Erik Bleich is Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he joined the faculty in 1999. His research has focused on how countries in Europe and North America have responded to racial, ethnic, and religious diversity through policymaking, public attitudes, societal activism, legal decisions, and the media. In 2012 he launched the Media Portrayals of Minorities Project, which combines approaches from the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields to understand how the media represent marginalized groups.

Dr. Nasim Alem is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering department at Penn State University.  Nasim was a postdoctoral researcher in the physics department at University of California Berkeley and National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, before joining Penn State as an assistant professor in 2013. Nasim’s research is focused on how advanced electron microscopy techniques can be utilized to further understand and address the existing challenges in novel nanostructures and devices. Nasim’s research is particularly focused on how defects and interfaces can modulate the chemical and electronic structure of the crystals and further tailor their macroscale electronic, optical and plasmonic properties. Nasim is originally from Iran and enjoys hiking, skiing, and travelling.  In her spare time, Nasim does wheel throwing and ceramic artwork.    

Dr. Jamin Greenbaum is a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography specializing in the acquisition and synthesis of airborne survey data in the polar regions. His fundamental professional interests lies in revealing and understanding key processes responsible for contemporary and future trends in sea level change due to the polar ice sheets. Greenbaum has supported or led thirteen expeditions to Antarctica and three to Greenland to conduct airborne, shipborne, and surface-based surveys to understand the ice and surrounding ocean. A firm believer in inclusive global collaborative science, he maintains collaborations with polar scientists, pilots, and logistical personnel in Australia, Canada, China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and throughout the US.

Vinay Swamy received his doctorate in French Studies with a certificate in Gender Studies from Northwestern University.  Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Vassar College, his teaching and research interests are located in French and Francophone literary and cinematic traditions and their intersection with political and cultural histories, as well as the construction of gender and social identities in contemporary France. Dr. Swamy also teaches in Vassar College's International Studies and Women’s Studies programs. 

Professor Swamy is the author and editor of several works including _Interpreting the Republic_ (Lexington Books, 2011); _Screening Integration_ (University of Nebraska, 2011); _Les Écrans de l'intégration_ (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2015); and "Legitimizing 'iel'?" (H-France Salon, 2019 vol 11, issue 14).  He is also the translator of _Through the Keyhole_ (Manchester University Press, 2016) by Marcela Iacub.

Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology. Her work is motivated by a long-standing interest in the everyday life of social movements, as well as the hopes and disappointments that have animated democratic political activism after the Cold War. Her first book, After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford 2014) chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of political transformation in Serbia. Her current research builds on this interest in democratic practice, activism and power through the lens of human rights and the rule of law. Prior to coming to UIUC, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an assistant professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She is currently the Co-Editor of the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR). 

Project/Thesis Title: Does resource colimitation theory predict the spread of invasive plants? A case study of ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) in northern France                      

Project Summary: With collaborators at Université de Picardie Jules Verne (UPJV), I will develop theory on how resource supply limits the spread of invasive plant species, and apply it to the potential invasion of ragweed in Hauts-de-France. Ragweed is a significant public health concern in France but it is not yet common in Hauts-de-France; the project will help to define where in the landscape its northward expansion is likely due to different substrate conditions. New theory developed in the project will add to our understanding of how plants and ecosystems in general respond to changes in multiple environmental drivers.

The laureate of the 2020 Fritz London Memorial Prize, the most prestigious award in condensed matter physics, Valerii Vinokur is a Professor at the City College of the City University of New York and the CTO US at the Terra Quantum AG. He is a Foreign Member of the National Norwegian Academy of Science and sLetters and Fellow of the American Physical Society. He finished his BSc in Physics of Metals at Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1972 and moved to the Institute of Solid State Physics, Chernogolovka, Russia. He continued research there on dislocation physics, charge density waves, and vortices in high-temperature superconductors until 1990. In 1990 Vinokur accepted his current appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. He has also held appointments as Visiting Scientist at CNRS, Grenoble (1987), Visiting Scientist at Leiden University (1989), Visiting Scientist at ETH-Zuሷrich (1990), and as Visiting Director of Research at Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris (1996). Vinokur has made foundational contributions in enriching our understanding of the vortex state in type II superconductors. With Lev Ioffe he developed a theory of glassy dynamics of extended topological defects (1987), laying the foundation for a theory of glassy vortex dynamics (developed with Dima Geshkenbein, Mikhail Feigelman, and Anatoly Larkin, 1989). In 1994 Vinokur put forth a theory of the dynamic melting (with Alexey Koshelev), which in 1998, enabled him to introduce a concept of the disorder-induced melting of the vortex lattice. With David Nelson he constructed a theory of the vortex Bose glass and predicted vortex Mott insulator (1993). In 2015 in collaboration with experimental group from Twente University, using a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian approach to non-equilibrium physics in dissipative systems, he constructed a theory of the dynamic vortex Mott transition. In 2017 Vinokur shared the International Abrikosov Prize for the development of pioneering concepts describing vortex matter in type II superconductors. 

