Professional Notes: March 2025
03/25/2025
Professional Notes is a round-up of awards, presentations, papers, and other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff members, and students.
Faculty and Staff
Cynthia Rubbelke (Nursing) was one of 10 individuals selected for the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation (BHOF) Ambassador Leadership Council Academy (ALCA) that took place in March in Washington, D.C. During the academy the individuals heard from experts in the field of osteoporosis, received advocacy and policy training, social media training, and interviewing skills. The academy culminated on Capitol Hill with the members advocating to their state senators and representatives for policies related to bone health and osteoporosis.
Katherine (Kitty) Newsham, Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) will be inducted into the Missouri Sports Medicine Hall of Fame on June 13, 2025. She joins Bob ‘Doc’ Bauman (1984) as a Saint Louis University inductee. Newsham will receive this honor in recognition of her long-standing contributions to athletic healthcare in Missouri. She served as president of the Missouri Athletic Trainers’ Association from 2014-2017.
Harold Braswell, Ph.D. (Health Care Ethics) was awarded the 2024 Maurice Burke Paper Prize from the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy for his paper “Slurring on the Couch.”
Katie Sniffen, Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) published the article "Access to Outreach Athletic Trainers Improves Orthopedic Specialty Appointment Adherence" in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Allied Health Sciences and featured as an Editors' Pick.
Molly J. Walker Wilson, J.D., Ph.D. (Law) and Michael S. Sinha, M.D., J.D. (Law) published "Physician Decision-Making Under Uncertainty in a Post-Dobbs America" in the Arizona Law Review. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and a series of restrictive state laws post-Dobbs, physicians in many states now face difficult choices between evidence-based practice and criminal penalties. Behavioral research on decision-making under constraints has revealed features of human reasoning which lead physicians in abortion-restricted states to err on the side of inaction, delaying or eschewing vital abortion care rather than risking criminal charges.
Tianyi Li, Ph.D. (Civil Engineering) recently published three first-author papers: "Detecting Subtle Cyberattacks on Adaptive Cruise Control Vehicles: A Machine Learning Approach," "Identifying Built Environment Factors Influencing Driver Yielding Behavior at Unsignalized Intersections: A Naturalistic Open-Source Dataset Collected in Minnesota," and "A Customizable Neural Network-Based Framework for Autonomous Vehicle Control with Human-Guided Learning."
Nori Katagiri, Ph.D. (Political Science) had a new publication on ransomware and virtual currency in the latest issue of the Journal of Cyber Policy The article covered how criminals use crypto-currencies in ransomware operations and leverage the vulnerability of virtual currencies to evade legal restrictions and international scrutiny.
Oluwatoyosi (Olu) Owoeye, Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) along with other Translational Injury Prevention (TIP) Lab collaborators, got a new paper published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine. The paper is an editorial regarding dissemination and implementation science in sports medicine and related fields.
Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D. (Health Care Ethics) published an article with SLU Health Care Ethics doctoral alumnus, Abram Brummett, entitled “Moral Bricolage and the Emerging Tradition of Secular Bioethics” in a special issue of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. He also published a chapter with SLU Health Care Ethics doctoral alumnus, Elliott Bedford, entitled “Managing Spiritual Issues in Religiously Affiliated Health Systems” in the book Medical Professionalism: Theory, Education, and Practice, published by Oxford University Press.
Vince Casaregola, Ph.D. (English) published "Saving Daylight" in Everyday Fiction.
Molly J. Walker Wilson, J.D., Ph.D. (Law) presented "Behavioral Legal Ethics: The Impact of Social and Cognitive Biases on Attorney Decision-Making" at the 24th Annual Legal Malpractice & Risk Management Conference on March 6 at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago. Wilson, along with her co-presenter, Tigran Eldred from Boston University School of Law, explained the implications of research on behavioral legal ethics and how social and cognitive biases influence attorneys when making decisions that have ethical implications. The talk described how these biases impact human behavior generally, before turning to how they affect decisions lawyers make in practice settings. Topics included the impact of cognitive heuristics and motivated reasoning, and proposed methods for reducing harmful behavioral tendencies leading to serious moral hazards for legal practitioners.
Monica Eppinger, Ph.D., J.D. (Law) served as a lead discussant on The Crime of Aggression panel for the American Society of International Law Summit in Ukraine. She also served as a volunteer tutor for Ukrainian paratroopers in Lviv, Ukraine in summer 2024.
