‘Ecologies of Justice’ symposium to highlight issues of waste, consumption

Discard studies expert Max Liboiron to deliver keynote

March 14, 2023

Residents of Arizona are no strangers to the notion of their state’s landscape being barren and harsh, however misguided it may be.

What the idea does do is make way for important conversations that address the impact problems such as waste, disposability, production and consumption have on social, environmental relationships and health, all of which will be a part of the "Ecologies of Justice: Wasteland, Wastewater and Human Disposability" symposium to be held March 23–24 at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Portrait of Max Liboiron. Discard studies expert Max Liboiron will deliver the keynote at the "Ecologies of Justice: Wasteland, Wastewater and Human Disposability" symposium. Photo courtesy Max Liboiron Download Full Image

“The Sonoran Desert provides an apt environment for these discussions, as the desert is often imagined as a wasteland. It has also been subjected to many kinds of wasting — water, nuclear, plastic and, last but not least, the wasting of life itself,” said Lisa Han, an assistant professor in the Department of English.

The symposium was developed by Mako Fitts Ward, Han and Celina Osuna, and is part of an Institute for Humanities Research Seed Grant. It is co-sponsored by the Institute for Humanities Research, the film and media studies program in the Department of English within The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Social Transformation Lab.

“The lab is thrilled to co-sponsor the symposium,” said Fitts Ward, director of the Social Transformation Lab and an assistant professor of African American and women and gender studies in the School of Social Transformation. “Using a justice lens to address how environmental crises impact people and the planet will allow participants to move beyond disciplinary boundaries to innovate new ideas, concepts and strategies toward meaningful social impact.”

“The (symposium) centers waste as a vehicle for ecologies of justice because of the way issues of trash, pollution and disposability cross boundaries and borders between humans and nonhumans, lands and waters, as well as local and global scales of research,” Han said.

The two-day event will feature a public keynote presentation by Max Liboiron, a professor in geography, author and leading expert in developing and promoting anticolonial research methods in a wide array of disciplines and spaces.

Liboiron has influenced national policy on plastics and Indigenous research and invented technologies and protocols for community monitoring of plastics. They are the author of “Pollution is Colonialism” and co-author of “Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power.”

“We are especially looking forward to welcoming Dr. Max Liboiron back to ASU for the keynote presentation, as their work in discard studies, Indigenous studies, and science and technology studies illuminates the dangers of plastic pollution and provides important anti-colonial methods for scientific research that influence how humanists and social scientists can approach as models of justice,” said Osuna, a postdoctoral scholar with the Social Transformation Lab.

Liboiron is the founder of Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), an interdisciplinary natural and social science lab dedicated to the environmental monitoring of plastic pollution. They will discuss the problems of waste and disposability in their research and speak to collaboration within the ASU community and beyond that can work to address these issues.

“This talk draws on case studies from plastic pollution research and activism that use muddy concepts of justice to show three things: a range of concepts of justice at work in activism and science; how the conflation or combination of some forms of justice can cause harm; and to ground a call for fellow researchers to use a more intentional and systematic approach to evoking models of justice in our work,” Liboiron said.

The symposium will also feature workshops and collaborative working sessions led by international scholars in literature, literary arts, design and geography.

The workshops seek to advance interdisciplinary research and demonstrate how disposability and waste coexist to establish a practice of management, surveillance and enclosure that define safety in terms of exclusion and disposability through humanities-oriented approaches that can be applied across academic disciplines.

“As the workshops will consist of students and faculty, we are hopeful that the conversations around waste and human disposability will provide all participants with the opportunity to create a shared language with which to address these issues in their own work,” said Osuna.

The keynote presentation featuring Liboiron will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 23, in the Memorial Union, room 228, on the Tempe campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Visit stl.asu.edu/news-events/events for more information about this event and to RSVP.

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ASU professor to examine neural processes in people who stutter

Downtown Phoenix campus
March 14, 2023

Aim of study to develop new treatments, interventions for stuttering

Ayoub Daliri is heartened when he hears President Joe Biden speak.

Daliri, an assistant professor of speech and hearing science at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions, is conducting a five-year study of individuals who stutter, and Biden’s ability to overcome his childhood stuttering problem is a positive message for others, he said.

“People who stutter see the president and realize that stuttering should not prevent them from reaching their dreams and goals,” Daliri said. “The president is an excellent example showing how people can overcome the challenges associated with stuttering.”

Daliri has received a $3.38 million grant from the National Institutes of Health National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for his study, which will be conducted on 60 children and 90 adults in partnership with the University of Washington.

ASU News spoke with Daliri about the study.

Editor's note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: Let’s start with this: How prevalent is stuttering among the general population?

Answer: It influences about 5 to 8% of children and about 1% of adults. The reason for that difference is that many children recover from stuttering, which we call spontaneous recovery. Stuttering influences many aspects of life, including academic and occupational achievement, and could severely impact the quality of life. 

Q: What is the current treatment for stuttering?

A: They vary. Typically, current stuttering treatments are behavioral in nature and administered by speech-language pathologists. However, these behavioral treatments have as much as a 70% relapse, which could become costly and reduce accessibility, especially for individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish with your study?

A: One of the issues is that we don’t really have a complete understanding of the neural processes of stuttering. So our goal in this project is to identify the neural processes of stuttering and understand the link between them to behavioral aspects of speech fluency and stuttering. Finally, our goal is to develop combined neural and behavioral interventions for people who stutter. 

Q: How will the testing work?

A: Our experiments would involve neural and behavioral recordings. We are primarily focused on how the brain prepares the auditory system when we plan to produce speech and how the brain uses auditory information to fine-tune its speech output during speech production. We will induce artificial or experimental errors during speech production to see how people would respond to these experimental errors and to see what happens in the brain when people evaluate and respond to the errors. In a very simplistic way, these errors could mimic or simulate how people may respond to a moment of stuttering in their speech. 

Q: What do you mean by errors?

A: Basically, a person will have a headset. As the person produces a word, the speech goes into the microphone. Then, we manipulate the speech in real-time and play it back to the person. For example, a person would say “head” but would hear “had.” In response to such errors, people change their speech to compensate for the errors. We want to better understand how the auditory and motor systems work together in people who stutter and those who don’t stutter. At the same time, we look at brain signals to see what is happening in the brain in response to the errors. What happens if we receive an error? Do we evaluate it? And is there a difference between people who stutter and people who don’t stutter when they receive errors? 

