USA Fellows Year: U.S. Fellows 2024-2025

Arunava Gupta

Dr. Arunava Gupta is a distinguished university professor emeritus at the University of Alabama and an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the University of California San Diego. He earned his MSc in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and his PhD in chemical physics from Stanford University. Before joining the University of Alabama as faculty in 2004, Dr. Gupta served as a research staff member and manager at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, where he led projects on thin-film and device technologies.

His research focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of advanced thin-film and nanomaterials for IT and energy applications. Dr. Gupta has authored more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, holds 30 U.S. patents, and is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Physical Society (APS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2010, he received the Humboldt Research Award for his sustained contributions to the study of magnetism and superconductivity in oxide-based materials.

Joseph Wronka

Dr. Joseph Wronka is professor emeritus, Springfield College, Massachusetts. He has also had extensive post-secondary teaching experience in the United States, including in Alaska, Georgia, and New York City, and briefly in Europe at Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. He has represented the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) for roughly two decades and was on the executive committee at the United Nations for an NGO working for Indigenous Peoples. Having been to India previously – Bhubaneswar, Delhi, and Karnataka – he was also a Fulbrighter in Pakistan, Austria, and Greece. Dr. Wronka was one of the 300 human rights/social justice activists who attended the 50th anniversary of the UN endorsement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has presented his work in roughly 20 countries. He is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, as well as books, with his latest book being Human Rights and Social Justice: Social Action and Service for the Helping and Health Professions. Having studied the phenomenon of performing and street musicians at the University of Nice, he completed his doctorate in social policy from Brandeis University; his master’s in existential-phenomenological psychology from Duquesne University; and his bachelor’s from Brooklyn College.

James Agbodzakey

Dr. James Agbodzakey is a professor of public leadership/administration and the director of the Urban SERCH Institute at the University of North Texas (UNT) at Dallas. He has worked extensively for governments and private and nonprofit entities in Africa, U.S., and the Caribbean on various projects and programs. He has championed efforts in the areas of public health, management, public affairs, economics, and sustainable development through his work with numerous prestigious institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and Florida Atlantic University. His public management and health services research using the collaborative governance framework has helped shape policies and strategies as a conduit to promoting the health and general well-being of target populations at the local and regional levels across the U.S. He recently served on the American Society for Public Administration’s Executive Committee and its National Council, and was the president of the Conference of Minority Public Administrators (COMPA).

Dr. Agbodzakey has participated in over 80 academic conferences, has made over 70 academic presentations, and has at least 50 peer-reviewed academic publications to his credit. Recently, as a section editor, he facilitated the publication of 200 authors in Springer’s Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. He currently serves on three editorial boards and four governance boards. His extensive experiences related to scholarship, curriculum development, accreditation, program building, the nonprofit sector, and community engagement have seen him excel as a specialist and consultant. He was a delegate for the AIDS conferences held in Washington D.C., Melbourne, Durban, Amsterdam, Montreal, and Munich. He was also a delegate for the tenth IAS Conference on HIV Science in Mexico City.

Dr. Agbodzakey has received outstanding faculty awards from the University of the Bahamas and UNT Dallas. He has won Florida Atlantic University’s National Association of Graduate-Professional Students Award and the Gwendolyn Bullock-Smith Public Service Award from COMPA. He is also the first Black faculty to be promoted to the rank of full professor at UNT Dallas.

Dr. Agbodzakey is committed to working with various stakeholders to help address the complex contemporary challenges in the area of public benefits related to inclusive excellence.

V.M. Balasubramaniam

Dr. V.M. Balasubramaniam is the Koehler–Ayres Professor of Food Processing and Sustainable Food Manufacturing Systems in the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Georgia (UGA), Griffin, GA. Prior to joining UGA, he served as professor of food engineering at Ohio State University (2002–2025) and as a faculty member at the National Center for Food Safety and Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology (1995–2002). He also holds an emeritus professorship from Ohio State University.

Dr. Balasubramaniam’s research advances engineering-based multidisciplinary approaches for developing next-generation sustainable food manufacturing and sanitation technologies that enhance pathogen reduction while preserving nutritional quality. He also contributes to food waste reduction through valorization and circular bioeconomy concepts.

Dr. Balasubramaniam has provided extensive leadership services, including as chair, past chair, and secretary of the nonthermal processing and food engineering divisions of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). Since 2000, he has been actively involved with the IFT–EFFoST International Nonthermal Processing Workshop Committee.

Dr. Balasubramaniam’s laboratory has mentored over 30 graduate students and 20 visiting scholars. He has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, four books, and over 270 professional presentations. His contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the 2021 IFT Research and Development Award.

