Experts to Focus on Colombian Coffee Production, Drug Use Analysis in Wastewater, Luxury Products and Sustainable Innovation

Fulbright logo

06/05/2023

Media contacts:
Emily Gowdey-Backus, director of media relations, Emily_GowdeyBackus@uml.edu
Nancy Cicco, assistant director of media relations, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs contact:  ECA-Press@state.gov

Sheree Pagsuyoin
Sheree Pagsuyoin
Prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program awards, designed to advance recipients' careers as educators and researchers, have been awarded to three UMass Lowell faculty members.

The honors, awarded by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, are bestowed based on the academic merits of recipients’ work and leadership potential. UMass Lowell Fulbright awardees for the 2023-2024 academic year include:

  • Sheree Pagsuyoin, associate professor, associate department chair, and graduate coordinator for the doctoral program in civil and environmental engineering, UMass Lowell Francis College of Engineering
  • Spencer Ross, associate professor of marketing entrepreneurship and innovation, UMass Lowell Manning School of Business
  • Mehmet Berk Talay, professor and department chair, UMass Lowell Manning School of Business

“The UMass Lowell community congratulates professors Pagsuyoin, Ross and Talay on their Fulbright awards, which recognize the significance of their research and work as educators. The opportunities that come with these awards will allow them to grow their expertise in international settings, forge partnerships with scholars from across the globe and return to UMass Lowell to share their expanded knowledge with our students,” said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen.

Spencer Ross
Spencer Ross
Pagsuyoin is an expert in the ecological and public health impacts of contaminants, including levels of the coronavirus, in wastewater, and an authority on water treatment technologies. She is a recipient of the highly competitive Fulbright Global Scholar Award, which will enable her to conduct research in Busan, South Korea; Manilla, the Philippines; and Antwerp, Belgium. In each urban setting, she will evaluate the feasibility of analyzing wastewater to monitor drug use in the population.

Ross and Talay each received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program fellowship. With his award, Ross, an expert in digital marketing, social media branding and consumer engagement, will study coffee production and marketing in Colombia at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá.

Talay is an authority on the development and launch of new products and services in local and international markets. With his Fulbright award, he will study how luxury products can help foster sustainable innovations, especially in the context of the automotive industry.

Berk Talay
Mehmet Berk Talay
As part of that research, he has been invited to the École Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) Business School in Cergy, France, where he will serve as a visiting professor in a research center established by French automaker Peugeot.

With their awards, the UMass Lowell faculty will join more than 800 fellow Fulbright award recipients who are U.S. citizens selected to teach or conduct research abroad over the next year.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States through an annual appropriation by U.S. Congress to the State Department, and by partner countries around the world. Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 78 MacArthur Fellows, and 41 who have served as a head of state or government, according to the State Department.

Share