Top 2024 research stories: Matching dinosaur footprints, advancing semiconductor innovation and more

Here are some of SMU research's highlights from 2024.

DALLAS (SMU) – Unlike the once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse we had last year, SMU researchers were anything but rare in major media outlets in 2024. From findings that could alter the history of early Americans to advances in AI and early disease detection, here are some of this year’s highlights:

 

Matching dinosaur footprints discovered thousands of miles apart demonstrate how animals moved 120 million years ago across a stretch of land that once connected modern day Brazil and Cameroon. South America and Africa formed a continent called Gondwana before they split apart. Paleontologist Louis Jacobs’ research on the theropod prints was covered by The New York Times, CNN, BBC, Smithsonian, People and NPR, among others.

Archaeologist David Meltzer weighed in on new discoveries that researchers claim could rewrite the history of early Americans — and the 4-ton sloths they lived with – in CBS News, Yahoo, Spectrum News 1 and the Chicago Tribune.     

 

Growing up in India’s Gujarat region, Jyoti Sharma experienced a devastating childhood earthquake that sparked a lifelong desire to develop an early warning system. Now a postdoctoral fellow, Sharma is working with geophysicist Stephen Arrowsmith to transform the University’s network of unused telecommunications and computer fiber into a sophisticated seismic monitoring system, NBC-5 reported.

 

 

Religious studies expert Jill DeTemple told Time Magazine that listening to the story behind another’s belief can help us remember that family members are complex. “Their ideas may come from a place we recognize, even if we don’t agree with them,” she said.

Vice Provost for Research Suku Nair told Dallas Innovates that the SMU-led Texoma Semiconductor Tech Hub’s (TSTH) pitch to Taiwanese tech investors and partners is just one example of its regional, national and global significance. There was also a segment on Spectrum News NY 1 about how the TSTH is seeking to strengthen and drive innovation in the existing semiconductor supply chain in North Texas and southern Oklahoma. And KRLD covered several congressional leaders coming to SMU in January to express their support of the TSTH. 

Psychology researcher Alicia Meuret told The New York Times that her recent study showed doctors and therapists should focus on improving patients’ positive emotions. Treatments based on boosting joy, in addition to easing depressed patient’s negative symptoms, can be very effective, she said.

Mechanical engineer Donghai Wang and his team have found a way to make lithium-sulfur batteries last longer than existing renewable batteries by preventing an unwanted side effect – polysulfide dissolution – that shortens their lifespan. Yahoo, ScienceDaily, BatteriesNews, and Charged Electric Vehicles Magazine covered the research.

Civil and environmental engineer Khaled Abdelghany told The Dallas Morning News that technology has been available for 10 years that might have prevented a deadly 2021 multi-car accident in Fort Worth.

 

Church historian Ted Campbell told The Dallas Morning News that the United Methodist Church has not had a significant rift like the current one since 1908. The recent conflict is largely over the United Methodist Church’s bans on same-sex marriage and clergy members in gay relationships.

 

Engineering expert Janille Smith-Colin shared four ways to empower tomorrow’s female engineers in an op-ed for The Times Higher EducationTransportation Today also wrote about the grant that she and others received to create a Mobility Equity Research Center. 

 

Presidential history expert Lindsay Chervinsky told The New York Times that the 2024 election echoes the elections of 1888 and 1892, when Benjamin Harrison ran against Grover Cleveland. “In terms of lack of enthusiasm, that’s about as close as we get,” she said.

 

In a study on the shrinking amount of lake ice, hydrologist Xiao Yang assisted with interpreting key NASA satellite images. Newswise and ScienceDaily covered the research, which found that the quality and duration of that ice cover also controls key physical, chemical and biological processes within freshwater ecosystems. 

 

 

 

In The New York Times essay, writing expert Jonathan Malesic discussed university students’ unwillingness to read books.

 

Political scientist Cal Jillson told the Texas Standard that redistricting made some state races much more competitive, such as the Collin County race in Texas House District 70. He also told KRLD that Texas no longer holds the record as the lowest-voting state –  instead, the state now boasts 18 million registered voters, the highest number ever.

 

In The Dallas Morning News op-ed, Simmons Dean Stephanie Knight and faculty member Amy Richardson discussed SMU’s partnership with Teach for America and how it addresses the teacher shortage.

 

Earth scientist Alexander Chase is using a new technique to search the ocean for unknown compounds that could lead to next-generation antibiotics. Phys.Org, Technology Networks, and Tech Explorist covered his research.

