List of New Science Faculty Invited Sigma Xi’s Annual Luncheon
Zachary Aron, Asst Prof, Chemistry, COAS
Zachary Aron received a B.S. at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Assistant Professor1999 and a Ph.D. at University of California, Irvine (2005). He was an NRSA Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School (2005-2006); E. K. C. Lee Award College of Arts and Sciences recipient (2004), and Eli Lilly Graduate Fellowship in Synthetic Organic Chemistry recipient (2003). Zachary's research lab is focused on the development of molecular assembly lines as versatile tools for chemical synthesis. He is using biosynthetic pathways as both starting point and inspiration, working to build reconfigurable multifunctional catalysts that allow specific access to a variety of structures.
Sonya Atalay Asst. Prof., Anthropology, . College of Arts and Sciences
Sonya Atalay received her Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley and comes to IU Assistant Professor after completing a National Science Foundation postdoctoral scholar's position Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research in the Middle East involves clay and College of Arts and Sciences ceramic analysis and an interest in foodways and cooking technologies at the9,000 year-old site of Çatalhöyük. She also conducts collaborative archaeological research with Native American communities (Anishinaabek peoples) in Great Lakes region of North America. Atalay's other research interests include Indigenous Archaeology—particularly the use of community based participatory research designs, ethics within the practice of heritage management, and intellectual property issues within archaeology.
Heather Bradshaw, Assistant Professor Psychological and Brain Sciences. College of Arts and Sciences
Heather Bradshaw received a B.S. at Florida State University (1994) in Nutrition and a Ph.D. at Florida State University (2001) in Neuroscience. She was a post-doctoral Fellow at Brown University where she received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Post-doctoral Fellowship (2003-2007). During the later half of her award she transferred to Indiana University to conduct research with her post-doctoral mentor. Her current work focuses on the regulation of uterine contractions and vaginal smooth muscle tone by endogenous cannabinoid signaling lipids.
Nathaniel Brown Assistant Professor, Counseling and Educational Psychology, W.W. Wright School of Education
Nathaniel Brown is joining the Learning Sciences program in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology. Nathaniel received his Ph.D. in science and mathematics education from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a M.S. from Cambridge University and a B.S. from Harvey Mudd College. Nathaniel's research interests include cognition and learning with a focus on conceptual understanding in science and the application of construct-referenced measurement to embedded classroom science assessment.
Mihai Ciucu Associate Professor, Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences
Mihai Ciucu received his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan and has held positions at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Institute for Advanced Studies, and, most recently, at Georgia Tech. He has wide interests mathematically, but his core subject is algebraic and enumerative combinatorics. It is said that mathematicians are good at counting, and, in some sense, this is his specialty. It has led him to connections between tilings of the plane, statistical mechanics and physics, and probability.
Serafin Coronel-Molina Assistant Professor, Language Education, W.W. Wright School of Education
Serafin Coronel-Molina completed his Ph.D. in the Educational Linguistics program at the University of Pennsylvania (2006). He also holds an M.A. from The Ohio State University and a B.A. from the Universidad Particular Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru. Most recently, Serafin has been a lecturer of Spanish at Princeton University. His research interests include sociolinguistics and applied linguistics from multiple perspectives, issues of linguistic anthropology, language, culture, ideology, and identity, politics of language, revitalization of endangered languages, and language contact phenomena. He has served as editor and author of a number of books, book chapters, and articles.
Dionne Cross, Assistant Professor, Mathematics Education, W. W. Wright School of Education
Dionne Cross received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, M.A. from Wake Forest University, and B.A. from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. In addition to being a mathematics teacher in public schools, Dionne has worked as a graduate research assistant with the Elementary Mathematics Assessment Project and for the Learning and Performance Support Laboratory at the University of Georgia.
David Giedroc Professor Chemistry College of Arts and Sciences
David Giedroc received a B.S. at The Pennsylvania State University (1980),and a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University (1984). He was an National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University (1986-1988), after which he accepted a teaching position at Texas A & M University. He received the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award (1990-1992) and was a Faculty Fellow at Texas A & M University (2001-2006). His research group is currently working in four separate areas united by their common use of the tools of biophysical chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry and structural biology to solve interesting "nucleic acid-centric" problems in biological regulation.
