Sabbatical Summaries

Dr. Kyuil Cho took the Towsley sabbatical semester in the fall of 2025. He used this valuable time to publish research articles, draft new proposals, develop new collaborations and supervise his research students. He worked with his six research students to summarize the outcome of the past summer research and published a new article titled 鈥淓ffect of Energy-Dependent Proton Irradiation in Thin-Film YBa2Cu3O7鈭捨� Superconductor鈥� in Journal of Materials in September 2025. He also received a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation that will support his new research project titled 鈥淚on-beam induced defects to enhance the critical current of high-temperature superconductors鈥� ($250,000, from January 2026 to December 2027). To develop new research ideas, he visited several collaborators in South Korea and gave research seminars. During the sabbatical term, he continued his research projects by supervising his five research students. It was a fruitful sabbatical. Dr. Cho deeply appreciates the opportunity of Towsley sabbatical.

Sabbatical summary to come.

Dr. Lauren Hearit worked on three projects during her fall 2025 sabbatical. First, in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Chastagner, she facilitated a series of focus groups and disseminated a state-wide survey that studied consumer preferences related to Christmas tree purchasing and marketing. They developed and co-led a best practices in Christmas tree marketing workshop at the National Christmas Tree Association annual meeting based, in part, on the focus group data. A manuscript focused on this focus group data is under submission for presentation at a national conference and will be under review at a journal early this spring. The results of the state-wide survey research will be presented in early March to the Michigan Christmas Tree Association, and a manuscript is in progress. Second, Lauren collaborated with Dr. Timothy Betts (TCU) on data collection and analysis of the Federal Reserve鈥檚 narrative leadership, and a manuscript focused on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is being written. Third, Lauren submitted a manuscript for peer review about conflict at a small, faith-based, non-profit organization.

On a personal level, Lauren spent time with family in Petoskey, Bay City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., read frequently for pleasure and worked on a new quilt. She enjoyed lots of time with her husband, Fritz, and new rescue dog, Leo. On the whole, she found the sabbatical to be a true gift, and appreciated the opportunity to reflect on and recalibrate her commitments, work and home life, and health.

On his sabbatical, Ben Krause fulfilled two composition commissions and made significant progress on two other musical projects. In August he completed an artist residency at Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois, where he composed a new work, Silent City, for the Kalamazoo Symphony Artist-in-Residence ensemble, commissioned by the KSO in collaboration with the American Composers Orchestra. The piece was workshopped, performed and recorded in Kalamazoo in early October. He also completed a five-movement piece for clarinet and piano, Spaces Real or Imagined, inspired by the paintings of Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, commissioned by the Michigan Music Teachers Association and premiered at the MMTA conference at Saginaw Valley State University. Performed and recorded by clarinetist Gary June and pianist Christina Giuca Krause, the piece is currently under consideration for the Music Teachers National Association annual conference, which will take place in Chicago in March 2026.

Apart from these two commissions, Krause made steady progress on two other works 鈥� a new work for flute and contrabass for members of Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt, Germany) and an album of solo piano music that he hopes to record by summer of 2026.

On June 3, 2008, Dr. Michael Misovich made a notation in the margin of some mathematical notes that he and a summer research student were attempting to understand.

Just over seventeen years later, he spent fall semester, 2025, writing a research article based upon his work with over a dozen undergraduate researchers during the intervening years, all stemming from what had appeared to be an obscure note in a student鈥檚 lab notebook. The article 鈥淎 similarity variable approach to generalized physical property predictions consistent with cubic equations of state鈥� connected concepts from phase equilibrium thermodynamics and equation of state methods while using a novel mathematical approach. (If that description is jargon-filled and difficult to understand, please refer to the alternate description, 鈥淗ow to predict every property of every substance at every temperature and every pressure.鈥�)

In addition to writing an article, he also wrote 22 reference letters for students applying to Ph.D. programs and NSF fellowships. He showed up on campus many Fridays during the semester to participate in the 鈥淢oving Together鈥� walking program. He and his wife traveled a bit throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Finally, he enjoyed spending Labor Day visiting his daughter who had moved back to Michigan earlier in the year.

Sabbatical summary to come.

During his sabbatical, Dr. Pikaart expanded his contributions to the national BASIL project, which helps colleges incorporate authentic research experiences into biochemistry teaching labs. With more time available, he took a leading role in organizing and hosting virtual support workshops that now reach instructors from roughly 20 institutions each semester. He also updated several of the project鈥檚 laboratory modules and created a new mini-module to help students learn modern structure-viewing software. In addition, he explored the use of virtual-reality protein viewers as a potential future teaching tool. Dr. Pikaart also advanced his research on environmental strains of E. coli, focusing on how these bacteria respond to an unusual metabolite, D-serine. His work showed that while some strains can use D-serine as a nutrient and others are initially harmed by it, many of the 鈥渟ensitive鈥� strains adapt and begin growing anyway, likely by altering their cell surface. He also built automated tools to classify more than 500 E. coli genomes in ways that help us understand how different strains are related.

A major goal of the sabbatical was learning to code, and Dr. Pikaart made substantial progress via an online course in Python. Using these new skills, along with effective use of AI tools, he built a working computational pipeline to test many potential molecular partners (ligands) against a protein structure, a task that previously required far more manual effort. These skills will directly enhance both his future research and his teaching, where he plans to introduce students to responsible and effective uses of AI in scientific work. In addition to his research and training goals, Dr. Pikaart used the flexibility of sabbatical time to serve the broader biochemistry community. He provided external promotion and tenure reviews for three faculty at peer institutions and participated as an external evaluator for the biochemistry program at the University of Michigan鈥揇earborn.

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