Reception will welcome new faculty to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences


LAWRENCE – The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas has hired 29 new faculty members for the 2013-2014 academic year. All faculty and staff are invited to welcome the new faculty at a reception Wednesday, Sept. 25.

The College will host the reception at 3:30 p.m. in the Malott Room at the Kansas Union. The program will include the presentation of the 2013 Career Achievement Award to James Hartman, professor emeritus of the Department of English.

The recognized new faculty members:

  • Nazli Avdan, Department of Political Science, assistant professor – Avdan’s research explores territoriality and international relations, including visa policies, international immigration, border management and reconceptualizing border salience.
  • Zongwu Cai, Department of Economics, Charles Oswald Professor of Econometrics – Cai’s research includes theoretical and applied econometrics, financial econometrics nonlinear and nonstationary time series modeling, and panel data analysis.
  • Mariana Candido, Department of History, assistant professor – Candido specializes in the history of West Central Africa during the era of the transatlantic slave trade.
  • Josie Chandler, Department of Molecular Biosciences, assistant professor – Chandler focuses on how bacteria communicate to carry out complex group behaviors by studying quorum, a cell-cell communication system. 
  • Vitaly Chernetsky, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, associate professor – Chernetsky’s research interests include Russian, Ukrainian, and East and Central European literatures and cultures.
  • Michael Clift, Department of Chemistry, assistant professor – Clift researches synthetic chemistry, focusing on the development of new reactions and total synthesis.
  • Richard Glor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Biodiversity Institute, associate professor/associate curator – Glor researches what processes contribute to the formation of new species and what factors underlie macro evolutionary patterns of diversity.
  • Lynn Hancock, Department of Molecular Biosciences, associate professor and Murphy Scholar – Hancock’s research interests include microbiology, pathogenic microbiology and prokaryotic genetics.
  • YunFeng Jiang, Department of Mathematics, assistant professor – Jiang’s research interests include the area of algebraic geometry and mathematics physics.
  • Megan Kaminski, Department of English, assistant professor - Kaminski's areas of research include creative writing, poetry and poetics, and nonfiction.
  • Rachel Krause, School of Public Affairs and Administration, assistant professor – Krause researches issues of urban sustainability, particularly motivations, implementation and consequences of local-level greenhouse gas abatement efforts.
  • Bradley Lane, School of Public Affairs and Administration, assistant professor – Lane researches travel behavior, focusing on the effects of cost to modal choice and the implications for transportation sustainability.
  • Patrick Miller, Department of Political Science, assistant professor – Miller’s research includes public opinion political psychology; campaigns, elections and voting behavior; political communication; and racial politics.
  • Lynn Murphy, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing, clinical assistant professor – Murphy’s research focuses on assessing and treating patients with neurogenic and other disorders of speech, language, voice, cognition and swallowing.
  • Paul Nahme, Department of Religious Studies, assistant professor – Nahme focuses on modern Jewish thought, modern Jewish intellectual history, and method and theory in the study of religion.
  • Eileen Nutting, Department of Philosophy, assistant professor – Nutting’s areas of specialization include philosophy of mathematics, logic and epistemology.
  • Shannon Portillo, School of Public Affairs and Administration, assistant professor – Portillo’s research explores formal structures, such as rules and laws, and informal structures, such as social status.
  • Andrea Quenette, Department of Communication Studies, assistant professor – Quenette’s research focuses on political news use and the influence of news framing on political attitudes, effect and behavior.
  • Christian Ray, Center for Bioinformatics/Department of Molecular Biosciences, assistant professor – Ray’s research interests include evolutionary biology, computational biology, biological physics and system biology.
  • Sarah Robins, Department of Philosophy, assistant professor – Robin’s research focuses on the intersection of philosophy and psychology with memory and implicit learning and conceptual development.
  • Armin Schulz, Department of Philosophy, assistant professor – Schulz’s areas of specialization include philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of social science.
  • Benjamin Sikes, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Kansas Biological Survey, assistant professor/assistant scientist – Sikes focuses on soil ecology, how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi communities change over time and the functional consequences of those changes.
  • Wm. Leo Smith, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Biodiversity Institute, assistant professor/assistant curator – Smith researches the evolutionary biology of fish, particularly the large-scale phenomena that shaped fishes’ history and diversification geographically and geologically.
  • Maya Stiller, Department of Art History, assistant professor – Stiller’s research incorporates many disciplines to introduce a new and interdisciplinary methodology to the study of religions in East Asia.
  • J. Daniel Tapia Takaki, Department of Physics and Astronomy, assistant professor – Takaki researches ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions, quarkonia production in proton-proton collisions, central exclusive production in proton-proton collisions and heavy-ion physics.
  • Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, assistant professor – Tosta’s research includes 19th and 20th century Brazilian literature, Brazilian cinema, contemporary Portuguese literature and ethnic literatures of the U.S.
  • Benjamin Uchiyama, Department of History, assistant professor – Uchiyama specializes in Modern Japan, particularly mass culture and war mobilization in the 1930s and 1940s.
  • James Walters, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, assistant professor – Walters researches Heliconius butterflies, with an emphasis on understanding the role that sexual selection plays in patterns of genetic diversity.
  • Peter Zazzali, Department of Theatre, assistant professor – Zazzali specializes in acting, actor training and theory, directing, performance history and sociology of theatre.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences encourages learning without boundaries in its more than 50 departments, programs and centers. Through innovative research and teaching, the College emphasizes interdisciplinary education, global awareness and experiential learning. The College is KU's broadest, most diverse academic unit.

Fri, 09/06/2013

author

Ursula Rothrock

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Ursula Rothrock

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

785-864-8118