New Faculty - College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

J. Kent Calder
Professor of Practice, Department of History

Mr. Calder is the Director of the Scholarly Publishing Certificate program. He has worked in the fields of scholarly and educational publishing for more than twenty-five years, serving as director of publications for the Texas State Historical Association Press, editorial director for the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, managing editor for the Indiana Historical Society Press, manager of development and permissions for Harcourt College Publishers, and senior director of editorial services for Harcourt Assessment. He has edited the journals Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History and the Wisconsin Magazine of History and served as managing editor for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly . Mr. Calder holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington and an M.A. from Butler University.

Andrew Chizmeshya
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Chizmeshya earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, with a specialization in physisorption and density functional theory. He held a postdoctoral fellowship in computational chemistry at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Engineering Laboratory in Idaho, where he developed computer simulations for the prediction of thermoelastic behavior in complex ionic compounds. He then joined Arizona State University's Center for Solid State Science as a research scientist, where he fostered the development of the Goldwater Materials Visualization Facility and co-founded the US-DOE funded Carbon Sequestration Research Group. Dr. Chizmeshya's current research interests span a broad range of topics in computational physical chemistry and materials science including mineral and geological carbon sequestration, predictive simulation of novel thin-film and bulk semiconductor systems, computer-based design of materials and the use of computer modeling in nanoscience and nanotechnology education.

Adam Cohen
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr. Cohen received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and held postdoctoral positions at Duke University Medical Center and the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California , Berkeley . He previously taught at Dickinson College and Philadelphia University. Dr. Cohen's major areas of interest are in cultural and evolutionary psychology, especially as they apply to religion. His work has focused on moral judgment, forgiveness, identity, and motivation, and has been published in top-tier journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, and Journal of Personality. He currently has a grant from the Metanexus Institute to study culture and concepts of God.

Paul Davies
College Professor

Dr. Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. He held academic appointments in the United Kingdom and Australia before joining Arizona State University as College Professor and Director of a new interdisciplinary research institute devoted to exploring the “big questions” of science and philosophy. Dr. Davies has worked mainly in the field of quantum gravity, with particular applications to the origin of the universe and the properties of black holes. He is also an expert on the nature of time. In 2001, Dr. Davies helped establish the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, and was a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have originated on Mars. He is the author of several hundred research papers and articles, as well as 27 books, including The Physics of Time Asymmetry and Quantum Fields in Curved Space. Among his recent popular books are How to Build a Time Machine and The Goldilocks Enigma. His television series “The Big Questions,” filmed in the Australian outback, won national acclaim. He has also devised and presented many BBC radio documentaries on topics ranging from chaos theory to superstrings. Dr. Davies was awarded the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize by the United Kingdom Institute of Physics and the 2002 Faraday Award by The Royal Society. In Australia, he was the recipient of two Eureka Prizes and an Advance Australia award. Professor Davies also won the 1995 Templeton Prize for his work on the deeper meaning of science. The asteroid 1992 OG was renamed (6870) Pauldavies in his honor.

Pauline Davies
Professor of Practice, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication

Ms. Davies is a radio science journalist with an extensive international career in broadcasting and documentary making. She spent 12 years with the BBC, including seven with the World Service in London, where her programs reached audiences in the tens of millions worldwide. They included weekly productions such as Discovery, Health Matters and Science in Action. Among her highly acclaimed special features was a twelve-part series on human origins, The Million Year March of Humanity, and the award-winning ten-part series, Who'd Have Thought It?, about serendipitous discoveries. Her topics have been as diverse as the fistula hospital in Ethiopia, Aboriginal health in Australia and the work of the new Library of Alexandria. Challenging assignments include reporting from the interior of war-torn Somalia and recording a living donor lung transplant operation in Minneapolis . Before joining the Hugh Downs School, she was producer in the Science Unit at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National in Sydney, and responsible for six weekly science-based productions, including the long-running flagship program The Science Show . As Professor of Practice, Ms. Davies is continuing to make news and documentary items from across the sciences for public broadcasters worldwide.

Carsten Duch
Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Duch joins the expanding group of scientists in the School of Life Sciences who stud y the mechanisms underlying animal behavior in insect model organisms. He previously served as a research group leader at the Free University of Berlin, and he has been an adjunct assistant professor at the Arizona Research Laboratories at the University of Arizona since 2004. Dr. Duch is a developmental neuroscientist who focuses on the behavioral function of single neuron and neural circuitry architecture, and on the signals establishing CNS Gestalt during ontogeny using modern opto- and electrophysiological techniques. His studies on the function of neuromodulatory neuron activity led to his Ph.D. in 1998 from the Free University of Berlin. Since then, Dr. Duch participated in many collaborative studies on motor circuit development and function in moths, locusts and flies. He received numerous prestigious research grants from the German Science Foundation, and has mentored graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Duch has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology and Journal of Comparative Neurology . He will teach in the areas of physiology, animal behavior and neuroscience.

