Research and Creative Achievement — Professional Promise awards honor faculty members who are early in their careers for excellence in research, scholarship, and creative achievement.
Jon Camden
Jon Camden, assistant professor of chemistry, is pioneering plasmon imaging studies of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, or SERS, a technique that enhances light-particle scattering either by molecules adhering to rough metal surfaces or by nanostructures. In this rapidly expanding field, his research is providing solid connections between experiment and theory, which will advance fundamental understanding of SERS enhancement mechanisms. He has developed a comprehensive research program, and his group has imaged structures with single molecule SERS activity and, through experiment and electrodynamic calculations, established conditions of electron activation of SERS hot spots.
Jason Hayward
Jason Hayward keeps busy, with fifteen peer-reviewed publications in leading journals and presentations around the globe in just a year. He holds a joint appointment with UT, where he is an assistant professor of nuclear engineering, and with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Nuclear Materials Detection and Characterization group. Within his field, Hayward has drawn praise for his work focusing on radiation instrumentation, a field of great importance to nuclear physics, astrophysics, nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, medical imaging, and materials research. The US Department of Energy recently honored him with its Early Career Award for his professional promise.
Maurice Stucke
Maurice Stucke’s scholarship is re-examining the conventional wisdom of antitrust policy and law. The associate professor of law’s new study in light of empirical findings from behavioral economics and psychology has had a great impact on competition policy around the world. By re-evaluating the goals and assumptions of antitrust law, Stucke provides policymakers with a different approach to competition law. He is ranked among the top antitrust legal scholars in the Social Science Research Network. Both the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have cited his work on behavioral antitrust.
Kimberly Wolbers
Kimberly Wolbers, an associate professor of theory and practice in teacher education, is gaining an international reputation as a literacy learning scholar and teacher of deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Teachers in Tennessee who have used her research results are inspired by her work and the improvement they are seeing in their students. Wolbers and her colleagues have added two new workshops to the existing program so students can continue to develop and improve. Schools and systems in five additional states will be participating in pilot studies of her project, which is funded by a research grant from the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences. Scholars and teachers across the country and abroad are becoming aware of her research and its powerful results.