Team Category: Alumni Council

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.