Amy Hackenberg, Assistant ProfessorMathematics Education, W. W. Wright School of Education
Amy Hackenberg comes to IU from Portland State University where she was an assistant professor of Mathematics. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, M.A.T. from the University of Chicago, and B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe University. Her research interests include how students learn to reason quantitatively and algebraically, how students learn fractions, the nature of student-teacher relationships during mathematical interactions, the relationship between social interaction and learning. and the connection of research on mathematical learning to mathematics teachers' practices and learning. Amy has published in several journals including For the Learning of Mathematics, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Mathematics Teacher.
Shirin Hassan Assistant Professor, School of Optometry
Shirin Hassan received a Ph.D. from Queensland University of Technology(2001). She was an assistant professor at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, and previously worked as an adjunct assistant professor at the IU School of Optometry.
Ke Hu Assistant Professor Biology College of Arts and Sciences
Ke Hu received her B.S. degree in Biology from the Tsinghua University(1987), and her Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Pennsylvania (2002). She was a postdoctoral fellow from 2003-2006 at the Scripps Research Institute. Ke's lab is interested in understanding how cytoskeletal structures are organized and function in a group of eukaryotic parasites, the Apicomplexans. The long term goal of her lab is to understand the origination, compartmentation and maturation of cytoskeletal scaffolds in the apicomplexan parasites using advanced light and electron microscopy, molecular biology, and proteomics techniques
Chunfeng Huang Assistant Professor, Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences
Chunfeng Huang joins IU after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in statistics at The Ohio State University with Noel Cressie. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics (2001) from Texas A & M University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Science and Technology of China (1997). He has been an assistant professor of Mathematics at North Dakota State University. His research interests include spectrum estimation for spatial processes, smoothing splines, spatial statistic, survival analysis, and computational statistics.
Karin Harman James. Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Program in Neuroscience
B.A., B.S., University of Toronto, 1991, 1996
M.A., Ph.D., University of Western Ontario, 1998, 2001
Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University, 2002-2004
Research Associate, Indiana University, 2004-2007
Research Interests
My research is centered upon discovering relationships between human brain functioning and behavior using psychophysical and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods. Specifically, research in my lab investigates how object recognition is affected by active interaction during learning. To this end, I study how adults and children learn to recognize objects with and without active learning and how brain activation changes as a function of various types of training. I am also interested in questions of expertise acquisition and therefore compare neural activation of experts and novices in several domains including perceptual expertise and musical expertise.
Jennifer Lee, Assistant Professor, Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences
Jennifer C. Lee received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in August 2007. Her research interests include sociology of education, work and labor market stratification, and Asian American communities. Her current research focuses on employment in Asian ethnic economies in the United States, and how it impacts educational aspirations and attainments of children of immigrants. She will teach courses concerning Education and Society and Sociology of Asian Americans.
Choong Lim, Assistant Professor Kinesiology School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation
Choong Lim earned his M.S. in sport marketing at Illinois State University and Ph.D. in sport communication/sport marketing at University of Maryland at College Park. Choong's research interests include sports media audiences, sport consumption in cyberspace, and new media technologies. His work draws upon theories and concepts from recent literature in psychology, marketing, and mass communication and applies diverse theoretical concepts to the study of sport media use. His current line
Kenneth Mackie. Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Program in Neuroscience
Brown University, ScB, Engineering, 1980, Yale University, MD, 1984
Post-doctoral fellowship, 1984-1986, Advisor—Paul Greengard
Internship (Internal Medicine) Yale University, 1986-1987
Residency (Anesthesiology) University of Washington, 1987-1990
Post-doctoral fellowship, 1990-1992, Advisor—Bertil Hille
The Mackie lab examines the role and function of the endocannabinoid system by using a combination of electrophysiological, imaging, biochemical and immunological approaches. The endocannabinoid system is comprised of cannabinoid receptors, endogenous cannabinoids (endocannabinoids), and the enzymes that regulate the production and degradation of endocannabinoids. ?9THC, the principal psychoactive component of cannabis, interacts with this system to produce the classic effects of cannabis intoxication. In addition, this system is widely involved in multiple physiologically important processes including memory, motivation, movement, analgesia, and emesis. Through our studies, we hope to better understand the implications of social and therapeutic use of drugs that influence this fascinating system.
