While I’ve witnessed myriad innovations in the financial services industry throughout my career, there is one area where banking has been slower to evolve: investing in women. Up until the last few decades, the financial world imposed nearly impenetrable barriers that prevented women from reaching the highest levels of an organization. This was the case both in terms of hiring women and offering products. But these days, equality has become a widely touted priority for businesses and positive gains have been occurring within the industry and the regulatory community. In 2014, Janet Yellen became the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve, for instance. While not banking specific, the number of women on the boards of Fortune 500 companies has grown to 20%, up from 15.7% in 2010.

Graduate programs in the humanities have faced withering criticism for churning out a surplus of doctorates despite a tight academic job market. Data released on Thursday by the Council of Graduate Schools suggest that the criticism could be starting to sink in. While overall applications to doctoral programs were up nearly 1 percent from 2015 to 2016, applications to arts and humanities programs declined by 7.1 percent.

There are two very different pictures of the students roaming the hallways and labs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. At the undergraduate level, 80 percent are United States residents. At the graduate level, the number is reversed: About 80 percent hail from India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries. For graduate students far from home, the swirl of cultures is both reassuring and invigorating. “You’re comfortable everyone is going through the same struggles and journeys as you are,” said Vibhati Joshi of Mumbai, India, who’s in her final semester for a master’s degree in financial engineering. “It’s pretty exciting.”

The idea that a Ph.D. can prepare you for diverse careers — not just for the professoriate — is now firmly with us. Most doctoral students in the arts and sciences start out with the desire to become professors. But that’s not where most of them end up. By now, most graduate advisers understand that their doctoral students will follow multiple career paths. And increasing numbers of professors and administrators are trying to help students do that. The number of Ph.D.s who pursue nonfaculty careers varies by field, of course. But the reality in many disciplines is: If you’re teaching a graduate seminar with eight students in it, only two of them, on average, will become full-time faculty members. What happens to the rest? And as important, how do they feel about where they end up?

Two University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students, Mehrdad Arjmand and Aaron Olson, founded NovoMoto after winning $90,000 in the 2016 Clean Energy Trust Challenge. Arjmand, a recent doctoral recipient in engineering mechanics, and Olson, a doctoral candidate in engineering mechanics, intend to use their graduate education to help people around the world. For now, their focus is on the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where 95% of residents live without access to reliable grid electricity. NovoMoto is a Sustainable Social Enterprise that intends to “provide clean, renewable, and sustainable electricity to the DRC and other sub-Saharan African countries in the future.”

Through home and business solar energy systems, microgrids, and solar-powered charging stations, Arjmand and Olson believe they will be able to empower communities. As a result, more economic opportunities will be available to the region. A small energy kiosk prototype will allow NovoMoto to work with local partners and control the kiosk remotely. The plan is to set up a kiosk consisting of a few solar panels and a battery bank. Customers take a fully charged battery home, use it to charge lights and cell phones and other equipment, and return it for another when it’s fully discharged.

In addition to providing better and more reliable access, the NovoMoto model is more affordable. “Depending on the area of the country, people now pay $15 to $22 a month for kerosene and mobile phone charging,” says Olson. “We beat it by providing electricity for $9 a month; that’s a savings of 40 to 60 percent.” To learn more about Aaron and Mehrdad’s work, visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

**Photo Credit: James Runde, Wisconsin Energy Institute

Inquiry-based learning is an active learning model that begins with a facilitator (teacher) asking questions, posing problems, or creating scenarios. This teaching model has become increasingly common in college classrooms, but Jessica Bohlen wanted to try the method with younger students. A recent M.A. recipient from the University of West Georgia and high school English teacher, Bohlen began a trial run partnership with two UWG professors and a local elementary school teacher. What they discovered could be transformational for the K-12 community.

At the end of the nine-week study, Bohlen saw a huge improvement in her classroom – 492 percent to be exact. Not only did her students perform better on test assignments, but their classroom behavior and confidence levels greatly improved. Bohlen’s results are particularly inspiring, because some of her students have learning disabilities.

Since the study was completed, Bohlen has had other teachers come into her classroom to see the results for themselves. Several have started to use inquiry-based learning approaches in their own classrooms. To learn more about Jessica’s work, visit the University of West Georgia website.