Susanna Fishel
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Fishel comes to Arizona State University from Fachhochschule Brandenburg an der Havel. Previously she spent 8 years at the software company Mental Images in Berlin . Prior to moving to Germany , she was assistant professor at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven . Dr. Fishel received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and her B.A. from Oberlin College . Her work at Southern Connecticut State was in algebraic combinatorics, in particular, exploring properties of various families of polynomials. After eight years in computer graphics, her research is heading further into algebraic combinatorics and computer graphics, especially in bringing techniques from algebraic combinatorics to polynomials utilized in graphics.

Yoav Gortzak
Assistant Professor, Political Science

Dr. Gortzak received his B.A. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from The Ohio State University. He specializes in international relations, with a focus on issues related to international security and order. He is particularly interested in the maintenance and enforcement of international order, and the causes, conduct, and prevention of violent conflict in the international system. He is currently working on a number of projects related to these issues, including a study of American non-proliferation efforts in the post-Cold War era, and a study of the use of indigenous forces in counterinsurgency operations. His research has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and Security Studies .

Steven A. Haas
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

Steven Haas received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004 with a specialization in demography and population health. Prior to coming to Arizona State University he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar and a fellow at Harvard University 's Center for Society and Health. Dr. Haas' research addresses questions that lie at the intersection of social stratification, and the demography of health and aging. His research investigates health as both a cause and a consequence of the stratification process with particular attention to the processes that produce health disparities over the life course. He is currently working on a number of projects in this area. One project explores the relative contribution of early life versus adult factors in determining trajectories of aging and disability. Another investigates the mechanisms linking adolescent health to educational outcomes and the transition to the labor market. A third project examines the influence of childhood health in determining differences in labor market outcomes (earnings profiles, employment interruptions, asset accumulation) over the work career.

Andrew Hamilton
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Hamilton's research focuses on the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the biological sciences, particularly evolutionary theory and systematics, as well as on the relationships between science and public policy. Two goals of this work are to use the tools of philosophy to clarify ideas and arguments with the hope of making progress in answering empirical questions and to bring careful thinking about science to discussions of values and policy in the classroom and in public forums. Within evolutionary theory, Dr. Hamilton is currently concentrating on natural selection. Does natural selection operate above the species level? In what sense are groups individuals with respect to selection's operation? What are the relevant cohesion relations between the individuals that make up various kinds of groups such that it makes sense to countenance the group as an evolutionary individual? This work is massively collaborative, and Dr. Hamilton is partnering with researchers in Arizona State University's Social Insect Study Group and the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity. Before coming to Arizona State University, Dr. Hamilton taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, the University of San Francisco, and the University of California, Davis . At Davis he was a proud member of the Griesemer lab. In addition to his appointment at Arizona State University, Dr. Hamilton is an Associate of the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science at the California Academy of Sciences.

Kip Hodges
Foundation Professor and Founding Director, School of Earth and Space Exploration

Dr. Hodges specializes in multidisciplinary studies of the evolution of orogenic systems. His research tools are drawn from the fields of structural geology, regional tectonics, metamorphic and igneous petrology, isotope geochemistry, geochronology, and geomorphology. His field areas have included Baja California; the East Greenland, Irish, and Norwegian Caledonides; the U.S. sector of the North American Cordillera; and the Peruvian Andes. For the past quarter-century, much of his research has focused on the Himalaya and Tibet. In addition to his role as Founding Director of SESE, Dr. Hodges will serve as the scientific director of Arizona State University's Noble Gas Geochemistry and Geochronology Laboratories. These state-of-the-art facilities are designed to support a wide range of tectonics and geochemical studies, with special emphasis on the design and implementation of advanced analytical instrumentation for (U-Th)/He and 40 Ar/ 39 Ar geochronology and thermochronology.

Gregory P. Holland
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Holland received his B.S. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1998 and was awarded a Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Wyoming in 2003. Before coming to Arizona State University in January of 2006, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Dr. Holland is an expert in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and its application to chemical and biological research. His current research interests are in energy related materials, biomembranes, nanoparticles and biopolymers. The bulk of Dr. Holland's work will be conducted in the newly formed Magnetic Resonance Research Center.

T. R. Hummer
Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing

Dr. Hummer received a Ph.D. from the University of Utah in American literature and creative writing in 1980. He is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently The Infinity Sessions (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), and a book of essays, The Muse in the Machine (University of Georgia Press, 2006). Dr. Hummer has taught at many colleges and universities, including Kenyon College (where he was editor of The Kenyon Review ), Middlebury College (where he edited New England Review), and the University of Georgia (as editor of The Georgia Review). He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and two Pushcart Prizes.

Laudan B. Jahromi
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

Dr. Jahromi earned her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 2004 in human development and family studies with a minor in statistics, specializing in emotional development in infancy and early childhood. Prior to coming to Arizona State University she was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles where she studied emotional competence in children with developmental disabilities. Her research focuses on emotion self-regulation in typical children and those with developmental disabilities. Dr. Jahromi's current research projects include the study of social-emotional development in children with autism, specifically the effect of emotion regulation on children's overall functioning, social-communication skills, and engagement with parents and peers.

