Junior Faculty Members Receive Woodward Faculty Research Awards
Three early-career faculty members have received the inaugural James H. Woodward Faculty Research Award in recognition of their promising programs of research, scholarship, or creative practice.
Established in 2021, this award is given annually to an untenured member of the faculty who was reappointed to a tenure-earning position in the preceding academic year. The award supports the career development of junior faculty in tenure-track positions by facilitating their development and growth as educators and scholars.
As this is the inaugural year of awarding monies for the Woodward Faculty Research Award, selected faculty members were granted reappointment in the academic years of 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021. Appointees are:
- 2020-2021: Jun Xu, Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science
- 2019-2020: Kaja Dunn, Theatre
- 2018-2019: Way Sung, Bioinformatics and Genomics
The award is made possible by a fund created in honor of Chancellor Emeritus James Woodward upon his retirement. Woodward led UNC Charlotte from 1989-2005 and was successful in reclassifying the university as a doctoral research institution.
Awardees are named James H. Woodward Faculty Research Fellows and receive a one-time award of discretionary funds that may be used to support research development including, but not limited to travel, publications, research expenses and conference participation.
Dr. Jun Xu
Jun Xu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and engineering science, is the 2020-21 James H. Woodward Faculty Research Fellow. Recently named as one of the Charlotte Business Journal’s 40-Under-40 Young Professionals for 2021, Xu is the director of Vehicle Energy and Safety Laboratory (VESL) within UNC Charlotte’s North Carolina Automotive and Motorsports Research Center.
His research expertise includes lithium-ion battery safety and impact dynamics for applications in electric vehicles. Since coming to Charlotte in 2014, he has successfully secured more than $3-million in research funding from both governmental and industry (e.g. Jaguar Land Rover, Altair, Dassault, CosMX, GAC) groups.
Xu serves as the vice chair of the Energy Conversion and Storage Committee, and the Multifunctional Materials Committee for the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME). He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in top journals including Energy Storage Materials, Journal of Material Chemistry A, and the Journal of Power Sources.
Kaja Dunn
Kaja Dunn (MFA), assistant professor of theatre and affiliate faculty for theatrical intimacy education, is the 2019-20 James H. Woodward Faculty Research Fellow. Dunn’s research focuses on equity, diversity and inclusion issues in relation to the decolonization of the theater profession.
Dunn, who has performed nationally and internationally in over 40 productions, serves as secretary on the national board of the Black Theatre Association. In 2018, she led a session at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education national conference on “Safe Spaces for Students of Color and Decolonizing the Theatre Classroom,” and she is co-organizing an international conference on “Decolonizing the Acting Process” with faculty from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
She has been invited to consult or present on issues of equity and diversity for Blumenthal Performing Arts, Actor’s Equity Association, Spelman College, Emory University, The Women’s Theatre Festival, MICHA, North Carolina Theatre Association, George Mason University, Children’s Theatre Charlotte as well as for schools and private corporations. She has published in the U.S. and has two co-authored publications coming out in the U.K. – one for a new Arden Research Companion to Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance on Decolonizing Shakespeare in performance and another for the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training’s Special “Against the Canon,” Training Theatre Students of Color in the USA.
Dr. Way Sung
Way Sung, assistant professor of bioinformatics and genomics, is the 2018-19 James H. Woodward Faculty Research Fellow. His lab focuses on novel approaches to reprogram DNA replication fidelity in eukaryotic organisms, to study the effect that mutations have on an organism, and to measure spatial temporal variation in mutation rate. This work has important implications in how we understand cellular fidelity, cell longevity and cancer formation.
His contributions to the biological field include long-term, mutation-accumulation experiments in a number of different eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms that have helped illuminate the forces driving the evolution of mutation rate. His research goals include developing a comprehensive understanding of how mutation, drift, selection, and recombination drive the evolutionary process.
Sung has received a number of internal research awards including the Faculty Research Grant, the UNC Charlotte Innovation Grant, and the Targeted Research Internal Seed Program. He also received a multi-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study the evolution of DNA replication fidelity.