Arts & Humanities | Education | Math & Natural Sciences | Social Sciences

Arts and Humanities

Dr. Edward Powers pursued a Ph.D. in Art History after several years of practicing Law. He joins the Art Department as Assistant Professor of Art, specializing in Late Twentieth- and Twenty-first-Century Art. He comes to Queens College after several highly successful years of lecturing and teaching at Pratt Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. He has published a book on Dada through the Museum of Modern Art and articles on a wide range of modernist topics, from Abstract Expressionism to Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol, the subject of his next book.

Gregory Sholette, Assistant Professor (Art) is a New York-based sculptor, multi-media artist, and writer. He holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, an MFA from the University of California at San Diego, and is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Studies Program in Critical Studies. In the Spring of 2004 he served as the Distinguished Batza Family Chair of Art and Art History at Colgate University and from 2000 to 2004 he was Chair of the Master of Arts in Arts Administration Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) as well as an Assistant Professor in the Visual and Critical Studies program at SAIC. He has exhibited regularly, curated a number of exhibitions and published widely in critical theory. He is the author or co-author of several books and exhibition catalogues.

Glenn Goldberg Assistant Professor (Art), studied at the New York Studio School and received a MFA from Queens College. He was named the 1996 Heilman Artist and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Represented by the Knoedler Gallery in New York, in the last year, he has had solo shows in New York, St. Louis, Boston and Munich. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions. In the last year, he has had two solo shows and participated in four group shows and is currently preparing two new solo shows.

Dr. Michael Nelson joins the Art Department as Assistant Professor of Art, specializing in Ancient Art. Dr. Nelson completed undergraduate degrees in Art History and Architecture simultaneously before completing his MA and Ph.D. in Ancient Art at the University of Toronto. A specialist in Mycenaen Art and Archeology, he has published two books and a number of articles addressing fundamental questions in the field. In addition, he has excavated in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and, currently, in Israel, where his work has revealed foundations and building stones, as well as decoration, of a Temple dating from the time of King Herod.

Mark Pettigrew, Assistant Professor of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures, received his BA in Anthropology from Harvard and his PhD in Arabic Language and Literature from Berkeley. His research specialization is Medieval Arabic Literature. Dr. Pettigrew has taught Arabic language as well as the literature and civilization of the Middle East at Berkeley and Columbia, and he is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Cultural Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Joseph Mills, Assistant Professor (Drama, Theatre and Dance) he was a tenured Associate Professor of Dance and Director of the Dance Program at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. From 1981-87, he performed and choreographed with the Mid America Dance Company in St. Louis, touring regionally. He began teaching for MADCO in 1984. Mills was also a member of MOMIX Dance Theater from 1987-1990 He was a principal dancer in The Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1990-94, and served as rehearsal director and choreographic assistant to Mr. Hawkins in the 1993-94 season. Joseph Mills received his doctoral degree from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1998. Mills performed in the Open Look, and Touch 2 Festivals in Russia in 2002, as a guest artist with Maida Withers Dance Construction Company in the production of Aurora 2003: Dance of the Auroras- Fire in the Skies. Joseph is passionate about the relationship of dance to other arts and humanities and has participated in several cross disciplinary course offerings between Dance and other disciplines such as music composition, yoga and performance, and movement theatre. Joseph looks forward to building cross disciplinary connections between the dance program and other academic areas of study at Queens College.

Maura Nguyen Donohue, Assistant Professor (Drama, Theatre and Dance) was born in Vietnam and raised in the US. She is artistic director of NYC-based performance troupe Maura Nguyen Donohue/in mixed company. In NY, she has been produced regularly at Dance Theater Workshop, as well as Performance Space 122, La Mama ETC, Danspace Project, Mulberry St. Theater, and The Kitchen. Her work has toured extensively across the US and to Canada, Europe and Asia. She has written about dance and performance in the US and Asia for Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal, The Dance Insider, HK Dance Journal, and the New York State Danceforce. She has taught master classes, repertory workshops at schools across the country, served as visiting guest artist for Smith College and spent the past two years as a teaching fellow at Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, and Smith College for the Five College Dance Department.