Q: What could the test results show you in terms of changing treatment for those who stutter?

A: Our focus in this project is to determine the neural processes that do not function as they do in nonstuttering individuals. This knowledge could help us figure out neural signatures of stuttering, which could serve as a starting point for developing neural treatments for stuttering. We hope that our behavioral and neural findings in this project will build a good foundation for our next step, which is developing neuro-behavioral interventions for stuttering. These interventions are not going to replace current stuttering treatments, but they could supplement or enhance the existing treatments.

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Reporter , ASU News

 
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3 things to start saying right now

March 13, 2023

Signal your commitment, professionalism and empathy with powerful phrases

Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the spring 2023 issue of ASU Thrive magazine. Story by May Busch, a former COO of Morgan Stanley Europe, who is now an executive coach, speaker, advisor, author and executive-in-residence in ASU’s Office of the President.

In today’s working environment, commitment, professionalism and empathy are key.

These are the qualities senior leadership looks for, and these are the things people want in a colleague, boss, partner or teammate. 

Maybe you already have these traits. Then the question is, how do you show it? 

Pay attention to your soundtrack

Imagine you have a recording of yourself at work in the last 24 hours, what does it sound like? 

Are you often complaining instead of encouraging? How often do you tell people what to do rather than help them grow?

How your soundtrack lands with others is a critical part of your personal brand and reputation. 

So here are three things to start saying at work right now: 

“What else can we be doing to achieve XYZ goal?”

A simple way to signal your commitment to the team, organization or mission is to ask this question in your meetings or one-on-ones.

This question taps into the wisdom in the room and shows you are dedicated to doing everything to achieve your goal. 

“This was an important learning experience. What I’ve taken away from it is ABC, and here are the actions I’m taking to address it.”

A great opportunity to signal your professionalism is to acknowledge when you’ve made a mistake. 

Not only do you take accountability, you also close the loop and indicate what you’ll do going forward. 

Illustration of two people talking

“Pay attention to your words and choose language that makes you sound like the committed, empathetic professional you are and aspire to be.”

“Tell me more about that” or “I’d love to hear about that”

When someone shares something, take the opportunity to “double-click” on what they said and ask them about it. Then listen.

This presents the opportunity to find out more about someone and demonstrate your interest and investment in them as a person.

This also gives you a chance to find out valuable information — what caused your team member’s frustration? What caused a conflict? What made their project such a big win for them? 

Look for your opportunities 

Every day you have opportunities to show your commitment, professionalism and empathy. It’s up to you to make the most of them.

Pay attention to your words and choose language that makes you sound like the committed, empathetic professional you are and aspire to be. 

Notice which phrases you use that land well with others and which you’d like to change. Keep experimenting and practicing so that sounding like a leader becomes your new normal.

What will you start saying? 

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Innovating with purpose

March 13, 2023

Principled Innovation helps ensure we are not just innovating for the sake of change but to fulfill our values

Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the spring 2023 issue of ASU Thrive magazine. Written by Cristy Guleserian, the director of Principled Innovation at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College where she works collaboratively with faculty, staff, students and community partners to integrate MLFTC’s core value of Principled Innovation into culture, curriculum and practice.

When using Principled Innovation, ASU’s newest design aspiration, we start with a basic question about any prospective change or course of action: We can, but should we?

Principled Innovation is a practice that offers reflective approach to change that centers the well-being of humanity, communities and society as a whole. It is a framework for ethical decision-making that can be embraced by individuals, organizations and systems. It informs simple, everyday decisions and complex actions at all levels. 

At the heart of Principled Innovation are four dimensions of character: moral, civic, intellectual and performance. When individuals practice Principled Innovation, their actions exhibit the empathy, honesty and humility inherent in moral character; the desire to serve others that is part of civic character; the truth-seeking impulse of intellectual character; and the problem-solving commitment of performance character.

Systems change can be messy. Principled Innovation offers practical techniques for perspective-taking and thinking through the possible consequences of even the most intricate systemic actions. It creates a kind of intellectual and ethical muscle memory that helps individuals, teams and institutions seek out and listen to input from multiple perspectives. 

It helps us ask ourselves the tough questions and consider the intended and unintended consequences of our decisions and actions, and whether they fulfill our charter commitments to equity, inclusiveness and taking responsibility for the well-being and success of the communities we serve.

Developing a character framework 

The impetus to develop a character-based framework for decision-making originated in the need, articulated by Dean Carole Basile, for Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College to respond to a variety of challenges facing colleges of education and, more broadly, education systems. Even as our college’s enrollment was rising, we saw the shortage of educators in Arizona and the United States getting more acute. 

Too many schools in too many communities were not meeting the needs of all their learners. We were graduating people into a profession and a system that was enduring a long-term crisis.

And, because innovating in education involves making the kinds of decisions that will affect the lives and learning of students, educators, families and communities, it was imperative for us to forge a way of making decisions worthy of the trust and confidence of the people affected by them. 

Values and ethics always drive individual and organizational decision-making. But those values are not always transparent. We wanted to create a clear, intentional process for how character could inform decision-making in education, including our own decisions. 

So we started a conversation about character at our college. Not surprisingly, challenging questions and important arguments were quick to emerge. Whose morals? Whose virtues? Whose character? 

We spent the first two years in a collaborative and iterative cycle of listening, writing and revising. And then we did it again. And again. 

We started with a framework from the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham. We heard loud and clear that context matters, and we needed to “ASU-ize” this work. In other words, we needed to tie our notions of character — what it is and why it matters — to ASU’s defining characteristic of innovation. 

Our faculty, staff and students shared a view of character not as virtues they perceived to be dogmatic but as assets required to achieve purpose. They moved from a notion of character education as prescriptions learners passively receive to a process learners actively pursue through practice and action.

As we adapted the process to fit the needs of our stakeholders and everyone involved, we began to create and codify a process. 

Chart that illustrates four guiding principles: Moral, Civic, Performance and Intellectual

Principled Innovation is a practice in which we imagine new concepts, catalyze ideas, and form new solutions, guided by four aspects of our character  —  moral, civic, intellectual and performance.

Four cards from the PI card deck

Download a card deck with more prompts for Principled Innovation process at pi.education.asu.edu/pi-card-deck.

