Lightning Talks: 23 New Faculty Introduce Themselves at 2nd Annual Pecha Kucha

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 15, 2024) — In a succession of one-minute introductions, 23 new faculty members shared their research with colleagues last week at the second annual Pecha Kucha, hosted by Provost Carol Kim and held in the Performing Arts Center. One by one, each faculty member took the stage, talked about their research areas accompanied by a descriptive slide, then took a seat in the front row of the theater.

The “lightning round” event is designed to be “fun, quick and informative,” Kim said, adding that it’s a way to boost collaborations among faculty in different disciplines. The Pecha Kucha was followed by a reception in the Futterer Lounge, offering a chance for further networking.

New faculty who joined the University this fall are:

Håvard Bjerkevik

Visiting assistant professor, Mathematics & Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences​ (CAS)

Bjerkevik’s research focus is topological data analysis. He received his PhD at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, in 2020 and was a postdoc at the Technical University Graz in Austria and Technical University Munich in Germany before coming to UAlbany.

Eli Boonin-Vail

Lecturer, Art & Art History, CAS

In addition to being a lecturer, Boonin-Vail is director of the Film Studies minor. He teaches a variety of history, theory and production courses in film and media, with a particular interest in global, Black and governmental media, and the relationship between American cinemas and the prison industrial complex. He received his PhD in 2024 from the University of Pittsburgh.  

Lori Bruner

Assistant professor, Literacy Teaching & Learning, School of Education​ 

Bruner’s research explores how print and digital texts support early literacy development, with a particular interest in how digital media can support children’s vocabulary learning. She received her PhD in curriculum and instruction from Michigan State University in 2022. ​

Jill Cofield 

Visiting assistant professor, Information Science and Technology​, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity

Cofield received both master’s in information science and PhD in educational policy and leadership from UAlbany and has more than 25 years of experience in educational leadership, public management and data development at the state Department of Education and at SUNY. 

Her research focuses on the effective use of technology in learning environments, including enhancing data management, improving access to resources and exploring educational interventions that strengthen STEM education.

​Mary DePascale

Assistant professor, Educational Psychology & Methodology, School of Education

DePascale’s research focuses on promoting mathematical cognition and learning in early childhood, examining how social interactions with parents and caregivers promote math learning in young children. She received her PhD from the University of Maryland College Park and did postdoctoral research at Boston College.

​Zhuojun Gu

Assistant professor, Information Systems and Business Analytics, Massry School of Business.​

Gu studies digital platform design and consumer behavior in mobile social gaming and online auction and retail platforms by leveraging randomized field experiments, game theory and econometric modeling to uncover the dynamics driving online marketplaces.​ She received her PhD from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

Ryan Hubbard

Assistant professor, Psychology, CAS ​

Hubbard received his PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he also conducted research as a Beckman Institute postdoctoral fellow. His research is focused at the intersection of prediction, language comprehension, memory and aging, and he uses novel behavioral paradigms, large-scale online experiments and eye-tracking to understand these cognitive processes. 

Camela Hughes

Visiting assistant professor, School of Criminal Justice, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy

​Hughes is director of the Cold Case Analysis Center and her interests include juvenile justice and best practices, the impact of trauma on individuals and how that impacts behavior, ethics in criminal justice professions, and the impact of media on criminal justice and perceptions of the system. Hughes received her master’s and PhD in criminal justice at UAlbany and taught most recently at The College of Saint Rose.​

S M Ashiqul Islam

Assistant professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, College of Integrated Health Sciences​

Islam joins UAlbany with a robust background in genetics and data science. His research interweaves advanced bioinformatics and AI methodologies to address complex biomedical challenges, notably in developing computational tools for mutational analysis in cancer research. Islam received his ​PhD from Baylor University.​

Luyi Jian

Assistant professor, School of Criminal Justice, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy

Jian’s research includes exploring innovative interventions for applying positive youth justice philosophy and analyzing complex administrative data to understand the impact of justice policies and services for youth and adults. Luyi holds a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley.​

​Haley L. Muir Knox

Visiting assistant professor, Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology, Division of Special Education, School of Education

Knox spent more than 10 years as a special education teacher working with students with a variety of disabilities and taught graduate and undergraduate special education and teacher preparation programs at The College of Saint Rose. Her research focuses on improving transition education to create better and more equitable outcomes in employment and independent living for people with disabilities. She received her PhD from UAlbany.