Devin K. Harris

Dr. Devin Harris is professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA). He is also a member of UVA’s Link Lab, a leading research center focused on cyber-physical systems. He earned his BS in civil engineering from the University of Florida and his MS and PhD from Virginia Tech. His research centers on large-scale civil infrastructure systems with an emphasis on smart cities and technology integration. His work spans image-based measurement techniques, virtual and augmented reality, crowdsourcing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, structural health monitoring, and the use of innovative materials in infrastructure. Recently, his research advanced applications of digital twins and immersive technologies in civil infrastructure and engineering education. Through these efforts, Dr. Harris seeks to enhance resilience, sustainability, and the role of emerging technologies in shaping future infrastructure systems.

Millard Keith

Dr. Ladd Keith is an associate professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative, associate research professor at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, and a distinguished scholar at the University of Arizona. His transdisciplinary research focuses on heat planning, policy, and governance to help increase the heat resilience of communities, regions, and nations across the world. He is the University of Arizona lead of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL); the heat research lead of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS); co-investigator of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE); and co-investigator of the U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health (SCORCH). Dr. Keith also serves on the Management Committee for the Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN), a World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization joint initiative to protect global populations from the health risks of extreme heat. He has a PhD in arid lands resource sciences and an MS in planning from the University of Arizona.

Carsten A. Ullrich

Dr. Carsten Ullrich is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 1995 from the University of Würzburg, Germany, under the supervision of Professor E.K.U. Gross, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with Professor Walter Kohn (winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). In 2001, he joined the University of Missouri as an assistant professor; in 2007, he received tenure; and in 2013, was promoted to full professor of physics. Dr. Ullrich’s main area of research is in theoretical and computational condensed-matter physics; specifically, he is interested in describing light–matter interactions and magnetic excitations using first-principles quantum mechanical approaches. For this purpose, he develops and uses methodologies based on the density functional theory. He has authored over 120 journal publications and a textbook on time-dependent density functional theory. In 2015, he was named a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Leonardo Flores

Professor Leonardo Flores is the chair of the Department of English at Appalachian State University and the president of the Latin American Electronic Literature Network – Lit(e)Lat. His research areas are electronic literature, with a focus on e-poetry, digital writing, and the history and strategic growth of the field. He is known for “I ♥ E-Poetry”, the “Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3”, “Third Generation Electronic Literature”, and the “Antología Lit(e)Lat, Volume 1”. He was a member of the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on AI and Writing and is now part of the MLA Task Force on Generative AI Initiatives. He is available to offer talks and workshops on AI and its impact on education, policy, scholarship, and creativity. Professor Flores is also a cyborg digital writer with a thriving creative coding practice. For more information on his current work, visit leonardoflores.net.

Bharat Bhushan

Dr. Bharat Bhushan is an academy professor (San Jose, California), and has served as an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor, and as director of the Nanoprobe Laboratory for Bio/Nanotechnology and Biomimetics at Ohio State University, Ohio. From 2013 to 2014, he served as an ASME/AAAS science and technology policy fellow of the U.S. Congress. He holds a BS, two MS degrees, and a PhD in mechanical engineering, as well as an MBA and five honorary doctorates, a total of 10 college degrees. His research interests include fundamental studies in the interdisciplinary areas of bio/nanotribology/nanomechanics, nanomaterials characterization, scanning probe techniques, magnetic storage, bio/nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing, bioinspired liquid repellency, self-cleaning, anti-icing, anti-fouling, and water harvesting, science and technology policy.

Dr. Bhushan has authored 11 scientific books, over 100 handbook chapters, and over 900 scientific papers. He is one of the 1,248 highly cited researchers in all fields on Google Scholar, with an h-index of over 150 and with over 115,000 citations; Scopus’s one of 401 scientists for career-long citation impact across all fields out of over eight million scientists from around world; the fourth highly cited researcher in mechanical engineering; 149th most cited researcher in materials science; and an ISI highly cited researcher in materials science and in the cross-field category. He has made over 400 invited presentations, including over 300 keynote/plenary addresses at major international conferences across six continents. In 2019, he also delivered a TEDx lecture.

Dr. Bhushan is the recipient of numerous awards and international fellowships, and is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the International Academy of Engineering (Russia). He has worked for various industrial research labs, including Mechanical Technology Inc., SKF, and the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is an alum of BITS, Pilani, and a recipient of the 2015 BITS (Pilani) Distinguished Alumnus Award. He can be contacted via: (bhushan100@outlook.com); (linkedin.com/in/dr-bharat-bhushan-48011871); and (facebook.com/bhushanb100).
 

Alicia Rubio

Dr. Alicia Rubio is a professor of finance at the University of the Incarnate Word’s H-E-B School of Business and Administration in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a PhD in family and consumer economics from Purdue University, an MBA in finance from ITESM Guadalajara, and a BS in actuarial sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. Her teaching and research focus on personal financial planning, financial well-being, financial behavior, and the intersection of cultural values and household financial behavior, with a particular emphasis on Hispanic households. Dr. Rubio has published in peer-reviewed journals and has presented her work internationally. Alongside her academic roles, she is an accredited financial counselor® and an accredited behavioral finance professional®.