Practical outcomes 

Principled Innovation drove the process of redesigning one of the core activities of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College: our teacher-preparation programs. We had an initial starting state of a program that was successful with professional experiences celebrated nationally and locally. Despite this, it was not fulfilling the college’s larger mission as well as it could. Graduates reported areas in which they felt underprepared. 

We also faced the question: How could we improve at preparing teachers who stayed in and flourished in the profession? 

Conscious application of Principled Innovation practices led to a comprehensive, widely participatory review of teacher-preparation programs. Stakeholders reviewed curricula, teaching methods, professional experiences (e.g., internships and residencies), organizational structure and operational processes — all with a focus on positive change that would improve the learning outcomes and experiences for both ASU students and the preschool–12th grade learners they serve.

A process for meaningful, complex innovation 

The work of formally codifying and evolving Principled Innovation has been intentional, messy, exciting, challenging, purposeful, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, uncertain and, most of all, rewarding. 

It helped us to identify and acknowledge the fundamental values of our college and the communities we serve. 

Principled Innovation gave us opportunities to practice moral and ethical decision-making in a very intentional way as we grappled with difficult dilemmas. 

Where we have landed is very different from our starting point. 

At Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Principled Innovation is now our core value, and ASU has adopted Principled Innovation as the ninth design aspiration, through which character development can occur.

This is not the end — Principled Innovation remains a living process. We will continue to learn and grow throughout all of ASU and beyond. 

Students interacting with VR headsets

Learning Futures studios is one of ASU’s extended reality studios teaching all aspects of VR using Principled Innovation. “Principled Innovation helps us operate ethically and make daily decisions that inform our code, design and even the way we meet and communicate,” Executive Director Dan Munnerley says. 

How can Principled Innovation apply in my life and my work?

Try working with these questions the next time you are looking at change you would like to make or pursuing an innovation project.

Moral questions 

• How are my values reflected in my decisions?

• How am I being empathetic toward myself and others?

Intellectual questions 

• What evidence do I have to support my perspective?

• What might we be missing?

Performance questions 

• How do I support and build on team members’ ideas?

• How will we know if the innovation is effective?

Civic questions 

• What are the strengths of the community in which we are operating?

• How have we received feedback from the community about the project?

Get familiar with Principled Innovation

• Learn more at pi.education.asu.edu.

• Explore additional resources at pi.education.asu.edu/resources. 

• See the nine design aspirations at president.asu.edu.

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Streamlining microelectronics security and testing

Fulton Professor of Microelectronics Krishnendu Chakrabarty leads efforts to add built-in features to hetereogeneously integrated semiconductors

March 9, 2023

The global microelectronics industry is undergoing massive changes. Semiconductor manufacturing, largely done abroad, is threatened by political instability that could derail current global supply chains. In response, companies are increasing semiconductor production in the U.S.

Semiconductor technology is also close to approaching the limits of Moore’s Law, which states that chips double in computing power every two years while costs are cut in half. This has left those in the semiconductor field to explore new types of technology. A semiconductor undergoes electrical testing in a lab. Fulton Professor of Microelectronics Krishnendu Chakrabarty leads Arizona State University’s contributions to the Center for Heterogeneous Integration of Micro Electronic Systems, or CHIMES, a research center comprised of 14 universities and funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Photo courtesy L N/Unsplash Download Full Image

In response to such large changes in the semiconductor industry, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, or SRC, formed the Joint University Microelectronics Program, or JUMP, 2.0. The coalition is a public-private partnership made up of universities, industry partners and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

According to DARPA, JUMP 2.0 consists of research centers focusing on a variety of technical challenges relevant to semiconductors. One of these research centers is the Center for Heterogeneous Integration of Micro Electronic Systems, or CHIMES, led by Penn State. Fourteen university partners, including Arizona State University, will collaborate through the center to advance future microelectronics capabilities.

“Phenomenal growth requires new and transformative logic, memory and interconnect technologies to overcome the inevitable slowdown of traditional dimensional scaling of semiconductors,” says CHIMES Director Madhavan Swaminathan, head of electrical engineering and William E. Leonhard Endowed Chair in Penn State College of Engineering’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in a news release.

Jumping microelectronics into the future

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Fulton Professor of Microelectronics Krishnendu Chakrabarty leads ASU’s contributions to the center, which is conducting efforts in electrical testing and security.

Chakrabarty’s research will focus on test and security functions in 3D integration, which involves connecting semiconductor devices together vertically, and heterogeneous integration, which combines semiconductors manufactured in different locations together into one device. These methods are used in the field of microelectronics packaging, which refers to how semiconductor devices are connected for use in consumer products and encased for protection and heat dissipation.

“Heterogeneous and 3D integration are key enabling technologies for next-generation electronics packaging and critical to re-establishing U.S. technology dominance in semiconductor manufacturing,” Chakrabarty says. “As we develop new packaging such as 3D and heterogeneous technologies, manufacturing defects are likely to occur, and these can introduce significant limitations on production numbers and product quality.”

The CHIMES research team intends to boost the reliability of these increasingly complicated computing devices. In turn, this will improve the efficiency of manufacturing semiconductor chips by reducing the amount of unusable, defective chips.

As devices become more complex, testing them for proper function is more of a challenge. Chakrabarty and his collaborators will focus on adding built-in test capabilities to 3D and heterogeneous integrated devices to overcome this problem.

These capabilities would detect a malfunction inside the devices without external troubleshooting and probing different spots to find the source.

To alleviate security concerns, the CHIMES researchers will investigate ways to prevent leakage of stolen intellectual property to adversaries and deter hardware Trojans. A hardware Trojan is physical sabotage from an adversary that causes a computer chip to malfunction.

How ASU CHIMES in to help

As a prominent researcher in the areas of electrical testing and security, Chakrabarty was invited to join CHIMES by Swaminathan.

“I am the principal investigator on multiple projects funded by DARPA, the National Science Foundation and the SRC’s Global Research Collaboration program on these topics,” Chakrabarty says. “My prior work on testing 3D integrated circuits has been adopted by multiple semiconductor companies.”

Chakrabarty considers ASU to be a valuable contributor to CHIMES thanks to the large presence of microelectronics in Arizona’s economy.

Industry partners in the center include Intel, which has managed large-scale manufacturing and office operations in the Phoenix area for decades, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is opening two large manufacturing plants in Arizona with a $40 billion investment.

