OSP Weekly 11/07/2022
----- Division of Research -----
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2023 Barrick Scholar Awards: Call for Nominations
The Division of Research is pleased to accept nominations for the 2023 Barrick Scholar Awards. Nominations, including the completed application packet and materials supporting the nomination, are invited November 7 - December 5, 2022, 11:59pm, PT.

The Barrick Scholar Awards are designed to recognize faculty members who have established a record of distinguished research or have demonstrated excellence in the area of creative activity. These awards are funded by an endowment from the late Marjorie Barrick and are made following recommendations of a committee of former recipients. The Provost’s Office selects the final honorees.

These awards are based principally on the quality and quantity of research publication or creative activity, which is judged to be extraordinary and distinguished. Only full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty who have completed at least three years of full-time employment at UNLV prior to the application deadline are eligible for these awards. Candidates must be nominated by an NSHE employee.

The awards are offered in two categories:

  • The Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award which is presented to faculty members with 10 years of service or more in an academic environment after the terminal degree, carries a $5,000 stipend to be presented at the annual campus recognition ceremony.
  • The Barrick Scholar Award which is presented to faculty members with fewer than 10 years of service in an academic environment after the terminal degree, carries a $2,500 stipend to be presented at the annual campus recognition ceremony.
2022 Distinguished Barrick Scholar Recipients
Katherine Hertlein
Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health/Couple and Family Therapy Program
Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine

Dr. Hertlein earned her PhD at Virginia Tech and her master's degree from Purdue University Calumet. Across her academic career, she has published over 90 articles, 40 book chapters, and 12 books in the areas of couple therapy, infidelity, sex therapy, behavioral health, and the impact of technology on couple and and family relationships. Her contributions in sex therapy promote a paradigm shift in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions in couple relationships, are considered seminal texts, and used by couple and family therapy programs widely. Her contributions in the area of technology include the development of the core competencies for behavioral health which can be applied to all of the behavioral health disciplines, and the creation of the first comprehensive framework detailing the effect of technology on relationships which has been applied cross-culturally.
Edwin Oh
Associate Professor
Department of Internal Medicine
Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine
Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine

Dr. Edwin Oh is a human geneticist who studies genomes from a variety of organisms. Using next generation sequencing tools, his team is constantly devising new biological and computational tools to characterize rare human diseases and emerging pathogens. Working together with community partners in Southern Nevada, their COVID-19 Wastewater Surveillance Program has collaborated with public health officials in the US and in several countries around the world. They have developed a viral detection and genome sequencing platform to track emerging pathogens and variants without having to directly test clinical cases. After working with 3 billion nucleotides in a human genome, they thought characterizing the 30,000 nucleotides in the SARS-CoV-2 genome in sewage was going to be straightforward. “Boy, were we wrong”, said Dr. Oh; “the last 2 years have reminded us to not underestimate the smaller things in Nature.”
2022 Barrick Scholar Recipients
Ambroise Aubrun
Assistant Professor
School of Music
College of Fine Arts

Dr. Aubrun joined the UNLV School of Music faculty in 2018. Prior to this appointment, he was teaching at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. He performs as a chamber musician, soloist and orchestral musician all over the world.
Qiang Zhu
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
College of Sciences

Dr. Zhu is a computational physicist. He received the PhD from Stony Brook University in 2013. In 2016, he joined the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) as an Assistant Professor in Physics. Dr. Zhu is well known for his contribution in the field of crystal structure prediction and computational materials discovery. He is also the recipient of the President’s award for distinguished Doctoral Students at Stony Brook University (2013), the NSF CAREER award (2021), and the DOE CAREER award (2021).
Althea Sheets, Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities Development Manager, Office of Sponsored Programs, althea.sheets@unlv.edu, 702-895-1880