Stephanie Raible, associate professor of entrepreneurship and the faculty director of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Lerner College of Business and Economics, has been named a top 50 best professor in undergrad business education by Poets&Quants. Raible has been a part of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship since 2018 and Lerner College since 2021, with an affiliated faculty appointment with the University’s Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. Over the past 12 years, she has taught and developed curricula across nine academic institutions and nonprofits in the United States and Europe and has taught and led interdisciplinary study abroad programs in Germany and Thailand. Her work has reached thousands of learners through her curriculum development and teaching efforts and recent textbook, Social entrepreneurship: A practice-based approach to social innovation. For her high-impact contributions to the field and at UD, she has received institutional, local, national and international recognitions from the University of Delaware, Delaware Business Times, Deshpande Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education, and the International Council for Small Business. In 2025, she will be a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Management Center Innsbruck in Austria.

Two UD researchers — Jamie Phillips and John Xiao — have been named 2025 fellows by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). With more than 460,000 members from 190 countries, IEEE is considered the world's largest technical professional society. It serves professionals in all aspects of the electrical, electronic and computing fields and related areas of science and technology.

• Jamie Phillips, interim dean for the College of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering concentrates his research on optoelectronic materials and devices based on compound semiconductors for the next generation of infrared detector systems, solar photovoltaics, IoT energy harvesting devices and biomedical sensors. The IEEE cited Phillips for his contributions to quantum dot infrared photodetectors and microscale photovoltaic energy harvesting.
• John Xiao, Unidel Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a fellow of the American Physical Society, is renowned for his pioneering research in spintronics and electromagnetic materials for high frequency applications. His IEEE fellow citation is for contributions to spin-polarized transport and spin dynamics in magnetic heterostructures. IEEE fellows are recognized for an outstanding record of accomplishments that have contributed to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology. 

Emily Frazer-Abel, a communications sciences and disorders doctoral student working in the Speech Language Acquisition and Multilingualism Lab, was named to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Minority Student Leadership Program Class of 2024 at the association’s convention in Seattle, Washington, this month.

Vince DiFelice, senior instructor in entrepreneurship, was named the 2024 Technical.ly Delaware’s Educator of the Year. He received the most nominations in this category.  “There is no more powerful form of learning than entrepreneurship; no more powerful form of personal development than that which comes from working on a startup,” DiFelice said. “Students realize potential and successfully pursue individual aspirations aligned with their interests; they begin to discover where they fit in the world.” DiFelica has mentored many of the startups connected with Horn Entrepreneurship, including Alchemize Fightwear, TRIC Robotics, Bison Venture Partners, Vibrating Therapeutic Apparel and NerdIT Now. Horn Entrepreneurship’s VentureOn was also selected as the 2024 Technical.ly Delaware’s Program of the Year.  

Sharon Walpole, professor in the College of Education and Human Development’s School of Education, has received the Literacy Research Association’s P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award. This annual award honors an author who has written an article, chapter or book within the last five years that has demonstrably and positively influenced literacy practices and/or policies within district, school and/or classroom settings. Walpole received the award for the second edition of her book, How to Plan Differentiated Literacy Instruction: Resources for Grades K-3, coauthored with the late Michael C. McKenna.

Grants

Jennifer Horney, founding director and professor of the epidemiology program in the College of Health Sciences and core faculty with UD’s Disaster Research Center, has been awarded a more than $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award, a first of its kind for UD, will allow Horney and her team to focus on translation and engagement around research on how the social service system adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project will focus specifically on the domestic violence service system as a model for understanding future adaptations needed to support the community post-disaster. “Public health and social services systems cannot meet demand on a day-to-day basis. A disaster means that even more people who require services cannot be served,” said Horney. “This supplement provides funds for the next two years to push our research findings into the field, to engage with practitioners to improve disaster preparedness, planning and response, and to study how our tools perform in a real-world disaster setting.”

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