Big Ten Academic Alliance Program Fellows 2023-2024

Craig Goergen

Dr. Craig Goergen is the Leslie A. Geddes Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Principal Investigator of the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Laboratory at Purdue University. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine. His work combines advanced engineering, imaging, and biological approaches to study a variety of cardiac and vascular diseases. With funding from the NIH, NSF, AHA, and the Gates Foundation, Dr. Goergen and his team are working to improve cardiovascular disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, ultimately providing patients with longer and more fulfilling lives. 

Dr. Goergen received a BS degree in biomedical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and MS and PhD degrees in bioengineering from Stanford University. In graduate school, Dr. Goergen worked with the Biomedical Imaging Group at Genentech to study abdominal aortic aneurysm formation and progression. His postdoctoral training in molecular optical imaging at Harvard Medical School focused on cardiac disease and left ventricular remodeling. He joined the faculty at Purdue University in December of 2012 and was the recipient of the 2017 BMES Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, the 2018 Outstanding Mentor of BME Graduate Students Award from Purdue University, and a 2022 Fulbright US Scholar Award for research for work at the Université de Montpellier, France.

Valerie Knopik

Valerie Knopik is the Ben and Maxine Miller Professor and Department Head of the Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS). She joined the Purdue faculty as the Ben and Maxine Miller Professor of HDFS in 2017 and has been Head since 2020. Dr. Knopik received her PhD from the Institute for Behavioral Genetics and the University of Colorado, Boulder. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric and genetic epidemiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, she joined the Washington University faculty. From 2004-2017, Dr. Knopik was faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University where she also served as Director of the Division of Behavioral Genetics at Rhode Island Hospital.

Dr. Knopik holds memberships in several societies, including the Behavior Genetics Association for which she is currently elected President. She is associate editor for Behavior Genetics, consulting editor for Child Development, serves on the editorial board of Psychological Medicine, and is the lead author on the textbook, Behavioral Genetics.  Her primary area of research focuses on joint effects of genetic, epigenetic and environmental (specifically prenatal and early postnatal) risk factors on birth outcomes, externalizing behavior (ADHD, conduct disorder), associated learning and cognitive deficits, and subsequent substance use.

Alfred Lopez

Alfred J. López is Professor and Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Director of Global Studies, and Director of Latin American and Latino Studies at Purdue University. He also currently serves as Interim Head of English. He is the author of six books, including José Martí: A Revolutionary Life (U Texas P, 2014), the definitive biography of Cuba’s greatest national hero. His essays have appeared in American Literature, Comparative Literature, Cuban Studies, South Atlantic Quarterly, Modern Fiction Studies, and the Huffington Post, among many other journals and periodicals. López was also the founding editor of The Global South (Indiana UP 2007-), the leading journal of globalization and global South studies. He is a first-generation college student, and the son of Cuban immigrants.

Eric Munson

Eric Munson, PhD,  is currently the Dane O. Kildsig Chair and Head of the Department of Industrial and Physical Pharmacy at Purdue University.  He received his B.A. degree from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1987.  After studying one year in Munich, Germany, on a Fulbright Fellowship, he received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Texas A&M University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 1994.  He was in the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota before moving in 2001 to the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at the University of Kansas, to the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at the University of Kentucky in 2010, where he was the Patrick DeLuca Endowed Professor in Pharmaceutical Technology. 

In 2018 he moved to Purdue University to become the Dane O. Kildsig Chair and Head of the Industrial and Physical Pharmacy Department.  His research program is focused on the characterization of pharmaceutical solids using a variety of analytical techniques, with an emphasis on solid-state NMR spectroscopy.  Dr. Munson is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, and recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, AAPS Research Achievement Award, and IPEC Foundation Ralph Shangraw Award.  He is a coinventor on three patents, has over 300 presentation, and has published more than 120 research, review, and book chapters. 

Dr. Haley Oliver

Dr. Haley Oliver is a 150^th Anniversary Professor and Assistant Dean for Online Programs in the College of Agriculture, and the Director of the USAID Feed the Future Food Safety Innovation Lab.  As Director of the Food Safety Innovation Lab, she develops and oversees USAID’s food safety research portfolio currently implemented in Senegal, Kenya, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Nepal.  She has over 10 years of food security field experience in low- and middle-income economies. Dr. Oliver’s domestic research focuses on foodborne pathogens in emerging food systems (e.g., cellular agriculture) with an emphasis on practical and feasible control strategies. Throughout her tenure, she has taught food microbiology, food safety, sanitation, and related subjects. She is deeply committed to active learning and has worked tirelessly to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in her classroom and research programs. 

She has received the United States Department of Agriculture and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities John Morrill Award, Purdue University Carine Alexander Spirit of the Land-Grant award, the USDA Food and Agriculture Science Excellence in Teaching Regional Career Award, the Charles B. Murphy Teaching Award, the International Association for Food Protection James M. Jay Diversity in Food Award.

She completed her Bachelor of Science degrees in Molecular Biology and in Microbiology at the University of Wyoming and received her PhD in Food Science, with minors in Epidemiology and Microbiology, at Cornell University.