Stanlie M. James
Professor and Director, African and African American Studies Program and Women and Gender Studies Program Affiliate

Dr. James has a B.A. in sociology and history from Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., a M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in modern British colonial West African history, religions of Sub Sahara African and social change in Sub Sahara Africa; and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in international studies with concentrations in human rights, comparative politics and Africa. From 1988-2006 Professor James had appointments in the Afro-American Studies Department, and the Women's Studies Program, and was affiliated with the African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison . From 2001-2005 she chaired the Afro-American Studies Department, and from 1996-2000 she served as Director of the Women's Studies Program. Her research focuses on women's international human rights and Black feminism.

Devin L. Jindrich
Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology

Dr. Jindrich is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and member of the Center for Adaptive Neural Systems in the Biodesign Institute. Dr. Jindrich received his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993 and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and in 2004 he joined the Department of Physiological Science and Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles as an assistant researcher. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the American Society for Biomechanics, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Dr. Jindrich directs the Laboratory for Integrative Motor Behavior (LIMB). Research in the LIMB seeks to discover fundamental principles of biomechanics and motor control, interpret these principles in the context of the physical and occupational environment, and apply basic research discoveries to problems in biomedicine and public health. Current studies to address these aims include: (1) characterizing the dynamic requirements for maintaining stability and maneuvering during locomotion; (2) discovering the behavioral strategies for controlling unsteady locomotion, and the relative roles of musculoskeletal properties and neural output in maneuvering and stability; (3) using biomechanics to prevent workplace injury; (4) developing methods to quantitatively assess locomotor and upper-extremity function following neuromotor impairment such as spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury; (5) developing and evaluating novel approaches for restoring motor function following spinal cord injury; and (6) understanding the mechanisms of spinal learning. Overall, the laboratory is committed to using discoveries from basic research to prevent injuries, and to develop effective methods for rehabilitation and functional restoration following neuromotor injury.

Anne Katherine Jones
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Jones earned her D.Phil. in 2002 in biological inorganic chemistry as a Rhodes Scholar and National Science Foundation Fellow from the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University, in the United Kingdom. After her doctoral studies, Dr. Jones was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study the biosynthesis of metalloenzymes in the microbiology institute at Humboldt-University Berlin, in Germany. She subsequently undertook research in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania to study the design of artificial energy-generating proteins as an NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellow. The goal of Dr. Jones's research at Arizona State University will be to understand how natural enzymes generate energy in cells and to design artificial energy-generating proteins for industrial applications.

Christos S. Katsanos
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Katsanos received his Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Florida State University in 2001. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. His research is in the area of nutrient metabolism in humans using stable isotope tracers. He specifically focuses on skeletal muscle protein metabolism and the physiological mechanisms that underlie the metabolic syndrome. Dr. Katsanos is a member of the American Physiological society and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Sally Kitch
Director, Institute for Humanities Research and College Professor, Women and Gender Studies Program

Dr. Kitch joins the faculty of Arizona State University from The Ohio State University, where she was professor of women's studies until 2006 and chair of the Department of Women's Studies from 1992-2000. She has her B.A. from Cornell University , M.A. from the University of Chicago , and Ph.D. from Emory University , where she was a Danforth Fellow. Dr. Kitch has published several articles on the epistemologies and methodologies of transdisciplinarity, particularly within the humanities and in the field of women and gender studies. Her most recent essay on the latter topic appears in The Handbook of Feminist Research (Sage, 2006). She is a feminist theorist whose scholarship integrates narrative and historical analyses and focuses on g ender, sexuality, and race as intertwined components of historical and contemporary social and cultural structures . For example, she has written two books on female celibacy as a source of gender equity in American utopian communities. Her most recent book, Higher Ground: From Utopianism to Realism in American Feminist Thought and Theory ( University of Chicago Press, 2000) analyzes the relationship between feminism and utopianism. She is currently developing new approaches to transnational feminist theory, based on interactions with Afghan women leaders, and writing a new book, The Sex Factor: Gendered Foundations of Race and Strategies of Resistance.

Kenro Kusumi
Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Kusumi has joined Arizona State University from a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom. Dr. Kusumi studies how molecular clocks are involved in regulating the early development of the spine and how disruptions in this process can lead to birth defects. Numerous research grant awards, including those from the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Cervical Spine Research Society, and the Philadelphia Foundation, have led to findings published in prestigious journals, including Nature Genetics, Nature, American Journal of Human Genetics, Human Genetics, Mechanisms in Development, and Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics . He is currently serving as a standing member of a development study section at the National Institute of Health. Dr. Kusumi also holds a faculty appointment at the new University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix, in collaboration with Arizona State University, where he is director for the musculoskeletal systems course.

