Trailblazer Award recipients named

Two associate professors have received Trailblazer Awards for mid-career excellence and impact in research and scholarship.

The Trailblazer Award was launched by the Provost's Office in January 2017 as an annual award for mid-career faculty members whose recent research, scholarship or creative work has made a significant impact in their disciplines in the College of Education, College of Liberal Arts, College of Health and Human Sciences or Purdue University Libraries.

The two Trailblazer Award recipients for 2019 are:

Cheryl Cooky, associate professor of American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies in the College of Liberal Arts.

Cooky studies sports, gender and equity. She is interested in social justice as it pertains to girls’ and women’s participation in sports, and has called for a public sociology of sport. She is the co-author of “No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change.” She has appeared as an expert in several documentary films, television and radio programs, and has been quoted in over 100 national and international news media outlets.

Sébastien Hélie, associate professor of psychological sciences in the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Hélie takes an interdisciplinary, integrative approach to studying the cognition of learning and problem solving. He uses different methodologies from cognitive psychology, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to study the relation between the brain and cognitive processing. He is a co-director of CEREBBRAL, the Center for Research on Brain, Behavior, and NeuroRehabilitation.

Recipients of the Purdue University Trailblazer Award will receive a plaque of recognition and a monetary prize of $2,000 at the end-of-the-year Faculty Awards Convocation on May 7.

Writer: Kelsey Schnieders Lefever, kschnied@purdue.edu