 

Economist Michael Cox told CBS-11 that cutting interest rates will not keep inflation away. In fact, it will have the opposite effect, he predicts.

 

The historic Texas film, “The Blood of Jesus,” archived at the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection in Hamon Arts Library, was recently screened as part of the “It Came From Texas” film festival. Film expert Rick Worland described the historic significance of the film after the screening. D Magazine and The Dallas Morning News covered the story.

 

In a video, religious studies and reflective expert Jill DeTemple told The Dallas Morning News civil discourse is possible at the holiday table, with a few careful steps.

 

Many of the beloved traditions that Americans associate with Christmas began as New Year’s traditions, cultural historian Alexis McCrossen explained to National Geographic, History.com, Time and others. McCrossen also told The Associated Press why we got in the habit of changing our clocks every year for Daylight Saving Time.  

  

Dallas Innovates covered a new $100,000 grant awarded to engineering professors J.-C. Chiao and Ali Beskok that will assist in their development of a fast, portable tool for point-of-care medical diagnoses. 

 

Mark Chancey, an expert on the use of the Bible in public schools, told Edweek that a broad religious literacy is essential in a religiously diverse democracy, but one religious view should not be promoted over another. He also discussed new Texas education guidelines for using the Bible in schools in a San Antonio Express News op-ed and in the Baptist News.

 

Physics researcher Joel Meyers told Phys.org, Astrobites and MSN that new research shows it may be time to update physics concepts. 

 

People Newspapers reported that more than 100 law enforcement agents, nonprofit organizations, researchers and others attended the inaugural SMU Human Trafficking Data Conference. 

 

Simmons education researchers Alexandra Pavlokis and Meredith Richards developed a 16-page graphic novel to help educators better understand students experiencing homelessness. NBC-5, the Dallas Express and FOX-4 featured the story about their novel, Uprooted, a creative way to explain their research to a wide audience.

 

Dallas Innovates highlighted the 14 new professors Dean Nader Jalili hired to enhance research innovation at SMU Lyle School of Engineering School, as well as the school's new Center for Digital and Human-Augmented Manufacturing. 

 

Musicology Chair Peter Kupfer was featured in a New York Times story that examined why couples are increasingly selecting other music than Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” for their wedding processional.  

 

In Parenting Patch, clinical assistant therapist Farnoosh Nouri offered tips for how to bring quiet into a busy, possibly stressful holiday.

 

After the July 19 global IT shut down, cybersecurity expert Mitch Thornton told Forbes that a robust and well-tested disaster recovery plan is key to protecting an organization’s assets and operations in the event of a crisis. And as North Texas e-News reported, Thornton and fellow cybersecurity expert Eric Larson warned that gone are the days when the telltale signs of a “phishing” scam were fairly easy to spot. Hackers are increasingly using generative AI to write more convincing emails and bogus advertisements, they said. 

Discovery of an obsidian blade in Texas may provide fresh insights into a mid-16th-century Spanish expedition seeking a legendary "city of gold," research from anthropologist Matthew Boulanger suggests. Newsweek, Texas Standard, Miami Herald, Live Science and others covered the news.  

There’s a significant link between wastewater injection and oil well blowouts in the Permian Basin. That was the key finding from a study led by SMU geophysics professor Zhong Lu, which was featured in the Houston Chronicle, Thomson Reuters, Newsweek and The Texas Tribune twice.

In a Q&A, electrical and computer engineering expert Jennifer Dworak told Medium that bringing high-tech manufacturing back to the United States is game-changing.

 

Tech Explorist covered engineering expert MinJun Kim’s research on a new cost-effective and user-friendly method to create solid-state nanopores.

 

Shriya Siddhartha, who won the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for leaders in STEM, was featured on NBC-5 for fulfilling her grandmother’s dream to attend medical school.

Civil and environmental engineering researchers Kathleen Smits, Navodi Jayarathne and others found that when natural gas leaks from a subsurface pipeline, certain surface conditions can impact the speed and distance of the leaked gas more than others, Environmental News Network and Phys.org reported.  

 

Psychology personality researcher Michael Chmielewski told Science that researchers should beware of data gathered on online platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

 

Bioengineer.org covered OREM engineer Digvijay Boob being awarded a five-year CAREER grant to pioneer quicker, streamlined solutions that could speed up how AI learns from data to make predictions and decisions.

 

KERA,Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Fort Worth Report wrote about a study done by SMU researchers that found workforce challenges are impacting outcomes for young children enrolled in Fort Worth’s early education programs. 

 

New research by marketing expert Maria Langlois found that experiencing nature, such as taking a walk, encourages healthier food choices. Advanced Science News covered her research.

