Sin-Ying Ho, Assistant Professor (Art); joins the faculty of Queens College specializing in Ceramics. She was born in Hong Kong, immigrated to Canada and currently resides in the city of New York. Ms. Ho holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a MFA from Louisiana State University. Ms. Ho has taught and run workshops and exhibitions all across Canada as well as from Harvard to Hong Kong. She has an impressive exhibition record – in the last several years she has participated in four to eight shows each year! She has taught at Southeastern Louisiana University (Hammond, LA) Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (Vancouver, BC), Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary, Alberta), Concordia University (Montreal, Québec), and. She has received awards including the San Angelo National Ceramic Competition Merit Award and Canada Council Research Grant. Recently, she exhibited at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. Gibberish is in the permanent collection of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta. Her work Music and Play is in the permanent collection of the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan. Ms. Ho will add an appropriately international and cosmopolitan outlook to our faculty.

Shirley Carrie, Assistant Professor (English); received her doctorate this year from SUNY-Stony Brook, where she specialized in African-American, African, and Caribbean literatures. Her dissertation is "Acts of Remembrance: Commemoration and the Literature of the Black Diaspora." She has been Assistant Director of the Mellon-Mayes Undergraduate Fellowship at Queens, a program that enabled her as an undergraduate at Queens to win a Woodrow Wilson/Mayes National Dissertation Fellowship.

Gerasimus Katsan, Assistant Professor (European Languages and Literatures); comes to Queens College from Yale University, where he was a Lector in Modern Greek in the Hellenic Studies Program as well as Director of the Multimedia Materials Development Projects in the same program. Before that, Dr. Katsan filled various positions in both the Modern Greek Program and the English Department at Ohio State University, where he received both his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. The subject of his Ph.D. dissertation is Unmaking History: Postmodernist Technique and National Identity in the Contemporary Greek Novel, which he is currently revising with an eye toward publication. He has also published several articles and reviews.

Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, comes to us from Florida Atlantic University where he was Associate Dean for Research, Graduate & Interdisciplinary Studies, and directing two programs for the PhD in Comparative Studies. He has published equally on both Italian and Italian/American culture; forthcoming this fall is Narrare altrove: ovvero diverse segnalature letterarie (Franco Cesati Editore, 2006). He is co-founder of Bordighera Press, publisher of the semi-annual "Voices in Italian Americana, a literary and cultural review", the annual "Italiana", and two book series VIA FOLIOS and CROSSINGS, as well as THE BORDIGHERA POETRY PRIZE. Tamburri is the current president of the American Italian Historical Association, completing his four-year tenure at the end of 2006. His was also recently elected vice-president of the American Association of Teachers of Italian for the biennial 2006-2007, becoming president for 2008-2009.

Robert A. Shaddy, Professor and Chief Librarian (Library); comes to Queens College from the University of Florida, where he served for four years as Chair of the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries. Previous library and academic administrative positions were held at the University of Toledo, Louisiana Tech University and the University of Missouri-Columbia. He received graduate degrees in History (Ph.D. , U.S. Intellectual and Cultural) and Library Science (M.A.) from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr. Shaddy has taught at each institution with which he has been affiliated, including survey courses in American history, Introduction to Historiography, History of the Civil War; Liberal Studies (seminars in Humanities, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts); the History of Books and Printing; and Archives Administration. Dr. Shaddy's research and publications have focused mainly on the history of books and book collecting. Current projects include a monograph examining book Collecting in Missouri (1870-1930) and editing the "Paris Stories" of James T. Farrell, author of the "Studs Lonigan" trilogy.

Kate Menken, Assistant Professor (Linguistics & Communication Disorders); received her Ed.D. in 2005 from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation is being published by Multilingual Matters under the title "When the Test is What Counts: How Standardized Testing Affects Language Policy and the Education of English Language Learners in High School". She is the recipient of a Spencer Foundation Research Training Grant (2004), a First Place Bilingual Education Dissertation Award by the American Educational Research Association (2005), and a First Place Outstanding Dissertation Award by the National Association for Bilingual Education (2006). From February 2005 to May 2006 she was an Assistant Professor in the Program in Bilingual Education, TESOL, and Secondary Spanish at City College, CUNY. Her area of specialization is educational linguistics, in particular its impact on TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), multilingualism, and language policy. She has published over half a dozen articles, the majority in peer-reviewed journals, and has given over 25 public presentations, nearly half invited.

