MOSCOW – Four University of Idaho professors have been awarded Fulbright US Scholar Program grants for the 2024-25 academic year by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
“The Fulbright Scholarship Program is an excellent opportunity for our faculty to expand their research horizons to the international community,” said Chris Nomura, vice president for research and economic development. “These programs allow them not only to participate in global research activity, but also to experience other cultures while representing the University of Idaho abroad.”
This year, the U of I’s four Fulbright scholars – the most since the university had five in 2019-20 – will study everything from sustainable jet fuel and Walt Whitman translations to extremist violence and river plants.
John Crepeau, professor of mechanical engineering, will be researching sustainable aviation fuels at Graz University of Applied Sciences, Austria. There is a big push to make aviation fuels more sustainable and to find out how these fuels affect different parts of an engine. He will be working with students there to optimize the performance of these fuels in terms of the overall performance of the engines.
Zachary Turpin, Associate Professor of English, will be researching and teaching at the Technical University of Dortmund (TUD). As part of his project “Intercultural Approaches to the Translation of Walt Whitman,” he will work with TUD scholars to examine evolving approaches (over the past century) to translating the dictionary-searching verses of the American poet Walt Whitman—and in particular, how translators deal with his many neologisms, those unique words that the poet did not simply find or borrow, but created specifically for his poetry, such as “presidentiad,” “poemet,” “venerealee,” “fatherstuff,” “yawp,” and dozens more.
Brian Wolf, Professor of Criminology, will join the Centre for Research on Extremist Violence at the University of Oslo in Norway. There he will conduct a project examining the problem of extremist violence in advanced and developed democracies. Using comparative criminological analysis, Wolf will examine and contrast responses to extremist violence in Europe, and in particular in Norway. The results of this project will be used to assess the causes – and potential solutions – of extremist violence in Europe and North America.
Elowyn Yager, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Ecohydraulics Research, will study how vegetation roots influence the strength of river banks, which is important for controlling river erosion during floods. She will conduct laboratory experiments on root strength at the University of Trento in Italy and field measurements in a well-studied Italian river with a group of international collaborators.
More than 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad each year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided opportunities to more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds to study, teach, and research abroad. Notable Fulbright scholars include 62 Nobel Prize winners, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, 41 heads of state and government, and thousands of leaders in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit fulbrightprogram.org.
