New Faculty
Ford Ballantyne IV
Justin Blumenstiel
Nancy Brady
Hailong Dao
Gunes Ercal
Pamela Fine
Andrew Gill
Peter Grund
Daniel Hirmas
Randal Jelks
Adrian Lewis
Yan Li
Bo Luo
Laura Moriarty
Srah Pressman
Scott Reinardy
Tarun Sabarwal
L. Ayu Saraswati
Misty Schieberle
Kapila Silva
Mondupe Babajide Wintoki
Xinmai Yang
Craig Adams, Distinguished Professor/Chair of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, comes to KU from the University of Missouri-Rolla, where he served as John and Susan Mathes Chair of Environmental Engineering and professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering. His research interests include the analysis, occurrence and treatment of pharmaceuticals and other emerging contaminants in drinking water, and providing sustainable water and sanitation in developing nations.
Norman Akers, associate professor of art, joins KU from the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he was a faculty member. He has collections included at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Rockwell Museum and the U.S. Embassy in Armenia. Akers received his master's from the University of Illinois- Champaign-Urbana.
Santa Arias, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comes to KU from Florida State University, where she was an associate professor. She received her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include Colonial Latin American studies and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of literature and cultures.
Ford Ballantyne IV, assistant professor/assistant scientist of ecology and evolutionary biology and member of the Kansas Biological Survey, joins KU from Princeton University, where he was a research associate. He earned his doctorate from the University of New Mexico. Ballantyne's research interests include modeling carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous stoichiometry in marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
Kathleen Smith Belcher, assistant professor of music and dance, earned her bachelor's from Florida State University. She most recently directed "Madama Butterfly" for the San Francisco Opera. Belcher has also served as associate stage director and assistant stage director for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera.
Justin Blumenstiel, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, received his doctorate from Harvard University. Most recently, he served as an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. His research interests include the evolution of genetic and epigenetic systems and of RNAi machinery.
Nancy Brady, assistant professor of speech, language and hearing, earned her doctorate from KU, where she most recently served as an associate research professor. Her research interests include the development of prelinguistic communication in children with developmental disabilities.
Julianne Buchsbaum, assistant librarian for KU Libraries, comes to KU from Kenyon College, where she served as librarian and technology consultant. She received a master's from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a master's from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Hailong Dao, assistant professor of mathematics, joins KU from the University of Utah, where he served as Wylie Assistant Professor. Dao received his doctorate from the University of Michigan. His research interests include commutative algebra, albegraic geometry and algebraic K-theory.
Lynn Davidman, Distiniguished Professor of Sociology/Religious Studies and director of the program in Jewish studies, received her doctorate from Brandeis University. She most recently served as a professor at Brown University. Her research interests include gender studies and the sociology of religion. Davidman is also a founder of interdisciplinary Jewish women's studies.
Pascal Deboeck, assistant professor of psychology, comes to KU from the University of Notre Dame, where he received his doctorate and most recently served as a postdoctoral research associate. His research interests include the development and application of dynamical systems and differential equation methodology.
Dale Dorsey, assistant professor of philosophy, joins KU from the University of Alberta, where he most recently served as an assistant professor. Dorsey earned his doctorate from the University of San Diego. His areas of specialization include ethics, political philosophy and history of ethics.
Gunes Ercal-Ozkaya, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received her doctorate at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her general research area is theoretical computer science, with focus on theoretical modeling and guarantees for reliable routing in wireless networks. Her other research interests include game theory, graph theory, randomized algorithms, wireless networks, network security and machine learning.
Pamela Fine, Knight Professor of Journalism, earned her bachelor's from the University of Florida. Fine has served as managing editor and vice president for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and most recently served as managing editor for the Indianapolis Star. She has been a Pulitizer Prize juror four times.
Andrew Gill, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, most recently served as co-founder of Galois, Inc. He earned his doctorate from the University of Glasgow. His research interests include functional programing, compilers, debugging and equational reasoning.
Peter Grund, assistant professor of English, joins KU from Uppsala University, where he earned his doctorate and most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow. His research interests include English language studies, especially historical linguistics.
Crystal Hall, assistant professor of French and Italian, comes to KU from the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate and most recently served as Benjamin Franklin Fellow. Her current research includes the study of the relationship between the epic poems in Galileo's library and his project as an author and philosopher.