Meghan E. Healey, Assistant Professor (Drama Theatre, and Dance) she received her her BA from Emory University and her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School. Also, is the Costume Design: Winner of the 2007 ACE Award and the 2007 HOLA for Best Costume Design for Zanahorias (Duke Theater). Her recent work includes: the American Premiere of acclaimed Swedish playwright Lars Norén’s WAR (RPT), Rob Handel’s The Knights (Target Margin, Aristophanika Festival), Milk-n-Honey (Lightbox Theater Co.)Week 52 of 365 Days/365 Plays for The Public Theater (dir. Joanna Settle), Five Kinds of Silence (Boundless Theater), Greenzone by Rob Handel (dir. Alec Duffy), 365 Days/365 Plays for Duende Arts and for Clubbed Thumb, points of departure by Michael John Garcés (dir. Ron Daniels), At Said by Gary Winter (dir. Tim Farrell, 13P), Tight Embrace by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (dir. Lisa Petersen, INTAR), Kissing Fidel by Eduardo Machado (dir. Michael John Garcés, INTAR), Yo Soy Latina (dir. Ricardo Kahn, Crossroads Theater), and the New York premiere of the opera Orpheus Descending (dir. Susan Einhorn). Also for INTAR: Blues for a Grey Sun with Nilaja Sun, With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? with Carmelita Tropicana, customs by Michael John Garcés, and the Ties that Bind Festival. Her other work includes world premiere productions of Millicent Scowlworthy (dir. Ken Rus Schmoll), Bump (dir. Paul Tei, Jaggerknaut Theater), Pyretown by John Belluso (dir. Tim Farrell, Geva Theater), The Witches Triptych (dir. Erica Gould, Idle Hands Prod.), September Shoes by José Cruz Gonzales (dir. Michael John Garcés, Geva Theater), and the American Premiere of Clive Barker’s Crazyface. Her most recent project Someday for the nationally renowned Cornerstone Theater Company will premiere in Los Angeles this June.

Aracelis Girmay joins the English Department's MFA Program as Visiting Assistant Professor. She writes poetry, fiction, & essays. Also, the author of the poetry collection, Teeth, & a collage-based art book entitled, changing, changing. A Cave Canem Fellow & board member of Acentos, Girmay's work has been published in Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Bellevue Literary Review, & Callaloo, among other journals. Girmay earned her MFA from New York University, & she has also been awarded grants from the Watson Foundation, the Toor Cummings Center, & the Jerome Foundation.

Roger Sedarat Assistant Professor joins the English Department's MFA program in Creative Writing, received his MA in English/Creative Writing from Queens College, CUNY and his PhD in English from Tufts University. His first book of poetry, *Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic*, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was recently published by Ohio University Press. He is the recipient of several scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as well as a St. Botolph Poetry Grant. His poetry has appeared in such journals as *New England Review*, *Atlanta Review*, and *Poet Lore*. In addition to translations of Persian poetry, he has published articles on American and Middle Eastern literature.

Siân Silyn Roberts, Assistant Professor (English) has an M.A. degree in English Literature from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a Ph.D. degree from Brown University, where she specialized in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American literature. Her dissertation argues that gothic conventions in early American literature revise Enlightenment categories of the individual, sympathy, and the social contract to suit a culturally diverse readership. She has an article forthcoming on the "Gothic Enlightenment" and will be teaching the American novel and the American Literature survey I in the fall.

Chastity Whitaker was appointed as a Lecturer in English in February 2008. She came to us with extensive teaching experience in CUNY colleges and at NYU. Her BA is from Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA is from NYU. During her graduate career, she became a Starr Foundation Teaching Fellow and Writer in Residence at the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, where she taught creative writing to at-risk students in New York City’s Chancellor’s Districts. At Queens, her primary teaching is in the SEEK Program. She comes to us with a strong publication record of non-fictional feature articles in major publications.

