On Jan. 4, 2022, Giulia Palermo, assistant professor of UCR Bioengineering, earned a $650,000 National Science Foundation CAREER award to research the state-of-art gene editing technology. She expressed gratitude for the award on twitter, exclaiming, “Honored to receive the #NSFCAREER award! This will give us the opportunity to pursue exciting research and high-level education to mentor students, including minorities and #womeninSTEM! I am grateful to my lab members, who made this possible through their dedication and work!”
Alongside Palermo, John Ira Jennings received the 2021 HugoAward for Best Graphic Story or Comic for his piece, “Parable of the Sower,” a graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s novel with the same title that Jennings completed with Damian Duffy. The novel follows a young woman named Lauren Oya Olamina who lives in Southern California in the year 2024. According to Jennings, “The country is in unrest, there’s famine, there is ridiculous wealth disparity gaps, there are an insane amount of homeless people, the environment is on the brink of destroying mankind, and the infrastructure of the United States is all but gone.”
After a number of violent drug users attack her home, Lauren escapes with friends and forms a religion called EarthSeed which has the goal of sending mankind into space in order for humanity to begin again.
“As you can see, the story is so close to some of the issues that are happening in the world that it almost seems like reportage …The story actually has a populist president who uses the phrase ‘Make America Great Again.’ The story is eerily prescient and is a testimony to the genius of Octavia Butler and also the brutal truths in every book that she wrote.”
John Ira Jennings also explained how this award is the answer to many of his aspirations. When asked what he plans to do for the future, he expressed, “I hope that our next graphic novel adaptation, Parable of the Talents, continues to do some sliver of justice to the brilliant work of Octavia E. Butler.”
The graphic novel can be found on Amazon.