Alesia Hanzal, acting assistant professor of communication studies, joins KU from the University of Arizona, where she is a doctoral candidate and most recently served as a teaching associate. Her research interests include areas of interpersonal communication and health communication.
Steven Hawley, professor of physics and astronomy, earned his doctorate in astrophysics from the University of California-Santa Cruz. He was a research associate at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory before joining NASA where he served as a five-time Shuttle astronaut and, most recently, director of space sciences at Johnson Space Center.
Heping He, assistant professor of mathematics, most recently served as a research fellow at the University of Melbourne. He earned his doctorate from Northwestern University. His research interests include likelihood methods, change-point problems and time series.
Daniel Hirmas, acting assistant professor of geography, joins KU from the Univerisity of California-Riverside, where is a doctoral candidate and most recently served as a graduate research assistant. His research interests include carbonate chemistry, pedology, geomorphology and modeling.
Randal Jelks, associate professor of American studies/African and African-American studies, earned his doctorate from Michigan State University. He was on the faculty at Calvin College and most recently served as Langston Hughes Visiting Professor at KU. Jelks has also served as the Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the National Humanities Center. His research interests include the United States and the American South.
Jay Johnson, assistant professor of geography, joins KU from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he served as an assistant professor. He received his doctorate from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research interests include Indigenous peoples' self-determination and resource management, Indigenous peoples' rights and the politics and philosophies of place.
John Karanicolas, assistant professor of molecular biosciences/bioinformatics, comes to KU from the University of Washington, where he served as a postdoctoral fellow. He earned his doctorate from The Scripps Research Institute. His research interests include computational protein design.
Shahriar Keshmiri, assistant professor of aerospace engineering, earned his doctorate from KU, where he most recently served as a postdoctoral engineer in the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets and coordinator of Flight Dynamics and Control team. His research interests include aircraft dynamics, flight planning, flight control and autonomous flight. Keshmiri is also a member of the Hawkeye design and manufacturing team.
ChangHwan Kim, assistant professor of sociology, comes to KU from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he most recently served as a postdoctoral associate. He received his doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin. His research interests include stratification and inequality, quantitative methodology and statistics.
Adrian R. Lewis, professor of history, joins KU from the University of North Texas, where he was an associate professor and chair of the Department of History. He earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago. His research interests include military strategy and doctrine, insurgency warfare, World War II, the Cold War, the Normandy invasion and current military operations. Lewis is a retired soldier.
Yan Li, assistant professor of East Asian languages and cultures, earned her doctorate from the University of Southern California, where she most recently served as an assistant lecturer. Her research interests include second language learners' interpretation of negation and negation related phenomena in their second language (Chinese).
Bo Luo, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, comes to KU from the Pennsylvania State University, where he is a doctoral candidate and most recently served as a research assistant. His research interests include information security and privacy, network security and database security.
Suman Mallik, associate professor of business, joins KU from the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he served as an assistant professor. He earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include supply chain management, contracting and operational problems in the broadcast television industry.
Craig Marshall, assistant professor of geology, earned his doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Most recently, Marshall served as research fellow at the University of Sydney. His research interests include biopolymer and biomarker composition of Precambrian microfossils and extant microbes to determine biological affinity.
Ludwin Molina, assistant professor of psychology, most recently served as Regent's postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. He received his doctorate at the University of California-Los Angeles. His research interests include inter-group relations, with an emphasis on how social identities and group-based power asymmetries influence prejudice.
Laura Moriarty, assistant professor of English, is a bestselling author and was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She received her master's from KU. Her areas of specialization are fiction and personal narrative.
Sara Morris, associate librarian for KU libraries, comes from Purdue University, where she most recently served as a digital reference graduate assistant and where she is a doctoral candidate. She received her master's from Indiana University. She has also served as assistant professor and reference services librarian at Mississippi State University.
Pamela Neidert, assistant professor in applied behavioral sciences, comes to KU from Florida Institute of Technology, where she served as an assistant professor. She earned her doctorate from the University of Florida. Her research interests include assessment of response maintenance under stimulus control and special challenges to functional analysis methodology.
Berl Oakley, Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biosciences, joins KU from the Ohio State University, where he served as a professor. Oakley earned his doctorate from the University of London. His research interests include fungal natural products chemistry as well as the microtubule cytoskeleton, which is essential for mitosis, meiosis and the maintenance of cell shape. Renee Perelmutter, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures and Jewish studies, most recently served as a research assistant at the University of California at Berkeley, where she received her doctorate. Her research interests include: morphosyntax and semantics of Slavic and Yiddish; negation, case and aspect in Modern Russian; speech and thought representation in Old Russian; and the Yiddish grammatical category of aspect evolving under the influence of its neighboring Slavic languages.
