New Faculty - December 2016
Nita Bharti, assistant professor of biology, studies how the interaction between social and biological factors impacts human health. She is particularly interested in how the movement of people between populations affects exposure to disease, patterns of disease transmission, and access to vaccination and other health services. She uses ideas from anthropology, biology, and geography to develop methods for measuring rapid changes in populations that influence the spread and persistence of infectious diseases. Bharti uses her research to inform public-health policy and disease-intervention strageties. Bharti has held the Society in Science Branco Weiss Fellowship since 2012. During research associate in biology at Penn State and a visiting scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Bharti was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University from 2009 to 2012. She earned a doctoral degree in biology and a master's degree in anthropology at Penn State in 2009 and 2004, respectively, and a bachelor's degree in anthropology, zoology, and biology at the University of Michigan in 2000.
Maciej Boni, associate professor of biology, focuses his research on integrating computational epidemiology, theoretical epidemiology, and field epidemiology. He has developed two new field study designs aimed at describing the dynamics of tropical influenza, and has used the latest malaria field data to develop mathematical models aimed at helping to manage the future of drug resistance evolution in malaria. He is currently interested in whether antibody dynamics in a population can be reliably used to reconstruct past disease incidence. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Boni was principal investigator and head of the mathematical modeling group at the Oxford Uni- versity Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 2008 to 2016. He has been a consultant for the biotechnology company, Visterra Inc. in Cambridge MA since 2014, and has worked with the World Health Organization in various capacities since 2010. Boni was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and a resident scholar for Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. from 2007 to 2008. He earned a doctoral degree in biological sciences and a master's degree in scientific computing and computational mathematics at Stanford University in 2006 and 2004, respectively, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Princeton University in 1999.
Joseph Cotruvo, Jr., Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Chemistry, uses chemical biology, biochemistry, and cell biology to investigate nutrient dynamics in living cells, especially the biology of metal ions. His laboratory uses an array of techniques—including enzymology, protein engineering, microscopy, spectroscopy, and genetics—to develop and use imaging tools to discover, study, and ultimately manipulate cellular pathways for human benefit. He is particularly interested in studying bacteria that play key roles in infectious disease and in the environment. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Cotruvo was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 2012 to 2016. He earned a doctoral degree in biological chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 and a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Princeton University in 2006.
Ethan Xingyuan Fang, assistant professor of statistics, works on many different problems from both statistical and computational perspectives. He is interested in the theory of big data—dealing with data sets too large and complex for traditional data processing tools to handle—and develops large-scale optimization tools for statistical problems. His work finds application in clinical trials, personalized medicine, and recommendation systems. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Fang earned a doctoral degree in operations research at Princeton University in 2016 and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics at the National University of Singapore in 2010.
Wenrui Hao, assistant professor of mathematics, focuses his research on complex problems in biology using mathematical modeling and scientific computing. His primary interests are problems in atherosclerosis, fibrosis, tumor growth, and cell cycle control. He uses mathematical tools such as ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, numerical algebraic geometry, uncertainty quantification, sensitivity analysis, bifurcation analysis, and computational methods. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Hao was a postdoctoral fellow in the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University from 2013 to 2016. He earned a doctoral degree in applied mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in 2013; a master's degree in computational mathematics at Nankai University in Tianjin, China in 2008; and a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, China in 2005.
Yanyuan Ma, professor of statistics, focuses her research in the areas of semiparametrics, measurement error models, mixed sample problems, latent variable models, dimension reduction, selection bias, and skew-elliptical distributions. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Ma was a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina from 2014 to 2016. She was a professor of statistics from 2011 to 2014, associate professor from 2008 to 2011, and assistant professor from 2004 to 2006 at Texas A&M University. Ma was a professor of statistics at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland from 2006 to 2008. Ma was a postdoctoral research associate at the Statistical and Ap- plied Mathematical Sciences Institute from 2002 to 2004. She was a developer at Cisco Systems from 2001 to 2002, a developer at Justa Technology Inc. from 2000 to 2001, and a risk manager at American Express in 1999. Ma earned her doctoral degree in applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Beijing University in China in 1994.
