Anati Alyaa Azhar
Originating from Malaysia, Anati received her B.S. in Molecular Biology from UMich. She enjoyed her research experience a lot and is now a 4th year PhD candidate in the department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. With Györgyi Csankovszki as an advisor, Anati’s research focuses on characterizing the interactors and regulators of the proteins participating in dosage compensation of C. elegans. Since Anati’s future career plans include teaching and mentoring, she is also a senior instructor in Developing Future Biologists (DFB), an educational outreach organization that aims to instill the core fundamentals of developmental biology in the next generation. Outside of research, Anati’s hobbies include storywriting, cooking and drawing.
Pat Boland
Pat is a Lecturer of Mathematics at the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus. Before receiving his BA from Providence College, he studied number theory and combinatorics in Budapest, Hungary. He later earned a PhD from the University of Massachusetts in geometry and topology. Pat came to the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral scholar in 2009 and has had the opportunity to teach a wide variety of undergraduate (and some graduate) math courses. One of his favorite courses to teach is Math 389 (Explorations in Mathematics). This course gives him the opportunity to guide young math researchers. Pat is proud to have given several talks to students in area high schools, including those affiliated with the Wolverine Pathways program. He currently enjoys researching interactions between number theory and hyperbolic geometry, is mildly obsessed with the Markoff numbers, and is interested in learning more physics.
Leandro Beraldo e Silva
Leandro is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Astronomy. His research is focused on trying to understand how galaxies (and their different subcomponents) are born, evolve and interact with each other. In the broad field of Galactic Dynamics, he has investigated the problems of how self-gravitating systems relax towards stationary states, different scenarios for the formation of the Milky Way's thin and thick discs, the role of galactic bars in shaping photometric features through resonances and the propagation of density waves in galactic discs. He is currently exploring stellar populations in the Milky Way's halo to constrain its shape. Leandro grew up in São Paulo (Brasil) and received a B.S. and his Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo. He has been a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Central Lancashire (UK).
Adriene Beltz
Adriene is an assistant professor of Psychology and a research assistant professor of Data Science. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Psychology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and her Ph.D. in Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience from the Pennsylvania State University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focused on quantitative methodology. In her research in the Methods, Sex differences, and Development – M(SD) – Lab, she uses time-indexed statistical analyses to understand how the brain functionally mediates sex hormone (e.g., androgen, estrogen) influences on gendered behavior- uniquely for each person. Thus, a key aspect of her work is person-specific data analysis, which produces findings that have implications for individualized education and precision mental health care. She is an associate editor for methods journals and has received several awards for her work, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science and an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation. When not working, Adriene enjoys spending time with her husband, two young children, and labradoodle.
Ahmad Barhoumi
Sunita Chepuri
Sunita is a Postdoctoral Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. She earned her BA at Bowdoin College and her MS and PhD at the University of Minnesota. Sunita's research is in algebraic combinatorics, a field that uses algebraic techniques to answer combinatorial questions. More specifically, she works with total positivity, which can be thought of as the study of matrices that meet certain positivity conditions, and cluster algebras, which are algebraic objects that arise from the relations between these positivity conditions. In her free time, Sunita enjoys participating in fantasy leagues of all types (March Madness, Iditarod, The Bachelor,...), doing (currently virtual) pub trivia with her friends, and ice cream.
Miranda Nicole Cosman
Miranda Nicole Cosman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She has taught introductory courses concentrating in biological anthropology on the topics of osteology, comparative anatomy, and human skeletal health. She has taught a small format class focused on developing student research skills and understanding of the methodologies employed by biological anthropologists. Her research focuses on how age related changes in locomotion of non-human apes are reflected in their trabecular and cortical bone across ontogeny. When not in CT labs or museum collections, she is hiking, bird-watching, or playing with her cats.
Shreyasi Datta
Shreyasi is a Postdoctoral Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. She did her Ph.D. at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. Her research area comprises the number theory and dynamics. More specifically, her work involves using results from dynamics to solve number theory problems. Besides work, she loves to spend her time in the gym, doing yoga, and drawing sketches.
Glenn Fox
Glenn is a Lecturer in the Division of Anatomical Sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Michigan. Glenn teaches Gross Anatomy (M1), Head and Neck Anatomy (DENT 545), and Human Anatomy (ANAT 403). His research focuses on pedagogical approaches to anatomy, and he has a special interest in the the evolution and ecology of squamate reptiles (specifically snake evolution and origins). In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, nature photography, travel, and spending time with his wife, sons, and their two dogs.
Dina Gohar
Mel Hochster
Mel Hochster is the Jack E. McLaughlin Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard and received his Ph.D. from Princeton. His research interests might be described as studying solutions of a large number of equations in a large number of unknowns, including their geometry, by techniques related to number theory. He has five children. Somehow this does not leave a lot of time for recreation, but his hobbies include bridge and cryptic crossword puzzles.
Trachette Jackson
Trachette (Trace) Jackson is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington and her postdoctoral studies were conducted at Duke University. Trace's research interests can be described as turning cancer discoveries into effective treatments with the aid of mathematical modeling. It is an exciting time to work in the interdisciplinary field of Mathematical Oncology. Even TIME magazine agrees that, “A team-based, cross disciplinary approach to cancer research is upending tradition and delivering results faster.” Trace is an award-winning educator and scholar whose research in mathematical oncology has received international attention. In 2003, she became the second African American woman to receive the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Award in Mathematics; in 2005 she received the James S. McDonnell 21st Century Scientist Award; in 2008 Diverse Magazine honored her as one of the year’s Emerging Scholars. In 2010 she received the Blackwell-Tapia Prize, which recognizes a mathematician who has contributed significantly to research, and who has contributed in significant ways to addressing the problem of underrepresentation of minorities in mathematics.
Cheyenne Lei
Dr. Cheyenne Lei is a Research Fellow within the Institute for Global Change Biology in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Geography at Michigan State University. Dr. Lei is interested in coupled human-environment change, atmospheric physics, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and landscape ecology. Dr. Lei’s research explores the major factors which influence surface reflectivity, in order to elucidate the mechanisms driving climate warming processes between coupled human-environment exchanges in unique ecosystems and landscapes. Lei’s work has not only been highlighted by the Department of Energy in 2021 for the broader scientific community and government policy, but also has been used as a major educational stepping stone in classroom projects for high school and outreach programs. Her efforts span a wide range of applications, from purely ecological research, such as greenhouse gas exchange in natural ecosystems, to industrial applications, such as landscape conversion for food versus fuel needs, irrigation optimization, as well as agricultural carbon sequestration. In her free time, she is an avid motorcyclist. As a certified United States Motorcycle Safety Foundation Instructor, Lei often teaches and demonstrates the basics of motorcycle safety and riding to beginner and advanced riders.
Daniel Mayerson
Daniel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITF) at the KU Leuven in Belgium. He holds Master degrees in Theoretical Physics from the KU Leuven (in Belgium) and the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. cum laude from the University of Amsterdam. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan from 2015 to 2018, and at the Institut de Physique Théorique (IPhT) at CEA Saclay in France from 2018 to 2021. His research interests include using string theory to understand black holes and their interior. Daniel grew up in Belgium and will gladly enlighten you as to why Belgian chocolate is the best in the world. Outside of physics, Daniel’s hobbies include fencing, piano, cooking and board games.
Hector Mendoza
Hector is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. Under the tutelage of Györgyi Csankovszki, Hector is currently investigating the epigenetic processes involved in the maintenance of sex chromosomes. Hector is also an IRACDA fellow, participating in pedagogical training with faculty from partner institutions in the Metro Detroit area. Hector’s future career plans include starting his own research program and mentor the next generation of future scientists. Outside of the laboratory, Hector enjoys science fiction media, cooking, and creative writing.
David C. Michener
Dr. Michener is the Associate Curator at the UM Nichols Arboretum and Matthaei Botanical Gardens and is active in the Program in the Environment as well as Museum Studies. David's professional responsibilities are for the endemic to exotic living plant collections and related landscapes managed by the "Arb and Gardens." His work has taken him from Brazil to the Russian Far East. David is active and published in the management of living collections according to museum standards. Currently, he is working to make the institution's rich resources digitally available to students and researchers. David has been with the University of Michigan since 1990. His undergraduate degree is in botany from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in botany are from the Claremont Graduate School / Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. He spent six years on a NSF-funded postdoctoral position at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. David's outside interests include gardening, fishing with friends, and travel.
Hidden In Plain Sight: Ann Arbor Research Garden Demonstrates Ties Between Plants And Medication
Patrick Nelson
Professor Nelson received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington in 1998. He spent time at the University of Minnesota and Duke University before working as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Mathematics at the University of Michigan and then as a Research Professor in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at UM. He received a Career Award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2003 for his work on Mathematical Modeling of HIV, was awarded a $900,000 NSF UBM award in 2006 for developing an undergraduate program in Mathematical Biology at UM. He is now interested in developing similar undergraduate programs at Lawrence Tech in Applied Mathematics and Math Biology.