IBM is also involved in CHIMES, and Chakrabarty says that the center will explore opportunities to collaborate with other companies involved in other JUMP 2.0 centers, such as Boeing and Micron Technology.

Opportunities for students will include collaborations with industry liaisons, mentoring, internships at partner companies and access to additional resources such as semiconductor tools and designs.

Despite the grand plans already in motion, the work at CHIMES is just beginning.

“My goal is to make CHIMES sustainable beyond the five years awarded by SRC, especially since the technologies we’re developing will intersect applications 10 years from now,” Swaminathan says in the Penn State news release. “Not only will we develop future heterogeneous integration technologies, but we will also educate the engineers and scientists of tomorrow.”

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TJ Triolo

Communications Specialist, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

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6 fall ASU English courses that mirror, articulate, solve

Tempe campus
March 9, 2023

This fall, the Department of English at Arizona State University will again offer courses that engage a local-to-global view of issues through the lenses of media and language. Many classes are open to students across the university regardless of major.

From a holistic, solutions-based approach to gun violence, to an exploration of rhetoric in ancient Greece and today’s media, to an examination of movies set in a mythical American West — we’re your Huckleberry. Courses in education, communication, film, literature, language and writing are designed to meet students where they are, then guide them toward “aha” moments.

Registration information for a sampling of fall semester classes is provided below. Find more in the ASU class schedule (look for “ENG,” “FMS,” “LIN” or “APL” prefixes), searchable by both online and in-person options.

1. ENG 494/598 Narratives of School Shootings

Image of a school crosswalk sign / Photo credit Brian Matis on Flickr. Used under CC 2.0.

According to Education Week, in 2022 there were 51 firearm-related incidents at K–12 schools that resulted in injuries or death.

What it is: A combination undergraduate-graduate offering, ENG 494/598 Narratives of School Shootings is offered through ASU’s Humanities Lab. The course will center youth as the solution to gun violence, learning from victims and advocates. Student teams will identify aspects of the problem, collect data and propose a solution. Those solutions will be pitched to local, state and national-level decision-makers like the Department of Education and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Why it matters: According to Education Week, in 2022 there were 51 firearm-related incidents at K–12 schools that resulted in injuries or death. School shootings capture public interest but little seems to have changed to alter their devastating frequency.

Who’s in charge: This course is co-taught by experts from two disciplines. Professor James Blasingame is an education scholar in the Department of English who has studied depictions of gun violence in young adult literature. He is author of the chapter “What We Know and What We Can Do,” published in “Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom” (Routledge, 2018). Associate Professor Sarah Lindstrom Johnson is a public health specialist in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics who studies violence prevention. She was recently recognized for her research on positive behavior interventions by School Psychology Review.

Who should take it: ENG 494/598 is open to first-year through doctoral-level students from any ASU academic discipline who have an interest in young adult literature, secondary education, public health, youth advocacy and activism, violence prevention, behavioral interventions and school policy. Students may enroll under several prefixes and catalog numbers, English: HUL 494/598 and CDE 498/598 among them. In addition, Barrett Honors students receive automatic honors credit by enrolling in the lab, which is also Barrett Honors Thesis Pathway eligible.

If you register: ENG 494/598 Narratives of School Shootings (classes #94559 and #87004) meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 4:15 p.m. on ASU’s Tempe campus.

2. ENG 392 History of Rhetorical Theory

A Lego orator has a captive audience. / Photo credit southtyrolean on Flickr. Used under CC 2.0.

Oratory in fifth-century Athens looked a lot different than it does today, but learning the history of rhetoric is important to understanding how public debate functions.

What it is: Beginning in ancient Greece with the rise of public oratory and ending in the present — an era dominated by mass media — ENG 392 History of Rhetorical Theory surveys the major foundational theories of the art of rhetoric. Students in this course are challenged by readings that emphasize the connection between systems of philosophy, or “worldview,” and systems of communication. While covering a great many topics and ideas, students’ focus will continually return to the subject of public discourse.

Why it matters: Fifth-century Athens is a world away, but developing an understanding of how rhetorical theory informs contemporary public debate around rights, justice, equality, access and expertise is critical. By focusing on big ideas, students become better thinkers and communicators, no matter their chosen careers.

Who's in charge: Associate Professor of English Peter Goggin, who studies and teaches theories of literacy, environmental rhetoric, and sustainability, instructs this course. Goggin is the co-editor of the book “Serendipity in Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy Research” (2018).

Who should take it: ENG 392 is open to students in any major who have completed first-year composition requirements and who are interested in understanding the effects of persuasive discourse and communication in political, legal, cultural and social movements.

If you register: ENG 392 History of Rhetorical Theory (class #84756) is a hybrid course that meets Thursdays from 12 to 1:15 p.m. on ASU’s Tempe campus and will require additional work online.

3. FMS 394 Arizona Identity and the Western Movie

Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, courtesy Picryl.

Historical reenactors at the Old Tombstone theme park and movie set in Arizona perform the raucous days of the 1880s. Photo courtesy Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

What it is: What does it mean to reflect an “Arizona identity” in media and film? Students in FMS 394 Arizona Identity and the Western Movie will reckon with cinematic depictions of the 48th state, through silent classics like “The Great Train Robbery” (1902) and cult classics like “Raising Arizona” (1987) and “Tombstone” (1993). Students will learn how aspects of Western filmic lore have created a national and global image of the West, and will consider how they view the region in relation to its past.

Why it matters: Assumptions have consequences — in real life and in the movies. In order to combat contemporary issues facing Arizonans and the western U.S., future problem-solvers need to start by discerning myth from truth.

Who’s in charge: Faculty Associate Jeremy Carr, a film critic and a contributing editor at Film International, teaches this course. His forthcoming book is “Kubrick and Control” (Liverpool University Press, 2023) and he is the author of “Notebook Primer: The Western” (July 2020), published in the online film publication, MUBI Notebook. 

Who should take it: FMS 394 is open to ASU Online students in any major with an interest in history, culture, film, photography, the American West and Southwest, conservation and geography.

If you register: FMS 394 Arizona Identity and the Western Movie (class #95942) meets via ASU Online during Session A.

4. ENG 403/LIN 513 Semantics

le vent le cri on Wikimedia Commons. Used under CC 2.0.

What is the meaning of love? A linguistics course can’t answer that question, but it can introduce theories of how meaning in language is derived.