Joseph Pomerening, Assistant Professor, Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Joseph Pomerening received a B.S. in Biochemistry, with honors, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1994), and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (2000).His postdoctoral studies where with James E. Ferrell, Jr. at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His laboratory pursues an understanding in the network structures and signaling processes that control the cell cycle and mitotic progression and exit during different stages of eukaryotic development. His research utilizes cellular, molecular, and biochemical methods, as well as computational modeling to dissect these pathways, and employs both the Xenopus laevis and mammalian cell model systems.
Fair Ramman Associate Professor, Geography, College of Arts and Sciences
Fair Ramman earned a B. Sc. from Bangladesh Agricultural University and M.S. and Ph. D. from the University of Arizona. His Ph.D. research was on remote sensing of evapotranspiration. Before coming to Indiana University, he was a faculty member at Texas Tech University and Ball State University. He teaches courses on remote sensing, image processing, and geographic information systems. His current research is on the use of novel remote sensing methods to estimate large-scale ecosystem carbon exchange, which is pivotal to understanding global change. NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation have funded his research.
Katherine Rhode Assistant Professor, Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences
Katherine Rhode comes to IU from a postdoctoral appointment at Yale University and Connecticut Wesleyan University. After graduating from Sonoma State University with a B.A. in Physics (1989), she worked as a research assistant at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, a programmer-analyst at NASA-
Matthias Scheutz Associate Professor, Cognitive Science, College of Arts and Sciences, Informatics and Computer Science, School of Informatics
Matthias Scheutz received an M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1995) in philosophy, and an M.S. (1993) in formal logic from the University of Vienna, as well as an M.S. in computer engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria(1993). He also received the joint Ph.D. in cognitive science and computer science from IU (1999). He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in artificial intelligence, robotics, artificial life, agent-based computing, cognitive modeling, and foundations of cognitive science. His current research and teaching interests include multi-scale agent-based models of social behavior and complex cognitive and affective robots for human-robot interaction.
Robert Schnabel, Dean, Professor, School of Informatics
Prior to IU, Bobby Schnabel served as Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Technology and Chief Information Officer at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1998-2007) and founding director of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society. His interests are in scientific and parallel computation, including applications to molecular chemistry problems. He is a co-founder and executive team member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology and PI on the HBCU Research Partnership funded by NSF. He is editor-in-chief of the Society for Applied and Industrial Mathematics Review; amember of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association; and chair of the Information Technology Deans group of CRA.
Joseph Shaw, Assistant Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Joe is an environmental toxicologist. His research focuses on understanding how environmental chemicals, particularly toxic metals, affect molecular processes in ways that might contribute to impacts on individual fitness, population dynamics, and higher-levels of response. His current studies include defining the susceptibility of Daphnia pulex populations to metals; relating gene-expression profiles in target tissue (gill and liver) to metal exposure and physiological outcomes in the killifish, Fundulus heteroclitus; and understanding the impact of arsenic on the expression, trafficking, and function of the cystic fibrosis chloride channel (CFTR) and other membrane transporters in this family.
Jesse Steinfeldt Assistant Professor, Counseling and Educational Psychology, W. W. Wright School of Education
Jesse Steinfeldt holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Counseling Psychology. He received his M.A. from the University of Iowa and a B.A. from Yale University. His research interests include the self concept and identity development of college student-athletes, American Indian empowerment, religiosity and spirituality in psychotherapy, multicultural issues in counseling, racial identity, psychosocial bases of injury/recovery, meta-analytic reviews, and sports psychology.