Kerry O'Brien, Assistant Professor (Linguistics & Communication Disorders); received her M.A. in Speech Language Pathology from Queens College in 2002. Since receiving her degree, she has worked in several school districts to provide speech-language therapy, intervention, and evaluation for children with various communicative disorders. In Spring 2006 she served as Substitute Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders at Queens College, supervising the clinical training of graduate students and teaching an undergraduate course on Disorders of Language.

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Education

Peishi Wang, Assistant Professor (ECP); recently joined the faculty in the Special Education Program in the Department of Educational and Community Programs. She received her PhD from Columbia University in special education. Her research interest includes families of children with disabilities, parent training, language development of young children with disabilities, and cross cultural research on family issues.

Mary Quincannon Foote, Assistant Professor (EECE); is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she received her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Mathematics Education. Her dissertation research, Situating Children's Mathematical Thinking within Their Lived experience: Professional Development Linking Issues of Culture and Mathematics, examined whether studying an individual learner supports the teacher's understanding of that child as a learner of mathematics, the teacher's understanding of other children as learners of mathematics, and the development of the teacher's mathematics teaching practice.

Bobbie J. Kabuto, Assistant Professor (EECE); is completing a PhD in Reading , Language and Cognition at Hofstra University. Her forthcoming dissertation, If I was Born in the Year of the Tiger, Why Do I Speak English? deals with issues of identity, ideology, and early biliteracy. She has taught at Queens College and Hofstra University as well as Willowbrook International School in Tokyo, Japan.

Rosaria Caporrimo, Assistant Professor (SEYS); has more than fifteen years of experience in higher education. Her areas of scholarship are gender equity in education and self-regulation/metacognition in mathematics learning.

John Gunn, Assistant Professor (SEYS); has more than 15 years of experience as a high School teacher and won the Teacher of the Year award in 2003. The majority of his work as a teacher was spent in alternative and restructured high schools. He has written on the micro-politics of restructured schools. He was a founder of the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts, a small alternative high school. His scholarly interests include student engagement, achievement and assessment in Social Studies in Urban Schools and students' ethical life in classrooms.

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Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Alicia Meléndez, Assistant Professor (Biology Department); received a B.A. in Biology in 1987 from Princeton University, and an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in 1995 from Columbia University. She worked as an HHMI postdoctoral associate at Columbia University, with Dr. Iva Greenwald in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from 1995-2000, and as an Associate Research Scientist in the department of Medicine with Dr. Beth Levine, from 2000-2005, also at Columbia University. Since 2000, her research concentrates on the role of autophagy during the development of the round worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Autophagy occurs in all cells, and is the major cellular pathway for degrading long-lived proteins and cytoplasmic organelles and has been implicated in processes like cancer and aging. Dr. Meléndez was the first person to use C. elegans genetics to study autophagy and also the first one to offer genetic proof of a role of autophagy in aging. Part of this work was published in Science in 2003. Her research focuses on the role of bec-1, the C. elegans ortholog of beclin 1, the first autophagy gene identified in humans that has now also been shown to have a role in tumorigenesis. Therefore, any insights on the function of bec-1 and autophagy in C. elegans development will likely shed light on the role of autophagy in tumorigenesis and disease.

Jianbo Liu, Assistant Professor (Chemistry and Biochemistry); received a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a B.E. in Environmental Engineering (minor) in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1997, all from Tsinghua University, China. He worked as a post-doctoral research staff member at Chinese State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and since late 2000 he has been working as a research associate at the University of Utah. As an experimental chemist, he has broad interest in mass spectrometry, molecular spectroscopy, gas-phase ion-molecule reaction, photochemistry, and laser chemistry. He has published over 50 research articles and book chapters. His current research is focused on adapting and using gas-phase spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, in conjunction with computational chemistry, to studybiologically relevant processes in a spectrum of systems ranging form isolated biomolecules, through micelles and aerosol particles/droplets, to biomolecule solutions.

