Research and Creative Achievement—Professional Promise Awards honor faculty members who are early in their careers for excellence in research, scholarship, and creative achievement.
Elizabeth Derryberry
Elizabeth Derryberry graduated from Princeton in 2000 and went on to do a PhD at Duke and then a postdoc at LSU. Throughout her career she has worked on birds, from how the anthropause affected bird songs in cities to the evolution of avian biodiversity in the neotropics.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
Being a Volunteer to me means promoting curiosity and science literacy in the next generation. UT empowers me to make a difference by supporting hands-on, inquiry-based science in the classroom and beyond.
Joshua Sangoro
Joshua Sangoro is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is a recipient of the ARO Young Investigator Program as well as the NSF CAREER awards. His current research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms determining dynamics and transport in soft materials across multiple length- and time-scales.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
Being a Volunteer encompasses willingness and readiness to offer our best in service to society and humanity.
Garriy Shteynberg
Garriy Shteynberg is an associate professor of psychology at the UT. He researches collective attention and the emergence of culture in social groups, and how they influence cognition, motivation, and behavior. He holds a PhD from University of Maryland and a masters from the University of Oxford.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
I especially enjoy working at a land grant university and a flagship state school like UT, where I’m able to interact with and be inspired by a broad variety of students. I believe in UT’s mission of an accessible, rigorous education that broadens one’s opportunities for meaningful engagement in the world.
Jian Liu
Jian Liu originally came to the US from China to pursue his PhD, which he received in 2012 from the University of Arkansas. He then became a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley before joining UT in 2015. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, and the DOD Young Investigator award.
What does being a Volunteer mean to you? How has UT empowered you to make a difference in a way you might not have imagined elsewhere?
Joining UT made my dream come true with the opportunity to build my own research lab and research team for advancing the frontier of physics. The materials research community at UT is special. So many colleagues here not only share the same interests with me but also provide highly diverse and complementary expertise, which cannot be found elsewhere. That allows me to turn ‘crazy’ ideas and fantasies into reality. Without the synergy, my achievements would have not been possible. I cannot image my science adventure elsewhere other than at UT.