Three researchers from Florida State University have been awarded prestigious Fulbright Scholar grants that will allow them to carry out their research abroad in the coming year.

This year’s FSU winners are:

Carl Schmertmann, William J. Serow Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Demography and Population Health at FSU.

Schmertmann is traveling to Belo Horizonte, a city in northeast Brazil, where he will work with researchers from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. His work will tackle the problems of estimates of life expectancy in Brazil.

Brazil’s unreliable life expectancy rates influence health care, he said.

“It’s important to accurately estimate health and mortality because that’s how medical funding is targeted,” Schmertmann said. “Expectation estimates help identify places the government would like to prioritize.”

He added: “It’s a great place to do this work. There is a very good doctorate. program and training program at where I go that attracts people from other countries in Latin America and Africa. I will therefore have the opportunity to meet a wider range of promising demographers.

Schmertmann’s ties to Brazil run deep. He met his wife during a student trip there and completed his post-doctorate at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He has returned to the country several times since.

He said he hopes FSU will benefit from his Fulbright.

“I’m excited to try to connect more with the demographics of FSU and with the institution in general and attract students and possibly future post-docs to FSU,” he said. “It’s an important part of this job; it helps connect FSU to a larger network, and that’s good.

Jen Atkins, associate professor of dance at the College of Fine Arts.

Atkins will work at various locations in Norway. Her research focuses on dance while integrating a wide range of disciplines, including American history, culture, gender, and popular culture.

“I look at how deeply meaningful the moving body in everyday life is, particularly in expressing, reflecting and even anticipating what we characterize as ‘American’ identities,” she said.

Through self-designed workshops that fuse American history, politics and culture with dance studies and popular culture, she plans to visit high schools across Norway and share workshops with students so that they can practice English while learning about American life.

“During my stay, I will also share educational workshops on decoding movement description, integrating popular culture into lesson plans, and the educational power of play in the classroom,” she said. “For me, this is a unique opportunity to focus intensely on perfecting my teaching approaches and learning more about what our new generation of students needs in terms of learning.”

She added: “My hope is to continually become a better teacher and glean new ideas about how to see the world and ourselves.”

Jasminka Ilitch-Ernst, professor of nutrition, formerly in the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Ilich-Ernst retired from FSU in 2018 and remains on the faculty of the Institute for Successful FSU Longevity. For her Fulbright beginning this fall, she will work at the Department of Nutritional Biochemistry and Dietetics at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.

“I will investigate the influence of macro and micronutrients and bioactive dietary components in decreasing chronic inflammation and improving body composition outcomes,” she said.

Ilich-Ernst was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia, which includes Serbia, and moved to the United States in 1983. She said she hopes to educate and be educated while working in her native country.

“By giving lay seminars in my native language, I can contribute to general public health education,” she said. “My desire is not only to help people in my region improve their educational and research opportunities, but also to learn from them, especially from the cutting-edge translational research they conduct. »

She added, “Since leaving this region and coming to the United States, I have considered offering experiences and opportunities similar to those I had in America to motivated scholars in my country. native.”