Brian Potetz, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, recently received his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and an NSF IGERT fellowship. His research interests include the statistics of natural scenes and the use of those statistics to help infer scene properties from images.
Sarah Pressman, assistant professor of psychology, comes to KU from the University of Pittsburgh, where she served as a postdoctoral fellow. She earned her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests include examining the relationship between positive psychosocial factors and health, with a focus on the underlying physiological mechanisms.
Gene Rankey, assistant professor of geology, earned his doctorate from KU. Most recently, Rankey served as an assistant professor at the University of Miami. His research interests include carbonate sedimentology and stratigraphy, remote sensing and geographic information systems.
Kamran Reihani, assistant professor of mathematics, joins KU from Arizona State University, where he served as a visiting assistant professor. He earned his doctorate from Tarbiat Modarres University, Iran. His research interests include operator algebras and noncommutative geometry.
Scott Reinardy, assistant professor of journalism, most recently served as an assistant professor at Ball State University. He received his doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research interests include stress and burnout of newspaper newsroom employees, sports journalism and newspaper organizational development.
Matthew Reynolds, assistant professor of psychology and research in education, comes to KU from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his doctorate in school psychology and quantitative methods. His research interests include the measurement and structure of intelligence and the longitudinal modeling of developmental psychopathology.
Robert Rohrschneider, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, most recently served as a professor at Indiana University. He earned his doctorate from Florida State University. His research interests include the European Union, German Politics and global enviromental movements.
Gregory Rudnick, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, comes to KU from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, where he served as Leo Goldberg Fellow. He earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona. His research interests include galaxy evolution and formation.
Tarun Sabarwal, assistant professor of economics, received his doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley. Most recently, Sabarwal served as a visiting lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include microeconomic theory and financial economics.
L. Ayu Saraswati, assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality studies, joins KU from Emory University, where she served as a post-doctoral fellow. She earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include transnational feminism.
Misty Schieberle, assistant professor of English, received her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, where she earned awards for both research and teaching. Her research interests include Middle English advice literature, writings by and about women and manuscript reception and transmission.
Kapila D. Silva, assistant professor of architecture and urban planning, earned his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he taught before coming to KU. He has also taught at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. His research interests include social and cultural aspects of architecture, urban design and urban preservation.
Jorge Soberon, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior scientist at the Biodiversity Institute, most recently served as a senior scientist at KU. He received his doctorate from the University of London. His research interests include building strong linkages between theoretical ecology and global diversity science.
Leigh Stearns, assistant professor of geology, comes to KU from the University of Maine, where she received her doctorate and most recently served as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research interests include polar glaciology, ice dynamics, snow accumulation rates and satellite remote sensing.
Lorie Vanchena, associate professor of Germanic languages and literatures, joins KU from Creighton University, where she most recently served as an associate professor. She earned her doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include 19th-century German and German American literature and history.
Barney Warf, professor of geography, most recently served as Earl and Sophia Shaw professor at Florida State University. He received his doctorate from the University of Washington. His research interests include political economy, social theory, producer services, financial markets, telecommunications and geography of cyberspace.
Timothy Welty, professor and chairperson of pharmacy practice, joins KU from Samford University, where he served as a professor. Welty received his pharmacy degree from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. His research interests include pharmacokinetic and neuropharmacotherapy.
Michael Williams, associate professor of journalism, received his master's from KU. He comes to KU from the University of Maryland at College Park, where he served as an associate professor. Williams is a new-media expert and is often cited in industry literature.
Modupe Babajide (Jide) Wintoki, assistant professor of finance, most recently served as an instructor at the University of Georgia, where he also received his doctorate. His research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance and international finance.
Wei Wu, acting assistant professor of psychology, comes to KU from Arizona State University, where she is a doctoral candidate and most recently served as a research assistant. Her research interests include growth curve modeling, structural equation modeling and missing data analysis.
Xinmai Yang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, comes to KU from Washington University, St. Louis, where he served as a postdoctoral research assiociate. He earned his doctorate from Boston University. His research is focused on photoacoustic imaging and biomedical ultrasound.
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