About American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

E. William Colglazier is editor-in-chief of Science & Diplomacy and senior scholar in the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He works there to advance knowledge and practice on science policy and diplomacy and to support international collaboration in science and technology. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the fourth Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State, providing scientific and technical expertise in support of US foreign policy. From 1994 to 2011, he served as executive officer of the US National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, where he helped to oversee the studies that provide independent, objective scientific advice on public policy issues. In 2016 and 2017 he co-chaired the 10-member group appointed by the UN Secretary General to advise on science, technology, and innovation for achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1971, and subsequently worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Tennessee.

Elisabeth Malsch is a leader in the forensics practice at Thornton Tomasetti in New York. She has decades of experience in modeling the mechanical behavior of structures; for the past 13 years, she has focused on structural analysis and design, specializing in investigative projects and restoration and repair of a wide variety of structures. She is proficient in static, dynamic, and nonlinear analysis and evaluation of buildings, mechanical systems, parking garages, space frames, domes, and scaffolds under the effects of wind, seismic forces, vibration, and blast loads. After completing her studies at Columbia University—where she earned a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a doctorate in civil engineering and engineering mechanics—Malsch received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany (2004-2005). She contributes to the scholarship of the profession as an adjunct professor at Columbia University in the Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department, through numerous speaking engagements, technical papers, and articles. In 2012, Malsch was named to Building Design + Construction magazine’s 40 Under 40 list and Engineering News-Record New York’s New York Top 20 Under 40. In 2013, she was included in Civil + Structural Engineer’s list of Rising Stars in Structural Engineering. Malsch has also contributed to making her firm more family-friendly by promoting intelligent staffing arrangements and access to the right tools for working remotely.

Dale Medearis is a senior environmental planner for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, where he co-leads the NVRC’s regional climate mitigation and adaptation programs and manages NVRC’s international partnerships. Medearis helped co-launch the first formal climate and energy partnership between the 40 largest US and European metropolitan regional councils, co-initiate the Transatlantic Climate Bridge, co-launch the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s “Cities and Climate” Network, and co-develop the Transatlantic Urban Climate Dialogue with the Free University Berlin. Prior to NVRC, Medearis spent 20 years at the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International Affairs as the program manager for western Europe and urban environmental programs. He served as vice-chair of the OECD Territorial Development Committee and chairman of the OECD Working Group on Urban Affairs. Medearis was a German Chancellor Fellow (1994-1995) and has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the European Union, and the American Council on Germany. Medearis holds a PhD in environmental design and planning from Virginia Tech University, an MS in cartographic and geographic science from George Mason University, an MGA in government from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in international relations from the University of Redlands.

Sumit Ganguly is a distinguished professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research focuses on contemporary politics in South Asia. He previously taught at James Madison College at Michigan State University, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a visiting fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a guest scholar at the Center for Cooperative Monitoring in Albuquerque, and a visiting scholar at the German Institute for International and Area Studies in Hamburg. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On September 1, 2024 he will join the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to direct their Strengthening the US-India Relationship Program.

Ganguly is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 20 books on South Asia. His most recent book with Manjeet S. Pardesi and William R. Thompson, is The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 2023) He is currently working on a new book that focuses on the origins and evolution of India’s defense policy for Columbia University Press.

Katrin Amian has been head of the North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania Division in the Sponsorship and Network Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn since 2008. In this capacity she is responsible for the management of the Foundation’s sponsorship programs and activities for fellows and awardees from these regions. Amian joined the Humboldt Foundation in 2007 as program director for strategic planning in the Department for Strategic Planning and External Relations. She previously served as assistant professor in the Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn. Amian holds a graduate degree in North American Studies and a PhD in American Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Bonn. She is a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and has received several visiting fellowships to study and conduct research in the United States—at the University of Notre Dame, Cornell University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Timothy Angelotti is an associate professor within the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In his clinical work, he specializes in the care of high risk, critically ill adult patients—during air medical transports, in the intensive care unit (ICU), or in the operating room. Angelotti received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame, and subsequently received his MD and PhD (Pharmacology) degrees from the University of Michigan, where he was a fellow in the NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program. He continued his clinical training in Anesthesiology at Duke University and subsequently Intensive Care Medicine at Stanford University. Angelotti’s research has been in the area of molecular pharmacology, specifically on the study of ion channels, receptor proteins, and the sympathetic nervous system. He directed an NIH-funded basic science laboratory for over 12 years before switching his research focus toward translational medicine, specifically clinical pharmacology of vasopressor drugs in the ICU. Besides the NIH, he has received research funding from Stanford University, the American Heart Association (AHA), the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER), and corporate sponsors. He has published six book chapters, over thirty-two peer-reviewed research articles, and a dozen invited reviews and lectures frequently to pre-clinical medical students. In addition to American Friends of AvH, Angelotti also sits on the Scientific Review Board for the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation (SPF) and has served as an associate editor for Analgesia & Anesthesia. In addition, he holds several leadership positions with his department and Stanford University Hospital. Angelotti was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation postdoctoral fellow based at the Technical University Munich (TUM) from 1995 to 1996 and in 2013, he returned to TUM on sabbatical as a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Return Fellowship.