Lei Lei
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Lei earned his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in biochemistry, with an emphasis on the structure and function relationship of transcription factors. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, he was a postdoctoral fellow and later an instructor at the University ofTexas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Included in his publications are articles on the transcriptional regulation in neural development, which have appeared in the journals Development, Developmental Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Genes & Development

Merlyna Lim
Assistant Professor, School of Justice and Social Inquiry and the Consortium of Science, Policy and Outcomes

Dr. Lim was awarded a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, in September 2005 with a dissertation entitled "@rchipelago Online: The Internet and Political Activism in Indonesia." Her research interests revolve around the mutual shaping of technology and society, focusing particularly on social, cultural, and political dimensions of the new media and information and communication technology. Dr. Lim holds the following awards: Annenberg Networked Publics Research Fellowship (2005-2006), Henry Luce Southeast Asia fellowship (2004), NWO Wotro Fellowship (2003-2005), and ASIST International Paper Contest Winner (2002). She has given invited lectures in the United States, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Germany.

Arthur Mason
Assistant Professor, School of Justice and Social Inquiry

Dr. Mason, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 2004), and will be joining the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at the beginning of the 2007-08 academic year. Dr. Mason was awarded a Fulbright research scholarship and is serving as the chair in the U.S.-Canadian Relations working group at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, for this academic year. This Fulbright residency is an ideal locale for Dr. Mason, as his work focuses on U.S.-Canadian policy in the context of Arctic oil and gas energy development. He is editing his dissertation into a manuscript, tentatively titled, “Modernity and Decay of Alaska's Natural Gas Pipeline.” The manuscript is based on Dr. Mason's first-hand experience of the Arctic energy policy process. Between 2000 and 2003, Dr. Mason held various politically appointed positions for the State of Alaska including Associate Director of Energy in the Office of the Alaska Governor. His ethnographic account of how decision-makers manage the political dynamics of Arctic energy development will include ways in which northern indigenous communities are identified as key to making investment decisions. Dr. Mason's Fulbright scholarship also affords him the opportunity to refine his Russian language skills in anticipation of future comparative research on energy development in the Russian Arctic. Dr. Mason's recent publications on energy policy and planning include, “The Condition of Market Formation on Alaska's Natural Gas Frontier,” in Focaal, European Journal of Anthropology (winter 2005/06), “Images of the Energy Future” forthcoming in Environmental Research Letters (winter 2006/07), and “Histories of the Future in Liberalized Natural Gas Markets,” forthcoming in Public Culture (fall 2007).

Eileen Diaz McConnell
Assistant Professor, Chicana/o Studies and Southwest Borderlands scholar

Dr. McConnell comes to Arizona State University from the University of Illinois , where she was assistant professor in Sociology and Latina/Latino Studies. After earning her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2001, she was visiting assistant professor in Latino Studies at Indiana University for two years before moving to the University of Illinois . Her research interests include Latina/o demography, especially the growth and change of Latino populations in non-traditional areas of the United States ; Latina/o migration; homeownership and housing issues related to wealth accumulation; and the collection and public dissemination of racial/ethnic data in federal data sources. Dr. McConnell is co-author of Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest ( University of Texas, 2004) and has published or forthcoming articles in journals such as Latin American Research Review,   Population Research and Policy Review, Social Forces, and Social Science Quarterly.

Ariana Mikulski
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics and Southwest Borderlands scholar

Dr. Mikulski received her Ph.D. in second language acquisition from the University of Iowa in May 2006. Her research examines the processes of language acquisition, maintenance, and loss in Spanish-English bilinguals. Her current projects focus on the Spanish subjunctive in bilinguals who are enrolled in university Spanish courses designed for heritage learners. These studies investigate the participants' ability to recognize where the subjunctive verb form should be used as well as their ability to produce it in the appropriate syntactic constructions. Future research will include the study of the Spanish verbal repertoires of child bilinguals and the role of language maintenance in ethnic/cultural identity.

Clark A. Miller
Associate Professor, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and Department of Political Science

Dr. Miller received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1996. He is a recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation Program in Science and Society, as well as a number of additional NSF grants. These awards have supported an ambitious research program on international science policy and on the intersection of science and democracy in contemporary societies. His articles have appeared in Governance, Social Studies of Science, Science and Public Policy , Science, Technology & Human Values, Environmental Values, and Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001), a volume he co-edited on climate science and policy. Prior to his appointment at Arizona State University , Miller was an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also held postdoctoral positions in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University .

Jack Nelson
Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Philosophy and Acting Associate Dean for CLAS Graduate Programs

Dr. Nelson received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and served on the faculty of Temple University for over 20 years. Subsequently he served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Missouri - St. Louis and later as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Washington . He is especially interested in the philosophy of W.V.O. Quine and more broadly in the philosophy of science and logic.

Robert J. Nemanich
Chair and Professor, Department of Physics

Dr. Nemanich completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1976, and joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). At Xerox PARC he was involved with development and characterization of materials for applications in photocopying systems, integrated circuits, optical digital storage systems, and thin film transistors. After ten years he joined the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University where he served on numerous university committees, held the position of Acting Associate Dean of Research, and directed the Surface Science Laboratory. Dr. Nemanich has a long-standing involvement with the Materials Research Society and has served as President, and as President of the International Union of Materials Research Societies. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and has served on the executive committee of the Division of Materials Physics. Dr. Nemanich is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Diamond and Related Materials . His university research is highly interdisciplinary and has extensively involved undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral colleagues, and diploma students from Europe in over 300 publications. His recent research has employed surface microscopy techniques to display the dynamical properties of nanometer scale structures (i.e., nanostructures) as they form and change on the surfaces of semiconducting materials.

