UC Santa Cruz has more than three dozen new senate faculty members joining this academic year, bringing the campus total up to 568.
The new hires help to build campus strengths in many key areas across the academic divisions.
Below is a list of the senate faculty members who were hired for this academic year, as well as their research summaries.
Neel Ahuja, associate professor
Feminist Studies, Division of the Humanities
Neel Ahuja’s research focuses on the intersections of geopolitics and science, with a specific interest in how histories of race and colonialism affect contemporary controversies over biological and environmental security. He is the author of the book Bioinsecurities: Disease Interventions, Empire, and the Government of Species.
Nathan Altice, lecturer with potential security of employment
Computational Media, Baskin School of Engineering
Nathan Altice’s research includes computing platforms, computer history, games, and sound. MIT published his first book, I AM ERROR, in May 2015.
Owen Arden, acting assistant professor
Computer Science, Baskin School of Engineering
James Battle, assistant professor
Sociology, Division of Social Sciences
James Battle’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, diaspora and transnational studies, development studies, and global health.
Russell Corbett-Detig, assistant professor
Biomolecular Engineering, Baskin School of Engineering
Daniel Anthony Cristofaro-Gardiner, assistant professor
Mathematics, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Lindsey Dillon, assistant professor
Sociology, Division of Social Sciences Environmental and economic justice in San Francisco
Nicole Feldl, assistant professor
Earth & Planetary Sciences, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Nicole Feldl’s research is in climate dynamics, including past, present, future, and occasionally extrasolar climates. Recent work has focused on atmospheric feedbacks and climate sensitivity, coupling between clouds and circulations, and the role of the ocean in setting the timescales and geographic patterns of climate change and variability.
Ryan Foley, assistant professor
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
David Gordon, assistant professor
Politics, Division of Social Sciences
David Gordon’s research aims to assess and understand the efforts, activities, and impact of cities and other non-state actors across various issues of global governance, with an emphasis on climate change and environmental sustainability.
Abhradeep Guha Thakurta, assistant professor
Computer Science, Baskin School of Engineering
Abhradeep Guha Thakurta works in the area of statistical data privacy and its connections to machine learning. His interests are in designing algorithms that both scale to industry workloads, and at the same time have strong mathematical guarantees. He was involved in designing algorithms for the implementation of differential privacy done by Apple.
Chenyue Hu, assistant professor
Economics, Division of Social Sciences
Chenyue Hu examines the patterns and determinants of global financial flows.
Sikina Jinnah, associate professor
Politics, Division of Social Sciences
Sikina Jinnah’s research examines shifting locations of power and influence in global environmental governance. Her first book focused on international institutions that manage climate change, biodiversity, and trade-environmental issues. Her newest projects examine governance of climate engineering, and the role of U.S. regional trade agreements in influencing environmental policy abroad.
Kevin Jones, lecturer with potential security of employment
Economics, Division of Social Sciences
Kevin Jones’s research interests include corporate governance, internal audit, and management accounting.
Karolina Karlic, assistant professor
Art, Division of the Arts
Karolina Karlic’s work is invested in the representation of American culture, race and diasporic existence surrounding industry and labor. Her photographic practice is dedicated to telling the stories of those who have been affected by the post-modernization of the auto industry and examining the use of contemporary documentary photographic practices through personal narratives.
Daniel Kim, assistant professor
Biomolecular Engineering, Baskin School of Engineering
Daniel Kim’s research addresses fundamental questions regarding the functions of long noncoding RNAs in epigenomic reprogramming and the acquisition of stem cell identity.
Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett, associate professor
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Cynthia Ling Lee, assistant professor
Theater Arts, Division of the Arts
Cynthia Ling Lee creates choreography and scholarship that instigate postcolonial, queer, and feminist-of-color interventions in the field of experimental South Asian performance. Committed to intimate collaborative processes and foregrounding marginalized voices and aesthetics, Lee is a member of the Post Natyam Collective and a board member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters.
David Lee, assistant professor
Technology Management, Baskin School of Engineering
David Lee’s research applies a computational lens to enable large-scale collaboration and decision-making in society. He employs HCI, algorithms, and mechanism design to deploying systems that enable communities to work together for good.