Morena Corradi, Assistant Professor (European Language and Literature), after receiving a Laurea in Modern Languages and Literatures (English, Norwegian and German) from the University of Bologna (Italy), Professor Corradi moved to the United States for her graduate studies. She holds an M.A. from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from Brown University. From 2005 to 2008 she was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on nineteenth and twentieth century Italian literature, fantastic literature and theory, narrative theory, and popular culture.

Dr. Mariana C. Zinni joins the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures as Assistant Professor, she specializes in Colonial Latin America. Dr. Zinni earned her Ph.D. (2008) and M.A. (2004) from the University of Pittsburgh. She also holds a Graduate Certificate in West European Studies (University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh). Her undergraduate education included a Profesorado en Letras (1999) and a Licenciatura en Letras (2001) from Universidad Nacional de Rosario in Argentina where she was a researcher at the Centro de Teoría y Critica Literaria. She has taught at the University of Pittsburgh and as Visiting Professor at Vassar College, where she also served as Coordinator for drill instructors and laboratory assistants of elementary level of Spanish language, as well as placement evaluator for Spanish. Dr. Zinni is interested in problems of mimesis and narration in early American chronicles and Historias de Indias. She is focusing her investigation on the hermeneutical and epistemological core problems surrounding the discovery and conquest of America as well as the imaginary process of invention and constitution of the New World. Currently, she is working on a series of articles related to her dissertation (“Narrative Modes and the Problem of Mimesis in Bernardino de Sahagún’s Colloquios y Doctrina Christiana.”; “Bernardino de Sahagún y la mimesis platónica en el nuevo mundo: la negociación del espacio hermenéutico”; “La Historia de las Indias de Bartolomé de Las Casas: un ensayo de retórica colonial.”).Her research interests include Colonial Latin American Literature and Culture, contemporary and Neo-Baroque Latin American prose, and literary theory. At present, Dr. Zinni is working on a research project about sexualities and love relationships in Argentina in 16th and 17th centuries.

Nancy Foasberg, Humanities Librarian, received the Bachelor of Arts in English, California State University-Chico, 2002, (undergraduate honors thesis: "Speech, Space, and Violence"); the Master of Arts in English, California State University-Chico, 2004, (thesis: "Coleridge's 'Christabel' and the Ballad Tradition: Ambiguity, Genre, and Geraldine"); and Master of Science in Library Science, Drexel University, 2007. Ms. Foasberg's library experience includes serving at the Engineering Library and the Weigle Information Commons in the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at Gloucester County College, the Community College of Philadelphia, Camden County College, and California State University-Chico, offering developmental, first-year, and advanced composition and The Writing Workshop. She will be responsible for English, Comparative Literature, and Drama, Theater, and Dance.

Leslie McCleave, Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies . She received her BA in Political Science at Boston College, and her MFA in Film Production at New York University. She has taught at a number of private and public universities including Drexel University in Philadelphia, the New School, Brooklyn College and New Jersey City University. Her many credits include her short Avenue X (1994) which won several awards, most prominently "Special Jury Recognition"at the Sundance Film Festival and the "Golden Gate Award" at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her other films include Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots (1996) and, most recently, Road (2005), which premiered on the Showtime channel in the Spring of 2008. Her current project is a documentary on a blind choir from Alabama.

Roy Nitzberg joins the Music Department as a Lecturer. He received his Ph.D. in music theory from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1999, with a dissertation on the music of Joseph Haydn. He is a co-author (with QC Prof. Henry Burnett) of a book, Chromaticism and the Developmental Process: A New Theory of Tonality, Ashgate, 2007. He was a co-editor of Hogaku, the journal of the Traditional Japanese Music Society between 1984 and 1989 and was the Associate Director of The Center for Preparatory Studies in Music, a children's music program at Queens College, from 1987 until 1995. Dr. Nitzberg was previously a member of the adjunct faculty of Queens College and also at Hunter College and Hofstra University.