John W. Boyer is Senior Advisor to the President and the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. He served as Dean of the College from 1992 through June 2023. During his tenure as dean, he broadened the College curriculum to include many new core courses and new programs of advanced study, as well as strengthened the College’s admissions program and establishing the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Boyer was also deeply involved in the founding of the University of Chicago Center in Paris. 

Boyer has served as an editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. A specialist in the history of the Habsburg Empire and of Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Boyer received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1975 and joined the faculty in the same year. Boyer has written four books on Central European history—Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897; and Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897-1918, both of which were published by the University of Chicago Press. He is also the author of Karl Lueger (1844-1910): Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf (2010) and, most recently, Austria 1867-1955 (Oxford University Press, 2022). In 2004 Boyer was awarded the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, by the Republic of Austria. He is a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna in 2015, in recognition of his scholarly work on the Habsburg Empire.

Louise K. Davidson-Schmich is a professor of political science at the University of Miami, where she has been since earning her PhD at Duke University in 1999; she is also Co-Editor of German Politics. Her research focuses on gender and politics, especially in the German context. She is the author of Gender Quotas and Democratic Participation: Recruiting Candidates for Elective Office in Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2016). Davidson-Schmich was awarded the German Chancellor Fellowship (1996-1997) for research on budget politics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She subsequently received funding for a follow-up visit to Germany, this time at the University of Bremen’s Zentrum Gender Studies. She also hosted an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Kolleg on the subject of German Chancellor Angela Merkel that resulted in a 2011 special issue of German Politics. 

In recent years, she and Dr. David Abraham have served as co-Humboldtians on Campus at the University of Miami. As an HoC, Davidson-Schmich hosted fellow Humboldtian Dr. Kathrin Zippel who spoke on the topic, “Climbing Glass Fences: Women in Global Science.” Davidson-Schmich serves on the editorial boards of The European Journal of Politics and Gender, German Politics and Society, and Women, Politics, and Policy. She is also a member of the executive board of the International Association for the Study of German Politics and a former Board member of the German Studies Association.

Catherine Epstein is Provost and Dean of the Faculty and Winkley Professor of History at Amherst College. She specializes in Modern German and Central European History. Since coming to Amherst in 2000, she has taught a wide range of European history classes, including courses on the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and World War II. Epstein is the author of four books on German history. Her textbook, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, was published in 2015 (Wiley-Blackwell). Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Nazi Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford, 2010) won the Arthur Kronthal Prize. Epstein also wrote The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century (Harvard, 2003) and A Past Renewed: German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933 (Cambridge, 1993). For a decade (2004-2014), Epstein served as Associate Editor of Central European History, the leading journal in German history in North America. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Council. Epstein has been Dean of the Faculty since July 2014, and Provost and Dean of the Faculty since 2019. 

Joseph S. Francisco is President’s Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously served as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Elmer H. and Ruby M. Cordes Chair in chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Francisco received his PhD in chemical physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a research fellow at Cambridge University in England and he returned to MIT as a provost postdoctoral fellow. Francisco was a professor of chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University in 2006 Francisco was appointed as the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Chemistry. Francisco has received multiple awards and was a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, which he spent at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt US Senior Scientist Award, as well as being appointed a senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy, and a Professeur Invité at the Université de Paris-Est, France. He is a co-author of the textbook Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics (Prentice-Hall) and was president of the American Chemical Society for 2010.