M. Najeeb Shafiq, Assistant Professor Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. W. W. Wright School
M. Najeeb Shafiq is joining the faculty of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in Globalization and Education. Prior to his appointment at IU, Najeeb served as a visiting assistant professor of Economics at Washington and Lee University and as an economist at Abt Associates Inc. He received a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Columbia University, an M.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a B.A. from the University of Western Ontario. His research interests include the economics of education, developmental economics, economic demography,and international education policy.
Sari Van Anders Assistant Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences
Sari van Anders received a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University (2007) and an M.A. from The University of Western Ontario (2003), supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) post-graduate awards. With research in human social neuroendocrinology, Sari examines bidirectional links between hormones and social behaviors, with attention to gender/sex. A major focus is the social modulation of androgens by partnering- and sexuality-related behaviors, and related health and evolutionary implications. She was awarded a Women in Science Award(2003) co-sponsored by UNESCO, L'Oreal, and NSERC, and a Young Investigator Award (2007) from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology.
Mike Van Nieuwenhze, Associate ProfessorChemistry College of Arts and Sciences
Mike VanNieuwenhze received a Ph.D. at Indiana University (1992), an M.A. at Yale University (1988), and a B.A. at Kalamazoo College (1984). He was a Hellman Foundation Fellow in 2003-2004. The principal focus of his research is to use the power of organic synthesis to study problems of biological and medicinal interest. The templates for the work are found in the vast array of unique substances provided by nature. Natural products offer the opportunityto advance the art of organic synthesis, enhance our knowledge of chemical reactivity, while, at the same time, positioning the synthetic chemist to have a significant impact in emerging fields of biology and medicine.
Andrea Wiley, Professor ,Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences
Andrea Wiley received her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from University of California-Berkeley (1992), an M.A. in Demography and Anthropology from theUniversity of California-Berkeley (1986), and a B.A. in Biological Bases of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania (1984, cum laude). Her approach to anthropological questions is distinctly biocultural—how biology affects culture, how culturally patterned behavior affects biology, and how these forces interact over time. She makes extensive use of an evolutionary perspective in both research and teaching, considering how biology and behavior can be considered adaptive by applying it to problems related to health, disease, demography, diet and nutrition, and human social behavior.
Karen Wohlwend Assistant Professor, Language Education. W. W. Wright School of Education
Karen Wohlwend completed her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Iowa. She also holds an M.A. and B.A.T. from the University of Northern Iowa. She was awarded the Emerging Scholar Award from the Educational Research Association. Her publications have appeared in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood, and Childhood Education. Karen's research interests include early literacy and language development, children's play as a semiotic means and cultural tool, communities of practice and peer
Y. Joel Wong Assistant Professor, Counseling and Educational Psychology. W. W. Wright School of Education
Y. Joel Wong has most recently served as a psychology intern at the Counseling and Mental Health Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also earned a Ph.D. (2006) and an M.A. (2005). Joel received his Bachelor of Laws degree with honors from the National University of Singapore. His research includes the psychology of men and masculinities, racial and ethnic minority psychology, and risks and protective factors in child and adolescent development. He was awarded the 2006 Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs. He has published in College Student Journal, Psychotherapy, Psychology of Men and Masculinity, and Journal of Adolescent Health.
Xiangdong Yang Assistant Professor, Counseling and Educational Psychology, W. W. Wright School of Education
Xiangdong Yang holds a Ph.D. in quantitative psychology from the University of Kansas. He also holds an M.A. from the East China Normal University and aB.A. from Qufu Normal University. Prior to his appointment at IU, Xiangdong served at the University of Kansas as a research associate in the Center forEducational Testing and Evaluation and a research assistant at the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. His publications have appearedin a variety of journals including Educational and Psychological Measurement; Learning and Assessment; Journal of Applied Measurement; Journal of Special Education; and Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
Yuzhen Ye, Assistant Professor, Informatics, School of Informatics
Yuzhen Ye received her Ph.D. in computational biology from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. She was a postdoc (2001-2004), and then a research assistant professor (2004-2007) in Burnham Institute for Medical Research. Her primary research interest is Bioinformatics, particularly biological pathway reconstruction and protein structure prediction and analysis.