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Brandon Draper’s recording dam to burst in 2024
LAWRENCE — An associate professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Music, percussionist Brandon Draper will make the Draper Family Band’s debut blues-rock recording the first of 10 he will release in 2024 under a new deal with Symphonic Distribution LLC.
School of Architecture & Design announces Spring 2024 Design Symposium
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design will welcome award-winning animation development artist Angela Sung on Feb. 1 as the first speaker of the spring KU Design Symposium Lecture Series. Now in its 40th year, the design lecture series (formerly Hallmark Symposium) has introduced KU students and the local community to top designers and artists working in a wide range of disciplines and professional fields.
Experts in special education, social welfare and particle physics receive KU Research Achievement Awards
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers expanding our understanding of special education, social welfare and particle physics have received this year’s Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award and the KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement Awards. The annual awards recognize outstanding unclassified academic staff, unclassified professional staff and postdoctoral fellows whose research has significantly influenced their fields and expanded intellectual or societal insights.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Brandon Draper’s recording dam to burst in 2024
LAWRENCE – The way Brandon Draper heard it all his life, it was the impending birth of his older sister that cost his keyboardist father a chance to audition for the Rolling Stones. In reality, he learned a few years ago — only when his dad thought he could handle it — it was his own birth in 1979 that compelled Paul Draper to rebuff guitarist Keith Richards’ 1981 entreaties to travel from Kansas to jam with the “world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band” at an East Coast recording studio.
Now an associate professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Music, percussionist Brandon Draper will try to make it up to his father when he makes their Draper Family Band’s debut blues-rock recording the first of 10 he will release in 2024 under a new deal with Symphonic Distribution LLC.
Brandon Draper’s own record label — Looking Up Productions — signed with Symphonic, a Tampa, Florida-based company that works with independent artists, in November.
Oz McGuire, KU music school graduate and friend of Brandon Draper, was named Symphonic’s vice president for artists and repertoire (A&R) and business development back in 2022, and he reached out to Brandon Draper to see what the multi-instrumentalist might have in his recording vault. McGuire had heard some of the ethereal music Brandon Draper has created to accompany meditation.
Brandon Draper said, “I told him, ‘Man, I’ve got more than just meditation stuff. I have 10 years’ worth of audio that I just recorded for me. I never had a place for it to go.’ And now he’s the conduit.”
Brandon Draper said that he released “Meditation Music, Vol. 1” on his own in 2018, but he planned to withdraw it from streaming services to re-release it through Looking Up via Symphonic.
“Me self-releasing it is like riding a scooter, and Oz releasing it is like a fleet of semi-trucks, and he’s in a Lamborghini leading the pack,” Brandon Draper said. “He has a way bigger reach. So the X amount of streams that I have received from my release … it’s done. It’s not gonna go much further. It had a bubble when it came out, and now it’s gone. But now it can have another life.”
The single “Aim All Around” by the Draper Family Band, with Paul Draper on the Hammond B3 organ, will be Brandon Draper’s first release on the Looking Up Productions label, scheduled for Feb. 2.
“My goal is that the first single from the Draper Family Band is released as soon as possible so I can start gaining some traction with that for summertime festival gigs,” Brandon Draper said.
Among the other recordings that Brandon Draper will release this year through Symphonic is one by Drum Safari, which has been his summertime job for several years. It’s a participatory, educational exercise in percussion for kids.
The other releases set for this year include:
Draper-Towne – organ-duo jazz.
DJB Nu Trios — jam band.
Brandon Draper Quintet live — modern jazz
Brandon Draper – “Meditation Music Vol. 2” featuring the hand pan, a type of steel drum.
Brandon Draper – “Summer of 808” re-release featuring the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer.
“I never stopped recording and making all this music,” Draper said. “I just never had the energy or the time to put into getting it out to people. But it’s all done, and now I have the label that I can send it to.”
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Contact: Dan Rolf, School of Architecture & Design, 785-864-3027, [email protected], @ArcD_KU
School of Architecture & Design announces Spring 2024 Design Symposium
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design will welcome award-winning animation development artist Angela Sung on Feb. 1 as the first speaker of the spring KU Design Symposium Lecture Series.