His current research interests include developing computer algorithms and web based interfaces for Type 1 Diabetes that can be implemented in the clinic as well as mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. He works on Delay Differential Equations topics applied to Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are defined to help mentor undergraduates and graduate students to think as interdisciplinary scientists.
Minh Nguyen
Minh Nguyen is a cosmologist and a Leinweber Research Fellow at the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, University of Michigan. Minh studies how millions of galaxies are distributed across the universe, specifically the hierarchical pattern and structure in their distribution, to better understand gravity, dark matter and dark energy. While gravity pulls everything, including dark matter—the invisible matter that makes up more than 25% of our universe—together, dark energy—the mysterious energy that makes up almost 70% of our universe—tend to push space and everything apart. Studying the clustering and clumpiness of galaxies and matter therefore provide key insights into their nature. More about Minh’s research can be found on his homepage.
Minh taught MMSS last year as a guest lecturer and is very excited to teach it again this year as a main lecturer. He is further a Science Communication Fellows at the UM Museum of Natural History. Minh received his PhD in Astronomy from the IMPRS-Astro program at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich for his work at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. Before that, he received his MSc in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the AstroMundus program.
Jun Nian
Jun is a postdoc at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Milan. He earned his Ph.D. degree from C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University, and was a postdoc in Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Michigan. During his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University, he taught the lab courses for both undergraduate and graduate students. These include both elementary physics courses such as mechanics and more advanced ones like lasers, superconductors and nuclear physics. At the University of Michigan, he was the organizer of the journal club and one of the coordinators of the seminars on theoretical physics. He is broadly interested in theoretical physics and mathematical physics, and his current research focuses on quantum field theory, gravity and string theory
Janice Pappas
Janice received her B.A., B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, with a M.A. from Drake University. She is a theoretical biologist and mathematical paleobiologist, conducting research on the evolution of organisms modeled by shape analysis and 3D surface morphologies. Some of the modeled organisms include diatoms, ostracods, mollusks, echinoderms, anthropods, and annelids. Modeling is accomplished using implicit functions and partial differential equations. She is also an aquatic ecologist with studies of the Great Lakes on board research vessels and in the lab, including fish distributions in coastal wetlands, effects of nitrogen on phytoplankton, and seasonal succession of phytoplankton. Other research interests include graph theory and morphospace analysis, fuzzy logic in systematics, biological symmetry, and geometric spaces in ecosystem analysis. In her spare time, she enjoys baking prize winning cakes for the Michigan State Fair, aviculture, antiques, sewing and being with friends and family.
Carlos Peredo
Carlos is an Assistant Professor and Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar, as well as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology, in the department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University. His research focuses on understanding the patterns of evolution associated with mammals returning to a marine environment. His lab studies the evolutionary origins of key innovations, such as echolocation or filter feeding in whales. These innovations represent key transformations associated with changing ecologies akin to the transition from scales to feathers in dinosaurs of fins to limbs in early tetrapods. His research program uses high resolution CT scanning and 3D modeling of fossils to understand how the return to a marine environment broadly shapes mammalian evolution overall, and to understand the origins of modern groups and their ecologies.
Jianming Qian
Jianming Qian is the David M Dennison collegiate professor of physics at the University of Michigan. He received his BSc from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1985 and his PhD in physics from MIT in 1991. He joined the University of Michigan first as a postdoctoral research fellow in 1991, later as an assistant professor in 1993, and was promoted to professor in 2005. His research is focused on the understanding of the matter and their interactions at the smallest scale. His research accomplishments include the determination of three light neutrino species, the discoveries of the top quark and the Higgs boson. He received the distinguished faculty achievement award from the University in 2014 and was named the collegiate professor in 2015. He is currently a member of the ATLAS Collaboration, studying proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland. Beyond teaching and research, he enjoys travel, learning about history and culture, and exploring nature.
Sarah Raubenheimer
Sarah is a Researcher and Program Manager for the Institute for Global Change Biology at the
University of Michigan. Sarah studied a BSc in Botany and Zoology followed by a BSc honors in Biodiversity and Conservation in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. She later earned a PhD from Rhodes University in South Africa in plant physiological responses to climate change. Sarah then worked as Instrument Scientist and Researcher at the Rhodes University Elevated CO 2 Facility, Africa’s first large-scale plant climate change experiment facility, focusing on the effect of climatic changes on the valuable savanna regions of southern Africa. Her recent work has focused on how grassland and savannas are changing with climate change across the globe. When not working on science, Sarah can be found hiking and running in any mountains and forests to be found, from the Drakensberg to the Himalayas.
