Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship

Central Michigan University President Bob Davies and Provost Mary Schutten recently announced the recipients of this year's President's and Provost's Awards, recognizing faculty who are leaders on campus and also in their areas of expertise.

President's Awards recognizes senior, tenured faculty members for their contributions to research and academic inquiry. Junior faculty receive recognition for their outstanding scholarly and creative achievements with the Provost's Award.

President's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity

Tanya Domina

Fashion, Interior Design and Merchandising

Tanya Domina has been a professor in the Department of Fashion, Interior Design and Merchandising for 29 years. Her colleagues say she has had tremendous impact on the department through her exploration of the thermal comfort of clothing for adults and infants. She has published 32 peer-review journal articles in her time at CMU and also serves as director of the Center for Merchandising and Design Technology.

Domina led the study of thermal mapping and profiling related to mass customization in next-to-skin apparel. Her research granted CMU a thermal baby manikin, the first of its kind at a university in the U.S., enabling students to gain hands-on experience and see the real-world results of their research.

In a nomination letter, her colleague said Domina "is usually the spark that gets the ball rolling, but is also the glue that holds groups together and keeps them on task."

En-Bing Lin

Mathematics

En-Bing Lin has been a professor in the Department of Mathematics more than a decade, and served as chair of the department for nine. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, received over $535,000 in grant funding and given 74 external presentations, including 14 keynote speeches at international mathematic conferences.

His progressive knowledge and ongoing research of advanced wavelet-based computational methods, bioinformatics, rough set theory and data analysis has been widely recognized by the mathematics and scientific community. In addition to his research, Lin has been the Ph.D. dissertation chair for four CMU students, including one who received the 2015 CMU Outstanding Dissertation Award.

"Regarding the quality of Professor Lin's scholarly work, I can say that it is original, interesting and advances mathematical and other scientific knowledge," a colleague said in his nomination letter.

Provost's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity

Abu Amin

Finance and Law

Abu Amin joined CMU in 2015 as an assistant professor in the Department of Finance and Law. He is a leading scholar of corporate finance, financial markets and banking in developed and emerging economies. Amin's research in emerging markets has enabled regulators, policymakers and investors to gain critical insight on whether regulations have improved transparency and stability in the banking industry and financial markets.

Amin has published 15 research articles, two of which were featured in an elite finance journal, and has received approximately $45,000 in grants from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Foundation. He has presented at 32 national and international conferences, including a finance presentation at Harvard University.

In his nomination letter, a colleague said, "Abu impresses me with his ability to build very effective research connections not only with local colleagues but also with colleagues at foreign universities and regulatory institutions."

James Gerhart

Psychology

James Gerhart is assistant professor and director of the Pain, Stress and Symptom Management Lab in the department of psychology at Central Michigan University. He graduated from CMU in 2011 and was hired as faculty in 2018.

Since then, he has published more than 70 scientific papers as well as 17 encyclopedia entries and has been successful in consistently securing funding for projects since 2015.

Gerhart's research focuses on the personal and interpersonal consequences of stress and anger in patients in oncology and palliative care settings. The goal of the research is to help patients, caregivers and clinicians better understand and manage responses to chronic and life-threatening conditions.

"He has made substantive contributions in a field that few psychologists have ventured – getting out of our silos and directly working with other health professionals in their clinical work," said a colleague.

This story was written by University Communications intern, Caroline Kramer.