Now in its 40th year, the design lecture series (formerly Hallmark Symposium) has introduced KU students and the local community to top designers and artists working in a wide range of disciplines and professional fields. See a complete list of past lecturers at the Design Symposium Speaker Archive.
Spring 2024 lectures begin at 6 p.m. in 130 Budig Hall on the KU Lawrence campus. Events are free and open to the public.
Feb. 1: Angela Sung is a plein-air painter and animation development artist for film and television. Combining traditional painting techniques and digital design, Sung has worked on projects for Disney, DreamWorks, Netflix, Warner Brothers and other studios. Credits include “Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts,” “Kung Fu Cooking Girls,” “Legend of Korra,” “Voltron: and the 2022 animated feature “The Bad Guys.”
Feb. 15: Spandita Malik is a visual artist from India. Her work is concerned with the current global sociopolitical state of affairs with an emphasis on women’s rights and gendered violence. Malik specializes in process-based work in photography, recently with photographic surface embroideries and collaborations with women in India.
Feb. 29: Polymode is a bicoastal, queer and minority-owned graphic design studio leading the edge of design with thought-provoking work for clients across the cultural sphere. The studio’s specialties include books, curation, education, exhibition, identities, interfaces, publications, visual design, websites, workshops and writing. Clients include the city of Los Angeles mayor’s office, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, David Kordansky Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, Phaidon Press and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
March 7: Harlan Bozeman is a lens-based artist whose research-driven practice has focused on confronting the erasure of Black culture and its histories and investigating the legacies of slavery and its aftermath in the American South. His previous work explored the Gullah Sea Islands communities, specifically Wadmalaw Island, where his family is from, and the narratives that serve to prolong their cultural significance. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, British Journal of Photography, Der Grief, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
March 21: Alana Louise is an award-winning creative working in branding, illustration, typography, visual design and user experience design. She is currently a creative executive at Wheelhouse Labs and is the creative director at Kimmelot. A first-generation immigrant with a deep passion for the outdoors, she is listed as one of the first 100 people to complete the “Expert” level of the Western Native Trout Challenge. Find Louis’s most recent work on Instagram.
April 4: Alan Tipp, a KU industrial design graduate, has developed products for some of the world’s best-known brands and contributed to numerous U.S. and foreign patents. Just five years after graduating from KU in 2000, Tipp was named director of Performance Eyewear at Under Armour, where he went on to be recognized on all of the company’s design and utility patents, including the tool-free football visor clip used in the NFL. Tipp now maintains an independent studio and consultancy based in Omaha, Nebraska.
April 18: Travis Millard is an artist, illustrator and art director who brings the intimacy of one artist’s hand to work spanning media and scale. Since graduating from the KU illustration program in 1998, Millard’s work has appeared around the world in gallery exhibitions, magazines, brand campaigns, video games and on the sides of buildings. He has developed products, collections and campaigns with brands such as Burton Snowboards, The Hundreds, Lakai, The Quiet Life, Vans and Volcom. Other clients include Disney, Nickelodeon and the filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. His illustrations have been featured in publications such as The Hollywood Reporter, Juxtapose, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and Thrasher. See some of Millard’s most recent drawings on Instagram.
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Contact: Vince Munoz, Office of Research, 785-864-2254, [email protected], @ResearchAtKU
Experts in special education, social welfare and particle physics receive KU Research Achievement Awards
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers expanding our understanding of special education, social welfare and particle physics have received this year’s Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award and the KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement Awards.
The annual awards recognize outstanding unclassified academic staff, unclassified professional staff and postdoctoral fellows whose research has significantly influenced their fields and expanded intellectual or societal insights. This year’s recipients:
Tyler Hicks, director of quantitative methodology, KU Center on Developmental Disabilities, Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award
Pegah Naemi Jimenez, associate researcher senior, School of Social Welfare, Research Staff Achievement Award
Georgios Konstantinos Krintiras, postdoctoral researcher, physics & astronomy, Postdoctoral Achievement Award
The three will be recognized at a ceremony this spring along with recipients of other major KU research awards.