What it is: ENG 403/LIN 513 Semantics is a combined undergraduate-graduate linguistics course concerned with a rather abstract — but important — part of language: meaning. Take, for example, the sentence, “Everyone loves someone.” This sentence can mean a lot of things, even at the same time. Does everyone love the same person? Or is there a unique person for every lover? This course outlines the tools linguists and semanticists (it’s a word, we promise) use for examining meaning in deceptively simple sentences like this. You will become an expert in the scientific theories and methods that reveal the actual meanings of any word or phrase in any natural language.

Why it matters: Equipped with these tools, students will have a new “superpower”: to be able critically analyze the daily use of language at a level that will improve reasoning, increase verbal intelligence, identify faulty or misleading reasoning by others, amaze strangers at parties, and impress friends and family.

Who’s in charge: Assistant Professor Tyler Peterson, who teaches in ASU’s linguistics and applied linguistics/TESOL program, instructs this course. Peterson specializes in studying how meaning is expressed in language and he also participates in documenting and revitalizing endangered Indigenous languages. His forthcoming book is “The Language of Surprise: Linguistic and Psychological Perspectives on Mirativity” (Cambridge University Press).

Who should take it: ENG 403/LIN 513 is open to students of any major — who have met basic first-year composition requirements and who have taken ENG 213 or SLC 210 — and who have an interest in language, philosophy, communication or linguistics. ENG 403 satisfies a requirement for the undergraduate English (linguistics) major, a requirement for the TESOL certificate, an elective for the accelerated linguistics and applied linguistics master’s degree, and an elective for the accelerated MTESOL degree. LIN 513 counts as an elective for the graduate programs in linguistics and applied linguistics.

If you register: ENG 403/LIN 513: Semantics (classes #86749 and #86748) meets Mondays and Wednesdays from noon to 1:15 p.m. on ASU’s Tempe campus.

5. ENG 349 Global Literary Studies: Indisciplining English

A person holds a globe in front of a wall of newspapers. / Public domain image credit: Slava Bowman on Unsplash, via Wikimedia Commons.

There's a world of literature out there. What gets lost in translation?

What it is: This course means to problematize English as a “default” language. Students in ENG 349 Global Literature: Indisciplining English will read world literature alongside critical works from authors such as Mia Couto, Emmelie Prophète, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, to critically examine themes such as colonialism, Orientalism, the politics of translation and the politics of the English language. Students will be critical of their own reading practices to develop a methodology of reading that rejects reenacting forms of oppression and silence associated with reading in translation, particularly in English.

Why it matters: Two questions: How does one understand the world — and world literature — if it is filtered through English? How does one ethically read world literature?

Who’s in charge: ASU Postdoctoral Research Scholar of English Mariam Galarrita teaches this course. An affiliate of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Galarrita specializes in Early Modern English literature and travel writing as well as premodern critical race studies.

Who should take it: ENG 349 is open to students who have met basic first-year composition requirements and who have an interest in literature, history, culture, language, critical reading, writing and thinking — and who are curious about experiences beyond their own.

If you register: ENG 349 Global Literary Studies: Indisciplining English (class #84819) is a hybrid course that meets Tuesdays from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m. on ASU’s Tempe campus and will require additional work online.

6. ENG 494/598 Hayden’s Ferry Review Literary Editing & Publishing I

Courtesy image of Hayden’s Ferry Review issue 71 (Fall/Winter 2022), which celebrated its publication this past January.

Courtesy image of the fall/winter 2022 cover for Hayden's Ferry Review.

What it is: ENG 494/598 Hayden’s Ferry Review Literary Editing & Publishing I is the first in a two-part course undergraduate-graduate course that is the practical study of literary magazine production. Students learn every facet of curating and producing an issue of the lauded Hayden’s Ferry Review — a semi-annual, international literary journal founded at ASU in 1986 — from reading and reviewing submissions, to editing and designing the magazine, to soliciting submissions.

Why it matters: The publishing industry is a vibrant, fast-changing one; those interested in pursuing a career in it can get a “leg up” in this hands-on course.

Who’s in charge: Poet Susan Nguyen, who is senior editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review, is the course instructor. Her poetry collection “Dear Diaspora” (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) recently won the 2023 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Writing: Poetry.

Who should take it: ENG 494/598 is open to graduate students and upper level undergraduates in ASU’s creative writing concentration who have an interest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short stories, art, editing, contemporary literature, journals and magazines, publishing and literary communities.

If you register: ENG 494/598 Hayden’s Ferry Review Literary Editing & Publishing I (classes #95949 and #95875) meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m. on ASU’s Tempe campus.

Top photo: A reflected image of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Photo by Nate Loper via Flickr

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ASU Morrison Prize honors proposal to reform energy law, improve grid reliability

March 6, 2023

The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has just awarded its prestigious Morrison Prize to a group of professors from four different law schools for their article arguing that continued reliance on fossil fuels will only exacerbate the reliability challenges plaguing the nation’s electric grid. The article outlines innovative strategies for strengthening grid reliability while accelerating the nation’s transition to a lower-carbon energy system.

Their prize-winning paper, titled “Grid Reliability Through Clean Energy,” appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 2022 and was authored by professors Alexandra Klass, Joshua Macey, Shelley Welton and Hannah Wiseman. The Morrison Prize Contest is a nationally recognized competition established in 2015 and administered through the program in law and sustainability at ASU's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The contest awards a $10,000 prize annually to the authors of the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year and is named after its benefactor, Richard N. Morrison, who co-founded ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. The winners will present this year’s winning article at ASU’s eighth annual SRP Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators on May 12 in downtown Phoenix. Windmills against a blue sky Four professors from different universities have won the annual Morrison Prize presented by the law and sustainability program at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Download Full Image

University of Michigan Professor Alexandra Klass thanked ASU Law for the honor and praised it for its contribution to complex sustainability issues.

“The Morrison Prize and ASU’s annual sustainability conference have become key drivers in bringing together scholars and practitioners to tackle the important energy and sustainability challenges of our day,” she said. “I am delighted that our article was recognized as part of that effort.”

University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Shelley Welton noted the generosity of ASU’s annual event and spoke of the collaborative effort of the prize-winning paper.

“I am tremendously honored to receive the Morrison Prize as part of this wonderful group of co-authors. Winning for this paper is particularly gratifying because I don’t believe we could have written this piece separately — it really was a collective effort greater than the sum of our individual expertise,” she said. 