Emily Yates Giulioni has over 15 years of project management, economic development, sustainable planning, and design experience. She has advanced knowledge in the transatlantic urban agenda with a focus on resiliency and revitalization policy, facilitating cross-sector collaboration and partnerships, and implementing civic engagement strategies which have brought vibrancy to local communities. She is currently chief innovation officer at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). She previously served as Philadelphia’s smart city director. There, she launched 14 tech and data pilots and leveraged a total budget of $219,000 over three years to bring in over $800,000 of additional funds and in-kind services. She was previously founder and principal of Urban Revolution Group, LLC and served as deputy director of Envision Charlotte. She holds a BS in Landscape Architecture from the Arizona State University and was a German Chancellor Fellow from 2010 to 2011.

Akasemi Newsome leads the Global, International, and Area Studies hub at the University of California, Berkeley. As associate director, Newsome manages a diverse portfolio including: 1) fostering new partnerships in joint campus research initiatives across world regions; 2) building teams tasked with operations, fundraising, programming, and research for the top research institute on Europe in the Western United States; and 3) supporting senior leaders and technical experts at UC Berkeley and in Norway to identify needs, opportunities and research priorities. At UC Berkeley, Newsome has secured multiple six- and seven-figure grants and gifts from various funders, including the EU Commission, the US Department of Education, and the MGS Foundation. She has also spearheaded public programming series elevating research on and by German and European scholars and activists from racialized groups. Prior to her career in higher education, Newsome gained experience in communications, strategic planning and political outreach in Fortune 500 companies, major US foundations, and international policy think tanks. She speaks German and has lived and worked in Germany.

Newsome is a political scientist with research interests in EU-US relations and the politics of labor, immigration, and comparative racialization. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley in 2015 and has several publications in recognized policy and academic venues: Politics and Governance (2022), International Relations (2021), and Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises (2021).

Jeffrey Peck served as dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences and the vice provost for global strategies at Baruch College, City University of New York from 2008 to 2015. From September 2015 through February 2016, he was a senior fellow with the Mercator Foundation, where he worked on a project on diversity and internationalization at German universities. He is currently a Berlin-based director at AKA/Strategy, a New York City–based consulting firm for nonprofits, mainly universities. Peck has taught at universities in both the United States and Canada and has held the Walter Benjamin Chair in German-Jewish Culture and History at the Humboldt University Berlin. Peck also taught at the Free University Berlin and was a senior fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. Peck holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley (1979); an MA, also in comparative literature, from the University of Chicago (1974); and a Bachelor of Arts from Michigan State University (1972) in German, English, and History. He is the author of numerous articles on German and Jewish studies and has also written extensively on transnational and global cultural issues. He is particularly interested in the global transfer of knowledge and the internationalization of the university.

Loren Ponds is practice co-lead in the tax policy division at Miller & Chevalier in Washington, DC. She centers her practice on providing strategic counsel to clients on legislative, regulatory, and other tax policy issues, as well as advising on technical tax matters related to transfer pricing and other international tax topics. Prior to joining Miller & Chevalier, Ms. Ponds served as majority tax counsel to the US House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, where she developed, analyzed, and refined the international tax provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Fluent in French and German, Ponds worked abroad as Ernst & Young's Global Transfer Pricing Operations Manager in Duesseldorf, Germany. She was also a German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the International Tax Institute at the Universitaet Hamburg in Germany, as well as a Trainee at the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in Paris, France.

Matthew Roller is a classicist whose research and teaching are broadly concerned with the literature, history, art, philosophy, and culture of the ancient Roman world. He is the author of three monographs: Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton University Press, 2001), Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status (Princeton University Press, 2006), and Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge University Press, 2018). His current book-scale project is an investigation of the arenas of competitive eloquence in the early Imperial period, from the Augustan age into the 2nd century CE.

His research has been supported by major awards from the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, as well as by smaller awards from diverse funders to support particular projects. He has been a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University since 1994. His service roles include chairing the Classics Department for seven years and the Anthropology Department for one year, and serving for five years as the Vice Dean for Graduate Education and Interdepartmental Centers and Programs in the School of Arts and Sciences. In 2023 Roller will serve as president of the Society for Classical Studies, the principal learned society and professional association for classicists in North America.