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Education

Jennifer A. Kyle , Assistant Professor in ECP, prior to joining the faculty in the Department of Educational and Community Programs, Prof. Kyle was an Assistant Professor in the Social Science and Human Services Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College since August 2004. She completed her doctoral degree in May 2004 at the Graduate Center in Clinical Psychology. Her doctoral dissertation centered on examining culturally based protective factors in African-American youth at risk for suicide. Upon completing her clinical internship she was granted a position as a staff psychologist in at North Central Bronx Hospital. She continues her research on protective factors in persons of color and received a PSC-CUNY grant to extend her earlier dissertation research. She will present her research at the International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) in Bremen, Germany and at XXIX International Congress of Psychology in Berlin this summer, 2008. Other areas of interest include psychoanalysis, development, gender, culture and group dynamics.

Ashraf Shady joins the EECE department as an Assistant Professor of Science Education. He worked for 17 years for the New York City Dept. of Education in the capacity of science teacher, science coordinator, and science director for District 75/citywide programs. His interest revolve around the impact of cultural misalignment on science education, and how cogenerative dialogue could be used to navigate categorical representations such as race, ethnicity, social class, and identity issues.

Cynthia Lashley joins the EECE department as an Assistant Professor, she received her doctorate from Erikson Institute and Loyola University (2007), Chicago, IL; an MS in Family, Culture, and Society (1999) from Wheelock College, Boston, MA; a BS in Special Education (1977) from Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT; and graduated as a respiratory therapist (1983) from St. Vincent’s School of Respiratory Therapy, Bridgeport, CT. She was most recently adjunct faculty at DePaul University School of Education and School of New Learning; Erikson Institute; and Kendall College, Chicago, IL. She also taught at the Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute in NM. She has cared for, taught, and/or worked with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children and has also taught and worked professionally with their families, caregivers, teachers, and administrators in a variety of settings since 1977. Her work also included coordinating programs; participating in local, statewide, and national initiatives; and presenting in local and national conferences and trainings. More recently (2007), Cynthia was also a data collection team member for the Chicago component of the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s Strengthening Families Project, Washington, DC (Jamilah Jor’dan, Chicago Program Coordinator).

Line A. Augustin, Assistant Professor of EECE, received her doctorate degree in Chemistry in 2006 from the Graduate Center, CUNY (with a chapter of her dissertation on an ethnographic study of the enactment of chemical knowledge of an High School student) and did a post-doc on Science Education in urban schools at the same institution. She is currently teaching science content and science methods courses in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department of Queens College, CUNY. Line is interesting in investigation of how racial, cultural, class and gender issues affect the ways that teaching and learning occurs in elementary classrooms, in understanding these issues and developing mechanism by which they can be utilized to promote better teaching and learning environment and greater dispositions towards science. She is also interested in what influences science teachers to change and/or to improve their teaching practices.

Terry Gurl joins the SEY Department as an Assistant Professor , she began teaching high school mathematics in 1990 after graduating from Brooklyn College under a math/science teaching scholarship. She taught for eight years in high schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan in settings ranging from a traditional parochial school to an alternative school that is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and holds permanent certification in secondary mathematics in New York. She taught mathematics education courses at Brooklyn College and mathematics courses at Polytechnic University through the Youth in Engineering and Science Program, and has presented at staff development workshops. She works with pre-service secondary mathematics teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University and assists with their field activities. She is receiving her PhD in mathematics education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include lesson study with pre-service secondary mathematics teachers, and interactions between cooperating teachers and student teachers in secondary mathematics.