Joshua Macey, who teaches law at the University of Chicago and previously won the prize in 2021 and 2022, said the event is a yearly highlight for him.

“ASU’s sustainability conference is an amazing event and always a highlight of the year for me,” he said. “I’m extremely grateful to the ASU law school, to Troy Rule and to Mr. Morrison for helping to cultivate academic community and for bringing together so many different voices in the environmental movement.”

For her part, Penn State Law Professor Hannah Wiseman said she was grateful for the opportunity the Morrison Prize creates to draw national attention to sustainability-oriented legal scholarship each year.

“ASU’s Morrison Prize has been instrumental in drawing greater attention to diverse environmental, energy and natural resources scholarship that aims to move forward sustainability efforts,” she said. “This team of authors is incredibly excited to receive this prize and thankful for the time and resources that Mr. Morrison and ASU have invested in administering the prize and bringing together law professors for productive and innovative discussions in the space of sustainability policy.”

Portrait of University of Michigan Professor Alexandra Klass standing in front of a power grid system.

University of Michigan Professor Alexandra Klass is one of the winners of the 2023 ASU Morrison Prize. 

Photo courtesy Alexandra Klass
Portrait of University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Shelley Welton

University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Shelley Welton is one of the winners of the 2023 ASU Morrison Prize. 

Photo courtesy Shelley Welton
Portrait of University of Chicago Professor Joshua Macey.

University of Chicago Professor Joshua Macey is one of the winners of the 2023 ASU Morrison Prize.

Photo courtesy Joshua Macey
Portriat of Professor Hannah Wiseman.

Professor Hannah Wiseman is one of the winners of the 2023 ASU Morrison Prize. 

Photo courtesy Hannah Wiseman

Professor Troy Rule, faculty director of ASU’s law and sustainability program, noted that the Morrison Prize contest continues to grow in prestige and influence year after year.

“Richard Morrison’s generosity in continuing to fund this prize contest is helping to drive sustainability-focused academic research in truly impactful ways,” he said. “ASU is extremely fortunate to partner with him in this important effort.”

Each year, law professors from throughout the world who have recently published articles in North American legal academic journals are eligible to enter the Morrison Prize contest. All entries undergo independent review and scoring by a group of professors not affiliated with ASU who teach in environmental sustainability-related areas at various North American law schools. The scores from these judges are aggregated to determine the prize winner.

Past winners

In 2022, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission general counsel Matthew Christiansen and University of Chicago Law Professor Joshua Macey won the Morrison Prize for their article “Long Live the Federal Power Act’s Bright Line.” 

In 2021, University of Chicago Law Professor Joshua Macey won the Morrison Prize for his article “Zombie Energy Laws,” which described how certain energy laws were impacting the nation’s decarbonization efforts.

In 2020, Vanderbilt University Law School professors Jim Rossi and Christopher Serkin won the Morrison Prize for their insightful article “Energy Exactions,” which was published in the spring 2019 issue of the Cornell Law Review. The article described how local governments could better leverage their land use regulatory authority to drive substantial increases in rooftop solar energy installations and energy-efficient real estate development.

In 2019, a six-author team won the Morrison Prize for an unprecedented analysis of the structuring of conservation easements in the face of rapid climate change. The article, titled “Climate change challenges for land conservation: Rethinking conservation easements, strategies, and tools,” was co-written by Federico Cheever, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law; Jessica Owley, director of the environmental law program at University of Buffalo - State University of New York; Adena R. Rissman, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forestry and Wildlife Ecology; M. Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wide Fund for Nature; Barton H. Thompson Jr., a professor of natural resources at Stanford Law School; and W. William Weeks, director of the Conservation Law Clinic at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.

In 2018, Minnesota Law School Professor Hari M. Osofsky and Jacqueline Peel, associate dean of the University of Melbourne Law School in Australia, won the prize for their academic article “Energy Partisanship.” They outlined the critical importance of circumventing fierce political divisions in order to combat climate change, and provided guidance for doing so.

In 2017, Vanderbilt University professors Michael P. Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan won the prize for "Beyond Gridlock." The article underscored the difficulties of effecting change through government and highlighted the underutilized potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through the private sector.

In 2016, Dave Owen, a professor at University of California, Hastings College of Law, and Colin Aspe, a freshwater conservation advisor at the Nature Conservancy, were the inaugural winners of the Morrison Prize. Their article, “Trading Dams,” described creative new policy approaches for better balancing hydroelectric energy generation and environmental protection on the nation’s river system. 

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ASU researcher combats food insecurity with AI

Tempe campus Hawaii
March 3, 2023

Community-led NASA Harvest project collaborates with Maui farmers, students to address agricultural challenges in Hawaii

Despite having a year-round growing season and rich, productive soil, Hawaii has the highest food costs in the U.S. and a strong reliance on imported foods.

“Maui County in particular is extremely vulnerable to systemic shocks like supply chain disruptions and climate change impacts,” says Hannah Kerner, an assistant professor of computer science in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University.

These steep food prices disproportionately affect lower-income residents and contribute to food insecurity in Hawaii. They also negatively impact small-scale, Indigenous farmers who have been historically marginalized in state and national policies and investments, stifling their production of native crops and consequently their livelihoods.

Kerner is addressing the issue in a project with NASA Harvest, NASA’s food security and agriculture program. Kerner is the U.S. domestic co-lead and artificial intelligence lead researcher for the program, which is housed at the University of Maryland Center for Global Agricultural Monitoring Research and operating as a consortium of international partners from more than 50 institutions around the world.

Kerner’s team is working with Maui United Way and other local partners to develop a food security dashboard that uses machine learning and satellite Earth observations to create new datasets for measuring and monitoring agricultural production across Maui County, which includes the Hawaiian Islands of Maui, Lanai and Molokai.

Machine learning, a branch of AI, uses data to train models to predict variables or future outcomes. Using local agriculture data and satellite Earth observations of Hawaii’s crops, Kerner’s machine learning models will be able to predict gaps in local food supply and access. This information will help Maui County decision-makers determine how to address food insecurity by identifying where crop growth can be more successful and assisting farmers with insights that will help them to grow more food locally, therefore decreasing Hawaii’s dependence on importing food.