Young Kyun Oh
Assistant Professor, Department of Languages and Literatures

Dr. Oh received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Chinese. His research interests are in the historical linguistics of Chinese, language contact between Chinese and Korean and Sino-Korean cultural connection. He is currently conducting researches on Old Sino-Korean phonology, in which he compares Old Chinese and vernacular Middle Korean to collect examples of linguistic fossils of early Chinese-Korean language contacts, and the history of Korean Sinology. Dr. Oh taught Korean as a lecturer in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Arizona State University from 2003 until he started his appointment as Assistant Professor of Chinese in 2006. He was nominated for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences dean's award for distinguished teaching in 2005.

S. Banu Ozkan
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics

Dr. Ozkan's research is focused on theoretical models and computer simulations in biology. Her background is in a broad range of methods, including lattice models, elastic network methods, dynamics, and all-atom physics-based computer simulations. Dr. Ozkan has several research interests including: understanding the principles of sequence-structure-function relationships in proteins, i.e., how the amino acid sequence encodes the protein's specific structure and function; how dynamics govern protein mechanisms; how proteins assemble into macromolecular machines; the dynamics of protein machines; and the prediction of protein-protein interactions and interfaces, taking into account chain flexibility.

Poori Park
Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Dr. Park received her Ph.D. in East Asian languages and cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998. Prior to joining Arizona State University, she taught at Carleton College and the University of Colorado Boulder . Her research interests include Buddhism and modernity, Buddhism and politics, Buddhism and women, and Zen Buddhism. She will complete a monograph, Buddhist Revival and Modernity in Korea under the Japanese Rule . in 2006, she received a Fulbright research grant to work on de-colonization and the reconstruction of contemporary Korean Buddhism.

N. Ángel Pinillos
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy

Dr. Pinillos earned his doctorate in philosophy from Rutgers University in 2006 and also holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Tufts University . He is interested in a cluster of questions surrounding the issue of how humans manage to represent the world. In particular, he works on the nature of natural language meaning, including its relation to the mind and formal semantics. He also researches the phenomenon of vagueness as well as the question of how logical knowledge is possible. Dr. Pinillos has published in Mind and has presented his work at the American Philosophical Association.

Marc D. Porter
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Director, Center for Combinatorial Sciences, The Biodesign Institute

Dr. Porter earned a B.S. in chemistry (1977) and M.S. in physical chemistry (1980) from Wright State University . After working in industry, he completed graduate studies for a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from The Ohio State University (1984). He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Communications Research. From 1986-2006, he was a member of the faculty at Iowa State University. Dr. Porter's research focuses on the role of interfaces in analytical chemistry, including electrochemically modulated liquid chromatography, electrocatalysis, organic monolayer films, chemically modified surfaces, scanning probe microscopies, infrared and Raman spectroscopies, and acoustic wave sensors. Dr. Porter's interests also include the creation of miniaturized, low power pumps for chip-scale liquid chromatographs and high throughput analysis systems for the rapid, low-level enumeration of various pathogens.

Stephen C. Pratt
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Pratt received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in animal behavior. As a Human Frontiers Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, he pursued research on ant behavior at the University of Bath, in the United Kingdom . He later worked as a postdoctoral scientist and lecturer at Princeton University, and he has also held research positions at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on how the complex behavior of ant and bee colonies emerges from the actions and interactions of colony members, without direction from a well-informed central controller. Recently, his work has also branched into mathematical modeling and computational analysis of comparative genomic data.

Mark Robinson
Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration

Dr. Robinson's research interests are currently focused on the origin and evolution of planetary crusts, including volcanism, tectonism, and regolith development. Investigations are approached using a variety of remote sensing techniques, including: multispectral imaging, spectroscopy, stereo analysis, photoclinometry, and geomorphology utilizing datasets from Apollo, Lunar Orbiter, Clementine, Galileo, NEAR, Lunar Prospector, Mars Global Surveyor, and Mars Odyssey. Dr. Robinson received a M.S. in geology & geophysics in 1991 and his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Hawaii .

Brisa N. Sánchez
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Sánchez received her Ph.D. in biostatistics in 2006 from Harvard University. Prior to that, she received a B.S. in mathematics and a M.S. in statistics at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research interests are in statistical methodology applicable to environmental and social epidemiology, including structural equation models, spatial statistics, and multilevel models. Her current methodological work involves developing robust fitting procedures and diagnostics for structural equation models (SEMs) with latent variables, which are becoming increasingly popular in health research. These models are particularly useful in studies where the primary exposure or outcome of interest are not directly observed, and are instead characterized by multiple surrogate variables. Her collaborative research includes studying the effects of in-utero lead exposure on neurodevelopment, using latent variable models to assess phthalate exposure, and applying spatial statistics to study food environments. Dr. Sánchez is on leave from Arizona State University, completing postdoctoral studies in biostatistics at the University of Michigan.