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Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Daniel C. Weinstein, Associate Professor (Biology), received a B.S. degree in Biology from Yale University (1990). He spent the next nine years at The Rockefeller University, first as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology (PhD, 1995), and then as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Vertebrate Molecular Embryology (1995-1999). Starting in 2000, Dr. Weinstein has been a member of the faculty at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as an Assistant and now Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics; he has lectured and/or directed graduate level courses in developmental biology, signal transduction, and pharmacogenomics. Using the frog Xenopus laevis as a model system, Dr. Weinstein’s research focuses on elucidating the signaling networks that regulate germ layer formation, suppression, and tissue morphogenesis during early vertebrate development. Recent studies in his laboratory have also begun to define conserved mechanisms underlying amphibian progenitor cell differentiation and mammalian embryonic stem cell pluripotency. Dr. Weinstein has received support, since 2001, from the National Institutes of Health; his work has been published in a number of leading journals including Nature, Cell, Development, Developmental Biology, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Glendon Dale McLachlan, Assistant Professor (Chemistry and Biochemistry), received his B.A. degree from the Department of Physics at Queens College, CUNY (1992), his Master’s degree from the Department of Physics at Hunter College, CUNY (1995) and his Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemistry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University (2004). His doctoral research delineated an equilibrium folding intermediate of a G-Actin and polyphospho-inositide binding protein at low pH, using circular dichroism, fluorescence and high resolution solution NMR spectroscopy. The results provided mechanistic insights, fundamental to protein folding and cancer metastasis. His post-doctoral research was in the area of material science, in the Department of Physics at Hunter College, CUNY (2004-2008). This research aimed at obtaining atomic-level structural information for native spider-silks and silk mimetics, using solid state and solution NMR techniques, in order to understand how the molecular architecture of the protein confers the physical properties unique to silk. His current research interest spans the disciples of material science and biochemistry, including, the structural characterization of newly designed silk-mimetics, protein folding on the surface of quantum-dots/carbon-nanotubes, membrane protein structure determination, and multi-dimensional NMR spectroscopy.

Heng Ji, Assistant Professor in Computer Science, received her B.A. and M.A. in Computational Linguistics from Tsinghua University, M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University in 2005 and 2007 respectively. She was an assistant research scientist at NYU and a research intern at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Her research interests focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP), especially Information Extraction, Reasoning and Prediction, Information-aware Machine Translation, Spoken Language Understanding and Biomedical Language Processing. She has published an invited book chapter and 24 papers at the most prestigious NLP conferences and journals. She was awarded the Sandra Bleistein Prize from Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of NYU, for the most notable achievement in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. She is a member of Association of Computational Linguistics, IEEE and Sigma Xi. She has served as a committee member and reviewer for many conferences and journals in the field of NLP, Information Processing, Digital Libraries and Artificial Intelligence.

Hoeteck Wee, Assistant Professor in Computer Science, completed his undergraduate studies at MIT and his PhD at UC Berkeley in 2007. His research is in theoretical computer science, with a focus on constructions of efficient cryptographic protocols under minimal assumptions. He was a visiting student at Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 2005-2006, a core participant in the Securing Cyberspace program at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (UCLA) in Fall 2006, and a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in 2007-2008.

Ya Ching Hung, Assistant Professor (Family, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences), received her B.S. degree in Physical Therapy in 1997 from National Taiwan University and her Ed.D. in Motor Learning and Control from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2007. Her dissertation, “Learning a novel throwing task: A morphometric analysis of skill development” discusses the rates of learning for end-point path and joint coordination control. Quantification of the form of the patterns indicates the two levels of measurements stabilized at different rate. That end-point path stabilized prior to the joint coordination during learning. Her current research includes quantification of movement control differences and improvements before and after intensive intervention for children with Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy. This study is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Gordon at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Christopher Hanusa, Assistant Professor in Mathematics, received his B.S. in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College in 2001 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Washington in 2005. He comes to Queens College after a three-year post-doctoral position at Binghamton University (SUNY). Dr. Hanusa's research interests include enumerative combinatorics, matrix theory, theoretical computer science, and the application of mathematics to the social sciences. He has four articles published in mathematics journals and one article accepted for publication in a political science journal. He welcomes collaboration with fellow faculty members. Dr. Hanusa is also interested in the teaching and learning of mathematics, and works to incorporate varied teaching techniques in the classroom to encourage and motivate student learning.

