipen to Offer Work-Based Learning

Starting this fall, students at the College of Arts & Sciences will gain access to real-world projects on Riipen, empowering them with practical skills and industry experience. Supported by CAEL and funded by the Truist Foundation, this partnership, made possible through CAEL’s Build Better Careers Program, focuses on creating equitable opportunities for BIPOC and underserved communities, opening doors to historically inaccessible industries.

Read the press release here: https://hubs.li/Q02Sz95m0

UofM’s Dr. Lan Wang Receives Grant from the Mission-Integrated Network Control Program

Dr. Lan Wang, department chair and Dunavant Professor in the UofM’s Department of Computer Science, has received a grant from the Mission-Integrated Network Control (MINC) program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Peraton Labs Inc. is the prime contractor of the contract. As outlined on the DARPA site, the objective of the MINC program is to ensure that critical data finds a path to the right user at the right time in highly contested, highly dynamic communication environments using secure control of any available communication or networking resources (communications, compute or storage capabilities). Full Details

Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities Announces Fellowships

The Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities (MOCH) is pleased to announce the 2024 Catherine and Charles Freeburg Fellows. Four faculty members and one graduate student at the University of Memphis have been recognized for their promising research in the humanities. The program is made available by a generous bequest from Catherine and Charles Freeburg, longtime supporters of the UofM. List of Fellowship Recipients

Department of English Awarded  U.S. Department of Education's National Professional Development Program Grant

mDOT Center Receives $1.1M NIH Grant for AI Wearables

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded $1.1M to the mDOT Center at the University of Memphis to continue developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence for wearables with the goal of transforming health and wellness around the globe.

Established in 2020 at the MD2K Center of Excellence housed at the UofM, the mDOT Center is a national biomedical technology research center that serves as a national hub for collaborative research. The center is led by Dr. Santosh Kumar, director of the Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) and Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence Professor in Computer Science. The center works closely with up to two dozen grant-funded projects to jointly develop, test, and deploy its novel wearables, apps, software, and research design tools to advance health research.

More information is available in the UofM press release.