David Schaefer
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

Dr. Schaefer received his doctorate from the University of Arizona in sociology in 2006, and a M.A. from Washington State University in 1998. His latest National Science Foundation funded research considers how forms of interpersonal exchange and the types of resources available to people impact the development of inequality, trust, and solidarity. Another line of his research focuses on network dynamics with an emphasis on the mechanisms underlying the creation of social networks and the forces that drive network evolution. Other projects examine how the structure of social relations affects individual opportunities and outcomes related to delinquency, health, social capital, and inequality.

Rachel E. Scott
Assistant Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Dr. Scott received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in anthropology, with a specialization in the bioarchaeology of Europe. After completing her B.A. at the University of Chicago, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study at the University College Dublin, in Ireland, where she earned an H.Dip. in Celtic archaeology. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, Dr. Scott taught courses in archaeology at both the University of Pennsylvania and the University College Dublin. Her research focuses on identity formation and on the social construction of disease and disability. One primary project integrates human skeletal, archaeological, and historical data to explore aspects of social identity in early medieval Ireland. Another examines leper hospitals and their associated cemeteries in late medieval Ireland in order to elucidate how and why biological diseases become imbued with social meaning.

Alyson F. Shapiro
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

Dr. Shapiro received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Washington in 2004. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, she was a postdoctoral fellow and then a research scientist in the Center for Infant Mental Health and Development in the Department of Family and Child Nursing at the University of Washington . Dr. Shapiro's research focuses on social and emotional development (examined through psychophysiology and observation) within the family context in both low and high risk families. Specific sub areas of her research interest include: dynamics within the mother-father-infant-triad in both low and high risk families, co-parenting, father involvement, the impact of marital discord on early development, cultural influences on family process, infant mental health, emotion regulation and communication, psychophysiology, the couple's transition to parenthood, and family focused preventative intervention. Her future research plans include pre-natal influences on fetal development, later infant outcome and family functioning, and family dynamics in at-risk families with infants.

Michelle “Lani” Shiota
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr. Shiota joins the Psychology faculty after completing doctoral and NIH-funded postdoctoral work at the University of California , Berkeley. Dr. Shiota's research takes a multimethod approach to the study of positive emotion and emotion regulation, integrating psychophysiology, behavioral, cognitive, narrative, and self-report measures. Specific interests include: differentiation among multiple, distinct positive emotions; positive emotion and social bonding; the role of positive emotion in emotion regulation; and short- and long-term cardiovascular aspects of emotion regulation. In addition to recent publications in Emotion and Cognition and Emotion, Dr. Shiota is co-author with Jim Kalat of the textbook Emotion, published by Thompson Wadsworth. She will be offering graduate and undergraduate seminars in emotion, a graduate course in experimental methods in social psychology, and an undergraduate course in social psychology.

Matthijs (Thijs) van Soest
Associate Research Professional, School of Earth and Space Exploration

Dr. van Soest holds a doctoral degree (1994) and Ph.D. (2000) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After completing his undergraduate and graduate degrees in isotope geochemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Dr. van Soest spent seven years working in the noble gas laboratory of the Center for Isotope Geochemistry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Dr. van Soest moved to Arizona State University in November of 2006 to become an Associate Research Professional in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, as part of Professor Kip Hodges' exciting new research group that focuses on the application of 40 Ar/ 39 Ar and (U-Th)/He geochronology and general noble gas geochemistry to a wide variety of geologic problems. Dr. van Soest has extensive laboratory and field experience with a focus on the use of noble gas isotope and abundance variations as tracers of geologic processes. Field areas where he has worked include: the Troodos ophiolite on Cyprus, the Lesser Antilles subduction zone (Eastern Caribbean), the Basin and Range (including such areas as Long Valley Caldera), Yellowstone National Park, the Idaho Batholith and Snake River plain, and the Cascade Range. In the laboratory his focus is on the development of a high precision noble gas abundance analysis system and the application of (U-Th)/He dating to olivines, so the method can be expanded to such hard-to-date rocks as young basalts. He is eager to establish this method at SESE and expand it further towards other U-Th poor materials.

Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda
Associate Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Dr. Tsuda received his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1997 from the University of California, Berkeley . Dr. Tsuda was a collegiate assistant professor at the University of Chicago and then associate director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His primary academic interests include international migration, diasporas, ethnic minorities, ethnic and national identity, transnationalism and globalization, ethnic return migrants, the Japanese diaspora in the Americas, and contemporary Japanese society. His publications include numerous articles in anthropological and interdisciplinary journals as well as a book entitled Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2003). Dr. Tsuda is the editor of Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective (Lexington Books, 2006), co-editor of Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (second edition, Stanford University Press, 2004,) and Ethnic Identity: Problems and Prospects for the Twenty-first Century (AltaMira Press, 2006). He has received research grants and fellowships from the University of California ( Berkeley and San Diego ), Fulbright-Hays, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Japan Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation, among others.