Hugo Sanabria is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University. He graduated from Tec of Monterrey, Mexico, with a BS in Physics Engineering and pursued an MS and a PhD in Physics at the University of Houston under Dr. John H. Miller’s supervision. His thesis was on applications of dielectric spectroscopy to study biopolymers. Sanabria was awarded a Keck Fellowship from the Gulf Coast Consortia for his postdoctoral research with Dr. M. Neal Waxham at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. There, he studied Ca2+ signaling proteins involved in learning and memory processes. He was subsequently awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, where he developed and enhanced single-molecule methodologies to study the structure and dynamics of proteins. In 2014 he joined Clemson University and in 2016 was named a CU School of Health Research Faculty Scholar. He is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER award, the 2019 Board of Trustees Excellence award, and the 2019 HORIBA Young Fluorescence Investigator Award. He has received research grants from both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Andrea Stith is director of research development at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. She was previously director of research development for science and engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara and served as assistant director for interdisciplinary education at the University of Colorado BioFrontiers Institute in Boulder. Her professional interests include graduate and postdoctoral education, broadening participation in STEM, and the internationalization of higher education. Stith served as a research fellow at the Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. While in Shanghai, her research focused on national and institutional policies that impact the career prospects of postdoctoral researchers. Previously, she studied science/technology and higher education policies as a German Chancellor Fellow at the Humboldt University Berlin and Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Stith has held program management positions at nonprofit organizations in the Washington, DC area, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. In 2002-2003 she was an AAAS/NSF Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation. Stith received her doctorate in biophysics from the University of Virginia and received her bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Delaware in 1995.

Christian Haenel began his tenure as president of American Friends of AvH on January 1, 2023. He holds a master’s degree in history (with a focus on American history) and economics. His academic studies led him to the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Christian began his career as a trainee in leadership development at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany, one of Europe’s largest private foundations. In that capacity he also worked at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan. He rose through the ranks at Bosch, becoming the Senior Vice President of international relations, and ultimately a member of the executive board of directors and senior vice president of future issues and foundation development. Christian led various national and international teams, coordinated high numbers of staff across units and functions and co-led diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which resulted in a significant increase in diversity among qualified applicants. He also co-led the strategic re-launch of Bosch’s international relations portfolio. Christian is also a member of the board of directors of Cultural Vistas, a nonprofit exchange organization located in Washington, DC, and Berlin, Germany.

Ilonka joined American Friends of AvH in 2015 and has over two decades of experience with nonprofit organizations with an international focus. She managed publications at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2006 to 2015. Prior to joining Carnegie, she was publications and research program coordinator at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (now the German-American Institute). An alumna of the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Program, she served as an application reviewer and interviewer at the Japanese Embassy for over a decade. Ilonka has an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown and a BA in German and Modern European Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada, which included a year’s study at the University of Augsburg. She speaks German, Japanese, Hungarian, and basic French. A lifelong athlete, Ilonka coaches gymnastics on weekends and competes in figure skating.

Jessica has extensive experience in nonprofit fundraising, specializing in donor cultivation, board development, and annual giving. Before joining American Friends of AvH in 2021, she served as a consultant for nonprofit organizations nationwide, helping her clients find their voice and engage donors around their missions. She previously served as director of development at the Arts & Business Council of Chicago, assistant director of development and external relations at Hudson Guild in New York City, and fundraising manager at the United Way of Metro Chicago. Jessica has an MPPA from Northwestern University, an MA in journalism from Michigan State University, and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan.

Madeline Friedrich joined American Friends in April 2022 as Communications and Event Program Coordinator. She completed her German-French double-degree in Transnational Communication and Cooperation in Germany, France, and the United States, with a focus on theater studies at the intersection of rising political challenges in the 21st century. Before joining American Friends, she worked as a Communications and PR intern at the renowned Le Carreau national theater in France and also served as assistant to the director of the Deutsch-Franzoesische Hochschule in Saarbruecken, Germany. Madeline speaks German, English, and French fluently, and is a native of Germany. In her free time, she enjoys exploring new coffee shops and the city of Washington, DC.

Sebrena Geier received her BA in political economy with a minor in French from Hillsdale College in Michigan. Prior to joining American Friends in May 2023, she worked in the education and security fields. As a student, she assisted foreign and native students with networking and advancement through the Washington, DC-based foreign policy organization, the Alexander Hamilton Society, and university club settings. Her academic work included research into anthropological changes based on literature and religious perception in the Middle East and the United States, culminating in a thesis investigating the impact of trends in rural American food poverty. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys foreign films, informal wellness coaching, reading religious and political commentaries, and being involved in whatever community she finds herself.

