The Office of International Affairs has announced the 2022 recipients of the Faculty Internationalization Grant. The six professors represent a wide range of academic disciplines and levels of experience.

The Faculty Internationalization Grant supports Lehigh faculty members who want to pursue international research and teaching projects, such as developing shared research with colleagues at institutions overseas, designing a workshop or a course with faculty and students from foreign institutions, or planning an international conference.

The grant recipients are:

  • Ganesh Balasubramanian, associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, to support joint research with a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay into advanced materials for sustainable energy storage and transport and with a graduate student from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur in the predictive manufacturing of recycled plastic materials.
  • John Paul Balmonte, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, to continue his collaboration with colleagues at the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) in Goa, India, through fieldwork at the International Arctic Research Base in Svalbard, Norway, and training at the Marine Stable Isotope Laboratory at NCPOR.
  • Alec Bodzin, professor of instructional technology and teacher education, to support a site visit to the University of Queensland, Australia, and explore a potential collaborative interdisciplinary research partnership to develop immersive learning experiences in environmental and sustainability education
  • Michael Kramp, professor of English, to expand his work with Fathima Wakeel, associate professor in the College of Health, as part of the Global Social Impact Fellowship project, Mothers of Sierra Leone, using documentary film to encourage women in Sierra Leone to seek maternal healthcare.
  • Nitzan Lebovic, professor of history, to begin a collaboration with colleagues at Oxford University and Arava Institute and New York University that aims to develop a regional framework to address climate change in the Jordan River Valley that is grounded in political ecology instead of national borders.
  • Nik Nikolov, associate professor of architecture, to deepen his partnership with WASP, a company in Italy that specializes in the 3D printing of building materials, as part of his larger research into using integrative building technologies as a response to climate change, and to explore the potential of developing an international student experience there.

The next cycle of grants will be awarded in fall 2023. Interested faculty should keep an eye out for an email announcement at that time.

Top photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons