The recipients of the 2021 Knowledge Mobilization Awards were announced on Friday, April 9 after a full-day showcase of graduate student and postdoctoral research. The awards, sponsored by the Graduate College’s Knowledge Mobilization Initiative, recognize the innovation and ingenuity of ASU scholars working to advance academic knowledge beyond the university through use-inspired, socially impactful research. 

For Jerome Clark, stories are not just for bedtime. They are tools that can be used to imagine, and eventually help create, a future for the Navajo nation, his nation. 

Clark is a PhD candidate in English Literature at ASU. He studies indigenous literature, focusing on the story traditions of the Diné (aka Navajo) tribe to which he belongs.  

Eli Pérez-Ruiz, a graduate student in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, has travelled across the Sonoran desert to study variations in natural urban landscapes to learn how these variations affect carbon dioxide fluxes-- the carbon gas exchanged between ecosystems and the atmosphere. 

His research is complex, so Pérez-Ruiz translates it into terms we understand too well; urbanization and climate change.

For the fourth year in a row, ASU graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from across all disciplines presented at the Knowledge Mobilization Awards (KMA) ceremony on Wednesday, March 4. The awards are a showcase and celebration of those scholars with research projects that are actively seeking to change current practices and policies in society.