Ethan Evans has nearly twenty years of experience in direct social service delivery, program management, academic research, and policy analysis. From 2002 to 2007, he served as Executive Director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance, leading a successful campaign for inclusionary housing in Sacramento County. Afterward, he was awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship during which he compared approaches to addressing homelessness internationally (his host organizations were the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Wohnungslosenhilfe e.V. and EVA-Stuttgart). Currently, Evans is an assistant professor with the division of social work at Sacramento State University, a research affiliate of the University of California, Davis Center for Health Care Policy and Research, and serves on the board of directors of Sacramento Self-Help Housing. Evans also serves as a Humboldtian on Campus.

Cecilia G. Flocco is an interdisciplinary scientist and consultant working at the intersection of life and environmental sciences with technological innovation and related policy issues. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in 2006-2008 and was awarded renewed research stays for experienced scientists and scholars in 2011 and 2017. She is currently working as a visiting scientist at the Federal Research Center for Cultivated Plants–Julius Kühn-Institut, Braunschweig, Germany. Former appointments include positions as an assistant professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, tenured research scientist at the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technological Research, on-site researcher deployed in Antarctica, postdoctoral scientist and international liaison for the European Commission’s International Cooperation Program, visiting scientist at the James Hutton Institute (Aberdeen, Scotland), the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, the German Research Centre for Biotechnology, the Technical University Federico Santa Maria (Valparaiso, Chile), and as a scientific expert in evaluation and advisory panels and other leading roles. She is also an on-call scientist of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights, and Law Program (SRHRL) and a member of the academic committee of the German School of Washington, DC. Flocco received an MS in biochemistry and an MS in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her PhD in biotechnology was carried out at the Department of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology at the same institution, with a research stay at the Biology Department of Colorado State University. She also holds a professional certificate in Leadership in Science and Research Management (Speyer Center, Berlin; Ernst Schering Foundation Fellowship, merit-based) and a professional graduate certificate in environmental policy and international development from Harvard University. Flocco can communicate in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

Leila Gómez is an associate professor in the department of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also the director of the Latin American Studies Center at CU Boulder. Her research focuses on travel writing in Latin America, cultural encounters, and imperial narratives. Her first book was Iluminados y tránsfugas: Relatos de viajeros y ficciones nacionales en Argentina, Paraguay y Perú (Iberoamericana Vervuert 2009) and her most recent book, Impossible Domesticity: Travels in Mexico (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) is about travel writing in Mexico and includes the work of photographers, journalists, archaeologists, and writers from Europe and North and South America. Gómez has also published La piedra del escándalo: Darwin en Argentina (Simurg 2008), Darwinism in Argentina: Major Texts 1845-1910 (Bucknell UP, 2011), and co-edited Entre Borges y Conrad: Estética y territorio en William Henry Hudson (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2012) and Teaching Gender through Latin American, Spanish, and Latino Literature and Culture (Sense Publishers 2015). Gómez received an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Advanced Researchers and spent a year at the Goethe University, Frankfurt.

Matthew Grayson joined Northwestern University in 2007 and has been an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering Department since 2012. He is an expert in the design, fabrication, and electrical characterization of electronic devices and materials. Recently he has also developed new advances in thermoelectric materials with the concept of transverse thermoelectrics made of semiconductor superlattices thatwill lead to new nanothermoelectric devices. Grayson completed his PhD studies at Princeton University with Professor Daniel Tsui, studying tunnel spectroscopy of fractional quantum Hall effect edges. His postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland investigated the infrared Hall angle of cuprate superconducting films. He then won a Humboldt Research Fellowship to conduct research in Germany at the Walter Schottky Institute of the Technische Universität München, where he remained for seven years on the research staff in a Habilitand position and led a small research group. He currently chairs the American Friends of AvH Alumni Council’s Humboldtians on Campus subcommittee. Grayson was also the recipient of an AvH Alumni Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives in 2012.

Folarin Oguntoyinbo is an associate professor of fermentation microbiology at the AR Smith Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Sciences at Appalachian State University. He was previously a professor at the University of Lagos (Akoka) in Nigeria. Oguntoyinbo was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Georg Forster fellow based at the Max Rubner-Institute for microbiology and biotechnology in Kiel, Germany in 2014-2015. He also spent time in the United Kingdom, serving as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham and as a Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society (2008-2011) based at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich. He is the recipient of the International Association for Food Protection’s (IAFP) 2016 Food Safety Award for a Professional in a Country with a Developing Economy and received the Overseas Development Award of the UK Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) in 2004. He was a member of the University of Lagos Senate and now serves as a member of various committees at Appalachian State University. He is an active member of American Society for Microbiology, IAFP, and SfAM.