William J. Tyler
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Tyler earned his Ph.D. in psychology with a specialization in behavioral neuroscience from the University of Alabama at Birmingham . During his graduate studies, Dr. Tyler investigated the role of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the structural and functional refinement of hippocampal synapses. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, he studied as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where he investigated methods for probing neuronal function using genetically-encoded optical reporters of synaptic transmission, as well as sensory-mediated synaptic plasticity in the rodent olfactory system. Dr. Tyler's current research interests focus on sensory-mediated plasticity and the homeostatic regulation synaptic strength in the central nervous system.

Tatiana P. Ugarova
Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences

Dr. Ugarova received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Biochemistry, National Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in Kiev. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, she was a research fellow in the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla and an assistant professor in the Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Ugarova studies the molecular mechanisms responsible for communication of cells with their extra-cellular environment and which underlie such basic cellular responses as adhesion, migration and signal transduction. Included in her publications are articles addressing the structure-function and the role of integrin adhesion receptors in vascular biology which have appeared in Journal of Biological Chemistry, Blood , Biochemistry, Journal of Experimental Medicine and Journal of Clinical Investigation . Her research on the molecular mechanisms of inflammation has been funded by the National Institute of Health since 1999. Dr. Ugarova is an established investigator of the American Heart Association and has been awarded grants from the AHA to study the molecular mechanisms involved in normal hemostasis and pathological thrombosis.

Arjan van der Vaart
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. van der Vaart received his doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in chemistry, with a specialization in quantum chemistry (2001), and an M.S. in biophysical chemistry from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands . Prior to coming to Arizona State University, he held a postdoctoral position for one year at the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, and subsequently held a position as a postdoctoral researcher and research associate at Harvard University for four years. For his postdoctoral research, Dr. van der Vaart was awarded a Marie Curie individual fellowship. His current research interests focus on the conformational dynamics of biomolecules, and the development of new computational methods to study this complex behavior. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society , the Journal of Chemical Physics, the Journal of Physical Chemistry, the Biophysical Journal , and other peer-review journals.

Monica W. Varsanyi
Assistant Professor, School of Justice and Social Inquiry

Dr. Varsanyi earned her Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Centers for Comparative Immigration Studies and U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She also taught courses in the Politics Department at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, and Urban Studies at the New School University in New York City, NY . Dr. Varsanyi's work addresses the growing gap between territorial and popular sovereignty in the United States, with particular reference to unauthorized migration. She is currently working on a project which explores local (city, county, state) policy initiatives regarding unauthorized residents, and how these local policies are in tension with the federal government's sovereignty in regulating borders, immigration, and citizenship policy. She has published articles in a number of journals including Citizenship Studies, Antipode, Political Geography , and Geopolitics, and she has a chapter forthcoming in the book, Latino and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging .

Meenakshi Wadhwa
Professor, School of Earth & Space Exploration and Director, Center for Meteorite Studies

Dr. Wadhwa received her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1994. Prior to joining Arizona State University , she was the curator of the Field Museum in Chicago . Dr. Wadhwa is a cosmochemist broadly interested in deciphering the origin and evolution of our solar system and planetary bodies through geochemical and isotopic means. She uses high-precision mass spectrometric techniques to investigate a wide range of solar system materials. These include meteorites of asteroidal and Martian origin, Moon rocks (from the Apollo missions and lunar meteorites), and other samples returned by spacecraft missions such as Genesis and Stardust. Her goals are to decipher their formation processes (using trace- and minor-element distributions and stable-isotope systematics) and time scales (using a various radiogenic isotope chronometers). As Director of the Center for Meteorite Studies, she oversees the curation of one of the largest university-based meteorite collections, as well as a variety of research and educational activities conducted in the center.

Jo-Anne Wartho
Associate Research Professional, School of Earth & Space Exploration

Dr. Wartho moved to Arizona State University in 2006 after 6 years of managing a 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating laboratory at Curtin University, in Western Australia , and 6 years at The Open University constructing and applying the pioneering ultra-violet laser in situ 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating technique. She holds a B.Sc. from the City of London Polytechnic, and a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds . Dr. Wartho's research projects have involved the application of this technique to determine argon diffusion and solubility parameters of feldspars and feldspathoids and the partitioning of nobles gases between minerals and melts, for use in resolving the timing and rates of geological processes. She has worked on a diverse series of projects, including 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of white mica grains extracted from the intestine contents of the world's oldest mummy, the 5,200 year-old Alpine Iceman discovered in the European Alps, to establish the origins of this individual; Rodinia supercontinent reconstruction involving 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating studies in South China; determining ascent rates of kimberlite pipes via 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of preserved argon diffusion profiles in phlogopite micas from South Africa, Australia, Russia and the Solomon Islands; and 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of a variety of geological processes in Chile, Brazil, USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Mozambique, Mauritania, Australia, New Zealand, Java, Russia, China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Jameson Wetmore
Assistant Professor, School of Human Evolution & Social Change and the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes

Dr. Wetmore received his doctorate in science and technology studies from Cornell University in 2003. He then completed two years of postdoctoral research in technology and ethics with Deborah Johnson at the University of Virginia . His research examines the relationship between technology and society in a variety of different ways. He has studied the history and politics of transportation, the Amish use of technology, nanotechnology and religion, and engineering ethics, and he engages with scientists and engineers to help them consider the societal implications and potential applications of their work. Dr. Wetmore works with the Center for Nanotechnology in Society and the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes to develop new ways to be reflexive about technology and scientific research in order to improve our understanding of their effects and guide innovations toward socially desirable outcomes. He is currently finishing a book that examines the social and political history of automotive restraints in the United States and explores how responsibilities for various aspects of safety were distributed, reconceived, and redistributed over the past forty years. He is co-author, with Deborah Johnson, of Technology & Society: Building our Sociotechnical Future (MIT Press, 2007).

Karen M. Wheeler
Assistant Professor, Department of Speech and Hearing Science

Dr. Wheeler completed her Ph.D. in August, 2006 in communication sciences and disorders at the University of Florida, with emphasis in the anatomy and physiology of swallowing, respiration, and associated neural sensorimotor control mechanisms. As a graduate student at the University of Florida , she was awarded the Thomas Abbott Scholarship for the outstanding graduate student in speech-language pathology. Dr. Wheeler was awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Hospital in Gainesville, FL, from 2004-2006. Her doctoral work examined biomechanical aspects of rehabilitation exercises utilized in swallowing disorders, which are a common occurrence after stroke, head and neck cancer, and with neurodegenerative disease processes. She is also developing the Swallowing and Speech Physiology laboratory in the Department. She plans to continue work related to neural modulation and plasticity of the swallow and respiratory mechanisms following rehabilitation exercises.

Quentin D. Wheeler
Professor, School of Life Sciences and ASU Vice President and Dean

Dr. Wheeler earned his doctorate from The Ohio State University in 1980. He was on the faculty of Cornell University from 1980 until 2004. While at Cornell, Dr. Wheeler served terms as Director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium and Chair of the Department of Entomology. He was Director of the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, from 2001 – 2004, when he was named the first foreign Keeper and Head of Entomology at London's Natural History Museum. Dr. Wheeler's interests include insect evolution and classification, particularly Coleoptera (beetles), systematic biology theory, and the role of taxonomy in biodiversity exploration and conservation. Dr. Wheeler is a research associate of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Linnean Society of London, Willi Hennig Society, and Royal Entomological Society.

Kelin X. Whipple
Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration

Dr. Whipple earned his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Washington in 1994, with a specialization in surface processes and landscape evolution. Prior to coming to Arizona State University, he was a professor of geomorphology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Whipple studies the evolution of mountain ranges, with emphasis on the coupling and feedbacks among topography, local climate, erosion, and rock deformation. In pursuit of a more complete understanding of these linkages, his research group collaborates with geoscientists with different specialization but overlapping interests and engages in field work in mountain ranges around the globe, numerical modeling, and laboratory experimentation. Dr. Whipple is an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface.

Yan Yang
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Yang received her doctorate in statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006, and a B.S. in English and science from the University of Science and Technology in 2001. Her research interests and expertise are in the areas of generalized mixed models, biostatistics, computational methods, and quantitative risk assessment. Her work has focused on developing general methodologies for correlated censored and bounded data (e.g., survival time, failure time and zero-inflated data), making inferences, evaluating theoretical bias in marginal analysis, and providing novel model diagnostics. She has investigated risk threshold estimation for bounded adverse outcomes. She is also experienced in microarray data analysis and analysis of lesion occurrence and magnitude from ultrasound safety studies.

Brandon Yoo
Assistant Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

Dr. Yoo received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2006. He also holds a B.S. from the University of Miami (1999). His research examines how racial minorities experience and cope with various culture-specific stressors. One area of particular interest is the role and function of cultural identity in the lives of racial minorities, especially Asian Americans. This research seeks to answer the following three interrelated questions; 1) What are the structure, measurement, and psychological benefits of the different cultural identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, etc.) for Asian Americans? 2) When and how is cultural identity protective against culture-specific stressors, such as racism? and 3) What type of experiences and situations are most relevant to the different cultural identity developments?

Mikhail Zolotov
Associate Research Professor, School of Earth & Space Exploration

Dr. Zolotov is a planetary geochemist. He received his Ph.D. at the Vernadsky Institute   Russian Academy of Sciences ( Moscow ) in 1990. Since then he has been a Senior Research Scientist at the Vernadsky Institute (1991-1996) and Washington University in St. Louis (1997-2002). He came to Arizona State University in 2002 as a faculty research associate. Dr. Zolotov uses physical-chemical methods to understand chemical processes and mineralogical transformations in past and present solar system environments. He investigates the behavior of volatile elements (O, H, C, N, S, Cl) and oxidation-reduction processes at surfaces of Mars and Venus, on satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, in planetary volcanic gases, and in aqueously processed asteroids.