The Office of Research established the Steven F. Warren Research Achievement Award in 2006 to honor unclassified academic staff researchers. Winners receive $10,000 in research funds. The KU Research Staff & Postdoctoral Achievement awards were established in 2018, with honorees receiving $5,000 for approved research or professional development activities.
Tyler Hicks
Hicks is the director of data science, research design and methodology as well as an assistant research professor at the KU Center on Developmental Disabilities housed within the Life Span Institute. He also holds an appointment in the research design and analysis unit at LSI. Hicks has been instrumental in designing new ways to analyze special education practices and collaborating with colleagues to make their projects work.
Hicks began his time at KU as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Special Education in 2017. He then served as a research associate at LSI’s SWIFT Education Center.
Methodology specialists don’t often have the opportunity to serve as the primary investigator on funded projects, but without their expertise, many proposals wouldn’t get off the ground. To date, Hicks has served as a co-PI or lead methodologist on funded projects totaling more than $34 million. He is noted as a leading expert in analyzing cost-effectiveness of special education interventions.
Hicks earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and doctorate in special education, both from the University of South Florida.
Pegah Naemi Jimenez
Naemi Jimenez is an associate researcher senior in the School of Social Welfare. Prior to her current role, Naemi Jimenez was an associate researcher at KU’s Center for Public Partnerships & Research from 2015 to 2021.
Naemi Jimenez’s scholarship focuses on cross-system approaches and community-engaged research that addresses social problems experienced by children and families in marginalized communities. This involves working with communities, practitioners and other interested parties, such as state agencies in Kansas, Missouri and Texas. She has received multiple federal grants to support this work.
Naemi Jimenez serves as the principal investigator on three multiyear state and federally funded research projects: Safe Sleep Program Evaluation, in partnership with the Missouri Children’s Trust Fund; THRIVE, a sexual health program for foster care professionals and youth involved in foster care, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin; and Kansas Bravely Raising and Activating Voices for Equity, a collaborative initiative that centers Black and Brown youth and family experts to advance racial equity in child welfare, for which she recently was awarded $2.5 million in federal funding to implement. She also leads evaluation for Kansas Strong: Parent Youth Facilitation Strategy and the Racial Equity Collaborative. At the university level, Naemi Jimenez represents the School of Social Welfare on the Campus Council on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging.
Naemi Jimenez’s equity research goes far beyond the region. She also conducted a study of how Iranian women use social media in social justice movements.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Davis, a master’s degree in psychology from California State University at Sacramento and a doctorate in social psychology from KU.
Georgios Konstantinos Krintiras
Krintiras is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. His work on some of the smallest building blocks of matter has attracted considerable international attention in the discipline.
Many learn that atoms are composed of subatomic particles, including protons and neutrons. But these particles are in turn made up of smaller components called quarks. Quarks normally remain confined within the protons and neutrons, but they can be studied when certain heavy elements, such as lead, collide into each other in large scientific instruments. Krintiras uses such instruments to study free quarks at KU and at Fermilab as a distinguished researcher.
Krintiras serves in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the largest collaborative efforts ever formed, hosted at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. He has served as a convener of the luminosity group and the heavy ion group, which help coordinate research at the facilities. Under Krintiras’ tenure, the luminosity group released the first publication that now counts more than 400 citations, and the heavy ion group was one of the most productive teams with CMS, producing almost one paper per month despite being one of the smaller teams.
Beyond his project management skills, Krintiras’ luminosity-related work has been recognized with a CMS achievement award, and he has made notable discoveries in his field. The American Physics Society praised his observation of top quarks in collisions between protons and lead nuclei in 2017. He also participated in the association’s particle physics community planning, which set a roadmap for future research.
Krintiras earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a bachelor’s degree in experimental nuclear physics from Lund University, Sweden. He also holds a master’s degree in experimental astroparticle and elementary particle physics from the University of Amsterdam and a doctorate from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
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