Oguntoyinbo’s teaching focuses on traditional fermented foods and beverages, reading, and writing in the fermentation sciences, the social implications of fermented beverages, sensory evaluation, and fermentation microbiology. His research focuses on the microbiome of fermented foods and beverages, their biochemical changes, sensory attributes, and process optimization with the aim of furthering food safety and improved quality. He is also testing hypotheses that could potentially improve industrial fermentation systems and continues to partner with various institutes in Germany on the development of multifunctional starter cultures for industrial fermented foods and beverage processing.

Mary Oleskiewicz is a professor of music and music program director in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has served on the UMass Boston faculty since 2001 and has served as guest professor at the University of the Arts (Berlin, Germany); Duke University; Queens College (CUNY); and as professor of flute at the University of South Dakota. Between 1998 and 2001, she held the post of curator of musical instruments at the National Music Museum. She is an authority on music at the 18th-century court of the Prussian King Frederick “the Great” and her musicological and performing expertise also extends to music of Latin America and the Caribbean. Oleskiewicz has performed, lectured, and given master classes throughout Europe and North America, Japan, Australia, and Mexico. She is currently principal flutist of Newton Baroque and is regularly featured as a contributor to Flutist Quarterly and the Dutch Flute Society’s Fluit. Her book, Bach Perspectives vol. 11: J.S. Bach and His Sons for the American Bach Society, was commissioned by the American Bach Society and published by University of Illinois Press in 2017. Oleskiewicz is the recipient of several multi-year fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Humboldt Research Fellowship, 2006-2008) and the German Academic Exchange Service, allowing her to reside for extensive periods in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere to research, edit, and record. She is also a three-time recipient of the University of Massachusetts’ Joseph P. Healey Award.

Alan Organschi is a design principal and a partner at Gray Organschi Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut—a firm recognized at the local, regional, and national level for its innovative conception and careful crafting of architectural projects, which range from the adaptive reuse of damaged buildings and neighborhoods to the development and implementation of low-impact component assembly systems for ecologically delicate sites. As a member of the faculty of the Yale School of Architecture, Organschi coordinates Yale’s first-year graduate housing studio, which culminates each spring with the student design and construction of an affordable house in New Haven. Organschi has lectured widely on architecture, technology, and sustainable urban renewal. As a consulting expert and an active member of the Advisory Board for The Seedlings Teacher Collaborative, Organschi works closely with New Haven private and public-school teachers to bring project-based education to the city’s schools. He was a German Chancellor Fellow from 1992 to 1993.

Deeneaus “D” Polk is focused on building a new type of transatlantic partnership, one increasingly led by the US South. His focus is on German foreign direct investments in Southern communities, his experience of being a BIPOC in Berlin, and all the things that bring us together. He is the founder of 3LEVATE, which aims to bridge skills gaps, forge career pathways, and make the US workforce more innovative and equitable for everyone—centering communities of color in the process. Polk recently completed a Bosch Fellowship in Berlin, Germany where he worked with the German equivalent of LinkedIn, New Work SE. While there, he focused on topics related to the German Future of Work, research on demographic change in Germany and its economic impact, and general workforce development issues and opportunities across Europe.

Polk graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in May 2020. There, he was a Presidential Scholar and Adrian Cheng Fellow with the Social Innovation + Change Initiative. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as the Director of the Mississippi Apprenticeship Program (MAP), a registered apprenticeship initiative seeking to better link the private sector, K-K-16 education, and community partners. His time spent leading MAP was directly informed by his German Chancellor Fellowship in Bonn. His time learning about the German Vocational Education and Training System and the Mittelstand at the Federal Institute for Vocational Training shapes his work today. He is a proud graduate of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and the University of Mississippi, where he was a Fulbright and Jack Kent Cooke Scholar.

Tarunraj Singh is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the aerospace engineering department of Texas A&M University prior to starting his tenure at the University at Buffalo in 1993. Singh was a Humboldt Research Fellow and spent his time at the Technical University Darmstadt and RWTH Aachen. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Singh has been awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship and a NASA Summer Faculty Fellowship. His research interests are in the areas of vibration control of maneuvering structures, uncertainty modeling and forecasting, and nonlinear estimation with several applications, including control of Type 1 diabetes, forecasting of volcanic ash plumes, and acoustic metamaterial. Singh also currently serves as a Humboldtian on Campus.