Zaakiyah Cua, Andrea Palmiotto, Victor Garcia, and Ben Ford were recognized at the 2020 IUP Research Awards.
Cua, a recent graduate of the Applied Archaeology MA Program, won first place in the Masters category for Outstanding Graduate Student Research. Her thesis, "Loyalhanna Creek: A Geoarchaeolgical Approach to Understanding the Archaeological Potential of Floodplains," involved a partnership with the US Army Corps of Engineers to model and test buried surfaces within the Loyalhanna floodplain for archaeological sites. Cua is now an archaeologist with the US Forest Service.
Victor Garcia is the director of the Mid-Atlantic Research and Training Institute for Community and Behavioral Health (MARTI), which was recognized with the Outstanding Center, Institute, or Program Award. MARTI is an interdisciplinary center focused on alcohol abuse treatment, domestic violence intervention, and related mental health issues.
Andrea Palmiotto was recognized as part of the most recent PI Mentorship Academy (PIMA). She spent much of the year improving her ability to obtain and execute externally funded projects and is now putting those skills to work to develop an agreement with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to organize a forensic anthropology field school. She is also completing a grant from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania to study the impacts of development on cemeteries.
Ben Ford won the High Impact Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who provides undergraduates with authentic research experiences. Like all faculty in the Anthropology Department, Ford integrates students into his research and supports independent undergraduate research both to advance the field of anthropology and to train the next generation of anthropological researchers.