Dan A. Lee, Assistant Professor in Mathematics, received his A.B. in mathematics and physics from Harvard University in 2000 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford in 2005. Since then he has been an Assistant Research Professor at Duke University. His primary field of research is geometric analysis, a branch of mathematics that uses partial differential equations to understand the geometry of curved spaces. Currently, he is most interested in geometric aspects of general relativity, including the geometry of black holes.

Scott Wilson, Assistant Professor in Mathematics, earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Stony Brook University in 2005. He subsequently spent three years at the University of Minnesota, as a Dunham Jackson Assistant Professor, where he taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses, participated in seminars, and continued his research. His interests include algebraic and geometric topology, as well as mathematical physics. He is particularly interested in developing algebraic tools to study mathematical models of space-time, called manifolds. Such tools are useful for giving computable models of physical systems, such as fluid flow, and also as more abstract mathematical concepts, which may be used to “distinguish” spaces.

Lev Murokh, Assistant Professor (Physics) received his M.S. in Radiophysics and Electronics and Ph.D. in Physics from the N. Lobachevsky State University (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). In 1998, he moved to USA where he held various research and teaching positions at Brooklyn College and the College of Staten Island of CUNY and Stevens Institute of Technology. His scientific interests include transport and optical properties of semiconductor nanostructures, physics of biological objects, and general theory of open quantum systems. Lev Murokh works in close collaboration with several experimental groups in USA, Canada, Germany, and Japan. He was a recipient of the Fellowship from Swedish Royal Academy of Science and, currently, he is a Co-PI of the National Science Foundation-sponsored project “Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team: Nanostructure Components for Terahertz Spectroscopy on a Chip”. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Physical Review Letters, Physical Review B, and Applied Physics Letters.

Anil Chacko, Assistant Professor (Psychology); received his B.A. degree in Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from SUNY Buffalo in 2007. His research interests lie primarily in the development and course of disruptive behavior disorders in children and in developing effective, accessible, and sustainable prevention, treatment, and service delivery models these children. His research is aimed at identifying distinct trajectories that capture the marked individual differences that are encompassed in the heterogeneous presentation and pathways of children with disruptive behavior disorders. Meaningfully identifying patterns of individual differences is particularly important for developing targeted interventions that address central risk processes in context. Characterizing this heterogeneity, in all its nuance and complexity, and harnessing such characterization to inform intervention is a central goal of his research career. He aims to develop a program of research that advances understanding of central questions such as: (a) what makes a difference for whom in the treatment/prevention of disruptive behavior disorders?; (b) does intervention at critical developmental periods reduce the likelihood of chronic difficulties for these children?; (d) does contextualizing prevention/treatment enhance their effectiveness for families who are traditionally “hard to treat”?, and; how do we integrate findings from the developmental psychopathology of disruptive behavior disorders to develop effective, accessible, and sustainable prevention, treatment, and service delivery models for high-risk children with disruptive behavior disorders?