She also presented at:
- On Territoriality in Ukraine: Unsettled Ground, to the Community of Scholars of the CREST Research Center (Culture, Religion, Ethics, Science, Technology) of Saint Louis University;
- On Territoriality in Ukraine: Unsettled Ground, to the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California Berkeley, Visiting Scholars Speaking Series (April 25, 2024);
- On Khlib: Sovereignty, Security, and the Contemporary Ukrainian State, to the Peripheries Working Group of the Townsend Center at the University of California Berkeley (April 3, 2024).
- On Health and Jurisprudence: A Conceptual History, at Mills College at Northeastern, Gender and Culture History Seminar, (November 28, 2023).
David Brinker (MOCRA) gave a talk titled, "Seen and Unseen: Sacred and Spiritual Dimensions in Contemporary Art" at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX, on March 2.
Jin Huang, Ph.D. (Social Work) participated as an invited panelist in the Financial Inclusion Policy Dialogue Panel hosted by Global Affairs Canada on March 4. The panel, titled “Addressing the Impact of Gender and Digital Financial Inclusion Disparities on Financial Well-being Across the Life Span,” was convened as part of the First APEC Senior Officials’ Meetings in Gyeongju, South Korea. The panel included representatives from Canada, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, and Singapore. Dr. Huang presented the work of the FCAB GC, highlighting the unique role of social workers in advancing financial inclusion for women and other minority populations. Dr. Huang emphasized the contributions of social workers through both macro policy development and implementation (e.g., asset-based social policies and Child Development Accounts) and micro financial guidance social services (e.g., financial education, counseling, coaching, and therapy). Dr. Huang will collaborate with the panel to produce a policy dialogue report aimed at promoting financial inclusion across APEC economies.
John Encarnacion, Ph.D. (Geology) gave an invited talk at Washington University on Thursday, March 6, on the geology and tectonics of the Philippines.
Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D. (Health Care Ethics) presented a paper entitled “A Christian Philosophical Appraisal of Biotechnological Enhancement and Transhumanism” at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and participated in a panel entitled “What Are the Most Important Rights, Responsibilities, and Tasks for Individuals and Institutions Forming Conscientious Judgments?” at the Symposium on Integrity in the Concept and Determination of Brain Death: Recent Challenges in Medicine, Law, and Ethics at the Catholic University of America.
Jonathan Sawday, Ph.D. (English) presented "On Counting (Early Modern) Time," at the Early Modern Reading Group, Washington University in St. Louis, February 21, 2025.
Anthony Breitbach, Ph.D. (Interprofessional Education) appeared two episodes of the Interprofessional SPACe podcast with Suzy Plows and Ann Curtis. Part one featured his professional journey; the philosophy and structure of the SLU IPE program; and how collaborative practice is aligned with the athletic training profession. Part two discussed professional engagement, scholarship and the wider national and global IPE landscape.
Kate Oland-Galligan, DPT (Clinical Health Sciences) appeared on an episode of the "The A&P Professor" podcast, hosted by former SLU faculty member Kevin Patton, talking about caring for one's facia.
Students
Under the guidance of Tianyi Li, Ph.D. (Civil Engineering) Yuhui Liu (PhD student), Kate Embry (School of Science and Engineering), and Ayana Asanova (School of Science and Engineering) earned recognition at the GSITE poster competition. Additionally, Yuhui Liu secured an award in the SSE 3-Minute Dissertation competition. Both accolades highlighted their innovative work titled "An AI-Enhanced Car-Following Model for Electric Vehicles: From Real-World Data to Macroscopic Traffic Analysis."
Benjamin Walsh (Arts and Sciences) has been selected by The American Council of Teachers of Russia as a 2025 Russian Scholar Laureate for "excellence in Russian language studies" and an "enthusiasm" to learn about various Russian-speaking regions of the world.
Colten Biro (Arts and Sciences) was recently inducted into the Alpha Sigma Nu, the Honor Society of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Induction into Alpha Sigma Nu is one of the highest honors awarded on a Jesuit campus.
Charles Freiberg (Arts and Sciences) has published an article titled "Wouldn’t it be nice if a machine could be nice for you? Why automating virtue could make you a worse person."
Colten Biro (Arts and Sciences) published “‘What about Becky?’: Teaching Children’s Literature via Student-Led Experience(s)” in The Early Children’s Literature and Culture Chronicle, 5.1 (Spring 2025). The article features an experiential learning activity which Colten designed in partnership with SLU’s Rare Books team.