Welcome New Faculty!
Eleven instructional and tenure-track faculty joined the College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics for the FY20 and FY21 academic years. Please welcome our new colleagues.
FY 20
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
Dinler Amaral Antunes, Assistant Professor
Dr. Antunes’ research focuses on the development and application of computational biology methods to model and analyze protein-ligand interactions. Some of his projects have broader biomedical applications, including drug discovery, but most of his work is focused on molecular interactions involved in cellular immunity. In particular, he is developing methods to help improve the specificity and safety of vaccines and immunotherapies targeting cancer and viral infections.
Martin Nuñez, Associate Professor
Dr. Nuñez is an ecologist interested in the study of biological invasions. Invasions provide us the possibilities of testing many ecological and evolutionary theories, and they give us the possibility of applying ecological knowledge to the management of these serious threats. Invasive species can also provide crucial information to understand and face other global challenges such as climate change. These theoretical and applied challenges are what fascinate him about the study of invasions.
Department of Chemistry
Brad Carrow, Associate Professor
Dr. Carrow’s research group is an interdisciplinary team bridging the fields of synthetic, organometallic, physical organic, and polymer chemistry. The broader goals of his research program are to develop catalysts and mechanistic knowledge to solve problems in contemporary sustainable catalysis and to discover catalytic routes to next-generation polymers that can help to address plastics pollution and recycling.
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Ny Riavo G. “Voary” Voarintsoa, Assistant Professor
Dr. Voarintsoa’s research has focused on geochemistry, petrography, and mineralogy of sedimentological archives (stalagmites and lake sediments) to reconstruct past climate and past environmental change in Madagascar, southern Africa, and the Mascarene islands, western Indian Ocean. Dr. Voarintsoa aspires to find better solutions to accurately reconstruct paleoclimate in these regions by developing additional robust proxies, such as the triple oxygen and clumped isotopes, as a tool to refine paleohydrology and to test climate models.
Department of Mathematics
Mikyoung Jun, ConocoPhillips Professor of Data Science
Dr. Jun works on spatio-temporal statistics and their application to environmental applications. Her research goal is to develop new statistical models and methods, motivated by real-world applications. Her expertise is on developing covariance models for Gaussian processes on a global scale, focusing on nonstationary and multivariate aspects. She has applied statistical models to climate data, terrorism modeling, air quality problems, and many more.
FY 21
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
Jake Daane, Assistant Professor
Dr. Daane studies the genetic mechanisms by which species adapt to changing and extreme environments, with a broader goal of utilizing this information to elucidate fundamental principles of trait development, adaptive radiation, and human disease. He approaches these questions using a combined application of comparative and functional genomics with experimental analysis in model organisms.
Sean-Patrick Scott, Professor of Practice
Dr. Scott is interested in the difference between normal and cancerous breast cell lines circadian rhythms at the molecular level of mRNA, microRNA, and protein. He is also interested in the difference in molecular circadian rhythms of other tissues in the normal and diseased state including stem cells. Finally, Dr. Scott is interested in the structure and function of cyclic nucleotide binding ion channels and protein design.
Abdalla Zanouny, Instructional Assistant Professor
Dr. Zanouny uses quantitative genomics to identity genetic variants underlying phenotypic variation of quantitative traits. He holds a Ph.D. in plant breeding and plant genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he taught for years. His other experience includes teaching at Madison College, King Saud University in Saudi Arabia, and Minia University in Egypt. He is interested in science communication and taking the science outside the classroom.
Department of Chemistry
Naihao Chiang, Assistant Professor
Dr. Chiang is interested in exploring fundamental light-matter interaction for small-molecule chemical/biochemical sensing and near-field induced chemistry at the single-molecule limit. He seeks to formulate and interrogate new plasmonic/optical cavity enabled near-field phenomena for fundamental studies of liquid-phase surface chemistry, with the extension to biomedical applications in intracellular delivery.
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Brandee Carlson, Assistant Professor
Dr. Carlson studies the geomorphology and development of stratigraphy in fluvial-deltaic systems using field measurements, physical experiments, and numerical models. She is interested in sedimentary processes that span seconds to thousands of years, from grain-scale sediment transport to the generation of large-scale stratigraphy. Her research informs coastal sustainability efforts as well as the depositional history of ancient sedimentary basins.
Department of Mathematics
Li Gao, Assistant Professor
Dr. Gao’s research interests lie in the area of functional analysis, with a special focus on operator algebras with applications to quantum information theory. In particular, he uses tools from noncommutative analysis to study quantum functional and entropic inequalities, as well as their applications to quantum entanglement, decoherence, and open quantum systems.