Emily A. Jones, Assistant Professor (Psychology), received her B.A. in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1996, her M.A. in Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook in 1999, and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook in 2002. In 2002, she joined the faculty at Southampton College and then CW Post as Assistant Professor. In 2004, Dr. Jones received certification in behavior analysis (BCBA). Her research draws from the areas of cognitive developmental psychology and applied behavior analysis, focusing on the development and demonstration of behaviorally based interventions to address core deficits in children with developmental disabilities, specifically autism and Down syndrome. Her previous research has examined interventions to teach spontaneous communication skills and decrease challenging behavior. Currently, in the area of autism, Dr. Jones has developed and demonstrated effective intervention procedures to address the fundamental deficits in joint attention skills. Two grants from the Organization for Autism Research have supported this work, expanding intervention from school to home and community settings with teachers, parents, and peers, as well as allowing for preliminary longitudinal follow up of children as they learn joint attention skills. In the area of Down syndrome, Dr. Jones’ research focuses on interventions to address early requesting deficits, an area of specific impairment. Future research questions center on the examination of increasingly sophisticated forms of joint attention and related outcomes associated with joint attention intervention in children with autism; early communication skills including, vocal imitation and gesture use, as well as social skills and feeding issues in children with Down syndrome.

Gregory O’Mullan, Assistant Professor (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences); received a B.S. degree in Environmental Science and a M.S. degree in Cell and Developmental Biology at Rutgers University. While at Rutgers he studied the biogeography of deep-sea hydrothermal vent mussels and patterns of bacterial endosymbiont transmission in these mussels. Dr. O’Mullan completed a M.A. and Ph.D. in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. His doctoral dissertation examined the biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen and the diversity of ammonia oxidizing bacteria in marine and estuarine environments. Most recently he has completed Postdoctoral training at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University where he has investigated the microbial ecology of the Hudson River Estuary and the response of subsurface microbial communities to aquifer carbon sequestration activities. Upon joining Queens College his research will continue to address the importance of microbes in aquatic environments and the interaction between human activity and the natural environment.

Ashaki A. Rouff, Assistant Professor (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences); received her B.S. degree in Geology from Middlebury College in 1998 and completed her Ph.D. in Geosciences from Stony Brook University in 2004. Her PhD research focused on metal-mineral interactions in low-temperature aqueous geochemical environments. She continued this research as a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Chicago at Illinois. She recently completed a second Post Doctoral position in the Laboratory for Energy Materials at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland. Her research at Paul Scherrer involved high temperature, high pressure studies aimed at improving hydrothermal gasification of biomass as a source of clean fuel. Her current research interests are geared towards understanding environmental problems in contaminant-mineral geochemical systems at variable temperature using a combination of macroscopic laboratory and molecular spectroscopic approaches.

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Social Sciences

Steven Solieri joins the Accounting department, as an Assistant Professor. He is a native of Queens New York, attended Holy Cross High School and resides in Lake Ariel, PA. He has taught at the Univesity of Scranton, the University of Michigan-Flint, Binghamton University and Palm Beach Junior College as well as several CPA review courses. Dr. Solieri graduated from Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL) and holds four Masters Degrees from University of Michigan-Flint (MBA), Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute-MS in Manufacturing Management), Pace University (MS in Information Systems), and Binghamton University (Master in Accounting). He also holds a Ph.D.in Accounting from Binghamton University. He holds five professional certifications CPA, CMA (Certified Management Accountant), CIA (Certified Internal Auditor), CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor) and CITP (Certified Information Technology Professional) and is pursuing the the CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) and CISM (Certified Information Security Manager).

Alexander Bauer joins the Anthropology department, as an Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. Since 1997, he has conducted archaeological research at Sinop, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, where he is investigating patterns of cultural interaction across the region from approximately 5000 BCE to the present day. He has published on wide range of topics, including the Black Sea and the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age, the archaeological analysis of ceramics, Peircean semiotics and epistemology, and cultural heritage law and policy. Currently, he is also the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cultural Property, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal focused on debates over cultural property, heritage, and related issues. Before coming to Queens College, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the George Washington University, and most recently Princeton University.

