Appointments, honors and activities

Appointments and promotions:

– Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE) at Purdue University and the university’s Office of Health Equity Initiatives have announced Holly Wood as senior director of health equity initiatives, effective immediately. Previously a subject-matter expert in several areas of public health at the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH), Wood joined Purdue in 2021 to serve as program director for the Indiana Healthy Opportunities for Everyone (I-HOPE), an RCHE-IDOH partnership initiative that addresses the effects of health disparities. In her dual role, Wood will continue to oversee I-HOPE as it engages with 30 at-risk Indiana counties to support locally prioritized improvements to community-level, public health. With the aim of bringing the community voice back to campus and amplifying it nationally through a framework being developed by Dr. Jerome Adams, a presidential fellow at Purdue and former U.S. surgeon general, her new duties will include raising faculty interest in health equity projects, coordinating the Purdue Health Equity Council, and driving health equity-related funding applications. Read more.

–  Purdue University researchers Pengyi Shi, an associate professor of management; Nan Kong, a professor of biomedical engineering; and Omolola A. Adeoye-Olatunde, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice, were recently selected to receive the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab’s 2022 Seed Grant Award. The honor was for their proposal to co-develop a digital solution and decision support system addressing the youth substance abuse crisis in Aru, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read more. 

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Notables:

– The undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program at Purdue University has been named among the best in the nation when it comes to ensuring future elementary teachers have the essential content and skills they need to teach mathematics. The National Council on Teacher Quality, a national research and policy organization that regularly evaluates the core requirements and practices of over 1,100 programs that prepare future elementary teachers, released a new report in which the undergraduate program at Purdue University earned an A for its requirements in elementary mathematics. Read more.