Matt Huenerfauth, Assistant Professor (Computer Science); received B.S. and M.S. degrees from University of Delaware in Computer Science, an M.Sc. degree from University College Dublin (on a George J. Mitchell Scholarship), and M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Pennsylvania (on an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship). His work focuses on the design of computer software for people with disabilities, especially for people who are deaf or who have low levels of written English literacy. His research is in the areas of natural language processing, virtual human animation, assistive technology for people with disabilities, and the computational linguistics of American Sign Language. He was the recipient of the Best Paper Award (2005) and the Best Doctoral Candidate Award (2004) at the ACM SIG-ACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, the major conference in the field of assistive technology. Matt was invited to deliver the closing plenary address at this conference in 2004. For his teaching work on courses in “Artificial Intelligence” and “Computer Ethics and Society,” he was awarded the Teaching Practicum Award from the Computer Science department at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.

Jeffrey Bird, Assistant Professor (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences); received his B.S., with honors in Soil Science, from Cornell University in 1989, his M.S. in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Vermont in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of California at Davis in 2001. His dissertation research focused on soil organic matter dynamics in temperate rice soils. The Soil Science Society of America honored his dissertation in 2001 with the Emil Truog Soil Science Award for its contribution to the advancement of soil science. Dr. Bird has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at UC Berkeley and a Guest Researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2001. His primary research interests address the underlying soil processes that drive biogeochemical dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems with an emphasis on the movement of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, and water. Funding from NSF, DOE, and the Kearney Foundation of Soil Science supported his research program at UC Berkeley. Jeff worked as a Soils Specialist and Program Leader for Cornell Cooperative Extension in NY State from 1993 to 1995. During his graduate studies and post doctorate, Jeff taught classes in Soil Science and Ecosystem Ecology.

Alfredo Morabia, Professor (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences), has an M.D. from the University of Geneva and completed a PhD in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University. He was Professor and Head of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the Geneva University Hospital from 1990 to January 2006. He has since moved to the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, CUNY. His past experience and current interests include the development of a community based risk factor surveillance system, cancer and genetic epidemiology, and the history of the methods and concepts in epidemiology. He is currently interested in evaluating how developing public transportation can stimulate physical activity and thus reduce obesity in the community. To that effect, Dr. Morabia seeks multidisciplinary collaboration with, among others, engineers, environmentalists, trade unions and commuter's organization, public health experts and lawyers.

Sandra Hayes, Gorenstein Professor (Mathmatics); went to Germany on a German Fulbright after graduating from Vassar College. She received her Ph.D and "Habilitation" in Munich from the University of Munich and became a professor at the Technical University of Munich. She was a Visiting Professor at the University of Angers in France and at the University of Bologna in Italy as well as at Rockefeller University and City College of CUNY in New York City. In Munich, Professor Hayes was director of a European Union Program for academic exchanges and was also appointed by the Academic Senate as the first women's representative of the Technical University. She is active in promoting general interest in mathematics and has a CD from a public broadcast about chaos theory in conjunction with the Bamberg Symphony orchestra. Her area of research is dynamical systems and she is collaborating with Yunping Jiang from Queens College on a project involving chance and chaos.

Janine D. Flory, Associate Professor (Psychology); received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology) from the University of Kansas, completing her Ph.D. in 1992. She completed an NIMH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and has served on the faculties of the University of Pittsburgh (Psychology) and Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Psychiatry). Her NIMH-funded research investigates the neurobiology of impulsive aggression, including neurogenetics, and she is particularly interested in using neurobiology and latent variable modeling to identify connections between normal and abnormal personality. Her work has appeared in Biological Psychiatry, Neuropsychopharmacology, Psychopharmacology, and Molecular Psychiatry and in April 2006, was featured in the Science Times section of the New York Times, “Living on Impulse”.

Carolyn Pytte, Assistant Professor (Psychology); received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1989, an M.S. in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Biology from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1999. She conducted postdoctoral research on adult neurogenesis at Wesleyan University from 1999-2006. Her research interests are in the field of Behavioral Neuroscience and she is currently studying the regulation and function of neurons that are generated in adulthood. Adult neurogenesis occurs in all animals, including humans, and certain types of newly generated neurons continually replace existing neurons throughout life. Her work uses the songbird as a model system to study behavioral factors that influence the regulation of neuronal replacement as well as the impact of neuron replacement on behavior. She has taught classes in Anatomy, Physiology, Biology, and Animal Communication.