In addition, the dashboard will integrate other relevant datasets like socioeconomic and price data to guide community decisions and actions, thereby empowering growers and decision-makers to combat food insecurity by helping to set fair prices for local growers and consumers.

“The dashboard will focus on supporting small-scale, independent and Indigenous farmers in Maui County and fill critical gaps in the knowledge of agricultural production at multiple scales across the county,” Kerner says. “It will also enable decision-makers and members of the Maui County community to continuously monitor the status and conditions of crops grown locally and develop policies and programs to boost production by small and indigenous farmers in a sustainable and culturally appropriate way.”

Engaging local communities in Maui County

Earlier this year, Kerner and her team visited Maui County to teach a training course and collect field data for the project with local students from University of Hawaii Maui College, or UHMC, one of NASA Harvest’s local partners, as well as high school students from across Maui County. The student program, called ʻĀina Data Stewards, is managed by Kerner’s team and UHMC.

“We’ve been very intentional with the way we’ve implemented this program to make sure it’s community-led, respectful and sensitive to existing dynamics,” Kerner says. “We are not collecting any data without farmers’ consent and we are engaging farmers and other community leaders throughout the process to ensure the project is co-developed and serves the community’s interests and needs.”

Kerner also notes that “there has been a huge effort with outreach, education, meeting partners and community members for Zoom meetings, visiting farms and really showing the community that we’re there to help them achieve what they want and not bring our own ideas while taking their data.”

During the trip, Kerner and her team trained approximately 30 UHMC and local high school students to collect data about local crops growing in Maui County, including foods like taro, bananas and coconut. Kerner’s team will combine the crop information with satellite data to create a machine learning model that makes more accurate and wider-ranging predictions about which crops are growing and where, giving farmers insight on current crop production and conditions.

Up close photo of green leaf of taro plant

Taro is a root vegetable and believed to be one of the world’s oldest cultivated crops. The root is used to make poi, a staple in Hawaiian cuisine. Photo courtesy Jacob Adler

Kerner’s collaborators in Hawaii say the team’s approach in involving the local community is key to the success of the dashboard and other tools to effectively combat food insecurity.

“This collaborative project is important because it will help to ensure that the ways the data are collected, analyzed and used will serve Maui Nui‘s needs and decision-making for the community’s collective benefit,” says Lui Hokoana, chancellor of UHMC.

“UHMC’s new Hulihia Center for Sustainable Systems provides a systems framework for the project, including training for the ʻĀina Data Stewards students,” Hokoana says. “The opportunity to bring together NASA Harvest’s cutting-edge technologies and our local stakeholders to design and implement community-based solutions for increasing local food production, including Native Hawaiian farmers, is a critical effort to achieve a sustainable future for Maui.”

NASA Harvest’s partnership with Maui United Way helps drive the project’s mission to have a community-led influence.

“The impacts of this research will have long-lasting effects on how our food systems adapt to various factors,” says Nicholas Winfrey, president and chief professional officer at Maui United Way. “We’ve already seen a variety of community input and insight on where this project should go. By allowing our community to guide this process, we’ve seen insights into the potential of where farms were years ago and the current impacts those practices are having on us now.”

Shay Chan Hodges, a collaborator and co-organizer of the Maui ESG Project, an initiative of Responsible Markets, is noticing the effects of this work.

“We see a lot of potential positive impacts from this partnership, which is already inspiring farmers and students,” she says. “During conversations with the NASA Harvest scientists, students and farmers have been excited about how access to satellite data can help them to understand numerous historical events and patterns, and predict and prepare for future events.”

A group of researchers posing

Left to right: Incoming ASU doctoral student Ivan Zvonkov; Catherine Nakalembe, assistant professor at the University of Maryland and Africa program director with NASA Harvest; ASU Assistant Professor Hannah Kerner; and Alyssa Whitecraft, associate research professor at the University of Maryland, deputy director of NASA Harvest and director of NASA ACRES. Photo courtesy Jacob Adler

Additional U.S. and worldwide applications

NASA Harvest began in 2017 with a $15 million, five-year grant from NASA Headquarters. The first five years focused on advancing the use of satellite Earth observations for agriculture monitoring and food security in the U.S. and worldwide. The grant was renewed for another five years to continue and expand these efforts internationally.

Some of the NASA Harvest team members, led by Deputy Director Alyssa Whitcraft, were also recently awarded a new $15 million, five-year grant from NASA to implement a new consortium focused on U.S. agriculture. Kerner will also serve as the AI lead for this new consortium, which will be called A Climate Resilient Ecosystems Approach to Strengthening U.S. Agriculture, or ACRES.

“A lot of what we’re doing in NASA Harvest is very interconnected across the globe,” Kerner says. “For both NASA Harvest and ACRES, I coordinate the projects that involve AI, and the consortium’s priorities serve as real-world use cases that drive much of the AI research that my group at ASU does. We focus on developing new advances in AI research that are tied to real people’s needs, and then actually work to deploy them into practice around the world.”

Kerner’s agriculture mapping has also produced high-resolution, multiyear cropland and crop type maps for other countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi, Namibia and Tanzania.

According to Ivan Zvonkov, an incoming doctoral student to Kerner’s lab who has worked with NASA Harvest for two years, the agricultural maps are being used by stakeholders for downstream applications, including cultivated area estimation, crop yield forecasting and crop conditions assessments.

“Research in this field has the potential to contribute to solutions to many societal challenges,” says Zvonkov, who will be attending ASU in the fall. “This has motivated me to think more broadly about designing and building machine learning systems that empower people.”

Group of people talks about crops in taro field

Ivan Zvonkov and Hannah Kerner discuss crops with Uncle Bobby Pahia (center), owner and farmer at Hawaii Taro Farm LLC. Photo courtesy Alyssa Whitcraft

Funding sources for Kerner’s Maui County project with NASA Harvest include the NASA Equity and Environmental Justice Program, NASA Harvest and the NASA ACRES program.