Shaun Mahony, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, is a computational biologist who develops machine-learning approaches for understanding gene regulation. His research aims to understand where transcription factor proteins that control gene expression bind to the genome, and what they do once they get there. He is interested in understanding how the regulatory environment of the cell—chromatin accessibility, interactions with co-factors, DNA methylation, and histone post-translational modifications—specifies where transcriptions factors bind. His research integrates massive data sets from large-scale genomic sequencing efforts with machine-learning approaches in order to understand the context-specific activity of transcription factors. Mahony has been a fixed-term assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State since 2012. Prior to that, Mahony was a visiting scientist in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University from 2011 to 2012. He was a research scientist from 2010 to 2012 and a postdoctoral research associate from 2007 to 2010 in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh from 2005 to 2007. Mahony earned a doctoral degree in Information Technology and a bachelor's degree in electronic and computer engineering at the National University of Ireland in Galway in 2006 and 2002, respectively.
Randall McEntaffer, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, uses high-resolution x-ray spectrographs that he designs, builds, and tests to study energetic phenomena in the Universe. The x-ray spectrographs McEntaffer designs are used as concept hardware for future NASA missions and operate on sub-orbital rockets. McEntaffer uses the sub-orbital payloads he designs to study supernova remnants and high-energy emissions from stars. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, McEntaffer was an associate professor of physics and astronomy from 2014 to 2016 and an assistant professor from 2008 to 2014 at the University of Iowa. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Colorado from 2007 to 2008 and an instructor at Front Range Community College in Colorado in 2006. McEntaffer earned bachelor degrees in physics and in astronomy at the University of Iowa in 2000, and a master's and doctoral degree in astrophysics at the University of Colorado in 2002 and 2007, respectively.
Bangalore Sathyaprakash, Elsbach Professor of Physics, has done research in physics on gravitational waves, cosmology, large-scale structure, classical field theory, and symmetry breaking. Currently, the main focus of his research is on understanding the sources of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime detected for the first time this year, 100 years after they were predicted to exist by Einstein. His research group is engaged in the analysis and interpretation of data from interferometric gravitational wave detectors such as the U.S. LIGO and the European Virgo. He is mainly concerned with searches for the mergers of compact objects—neutron stars and black holes. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Sathyaprakash was a professor of gravitational physics from 2003 to 2016 and lecturer, senior lecturer, and reader in physics and astronomy from 1996 to 2003 at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. He was a visiting fellow at the California Institute of Technology in 1996, a post-doctoral fellow and scientist at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India from 1989 to 1995, and a postdoctoral fellow at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy from 1992 to 1993. Sathyaprakash earned a doctoral degree in theoretical physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India in 1987, a master's degree in physics at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India in 1981, and a bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics at Bangalore University in Bangalore, India in 1976.
Lauren Zarzar, assistant professor of chemistry and of materials science and engineering, focuses her research on developing dynamic materials that sense and adapt to their surroundings. These materials require precise chemical-mechanical coordination between multiple materials working cooperatively in order to function properly. Therefore, Zarzar's research explores both developing novel mechanisms for coupling these chemical and mechanical cues and developing approaches that facilitate the integration of a myriad of materials, especially at nano and micrometer length scales. Her lab uses direct laser writing to pattern both hard and soft materials—including metals and oxides—for 2D and 3D nano/microscale patterning. She also studies functional fluids with applications such as tunable lenses, sensors, and triggered release; and the design of responsive hydrogels that couple programmable reconfiguration at the molecular level with macroscale functionality. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Zarzar was a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2013 to 2016 and a researcher in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Tokyo in 2013. She earned a doctoral degree in chemistry at Harvard University in 2013 and bachelor's degrees in chemistry and in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008.