Minkyung Koh successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, Marriage Migration of Women and Making a Multicultural Society in South Korea. Her committee consists of Nancy Ettlinger, Max Woodworth, and Ed Malecki as advisor. The Graduate School representative was Ann Allen of the Department of Educational Studies.

Hui Kong successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, Understanding and Designing the Development of Chinese Cities: Towards an Approach based upon the New Science for Cities.  Her committee consists of Morton O’Kelly, Ningchuan Xiao, Max Woodworth, and Dan Sui (advisor).  Hui plans to start her postdoc at MIT's Mobility Lab sometime this summer.

Scarlett Jin passed her candidacy exam on 4/3.  Her committee includes Max Woodworth, Ed Malecki, Oded Shenkar (Fisher College of Business), and Dan Sui (advisor).

A new co-edited book, Human Dynamics Research in Smart and Connected Communities, by Dan Sui and Shih-Lung Shaw has just been published, and will be on display at AAG: we have a copy in the office as well.

Max Woodworth had a research paper accepted to Area, a two-book review essay accepted by Cross-Currents: East Asian History of Culture Review, and a book review accepted at the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

The department was very well represented at the recent Denman Undergraduate Research Forum. Find the news and pictures from the event here.

A web site presence to explain the available support for work in the Sharpe Innovation Commons is available. We are excited that students have begun to appreciate this terrific asset and made proposals for projects to take advantage of the infrastructure and technology. Separately, we are well under way in the construction of phase II of this resource area.

Finally, on a very positive note, our undergraduate advising staff (Nancy Coscia and Jocelyn Nevel) inform me that we are expected to cross the 500 mark for majors sometime around now as people complete their meetings and interviews. Our largest majors are GIS with 170 and Air Transportation with 154. This is a tremendous uptick from just a few short years ago.

Announcement

As you may have noted, the University is making a tremendous push to document responsible conduct in the area of Research. Everyone (including grads) has received instructions to take an online test to demonstrate understanding and compliance. To make research proposals going forward, you will need to have passed this instructional based test. RCR training needs to be completed by June 15, 2018. For more information regarding this training requirement and answers to commonly asked questions please see,

The course of concern is Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research.

While individual results will vary with experience, I would venture (having just completed it myself) that the vast bulk of the material will be well within your scope and understanding. There are a few factual terms and lists of items that might require a tune up for competency. I think you will especially appreciate some of the case study videos. We are currently in the soft phase of recommending timely completion. Eventually, (and we are not quite there yet) we will be bringing in some stronger measures to ensure 100% compliance.