 

North Texas leads the country in the number of colocation data centers, Cox economist Michael Davis wrote In a D Magazine op-ed. On a separate topic, Davis also wrote an op-ed for Inside Sources stating that millennials are hitting their stride thanks to technology and economics.

 

Economist Cullum Clark told WFAA-TV that closing schools and declining enrollment in Plano are the result of a painful reality – sharp drops in birth rates and ageing communities.

 

Presidential history expert Lindsay Chervinsky told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that history is not on the side of Robert F. Kennedy’s bid to be included in the presidential debates. The only three-way debate in U.S. history took place in 1992 between Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Since then, requirements to participate have become stricter.

 

A flurry of earthquakes in West Texas is related to wastewater disposal created by oil and gas extraction, seismology expert Heather DeShon told The Dallas Morning News. The wastewater is injected deep into the Earth’s surface and reactivates ancient faults, she said. Seismologist Brian Stump also discussed the earthquakes with FOX 26 in Houston, KRLD-radio, FOX-4, and the Houston Chronicle.

 

 

While Dallas was a prime viewing spot for the total solar eclipse on April 8, SMU was in prime time – from a 105-year-old SMU graduate who told FOX-4 about witnessing his 13th total solar eclipse to journalism student Taylor Good who described the eclipse for the Guardian. Theoretical physicist Joel Meyers gave CBS News 2 a preview of what to expect the day of. And in Mashable, art historian Adam Herring said prominent Aztec warriors held all-night vigils after an eclipse, while Melissa Barden Dowling said early Romans were terrified. Economist Cullum Clark told NBC-5 that Dallas shouldn’t expect a significant economic impact for such a short event. The Dallas Morning News and NBC-5 stories also included the work of atmospheric researcher Jacob Clarke as he tracked changes in the atmosphere during the total eclipse. 

 

Do not use your dog’s name for your online password, cybersecurity expert George Finney told Reader’s Digest. Store your passwords in a password vault and use two-factor authentication for every account, he said.

 

Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky told USA Today that the scope and severity of former Trump administration officials speaking out against him is unprecedented.

 

Meadows composing professor Xi Wang was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the music and culture of Tibet. KERA reported the story.

 

Even very hateful and offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment, expert Tom Leatherbury told The Dallas Morning News. However, a state university can establish reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, he said.

 

Law professor Christina Sautter explained to Marketplace why mergers and acquisitions are an economic indicator.

  

Economist Pia Orrenius told Marketplace that the roadworkers killed in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge were immigrants often slotted into jobs characterized by more injuries. Without immigrants, cities and companies would see bottlenecks to growth, she said.

 

Research in northwest Alaska revealed a new picture of the mid-Cretaceous climate and dinosaur life, Tony Fiorillo told Smithsonian Magazine. Fiorillo is a senior fellow in the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

 

The New York Times and StudyFinds featured a new study from psychologist Sarah Kucker and colleagues revealing that passive video use among toddlers can negatively affect language development, but their caregiver’s motivations for exposing them to digital media could also lessen the impact.

 

Medscape and Medical XPress featured a deep learning model created by computer science professor Mehak Gupta that can predict the risk of obesity for young children using only routinely collected electronic health record data. 

 

Backed by a 2024 EPA Clean Ports Program grant, the DFW Clean Ports Project seeks to address air quality around key logistics hubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Dallas Innovates reported. Researchers Scott Douglas and Khaled Abdelghany will employ cutting-edge road-based remote sensing technology to track emissions, using devices similar to satellite weather sensors. 

 

Chemist Elfi Kraka and her colleagues have developed a machine learning model to help study stardust and atomic reactions. Dallas Innovates covered the story.

 

The land under DFW Airport was once the shoreline of an inland sea and is rich in dinosaur fossils. As the airport prepares to build another terminal, paleontologist Dale Winkler toldWFAA-TV he expects more dinosaur fossils to be discovered.

 

John Cena’s “streaker” routine at the Oscars was a mini-meditation on gender-gap at fashion’s highest level, Rhonda Garelick wrote in The New York Times.

When urban farming comes to mind, SMU faculty members Doric Earle and Owen Lynch hope you'll think of entrepreneurship next. As co-founders of the nonprofit Restorative Farms, they are working to establish a sustainable and profitable AgriSystem model in South Dallas. NBC-5 covered the news. 

Gaming featured Guildhall professor Steve Stringer in a Q&A. He often talks with parents and high schoolers about careers in game development. It all starts with math, he said.

