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Faculty Highlights - COSAM new faculty for fall 

COSAM welcomes nine new faculty this fall in the Departments of Biological Sciences, Geosciences, Mathematics and Statistics, and Physics.

Biological Sciences

Courtney Leisner comes from the Department of Plant Biology at Michigan State University where she is completing a NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research interests are in understanding plant responses to their environment.

Ryan Range comes from the Department of Biological Sciences at Mississippi State University where he is an assistant professor. His research deals with a fundamental question in developmental biology - how signaling and regulatory interactions pattern embryos along these axes during development.

Cissy Ballen comes from the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities where she is a postdoctoral associate. Her research addresses the role of higher education in creating just and equitable communities.

Jason Upton comes from the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin where he is an assistant professor. His research program centers on the molecular pathogenesis of murine cytomegalovirus and the regulation of programmed cell death including the molecular mechanisms by which cancer cells evade programmed cell death and how tumor cells inactivate their own cell death machinery.

Mathematics and Statistics

Phuong Hoang received her PhD in applied mathematics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), France. Her research interests lie in the mathematical and numerical analysis of numerical methods for solving partial differential equations and in their application to the simulation of various physical phenomena.

Gregory Puleo received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on graph theory, especially problems related to graph coloring.

Geosciences

Laura Bilenker received her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on quantifying element mobility and isotope fractionation on Earth’s surface and in its interior.

Physics

Michael Gramlich comes from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a physicist trained in neuroscience and biophysics. He studies molecular mechanisms that underlie long-range synaptic vesicle transport using nanoscale-resolution fluorescence microscopy.

Dennis Bodewits comes from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland. His research area is the study of atomic and molecular physics in the atmospheres of comets.

Last Updated: 10/12/2018