Rebecca London, assistant professor
Sociology, Division of Social Sciences
Rebecca London’s research focuses the role of policy, programs, and community institutions in supporting positive development for children and youth. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, she has conducted research in multiple areas, including: K–12 and post-secondary education, university-community partnerships, welfare reform, health and wellness, the digital divide and children’s living arrangements. She is co-editor of the volume From Data To Action: A Community Approach to Improving Youth Outcomes (Harvard Education Press).
Donald Miller, assistant professor
Languages and Applied Linguistics, Division of the Humanities
Donald Miller’s research interests focus on English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and academic vocabulary in particular. He uses corpus linguistics in order to understand the lexical challenge posed by target language use domains as well as students’ development of proficiency with academic vocabulary.
Francois Monard, assistant professor
Mathematics, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Francois Monard’s research is concerned with the mathematics behind medical and geophysical imaging, or how to image bodies in a non-invasive way. This involves analysis of inverse problems, partial differential equations, and numerical simulations.
Ruth Murray-Clay, associate professor
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Ruth Murray-Clay studies the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including the solar system. She is particularly interested in planet formation, planetary and stellar dynamics, evolution of atmospheres, the solar system’s Kuiper belt, and the structure of disks orbiting young stars.
Viktoria Oelze, assistant professor
Anthropology, Division of Social Sciences
Kyle Parry, assistant professor
History of Art and Visual Culture, Division of the Arts
Kyle Parry’s current research concerns digital and visual documentary responses to contemporary events of environmental violence.
Yuan Ping, assistant professor
Chemistry and Biochemistry, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Yuan Ping’s research is on computational materials science; by developing and using computational methods and theory to solve energy related problems, such as photovoltaic, solar-to-fuel conversion, etc.
Patricia Pinho, associate professor
Latin American and Latino Studies, Division of Social Sciences
Patricia Pinho is a Brazilian social scientist whose research revolves around race and ethnicity, blackness, whiteness, the black diaspora, and transnational black relations in the Americas. Her current research examines the construction of black transnational solidarity within the geopolitical context of African American roots tourism in Brazil.
Chen Qian, assistant professor
Computer Engineering, Baskin School of Engineering
Chen Qian studies computer networking, network security, and the "Internet of Things."
Edward Shanken, associate professor
Digital Arts and New Media, Division of the Arts
Edward Shanken’s work explores the entwinement of art, science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices involving new media. Recent research examines surveillance and privacy, systems theory, art and software, sound art and ecology, and bridging the gap between contemporary art and new media art.
Ivy Sichel, associate professor
Linguistics, Division of the Humanities
Amanda Smith, assistant professor
Literature, Division of the Humanities
Amanda Smith studies 20th and 21st-century Latin American literature and culture, with emphasis on the Andean and Amazonian regions, and the relationship between cultural production and the production of space.
Adam Smith, assistant professor
Computational Media, Baskin School of Engineering
Adam Smith studies artificial intelligence in the game design process, applying automated search, inference, retrieval, and learning to extend the creative reach of designer-programmer-artists.
Elizabeth Swensen, assistant professor
Arts Division
Elizabeth Swensen’s research projects focus on metacognitive development outcomes and strategy-based learning in games, as well as using games and play to explore issues of imposed identity and the powerful role language plays in enforcing that identity.
Leila Takayama, acting associate professor
Psychology, Division of Social Sciences
Leila Takayama explores how people interact with new technologies and how their experiences influence the ways they engage with the world—re-embodied cognition. She focuses upon human-robot interaction, including how people make sense of increasingly autonomous systems and how they interact through telepresence robots.
Myriam Telus, assistant professor
Earth & Planetary Sciences, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Jordan Ward, assistant professor
Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
Jordan Ward studies how genes are regulated to ensure precise development, and uses this knowledge to combat parasitic nematode infections.
Jeremy West, assistant professor
Economics, Division of Social Sciences
Jeremy West studies applied microeconomics, particularly issues related to energy, the environment, and public policy.
Jerry Zee, assistant professor
Anthropology, Division of Social Sciences
Zachary Zimmer, assistant professor
Literature, Division of the Humanities
Zachary Zimmer’s research explores questions of literature, aesthetics, politics, and technology in Latin America. His current project is a comparative study of Latin American science fiction and narratives of the sixteenth century conquest of the Americas.
