The Museum of Art in the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Performing and Visual Arts is hosting its biennial 2021 National Juried Painting Exhibition through Oct.1 at the university's Hattiesburg campus.

USM received 732 total entries from artists across the United States for the event. Juror and guest artist Susan Palmisano chose 52 of those paintings to go on display in the exhibition.

Palmisano will also host a virtual awards ceremony and lecture presentation via Zoom on Sept. 30 beginning at 7 p.m. To join the stream on the date of the event, visit https://usm-edu.zoom.us/j/82216090626.

The exhibit is on display in the Gallery of Art & Design, George Hurst, which is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information on the Museum of Art at USM, visit https://www.usm.edu/performing-visual-arts/museum-art.php.

JSU Receives Grant for Digital Tele-Health Hub

Jackson State University’s College of Health Sciences recently received a $700,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to launch the first phase of its Digital Tele-Health Hub, which will address historical health disparities among African Americans, particularly regarding the coronavirus pandemic and its variants.

JSU's School of Public Health proposes developing the capabilities of the new Digital Tele-Health Hub through a specific research project called “Managing Epidemics with Consumer Wearables,” a release from JSU says.

The hub will focus on conducting collaborative research for using digital telehealth to earn the trust of communities; partnering with leading research institutions, technology companies, healthcare systems, community organizers and the public sector to raise awareness of social and health challenges and co-design digital health solutions to address inequities; and deploying real-world innovations to improve health outcomes for communities of color. JSU will analyze the impact of innovations and share findings with the community, partners, academic peers and other health stakeholders, the release says.

Dr. Mario Azevedo, a professor in JSU’s College of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Fidelis Ikem, the dean of JSU’s College of Business, are co-principal investigators of the project, which is in collaboration with the city of Jackson, the World Economic Forum and the Scripps Research Translational Institute.

MSU Receives Grant for Wildfire Research

Mississippi State University recently received a $1.7 million grant to better equip emergency planners and other stakeholders to reduce the vulnerability of disadvantaged communities to the impacts of wildfires and related cascading hazards such as mudslides, landslides and flooding.

The three-year funding comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture through the Cyber-Physical Systems program, which is a joint program with the National Science Foundation’s Smart and Connected Communities program.

MSU’s Farshid Vahedifard, CEE Advisory Board Endowed Professor in the university’s Richard A. Rula School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the lead principal investigator. Other MSU researchers include Alireza Ermagun, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, as a co-principal investigator, and Diego Thompson, an assistant professor of sociology, as senior personnel.

Other co-principal investigators and senior personnel include Amir AghaKouchak, Tirtha Banerjee and Roxy Silver from the University of California Irvine; Ben Leshchinsky from Oregon State University; Timothy D. Stark from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Katya Schloesser from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The research team will also work with several community partners from California’s state and local authorities, including Kathy Lester from the Office of Specialized Services, Sacramento Police Department; Brian Martin and Dale Carnathan from Lake County Sheriff’s Office; and Brock Falkenberg from Lake County Office of Education.

For more information on MSU’s Richard A. Rula School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, visit cee.msstate.edu.