Dr. Armen Kemanian is a Professor of Plant Science at The Pennsylvania State University. He leads the Agroecosystems Modeling lab in the department of Plant Science. Dr. Kemanian research program encompasses from soil biogeochemistry and plant processes to modeling agroecosystems at field and watershed scales. He is the developer of the agroecosystems model Cycles. At a fundamental level, Dr. Kemanian uses stable isotopes to trace the fate of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus (via oxygen) in soils. This quantitative knowledge is promptly incorporated into Cycles, a model that includes unique and innovative approaches to model the carbon and other elements balance in soil. Modeling also includes the application of machine learning. Dr. Kemanian is acutely interested in developing a better understanding of water flux in the soil-plant-atmosphere systems, as proper crop water use is crucial to the sustainability of coupled human and natural systems. Dr. Kemanian enjoys reading and nature, never tired of observing plants, rocks and raw landscapes, and kayaking with his family in the lakes of Pennsylvania.

Michael Timko is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the William B. Smith Chair at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of chemicals and fuels production, with elements that include waste-to-energy, bioenergy, and green and sustainable chemistry. The overarching theme of the work is connection of molecular level phenomena to real-world impacts. He will visit the CNRS at Université de Bordeaux to use their specialized methods for studying butanol recovery using supercritical carbon dioxide. Butanol is a potential replacement to gasoline, but it remains prohibitively expensive to produce due to the high costs and energy requirements of recovering and separating it. Prof. Timko found that supercritical carbon dioxide is much more energy efficient than other separation methods for recovering butanol from reaction mixtures. Now, at Université de Bordeaux he will study fundamental aspects of the separation process at the droplet level, with the goal of reducing further the energy requirements and making the process cost competitive. Prof. Timko’s training is in Chemical Engineering and Chemical Physics, at The Ohio State University, MIT, and Harvard University. He enjoys spending time with his family, biking, hiking, and cooking.

Steven Wilf is Anthony J. Smits Professor of Global Commerce at the University of Connecticut School of Law.  An intellectual property scholar and a legal historian, his writings include works on both Europe’s and America’s legal past as well as on a variety of legal regimes such as copyright and patent.  He earned his law degree and a doctorate in history from Yale University, and clerked in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  His fellowships include Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs, Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, and Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the United States Copyright Office.  He is currently completing a book for Cambridge University Press on the history of intellectual property law.  During his Fulbright year at the Centre d'Etudes Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle in Strasbourg, he will be working on a project to bridge the gaps between United States and European Union approaches to trade secrets. 

As a Fulbright Specialist my project involves working with my host institution, l'École Média Art du Grand Chalon, on the Mondes Visuals project. This three-year interdisciplinary, research-creation program connects international specialists converging their divergent research to explore the sensory experiences of perception between humans and artificial systems. My aerial dance research, tethering, is distinctly equipped to amplify the goals of Mondes Visuals and address the gap of an embodied perspective within the program. My role includes a series of workshops as well as leading a creative project with the film students. For the student project, I will direct a film that uses footage from body cameras placed on various locations of each student and myself while engaged in tethering together. This horizontal aerial technique is a sensational interchange between bodies, focusing on creative physical negotiating. The fabric constructs a synthetic touch that scaffolds a complex interplay between the moving body and images, exploring corporeal perception within a post-eye social network. Orientated within an unpredictable and ephemeral embodied gathering, assembled creatures (blindfolded) will entangle, suspend and support each other within a giant fabric loop. The fabric acts as a movement conduit between each mover, creating a responsive physical dialogue that is distant and intimate, internal and external, receiving and giving, thus enhancing a “community body.” During this improvisation, each participant’s uniquely positioned body camera will capture non-stable, ever-shifting and rival images of a single event. This synthetic/flesh/digital-human project unearths a visualization constructed via relational, embodied viewpoints to create a disoriented "mov"-ie. The resulting film will critically articulate the multiplicity of viewpoints of a single event and will be shown at the culminating Mondes Visuals international conference in the summer of 2022. This groundbreaking project will transform the aerial fabric, moving bodies and film into symbiotic instruments that position us to reimagine human interaction.

