Anuradha Prakash, professor of food science, has been featured amongst Orange County Business Journal’s Women in STEM. In addition to her longstanding academic research program, Prakash leads one of the few food science testing laboratories in the region. In this role, she regularly works with new and established businesses who are developing new products. Recent clients include Nine Avenue Foods, Bolthouse Farms and Custom Flavors. Her development of the Ranney Food Processing Lab is highlighted for enabling significant food science innovation in the region. 

Daniel Gardner, a Grand Challenges Initiative postdoctoral research and teaching fellow collaborating with Chapman faculty member LouAnne Boyd, has published a study entitled “Piecing Together Performance: Collaborative, Participatory Research-Through-Design for Better Diversity in Games” in IEEE Transactions on Games. The study explores how people using digital games interact with the identities of the characters they choose to play in those games, with a focus on how character identities have historically defaulted to white males. Gardner begins a position this summer as an assistant professor at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. 

Jenny Gritton, who completed her B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy in 2019, has published a new study describing disparities in the accessibility of cycling in Orange County. Gritton and co-authors define a “bikeability” index based on bicycle route density, route separation, connectivity, destination density, and topography. The study identifies several areas in the county where low socioeconomic status and a high proportion of non-white residents are also associated with low bikeability. Gritton is now the active transportation coordinator for the city of Lakewood, Colorado. 

Orange County bikeability index, published by Jenny Gritton ’19 in Sage Open.

Joshua Fisher, associate professor of environmental science and policy, can be found on History Channel’s Einstein Challenge, a show where experts are tasked with explaining some of the world’s most complicated topics to a panel of kids. Fisher can be found explaining natural disasters, including tsunamis, in episode four of this season.  

Hesham El-Askary, professor of computational and data science, served as a panelist on behalf of Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at the 6th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue’s session on securing cultural heritage in the face of climate change. El-Askary provides remarks beginning at 30 minutes. 

Ehsan Yaghmaei, who completed his Ph.D. in computational and data science in Schmid College of Science and Technology in 2023, has published a new study demonstrating that the combined use of two common drugs, called Donepezil and Memantine, significantly increases the five-year probability of survival amongst Alzheimer’s disease patients. According to the study, which is published in Communications Medicine, “adopting combined treatment of Memantine and Donepezil could extend the lives of approximately 303,000 people with AD living in the USA to be beyond five-years from diagnosis.”