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Social Sciences

Michael Stevens, Assistant Professor (Accounting); has had an extremely diverse scholarly and professional career. He is a graduate of New York University School of Law's graduate tax program where he earned the LL.M in taxation degree. He earned a J.D. from St. John's University School of Law, is a member of the N.Y. Bar, and is also a CPA. Michael also has a graduate degree in mathematics. He served many years as the editor in chief of Practical Accountant, a nationwide magazine for the accounting profession, and has personally authored over 100 articles in accounting and taxation. He worked in public accounting and was an editor of Prentice-Hall's Federal Tax Service. Earlier in his career, Michael also taught in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Queens College.

Ryan Edwards, Assistant Professor (Economics); received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. He has since worked at the Rand Corporation researching population health and the economics of aging. He has been particularly concerned with the relationship between life span variance and socioeconomic inequality as well as the relationship between life expectancy and rank in the military. Prior to receiving his degree from Berkeley, Ryan served for a year as staff economist in macroeconomics for the Council of Economic Advisors.

Gaoquan Liu, Assistant Professor (Economics); has just completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on contract theory, the theory of the firm, and industrial organization. He has obtained new insights concerning the simultaneous design of monetary incentive schemes and the allocation of decision rights with organizations. As a graduate student, Gaoquan has had considerable teaching experience which will be put to good use this fall as he takes over the teaching of our course in Business and Economics.

Ping Li is joining the (Graduate School of Library and Information Studies). Her primary teaching responsibilities will be reference sources and services, both general and specialized, and instructional services for library/information center users. She holds degrees from Nanjing Normal University in China, has ten years experience as a professor of English at two Chinese universities. She has also earned an M.L.I.S. from McGill University's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies and is a doctoral candidate there. Her dissertation work is on Doctoral Students' Mental Models of a Web Search Engine. In 2006 she has been selected to make presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Library and Information Science Education, Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS/ACSI) Annual Conference (2006), and Southern Chapter and Mid-Atlantic Chapter (MLA) 2006 Joint Conference. She is involved in a research project entitled "Outcomes in the Palm of Your Hand: Improving the Quality and Continuity of Patient Care" being conducted by the Faculty of Nursing of the University of Toronto.

Sadatru Sen, Assistant Professor (History); is a specialist in modern South Asian History. He received his PhD from the University of Washington. He is the author of Colonial Childhoods: The Juvenile Periphery of India, 1860-1945 (2005), Migrant Races: Empire, Identity, and K.S. Ranjitshinji (2004), Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (2000).

Bob Wintermute, Assistant Professor (History); is a specialist in United States military history. He received his PhD degree from Temple University in June 2006. His dissertation was "Waging Health: the United States Army Medical Department and Public Health in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920".

Peter Vellon, Assistant Professor (History); is a specialist in Italian-American History. He received his PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center. He has published several articles on Italian-American history and is revising his thesis, "A Darker Past: The Development of Italian American Racial Consciousness, 1886-1920" for publication.

Sujatha Fernandes, Assistant Professor (Sociology); received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2003. Her research interests include the politics of art, state-society relations, and the role of culture in social movements, with an area focus on Latin America . Fernandes's book, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures, is forthcoming with Duke University Press in Fall 2006. She is currently working on two new books. One is based on her field research in Venezuela, and is entitled In the Spirit of Negro Primero: Urban Social Movements in Chávez's Venezuela. The other is a memoir Close to the Edge: Reflections on Race, Politics, and Global Hip-Hop.

Melissa Checker, Assistant Professor (Urban Studies); received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from New York University in 2002. Her research focuses on urban social movement organizing, environmental anthropology, and race class and ethnicity. More specifically she studies environmental justice activism and she has written about, and worked with, Latino, Hasidic, and African American environmental activists in Brooklyn, New York (Williamsburg/Greenpoint), and African Americans in Augusta, Georgia and Memphis, Tennessee . She has published two books, one edited volume entitled Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life(Columbia University Press, 2004) and single-authored ethnography entitled Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU Press, 2005).

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