Global theology expert Robert Hunt and his student Drew Dickens co-authored The Dallas Morning News op-ed on how the new ChatGPT online technology could impact higher education.

Artificial intelligence can improve many things, but also worsen others – such as enabling harder-to-detect cyber threats. Good Day discussed this issue with Mitch Thornton from the Darwin Deason Institute for Cybersecurity. He also gave The Dallas Morning News tips for how consumers could protect their private information after the AT&T data breach. 

Infrastructure desert expert Barbara Minsker’s research was featured on an NBC-5 and KRLD podcast, “Texas Wants to Know: What is Redlining and How Has It Impacted the Black Community?”

 

Paleontologists Diana Vineyard, Louis Jacobs and Michael Polcyn found that ancient rocks and fossils from Angola reptiles provide evidence of the splitting of South America and Africa and the formation of the South Atlantic Ocean. MSN covered the story.

 

 

SMU nanotechnology expert MinJun Kim helped a team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin to develop a less expensive way to detect nuclease digestion, reported The Microbiologist, AZoLife Sciences, StatNano and SciTechDaily.

  

After analyzing several years of property crime and organized retail theft data, Cox statistics expert Michael Braun told the Marshall Project that Black people were arrested and charged with retail theft more than twice as often as their White peers. Hispanic people were charged more than 20 percent more often than White people. Ambiguity in the law gives police officers a lot of discretion before the case reaches the prosecutor’s desk, he said.

 

Engineer John Easton explained to The Dallas Morning News why Texas water infrastructure is struggling to keep up. And he was interviewed by The Baltimore Sun about buildings there found to have Legionella in the water.  

 

Economist Santanu Roy was featured in Phys.org about a study that looked into whether being transparent about past business makes one-time businesses, such as real estate agents, more or less likely to make a sale that benefits both them and the buyer.  

 

Does a college education pay off? In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed, economic expert Cullum Clark said, yes, it does.

 

Economics professor Klaus Desmet’s research on ideological polarization was featured in a Le Monde op-ed.   

 

Earth.com covered paleontologist Michael Polcyn’s research on new insights into the evolutions and paleoecology of mosasaurs. 

 

An international team of physicists, including physics professor Fredrick Olness, has for the first time achieved a major breakthrough in nuclear physics by unifying two distinct ways of describing atomic nuclei, Physics World reported. 

 

In a study with Dartmouth, chemist Alex Lippert described a new synthetic molecular switch that can trigger shape changes in liquid crystals, enabling them to reflect different colors. The liquid crystals could be used for liquid crystal lasers, display screens that could be easily printed and erased and microscopic tags that could be added to bank notes to deter counterfeiters. MSN and Technology Networks covered the research. Lippert also collaborated with Dartmouth on another study about erasable 3D images, AZoOptics and New Atlas reported.

 

 

The Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed by anthropology professor Neely Myers explaining why it’s so critical that young psychosis patients get effective early intervention.

 

Dallas Innovates recognized engineering professors Khaled Abdelghany and Corey Clark as two of the 75 most innovative leaders in artificial intelligence in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Christopher Roos wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune about why we need a new Smokey Bear that embraces good fire.

 

Some U.S. states still allow, or haven't officially banned, corporal punishment in public schools. George Holden, who has studied parenting, corporal punishment and family violence-related topics, told ABC Action News that's a problem.

 

Computer science major Trevor Gicheru was featured in The Dallas Morning News for the app he created to assist in making study aids from classroom lectures.

 

Elizabeth Stringer spoke with Authority Magazine about the future of gaming and her journey from working in major studios to becoming an integral part of the SMU Guildhall program.

 

Transportation expert Khaled Abdelghany told The Dallas Morning News he expects the number of young people choosing not to own a car in Dallas to increase. Working remotely and ordering goods online is leading to a significant change in the fabric of the transportation system, he said.

 

Mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Kamruzzaman Joty has found a new way to detect and analyze biomolecules, potentially making it easier to detect proteins that are present in low concentrations. That could pave the way for new methods of early disease detection, covered StatNano, Nanowerk and MSN.

 

Tech Xplore reported about a new approach for using powerful language AI models to automatically generate narrative content for turn-based role-playing video games (RPGs). Corey Clark and Steph Buongiorno created this PANGeA - Procedural Artificial Narrative using Generative AI. 

 

Dallas Innovates covered the Austin Symposium on Molecular Structure and Dynamics hosted this year by SMU. The conference, organized by chemistry chair Elfi Kraka, brought 121 chemists from 14 countries to campus.

 

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