Top photo: Assistant Professor Hannah Kerner and her research team recently visited Hawaii to record the locations of crops, like those growing in this field of taro. Photo courtesy Jacob Adler

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Cronkite School partners with Grambling State University to research emergency management resources at HBCUs

March 2, 2023

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in partnership with the Department of Mass Communication at Grambling State University, is a recipient of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant to assess emergency management resources and needs at the nation’s 103 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

The research grant, awarded by FEMA’s National Training and Education Division/Higher Education Program, examines real-world challenges resulting in recommendations and solutions to complex problems. Exterior view of The Cronkite School building in downtown Phoenix. The Cronkite School, in partnership with the Department of Mass Communication at Grambling State University, is a recipient of a FEMA grant. FEMA grants support critical recovery initiatives, innovative research and many other programs, and are the principal funding mechanism FEMA uses to commit and award federal funding to eligible state, local, tribal, territorial, certain private nonprofits, individuals and institutions of higher learning. Download Full Image

“This baseline research will set the stage for creating a multidisciplinary Joint Information Center: Media & Strategy Lab. It links the assets of ASU, GSU and their partners that are dedicated to cutting-edge digital media training, execution and analysis,” said Cronkite Dean Battinto L. Batts Jr., who has a special investment in this project, given his own background as a dual HBCU graduate from Norfolk State University and Hampton University. “Building relationships with HBCUs is a strategic priority for the Cronkite School, to strengthen our enterprise of educating communicators that fully represent our communities and our society.”

At Cronkite, the project is guided by Cronkite Assistant Dean Dawn Gilpin and strategic communication faculty members Fran Matera and Juan Mundel. At Grambling, the project is directed by Ceeon Quiett Smith, chair of the Department of Mass Communication and Cronkite’s first African American PhD recipient in 2017. Matera served as Smith’s dissertation director.

“It is very exciting that the research that began seven years ago investigating JICS and emergency response communication at Cronkite has developed into an opportunity for GSU and ASU, supported by FEMA, to develop an innovative crisis communication system, with HBCUs at the center designed to provide a voice for and from rural and urban communities,” said Smith. “This is indeed a unique opportunity to create transformative educational content and build a sustainable partnership among HBCUs, ASU and FEMA.”

The JICMS Lab is projected to launch this summer.

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ASU students win $10K prize in 30-hour hackathon

Tempe campus
March 1, 2023

Event looked at tackling terrorist threats to homeland security

There was pure joy, followed by lots of hugs and high-fives on Sunday afternoon when a team of five Arizona State University students won a $10,000 prize for creating a design to divert a domestic terrorist attack. 

It was all part of a Devils Invent event, which took place Feb. 24–26 in the Engineering Center on the Tempe campus and via Zoom. Devils Invent is a series of design challenges put on by ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. 

The event's theme was “Protecting America’s Public Access Areas” and featured the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

The hackathon brought together 23 teams from 11 colleges across the country, including Northeastern University, San Diego State University, the University of the District of Columbia and California State University, Los Angeles. 

“Essentially, it is a way for students to design, innovate and build their teamwork and hands-on technical skills,” said Melissa Stine, coordinator senior for student success and engagement at the Fulton Schools. 

The goal of the challenge was to design effective responses to Department of Homeland Security threats in what are described as soft locations — churches, museums, schools, stadiums and other public places. Organizers paired students with academic and industry mentors to solve problem scenarios. 

Participants were tasked with designing responses to one of the following prompts:

  • How do we guide crowds to good decisions during an attack?

  • How do we enable effective and timely communication among stakeholders and responders to allow for oversight and response to an attack?

  • How can we inform and enable civilians to prepare for a drone attack?

The winning team, called Malindo, was made up of five computer science students from the Fulton Schools: Nathan McAvoy, Fawwaz Firdaus, Kalyanam Priyam Dewri, Camelia Ariana Binti Ahmad Nasri and Rui Heng Foo. They competed in the second prompt.

Their design, titled Live Emergency Response System, uses artificial intelligence in closed-circuit television cameras to detect firearms on a potential terrorist. Radar mapping tracks the target’s movements and provides first responders with information, including the suspect’s location.

Computer-generated person on computer screen in a hallway

The image of an armed terrorist was part of a winning design created by the ASU team Malindo during a design challenge for the Homeland Security Department. Photo by Dolores Tropiano

The team spent 30 hours in the Engineering Center working on the project — which turned out to be time well spent. 

“We can learn more here than we can learn in a classroom,” said team member Firdaus, a second-year student. “I feel more passionate about doing this than I would doing homework. … I would never stay up all night doing homework.”

There was more than passion that kept them going.

“We had good snacks and a lot of Red Bulls,” said McAvoy, a first-year student on the team. 

The weekend-long event kicked off with a keynote speaker, George Naccara, a retired admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard and former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security. 

Naccara described the profile of a domestic terrorist based on multiple government studies.

Most attacks occur in public access areas, 71% involve firearms, 90% are male with a criminal history, and the suspect typically has extreme ideologically and hateful views, he said.

“This is truly a remarkable opportunity to engage young minds in thinking about the risks and threats and devising innovative approaches to mitigate or minimize these risks. I emphasize young minds (because) that's you out there — each of you,” Naccara said.

Students in classroom sitting at desks for design challenge

A Devils Invent event focusing on “Protecting America’s Public Access Areas” drew 58 ASU students for a hackathon Feb. 24–26, put on by ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Photo by Zachary Spencer.

A total of 58 students from ASU participated, forming 11 of the teams. ASU students won in five out of nine prize categories.

The two second prize winners from ASU were:

The two ASU teams that tied for third prize for their response to the crowd prompt were:

Prizes, ranging from $2,500 to $10,000, were awarded at the end of the event, in a ceremony that was co-hosted by Northeastern University’s Soft-Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality Center of Excellence and ASU’s Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency.

The hackathon gave students the opportunity to successfully tackle real-life emergencies and grow from the experience. 

“Not many undergraduates think they have the skills to handle these problems,” said Anthony Kuhn, the director of design experiences for the Fulton Schools, who also runs the Devils Invent hackathons.

“But by giving them time to work an entire weekend, they prove to themselves that they can.” 

Before the winners were announced, Gregory Simmons, program manager for Minority Serving Institutions and Workforce Development at the Department of Homeland Security, talked about the future opportunities available to students in the department.

“The bottom line,” he said, “is that we want you to come and take jobs within Homeland Security.”

Top photo: The Malindo team (back row, left to right) Nathan McAvoy, Fawwaz Firdaus, Kalyanam Priyam Dewri (front row, left to right) Rui Heng Foo and Camelia Ariana Binti Ahmad Nasri won $10,000 for their design to divert domestic terrorism at the Devils Invent hackathon Feb. 24–26. Photo by Dolores Tropiano

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