SLU Honors Scholarly Works and Grant Winners

05/01/2026

Saint Louis University celebrated scholars on Wednesday afternoon at the annual Scholarly Works and Grant Winners reception.

“The work we are celebrating today is not just wonderful in the usual superlative sense of wonderful,” President Ed Feser said. “It’s wonderful because of our capacity for wonder – the wonder that we feel when we uncover that new insight. It’s what motivates and excites us to do new research.

The annual ceremony, which dates back to 1977 and is hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research, celebrates research excellence and recognizes success in publications and other scholarly outputs, as well as grants and service from SLU faculty and staff. Winners were recognized for their accomplishments from 2025.

“What we are celebrating here today, the pursuit of truth, the understanding of the universe and, for those of us with faith, the understanding of God’s great tapestry – this will endure,” Provost Mike Lewis said. “It has endured for millennia, and it will endure for the next millennia.”

Scholarly Works Awards

Scholarly Works as Public Awards

• Junior faculty award: Madi Babaiasl, Ph.D., assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, for her YouTube channel: Mecharithm - Robotics and Mechatronics
• Senior faculty award: Matthew Grawitch, Ph.D., professor in the School for Professional Studies, for his Psychology Today blog: A Hovercraft Full of Eels

Scholarly Works as Creative Works

• Vincent Casaregola, Ph.D., professor of English, for his poetry book: Vital Signs (Finishing Line Press)

Scholarly Works as Clinical Articles

• Junior faculty: Gucan Dai, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology for “Voltage sensor conformations induced by LQTS-associated mutations in hERG potassium channels,” published in Nature Communications
• Junior faculty honorable mentions: Ying Li, Ph.D., assistant research professor in pharmacology and physiology for the article “Contribution of S1pr1-featured astrocyte subpopulation to cisplatin-induced neuropathic pain in male mice,” published in Pain
• Senior faculty: John Tavis, Ph.D., professor of molecular microbiology and immunology, for “Scientific and medical evidence informing expansion of hepatitis B treatment guidelines” in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology
• Senior faculty: Michael Sinha, J.D., M.D., associate professor of law, for “Combination-Only Approvals as a Barrier to Affordable HIV Care” in JAMA

Scholarly Works as Non-Clinical Articles

• Junior faculty winners:Theodosia Stavroulaki, assistant professor of law, for “The Healing Power of Antitrust” in Northwestern University Law Review
• Junior faculty winners: Carolyn O'Laughlin, Ph.D., assistant professor of education, for “Like There’s an Asterisk Next to My Name… in a Place Designed to Weed Me Out: Autistic Students Evaluate College Belonging” in The Journal of Higher Education
• Junior faculty honorable mention: Michael Landry, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, for “Transverse surfaces and pseudo-Anosov flows” in the Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik
• Junior faculty honorable mention: Malkanthi Karunananda, Assistant Professor, Chemistry for “Synthesis, Characterization, Electronic Structure, and Excitation Dynamics of Dinuclear Copper (I) Complexes with a Naphthyridine Diimine Ligand” in Inorganic Chemistry
• Senior faculty winners: Atria Larson, Ph.D., associate professor of theological studies, for “Lucretia (and Lucia) and the Medieval Canonists: Guilt, Consent, and Chastity in the Early Canonistic Jurisprudence of Rape” in Law and History Review
• Senior faculty winners: Dapeng Zhang, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, for “Unveiling the multifaceted domain polymorphism of the Menshen antiphage system” in Nucleic Acids Research
• Senior faculty honorable mentions: Brad Carlson, Ph.D, professor of marketing for “The Collective Identity Effect: How Group-Level Identity Influences Individual Behavior” in the Journal of Marketing
• Senior faculty honorable mentions: Amanda Izzo, Ph.D., associate professor of women and gender studies, for “The Homosocial Gospel: Winnifred Wygal and the Women Couples of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the USA” in Religion and American Culture
• Senior faculty honorable mentions: Koyal Garg, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering, for “MyoQuant: An optimized image analysis algorithm for quantitative analysis of skeletal muscle fibers” in  MethodsX
• Senior faculty honorable mentions: Yuqi Wang, Ph.D., professor of biology, for “Tumor extracellular vesicle–derived PD-L1 promotes T cell senescence through lipid metabolism reprogramming” in (Science Translational Medicine
• Senior faculty honorable mentions: Lauren Bartlett, J.D., professor of law, for “An Indecent Exposure of the Rules of Legal Ethics” in Yale Journal of Law and Feminism

Scholarly Works as Books

• Junior faculty winner: Philip Porter, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology at SLU Madrid, for “Unnatural Death: Creation, Sin, and the Angelic Fall”
• Senior faculty winner: Douglas Boin, Ph.D., professor of history, for “Clodia of Rome: Champion of the Republic”
• Honorable mention: James Redfield, Ph.D., associate professor of theological studies, for “Adventures of Rabbah & Friends: The Talmud's Strange Tales and Their Readers”
• Jackson Nickerson, Ph.D., professor and Edward Jones Dean of the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, “With a Bot and a Prayer: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Generativity”
• Flannery Burke, Ph.D., associate professor of American Studies for “Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region”

Grant Winners and Innovation Awards

Faculty Innovation Award

• Chris Arnatt, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry, and Fran Sverdrup, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, were named as Senior Members of the National Academy of Inventors.

Training Award

• Rene Dulle, director of the Center for Environmental Education &Training (CEET), for the fiscal year 2025 Susan Harwood Training Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor and the fiscal year 2025 BIL Brownfields Job Training Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency

Research Impact and Collaboration Award

• Annie Garner, Ph.D., professor of psychology, for the Neurodiversity Behavioral Health Access Fellowship from the Health Resources and Services Administration

Career Award

• Nate Kinsey, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, for PECASE: Extreme Analog Control of Optical Frequency via Squeeze Shifting from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
• Abby Stylianou, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, for CAREER: Aligning Image Retrieval Systems with Human Notions of Similarity from the National Science Foundation

Research Administrator Award

• Erin Hill, director, sponsored programs financial management

Faculty Research Award Honorable Mentions

• Edwin Antony, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology
• Dan Hoft, M.D., Ph.D., professor of infectious diseases
• Vasit Sagan, Ph.D., professor of Earth, environmental and geospatial science
• Brent Znosko, Ph.D., professor of chemistry
• Malkanthi Karunananda, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry

Faculty Research Award

• Kyle McCommis, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology for Structural dynamics of the human mitochondrial pyruvate carrier associated with transport and inhibition from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Alex Reiter, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering, for Assessment of tendon loading for enhancing the treatment of Achilles tendon from the Department of Defense (DOD)

Faculty Research and Foundation Award

• Gary Ritter, Ph.D., professor and dean of the School of Education, for getting grants for the Saint Louis University Rising Teachers Program from the Town Branch Foundation and The Viragh Foundation