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

**Photo Credit: Amy K. Lavender

Matthew Schwartz, a master’s student in the University at Buffalo School of Social Work, realized many of his clients were having difficulty accessing food pantries. As a case manager for the Jewish Family Service of Buffalo and Erie County, Schwartz noticed the requirements to utilize food pantries were often things food insecure people might not have. Some food pantries require a state-issued form of identification, official documentation of financial need, and some will only help people who live in designated zip codes. In addition, available transportation and limited hours can greatly limit people’s ability to get the food they need.

Schwartz decided to step in and find a way to make food more accessible. Along with the local Jewish community, the United Church of Christ, and other case managers, Schwartz founded Food Gnomes, a mobile food pantry serving the Greater Buffalo Area. In addition to being stocked with food, each car is a mobile information center with details on housing and shelters, domestic violence programs, job and career training, educational opportunities, and more. Each driver is a local case manager able to provide assistance and referral to local services.

“We really believe in having an impact by answering the needs as the community states them, not what we think they are,” Schwartz says. “We only have one question: Are you hungry? If the answer is yes, then we feed you.” To learn more about Matthew’s work, visit the University at Buffalo website.

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**Photo Credit: Nancy J. Parisi, University at Buffalo Communications

Lauren Forrest, a doctoral student in psychology at Miami University of Ohio, is on a mission to help U.S. military veterans through her research to identify risk factors related to suicide and self-injury. According to the Veterans Administration, “Veterans accounted for 18% of all deaths from suicide among U.S. adults in 2014.” Although a lot of research is being done to better understand why this happens, Forrest argues that a new approach to risk factors is needed.

You know the five major senses (taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing); but you probably haven’t heard of interoception, a part of the sensory system that manages sensations inside your body. Knowing when you’re hungry, if your breathing is heavier, or your heart rate is fast are all functions processed by your brain through interoception. Forrest hypothesizes that people who don’t adequately process these sensations could be more likely to self-harm, particularly for individuals with a high tolerance for pain and fear.

Forrest recently received a grant to complete her study from the Military Suicide Research Consortium, a testament to the potential impact to the military community, but her research could have much broader implications. “Suicide and non-suicidal self-injury are really huge public health problems with very significant consequences,” says Forrest. To learn more about Lauren’s work, visit the Miami University of Ohio website.

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**Photo Credit: Lauren Forrest

Karishma Bansal, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico, and her colleagues made international news in June 2017 for their groundbreaking discovery: two supermassive black holes orbiting each other. Scientists have theorized this phenomenon was possible, but Bansal is the first to prove it. Over a 10-year period, UNM’s Dr. Gregory Taylor (Bansal’s mentor) and scientists from other universities took very fine measurements with a series of 10 radio telescopes located across North America. Bansal analyzed some of the data collected and demonstrated the orbital movement.

To give you some perspective, each supermassive black hole is the size of our entire solar system; they exist 750 million light-years from earth; and they move at about 4 million miles per hour. Supermassive black holes exist in the center of most large galaxies. As two galaxies began to collide, the two black holes began to orbit each other. Eventually (as in millions of years from now), the two black holes will probably merge.

Someday, billions of years from now, our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. Bansal’s research will help scientists better understand this process. To learn more about Karishma’s work, visit the University of New Mexico website.

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**Photo Credit: C. Shell

Becoming a firefighter comes with its share of risks, but Chandler Maness hopes to do something about that. As a master’s student in textile chemistry at North Carolina State University, Maness is working to develop better gear for firefighters. His primary goal is to reduce the amount of particulate materials from fires that manage to seep into the gear. According to Maness, “those particulates contain toxic compounds and carcinogens that are part of the reason that firefighters have such a high rate of cancer. So the scope of the overall project is to kind of develop a turnout and ensemble that prevents these particulates from getting to the skin.”

Finding the most protective materials and designs is important, but they also need to be functional and allow firefighters the same level of maneuverability. Maness and his colleagues went right to the source, visiting local fire and emergency management stations to talk to firefighters and show them prototypes. They take that feedback back to the lab and create a new prototype.

“Obviously, my hope and the hope of all my co-workers is that the research we do will contribute to a decrease in those [cancer] rates,” said Maness. To learn more about Chandler’s work, visit the North Carolina State University website.

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**Photo Credit: Marc Hall, NC State University Communications