​Chong Liu

Assistant professor, Computer Science, College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering​ (CNSE)

Liu’s research focuses on designing provably efficient machine learning algorithms for real-world challenges, such as testing new materials and new therapeutics. He also researches how to speed up machine learning algorithms using quantum machines.  Liu received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jake Mulholland 

Assistant professor, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, CAS​

Mulholland received his master’s and PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Naval Postgraduate School. A former assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Dakota, his research expertise is in severe local storms with an emphasis in simulating these storms with high-resolution numerical weather models.

​Yaqi Shen

Assistant professor, Literacy Teaching & Learning, School of Education

As a former English language learner and English teacher, Shen is interested in biliteracy development, literacy assessment and classroom-based reading intervention with a goal of developing classroom instructional practices to improve the reading development of children from diverse first-language backgrounds.​ Shen received her PhD in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Pennsylvania State University.

Hannah Shorrock

Assistant professor, Biological Sciences and RNA Institute​, CAS

Shorrock received her PhD from the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at The University of Edinburgh. She has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Berglund Lab at The RNA Institute at UAlbany, where her research focus was on small molecule screens and therapy development for CAG repeat expansion diseases, including multiple types of spinocerebellar ataxia.​​

Saurabh Sihag

Assistant professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, CNSE

Sihag received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute after graduating with a master’s from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked on research problems at the interface of the theory of machine learning and the practical machine learning solutions for health care. His research interests include statistical signal processing, learning theory and network neuroscience.​

​Scott Storm

Assistant professor, Literacy Teaching & Learning, School of Education ​

A former high school teacher with 15 years of experience designing, founding and sustaining urban public schools, Storm researches the social and cultural construction of schooling, adolescence and literacies particularly as they relate to aesthetics and social justice. He received a PhD from New York University.

​Haoyu Wang

Assistant professor, Computer Science, CNSE

Wang received his PhD in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. His research spans data mining, machine learning and natural language processing, with a particular focus on developing efficient AI systems to democratize AI for broader accessibility. ​

Melanie Wilcox 

Associate professor, Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology, School of Education. ​

Wilcox’s research focuses on issues of racial, economic and social inequity and justice in psychology and higher education, including culturally and structurally responsive mental health care, racial and socioeconomic inequity in higher education, and racial and social justice. Her aim is to conduct policy-relevant research, and she has used her research to advocate for institutional and public policy change. Wilcox received her PhD from UAlbany and is a licensed psychologist and board certified in counseling psychology, with clinical expertise in trauma, addiction and LGBTQ+-affirming care. 

​Bariscan Yonel

Assistant professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, CNSE​

Yonel’s research interests include signal processing, optimization, machine learning and inverse problems in imaging, towards developing provably good, computationally efficient methods in addressing high dimensional inference problems and utilizing modern advances in data science and artificial intelligence to enable novel sensing and imaging systems. He received his PhD from RPI and his bachelor’s from Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Xueying Yu

Research Faculty, Atmospheric Sciences Research Center​​

Yu received her PhD degree from the University of Minnesota, a master’s from Nanjing University and was a postdoc at Stanford University. Her research focuses on understanding the drivers of climate change, focusing on greenhouse gases and air pollutants, to address critical knowledge gaps related to land-atmosphere-ocean exchange, climate-chemistry interactions and their changes over time. 

Shenglong Zhang

Associate professor, Chemistry, CAS

Zhang comes to UAlbany from New York Institute of Technology, where he was an associate professor in the Department of Biological & Chemical Sciences. He did his PhD in Organic Chemistry at Columbia University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Zhang’s research focuses on sequencing RNAs that carry natural chemical modifications using mass spectrometry.​

Bu Zhao

Assistant professor, Environmental & Sustainable Engineering, CNSE​

Before joining UAlbany, Zhao was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and received his PhD from the University of Michigan. His research interests include data-driven environmental system analysis, environmental big data, industrial ecology and sustainable engineering. Zhau is managing editor of the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling and the review editor of the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.