Dr. Santillan-Jimenez will lead a project – at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comté in Dijon, France – designed to exchange knowledge and establish partnerships benefiting multiple participants, institutions and communities both in the U.S. and overseas through a variety of educational and training activities within science and engineering education.

A National Science Foundation Research Traineeship has recently given the University of Kentucky the chance to develop novel interdisciplinary curricula. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic required the delivery of this content in a virtual format.  The lessons learned through these experiences present remarkable opportunities, including the prospect of courses taught by an international roster of experts and lectures that can be delivered to students irrespective of their affiliation and geographical location. This Fulbright Specialist grant will be instrumental in helping researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University of Burgundy Franche-Comté work toward the internationalization of academic and training curricula that can be accessed online both synchronously and asynchronously.

Dr. Maria Claudia B. Alves serves as Senior Director for Engineering Global Programs at the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. In this position since July 2012, she developed and implemented a multi-year strategic plan on global education programs that led to measurable outcomes such as increase in student participation and learning, as well as faculty engagement in global programs in the College of Engineering. Some of her most significant accomplishments are establishing a shared vision among stakeholders by jointly developing and implementing the strategic plan; doubling student participation in global programs while elevating the value and impact of the global program on the students’ learning experience; establishing new models of global experience (global research and internship, global virtual courses, and multidisciplinary project-based field trips); and creating and implementing many long-lasting global programs in collaboration with faculty members and international partners. Dr. Alves commenced her employment at Texas A&M in 2005 as Assistant Director for Latin American Programs. In that position, her most impactful accomplishments were the development and implementation of education and research programs in partnership with Brazil; these programs are still in place today. She also supported the establishment of the TAMU Soltis Center in Costa Rica. Three awards she is most proud of are the 2021 International Education Administrators (IEA) Fulbright France Award, the TAMU Tradition of Excellence Award in 2007, and winning the Women’s Tennis NCAA Division-2 National Champion in 2001. Dr. Alves speaks three languages fluently (Spanish, Portuguese, and English) and conversational-level French. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and a MS in Marketing from Texas A&M University.

Zoe Petropoulou serves as Assistant Provost for Global Initiatives since 2015 and she is Associate Professor of French in the Department of Languages and Literatures. She served as Chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures (2011-2017) and as a Coordinator of the French program (1995-2010). She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships from the French government, the Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Paris, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Strasbourg. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH- summer seminar 1995). She co-directed two Title VI grants from the U.S. Department of Education (1997-1999 & 2000-2002). Most recently she received the 2020-2021 Greek Diaspora Fellowship from IIE & the Niarchos. She is the author of a book on Albert Camus, "L'Espace Sensoriel chez Albert Camus." She received a B.A. in French literature from the University of Athens, in Greece, an M.A. in French literature from the University of Paris IV, and a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Paris III, in France.   

The conditions present at the early stages of the Universe can be experimentally emulated by accelerating heavy atoms close to the speed of light and then colliding them in a controlled environment. Currently, there does not exist a substantially accurate thermal model which describes the overarching dynamical mechanism occurring at the boundary of the aforementioned transition of the cosmic soup. My intent is to develop a statistical thermal model, alongside my collaborators in Strasbourg, to adequately describe the current phenomenological observations acquired by heavy ion colliders and to provide a better understanding about the Universe in which we reside.

My project explores changing understandings of autism in France through an analysis of the project "Construire une Université Aspie-Friendly". The "Aspie-Friendly" project is supported the French government, with additional support from private companies. Based in Toulouse, it supports students on the autism spectrum at a network of universities across France. My research will use ethnographic methods to understand how, why, and by whom, new autism categories are being constructed in France, and what that means for the young autistic adults who are at the center of this process.

Nous étudierons deux mécanismes qui prennent place dans le milieu interstellaire : la photoionisation du radical CH et la création des ions moléculaires négatifs via les résonances Feshbach rotationnelles. Pour ceci, nous développerons la théorie et les codes nécessaires, puis on comparera nos résultats aux spectres expérimentaux.