By SHANNON O. WELLS
The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Award that Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili recently received provides the professor in the School of Public and International Affairs an opportunity to serve as distinguished scholar at Tel Aviv University in Israel to pursue what she called “important research at a pivotal time.”
“I will study regional alliances in the Middle East and beyond as countries respond to the influence of Russia, China and Iran,” she said. “My project focuses on how both formal and informal organizational agreements shape cooperation across borders, from security partnerships to trade and people-to-people exchange.”
Murtazashvili, who also serves as director of the Center for Governance and Markets, noted that her research coincides with a time when “we are witnessing unprecedented forms of regional cooperation in places where many thought such collaboration was not possible.”
Through her research, she seeks to connect “micro-level governance questions with geopolitics,” while developing comparative insights that link the Abraham Accords — agreements from 2020 establishing diplomatic normalization between Israel and several Arab states — with “emerging experiments in regional integration” in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.
In July 2025, the Trump administration indicated it was seeking to include Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in the accords.
Murtazashvili is one of three Pitt faculty members who received Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Awards, the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced in June.
In addition to Murtazashvili, Aleksandar Stevanovic, associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will travel to Podgorica, Montenegro, to assist the city government and local university in designing and implementing an adaptive traffic signal control system.
His project combines research, collaboration and teaching with the goal of optimizing the system and training local professionals for its long-term maintenance.
Guillermo Velazquez Calero, associate professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Structural Biology, will collaborate with scientists in Granada, Spain, on identifying small drug fragments that can inhibit the RAS oncogene, a protein involved in nearly 30% of human cancers.
Using advanced X-ray crystallography, he is creating what he called detailed “molecular movies” of RAS’s activity cycle to help prevent uncontrolled cell growth.
Awarded to faculty, researchers, administrators and established professionals who teach or conduct research in collaboration with institutions abroad, Fulbright U.S. Scholars engage in cutting-edge research and professional networking opportunities. The connections they make often set the stage for ongoing international partnerships.
“The University of Pittsburgh is proud of our longstanding partnership with the Fulbright Program, including distinction as a top producer,” Chancellor Joan Gabel said, as reported in Pittwire. “Our exceptional faculty members who participate not only work to build partnerships, but also then endlessly enrich the Pittsburgh campus when they return home.”
A 2018 Fulbright alum who studied higher education practices in India, Gabel serves as chair of the Fulbright Scholar Advisory Board of the Comparative and International Education Society. The independent body provides administration and strategic guidance to the Institute of International Education, Pittwire noted.
In addition to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards, Karen J. Gilmer, associate teaching professor of theater and costume design in the Department of Theatre Arts, has received the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad award, which supported a cultural and academic immersion program in Dakar, Senegal, from May 4 to June 5.
She also conducts research on the costume and dress history of Gorée Island and the Signares of Saint-Louis, Senegal, women of mixed African and European heritage (Métis) who played a unique and influential role during the transatlantic slave trade.
Regulating flow
In anticipation of his Fulbright project, which starts on Sept. 15, Stevanovic said he’s been in touch with his hosts at University of Montenegro and the city of Podgorica for “quite some time,” helping them with their decisions to install an adaptive traffic signal control system.
The project components include helping authorities from the city of Podgorica/Montenegro to properly deploy a smart traffic signal system intended to significantly reduce delays and the environmental impacts of vehicular traffic, he said.
“Considering that I often present my research internationally, it happened that the professionals from Montenegro heard about my expertise and contacted me last year to discuss their projects,” he said, noting that he’s been interested in adaptive traffic signal control systems since his early days of graduate research.
The research component will utilize state-of-the-art methods to design operational elements of the smart/adaptive traffic-signal system. The traffic signals, Stevanovic noted, operate in a “dynamic way” by changing durations and sequence of green times to reflect diurnal and seasonal traffic variations.
“Many cities around the world are installing such systems, which themselves have been constantly evolving,” he said.
His projects related to the traffic signals include studies commissioned by relevant bodies of the National Academy of Sciences.
Switching off cancer triggers
Although his project started three years ago, Guillermo Calero said his laboratory has focused for closer to six years on creating “molecular movies” of enzymatic processes using X-ray crystallography and single-particle cryoEM methods.
“Among the laboratory projects, we have observed nucleotide addition by RNA polymerase II and HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, among other clinically relevant enzymatic reactions,” he explained.
Calero's Fulbright project in Spain involves time-resolved structural studies of the RAS family of GTPases, RAS proteins being molecular “switches,” with “on” and “off” states. In their “on” (GTP-bound) state, RAS proteins are active and trigger cellular proliferation.
“RAS mutations that fail to inactivate — or turn off its activity — are found in an astonishing 30% of all human cancers, including lung, colon and pancreas,” he said.
Using novel time-resolved techniques that allow observation of the molecular mechanisms of an enzymatic reaction, Calero's laboratory was able to observe the GTP hydrolysis reaction by N-RAS and its cancer-generating mutants, what he called a 40-years-in-the-making achievement.
“Taking advantage of the multitude of states observed during the hydrolysis reaction of N-RAS and its cancer generating mutants, we will probe billions of small molecules computationally and test their RAS-binding capabilities,” he said.
The ultimate goal is “knocking down” the ability to trigger “uncontrolled cellular proliferation observed in the RAS-related cancers.”
Dance and character development
Karen J. Gilmer’s Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad experience in Dakar, Senegal, last spring brought together 15 Pitt faculty members with the goal to deepen understanding of Senegalese language, culture, traditional medicine and environment, Gilmer noted.
“A key component of the experience involved critical reflection on how we might decolonize our research, teaching practices and departmental curricula,” she said. “Currently, I am investigating how West African dance can serve as a tool for character development, particularly in shaping character movement and enhancing the relationship between movement and costume.”
She also is conducting research on the costume and dress history of Gorée Island and the Signares of Saint-Louis, Senegal, women of mixed African and European heritage (Métis) who played a unique and influential role during the transatlantic slave trade.
“I am gathering visual primary sources that provide evidence of hairstyles, headdresses, fabrics and fashions that reflect the fusion of African and European aesthetics,” she said. “This research is significant because it helps illuminate the history of African fashion and the cultural impact of European influence during the slave trade.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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