Virginia Tech researchers (from left) Richard Hanowski, Julie Shortridge, and Andy Scerri.
Three Virginia Tech researchers have received Fulbright Scholar Awards for the 2024-25 academic year, according to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.
The focus of the research projects seek to improve global transportation safety, environmental policy, and climate change.
“Virginia Tech faculty are contributing to our global reputation through their active participation in the Fulbright program,” said Dan Sui, senior vice president for research and innovation. “Our faculty who are leading Fulbright programs will have an opportunity to learn from and make an impact on their host international communities during their Fulbright tenures. Addressing challenges through the program supports the university commitment to be a force for positive change through advancing research and partnering abroad.”
Since the Fulbright program’s inception in 1946, nearly 170 Virginia Tech faculty members have participated. More broadly across the world, the program has provided more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds and fields the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research; exchange ideas; and contribute to finding solutions to important international problems.
The three faculty members are:
Richard Hanowski
Division director of freight, transit, and heavy vehicle safety, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
Seventy percent of road deaths in Malaysia involve motorcycles. However, their affordability leads many road users in low- and middle-income countries to rely on them. With a passion for global transportation safety and over 32 years of transportation safety research experience, Hanowski will collaborate with the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research in Kajang, Malaysia, to research, design, develop, and test a low-cost motorcycle collision avoidance technology to help mitigate motorcycle crashes. The research will commence in January for a three-month period.
Andy Scerri
Associate professor and director of graduate studies, Department of Political Science, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Governments have the power to make policy decisions about the production, distribution, and consumption of energy in given areas. Scerri, whose research focus is environmental political theory and policy studies, will travel to the Netherlands to continue work on his current book, tentatively titled “Democracy Without Illusions.” It argues that stability in energy policy is undesirable democratically and revisits the ideas of American democratic realists in the mid-20th century. The book will include a chapter on the recent shift to the right in the Netherlands and the difficulties it raises for advancing climate-responsible policymaking going forward. Scerri also will co-teach a class on democratic theory at Maastricht University and receive training in a problem-based learning approach to teaching and syllabus design.
Julie Shortridge
Assistant professor and Virginia Cooperative Extension specialist, Department of Biological Systems Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The Arctic region is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, presenting an opportunity to understand these impacts as they emerge. With her Fulbright, Shortridge will study how interactions between warming temperatures and energy transitions in Northern Finland could lead to tipping points that rapidly change social and environmental systems. She will work with colleagues in the Department of Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering and the Frontiers of Global Resilience Research Program to develop stakeholder-informed conceptual and computational models of these changes. These models will be used to test resilience-building strategies to preserve environmental and social resources in the face of rapid changes.
The competition for Fulbright awards for the 2025-26 academic year has been announced and the deadline for submission is Sept. 16. For more information about the application process, contact Nicole Sanderlin.
Virginia Tech