Diane Coogan-Pushner, Distinguished Lecturer in Economics, brings expertise in risk management from working over seventeen years in capital markets, insurance markets, and corporate finance, after earning her Ph.D. from Boston University. She is also a CFA charter holder. Dr. Coogan's experience includes portfolio management for the longest-running hedge fund for financial stocks in the US, managing a private equity insurance fund, structuring reinsurance and capital markets transactions for Swiss Re, and building the value-based management practice area for financial services firms while at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She has published on the topic of risk-adjusted performance measurement, is a thought leader on risk management and financial services valuation, and has been a featured speaker at banking and insurance conferences. Earlier in her career, Dr. Coogan worked for AT&T's financial forecasting and strategy divisions and for the World Bank.

Wendy Wang, Distinguished Lecturer in Economics, obtained her Ph.D. in financial economics from the City University of New York. After graduating with honors she went to work in the financial industry. During her ten years on Wall Street Wang conducted economic and financial research studies, as well as portfolio construction and management with a specialization in risk management. In her most recent job Wang specialized in portfolio optimization and macro & micro factor models. She also has worked on equity, fixed–income credit structured products, and their derivatives, as well as hedge funds.

Ying Zhao, Assistant Professor in Economics, received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. Her primary research interests fall in the area of empirical industrial organization, especially the dynamics of consumer and firm behavior in durable goods markets. She also has broad interests in the application of IO models to other fields in applied microeconomics

Katherine Antonova, Assistant Professor in History, recently completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University. She is preparing a book manuscript entitled "The Importance of the Woman of the House": Portrait of a Russian Gentry Family, 1830-1866, a microhistory of the Chikhachev family of Vladimir Province, Russia. The book explores gendered family roles, the reception of ideas, and the relationships between the gentry family, the provincial village, and educated society. She is currently co-organizing a conference at the Harriman Institute on the home in Russian history and culture.

Kristina Richardson, Assistant Professor in History, received her A.B. in History and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University (2003) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (2005, 2008). Her dissertation "Blighted Bodies and Physical Difference in Cairo, Damascus and Mecca, 1400-1550" investigated the ways in which scholarly male friendship influenced the transmission of ideas about disability in the late medieval and early modern Arab Islamicate lands. Her forthcoming projects include investigations of intimacy and marital relations; medical and scientific discourses; and the relationships between body and authority in early modern Damascus and Cairo.

Elena Vesselinov, Assistant Professor of Sociology, investigates gated communities, race and ethnicity, the link between social and spatial inequality, immigrant housing, post-socialist cities and economic globalization. Dr. Vesselinov's research has appeared in Urban Studies, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Sociological Forum, Research on Social Stratification and Mobility, and Demography, among others. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Soros Foundation, Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies and other agencies. Her study of gated communities and residential segregation has been recently supported with a two-year award by the National Institutes of Health.

Nicholas Alexiou Lecturer of Sociology, has taught at Queens College since 1990, in the Sociology Department and the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. He holds a degree in sociology from Queens College (M.A.) and is completing a Ph.D. in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has published on ethnic identity, mass media, and issues concerning the Greek American community, and regularly contributes to Greek-American press and radio, submitting articles on sociological and cultural topics and hosting a radio show on Public Radio. Nicholas Alexiou has also published four books of poetry, and a selection of his poems has appeared in anthologies of Greek-American poetry. In 2007, he received the Queens College President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by Adjunct Faculty.

Holly Reed, Assistant Professor of Sociology, recevied her Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University. She was a demography trainee with the Population Studies and Training Center. Her dissertation research uses event history analysis to examine historical changes in internal migration patterns and migrant social networks in South Africa from the apartheid era until the present. She has also worked with colleagues at Brown and at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, on a research project exploring the relationships between migration, urbanization, environmental change and human health in coastal Ghana. Ms.Reed is a 2003 recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and previously worked as a program officer for the Committee on Population of the National Academies in Washington, DC. Her research with the Committee dealt with the demography of forced migration, the demographic dynamics and implications of urbanization in the developing world, and other international population issues. Ms. Reed holds a B.S. in international relations and an M.A. in demography from Georgetown