Corinna Schindler
Corinna Schindler is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. For her postdoctoral studies, Corinna joined the laboratory of Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University as a Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Fellow to work in the field of asymmetric catalysis. The primary goal of her research program is to develop new synthetic methods based on transition metal catalysis to enable the synthesis of biologically active natural and unnatural products.
Sheila Schueller
Sheila is a lecturer in UM's School of for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), where she teaches ecology and conservation biology courses to masters-level students, and has been an instructor in the MMSS program since 2002. She has also taught undergraduate students at Eastern Michigan University and UM's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, written a book on animal behavior for middle and high school students, and served as an instructional consultant for UM's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. She received her B.A. from Swarthmore College and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where she studied the ecology and evolution of plant-animal interactions (especially pollination and invasive species) in Michigan, the California Channel Islands, and Greece. Beyond academia, she learns from and works with many practitioners doing on-the-ground conservation and restoration work, including serving as an evaluation and adaptive ecosystem management consultant and by research and learning partnerships with private and public land owners and planners. She enjoys all aspects of ecology, especially outdoors!
Iian Smythe
Iian is a Postdoctoral Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics here at the University of Michigan. Before coming to Ann Arbor, he taught at Rutgers University and completed his PhD at Cornell University, specializing in logic, set theory, and the mathematics of infinity. As a logician, he is interested in understanding when problems are, or are not, possible to solve with a given set of mathematical tools. Teaching mathematics is his greatest passion, but Iian also likes to spend his time cooking, baking, sightseeing, and listening to music in every possible genre from his ever growing collection of vinyl records.
Randy Singer
Randy is an Assistant Research Scientist and Collection Manager for the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the Ann Arbor Campus. His research focuses on ecology and the natural history of deep-sea fishes. Randy also uses chemistry to help to develop new ways for preserving and caring for natural history specimens in museums. In his area of research he has discovered new species, mapped where species live and what environments they prefer and has added to what we know about our planet's largest ecosystem - the deep sea! Randy also has the pleasure of overseeing the fish division of one of the world's largest natural history museums. These museums house millions of specimens collected over hundreds of years by other scientists and are used in research and education by thousands of people all over the world. Randy grew up in the United States in the state of Florida and received his B.S. in Ecology from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia and his Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.
Corey Stephenson
Corey received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. After conducting postdoctoral studies at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, he joined the Department of Chemistry at Boston University as an Assistant Professor in 2007. He was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in February 2013, and in July 2013, joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan as an Associate Professor. Research in the Stephenson group is focused primarily upon the development of new strategies and methodologies for the synthesis of natural products and biomass degradation with a particular interest in processes which utilize the redox chemistry of visible light activated metal complexes. Corey has been a recipient of several awards of the past seven years recognizing excellence in research and teaching including: the Boehringer-Ingelheim New Investigator Award (2010), an NSF CAREER award (2011-2016), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2011-2013), the Amgen Young Investigator Award (2011), the Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry (2012-2015), the Eli Lilly Grantee Award (2013-2015), the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2013) and the EOS Best Reagent Award (2014).
Monica Valluri
Monica Valluri uses numerical calculations and simulations to probe observed galactic phenomena in order to understand the physical processes that produce them. Her current focus areas are dark objects whose presence we learn about via their gravitational effects on stars: supermassive black holes and dark matter halos. She has been working to develop sophisticated tools to use the motions stars close to the centers of galaxies to measure the masses of their supermassive black holes and to understand how these black holes affect the properties of their host galaxies. She has also been working on using the motions of millions of ancient stars in the Milky Way's halo to determine the properties of dark matter and compare the properties with those from large simulations of the universe.
Nina White
Nina White is a Lecturer and Research Scientist in the Department of Mathematics. She received her B.A. from University of California Berkeley, and her M.A and Ph.D from the University of Michigan. In graduate school, Dr. White’s research area was geometric topology, but since graduate school she started publishing in Math Education. She still loves geometry of all kinds, and greatly enjoys teaching Euclidean Geometry at UM every Fall. She has also taught a wide variety of geometric courses at the high school summer program Canada/USA Mathcamp. She lives with her family on a small livestock farm outside of Ann Arbor and enjoys (among other things) swinging kettlebells, riding her bike, solving crosswords, sewing clothes, singing all kinds of songs, and cooking up a storm.
Jakub Witaszek
Jakub Witaszek is a D.J. Lewis Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. He earned his PhD from Imperial College London and before coming to Michigan he spent a year between the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. His work involves the study of geometric shapes described by polynomial equations, especially these with integer coefficients. In his free time, Jakub enjoys reading fantasy and sci-fi books, and meeting up with his friends.