Annual Research Award Winners

Every year the Office for the Advancement of Research issues a call for applications for our Annual Research Awards, and various faculty members are selected to receive these awards.

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2020 Awardees

2020 Scholarly Excellence Award Winners

Marta Concheiro-Guisan is an Assistant Professor in Toxicology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She received her Pharm.D. degree and her Ph.D. in Toxicology from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). During her Ph.D., she did trainings at foreign institutions, specifically at the Institute de Médicine Légale et de Médicine Social in Strasbourg (France) and at the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal in Lisbon (Portugal). She was first a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and later a Research Scientist at the Chemistry and Drug Metabolism Section at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Concheiro-Guisan is an expert in developing and validating new analytical methods in classic and alternative biological specimens (plasma, blood, urine, oral fluid, hair, sweat, tissues). She has conducted research projects in human performance (driving under the influence of drugs), clinical investigations (drug exposure during pregnancy), wastewater analysis of licit and illicit drugs, and postmortem toxicology. Dr. Concheiro-Guisan has more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has participated in presenting her work at more than 30 professional toxicology meetings. Currently, her research is focused in the study of alternative matrices in forensic and clinical toxicology (hair, umbilical cord, placenta) and in the investigation of novel psychoactive substances (synthetic cathinones, synthetic opioids, and synthetic benzodiazepines).

Elizabeth Jeglic, Psychology

Dr. Elizabeth L. Jeglic is a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College in New York. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Binghamton University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Dr. Aaron T. Beck. Dr. Jeglic's research interests primarily focus on issues broadly related to sexual violence prevention and evidence-based public policy. She has received grants from the National Institute of Justice and the American Association for Suicide Prevention to fund her research.  Dr. Jeglic has published over 125 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr. Jeglic is the co-author of three books:  New Frontiers in Offender Treatment: The Translation of Evidence-Based Practices to Correctional Settings (Springer, 2018), Sexual Offending: Evidence-Based Legislation and Prevention (Springer 2016) and Protecting your Child from Sexual Abuse: What you Need to know to Keep your Kids Safe (Skyhorse, 2018).  She is an Associate Editor of the journal Sexual Abuse and is on the editorial board of Psychology, Public Policy and Law.  Along with Dr. Cynthia Calkins, she is co-Director of the Sex Offender Research Lab (SORL).  She was awarded the Fay Honey Knopp Award from the New State Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers for her contributions to the prevention of sexual violence.  

Lila Kazemian, Sociology

Lila Kazemian is a Université de Montréal graduate, earning her Ph.D. in criminology at the University of Cambridge (UK). She joined the faculty at John Jay in 2006, where she was recently promoted to Full Professor. Dr. Kazemian's research has largely focused on studying changes in criminal behavior across time, long-term incarceration, prisoner reintegration, and comparative criminology. Specifically, she has investigated the factors contributing to abandoning offending behavior, otherwise known as desistance from crime. Her more recent research entails a longitudinal follow-up of long-term French prisoners. The findings from this study were published in a book titled Positive Growth and Redemption in Prison: Finding Light Behind Bars and Beyond. In this book, she examines how the process of desistance from crime unfolds during lengthy periods of incarceration and how individuals achieve positive transformations under seemingly impossible circumstances. She has provided expert testimony in various legal cases involving discriminatory housing and employment practices against individuals with a criminal record, bridging the gap between criminological research and criminal justice policy and practice. Dr. Kazemian's prior work has been published in Criminology & Public Policy, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Punishment & Society, the European Journal of Criminology, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Joshua (J.W.) Mason, Economics 

J.W. Mason is Assistant Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. Previously, he taught at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is also a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Formerly the Policy Director for the New York State Working Families Party, Mason's work has been widely featured in the business and general-interest press; during the period 2017-2019, this included multiple mentions by The American Prospect, Barrons, Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio, Business Insider, Businessweek, CBS News, Chicago Reader, CNBC, CNN, the Financial Times, Forbes, O Globo (Brazil), The Hill, Jacobin, The Nation, National Review, The New York Times, New York Magazine, NPR, Slate, der Standard (Austria), The Times (UK), Vox, the Washington Post, and The Week, among others.

Melinda Powers, English 

Melinda Powers is a Professor in the Department of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Specializing in historiography, performance theory, ancient Greek and contemporary theatre, she is the author of Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage (Oxford University Press, 2018), Athenian Tragedy in Performance: A Guide to Contemporary Studies and Historical Debates (University of Iowa Press, 2014), as well as several articles and reviews on the reception of Greek drama published in journals, such as Helios, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Text and Presentation. She has worked with US veterans on the National Endowment of the Humanities funded grants Warrior Chorus, You/Stories, and Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, and her research has benefitted from the generous support of the American Philosophical Society, the Office for the Advancement of Research of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Professional Staff Congress of The City University of New York.

Guoqi Zhang, Sciences 

Dr. Guoqi Zhang is an Associate Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Sciences at John Jay since 2018. He also holds a professorship in the Chemistry PhD program of the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include organic and organometallic chemistry relevant to applications in forensic science and chemical catalysis. He is an author of 118 peer-reviewed articles, a book chapter and two patents. In the past three years he has published 19 peer-reviewed journal articles including some in the top #1 journals in his field. His research is well recognized by the professional community and his publications have received over 3,800 citations thus far. He has mentored more than 20 undergraduate students in his research laboratory. His undergraduate researchers have coauthored in 28 recent publications and four of them have presented at major national conferences. He was a grant recipient of National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society and the CUNY Collaborative Initiative Program. He also served as a professional reviewer for grant agencies including NSF, ACS and a number of scientific journals.

2020 Donal E. J. MacNamara Award Winner

No awardee

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