Summer 2014 Faculty Update

Associate Professor of Economics Richard Ball gave a presentation at a summer institute on Transparency Practices for Empirical Social Science Research. This institute, which was organized by the Berkeley Initiative on Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) and took place at the University of California at Berkeley from June 2-6, provided training to a cohort of 32 advanced doctoral students and recent Ph.D.s. Ball led a session titled "A Student-Oriented Protocol for Research Documentation and Replicability," at which he introduced the institute participants to Project TIER, the ongoing project on which he and Norm Medeiros, associate librarian at Haverford, are collaborating.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Elizabeth Beazley was given a five-year, $35,000 Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians from the Simons Foundation for her project,“p-adic Representations, Affine Flag Varieties, and Alcove Walks.”

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo released his new CD, Ritornello, on Navona Records. The disc is devoted to Cacioppo's piano and chamber music, and features him as solo pianist and in collaboration with the Quartetto di Venezia. Cacioppo was a participant in an interdisciplinary Native Studies conference at the Center of Southwest Studies at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colo. He spoke on Native American music, and, along with other performers, presented six of his own works in concert. The conference brought together representatives of a dozen organizations, among them the Mountain Studies Institute and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. Associate Professor of Piano at DePauw University May Phang was awarded DePauw's Barbara E. Smith Faculty Fellowship to support her performances and recordings of Cacioppo's music. The three-year grant period begins with Phang adding four of Cacioppo's major piano works from the '80s and '90s to her repertoire. Broadcasts of his new quintet,“Women at the Cross,” and other pieces from Ritornello were aired on WOMR Provincetown, Mass., and WRUV Burlington, Vt.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Louise Charkoudian and Associate Professor of Chemistry Casey Londergan published a paper,“Probing the Phosphopantetheine Arm Conformations of Acyl Carrier Proteins Using Vibrational Spectroscopy,” in The Journal of the American Chemical Society. The work described in the paper was carried out by Matt Johnson '14 and was highlighted in the“News of the Week” section of the Aug. 25 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

Associate Professor of Independent College Programs Kaye Edwards gave a presentation,“Preventing cervical cancer in Nicaragua. Can vaccines and screens be means of solidarity?,” at the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz in May. Her talk addressed the natural history of cervical cancer to highlight potential points of intervention; the social, political and economic factors that help explain why cervical cancer mortality rates are up to 12-times higher in some countries than in the United States; and the larger issue of the need for community engagement in discussions about how to prevent and treat diseases.

Assistant Professor of History Andrew Friedman's book, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia, was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for 2014 by The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations at their annual meeting in Lexington, Ky., in June. In July, Friedman gave a presentation,“Exploring the Covert Capital,” at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., an event co-sponsored by the Spy Museum, the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Historical Society of Fairfax County. Also in July, Covert Capital was featured in an hour-long segment on the radio program Against the Grain, A Program About Politics, Society and Ideas, which airs on Pacifica Radio, KPFA FM 94.1 in Berkeley, Calif.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Seth J. Gillihan gave a presentation,“Exposure Therapy for PTSD,” as part of grand rounds for the Department of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y., in June.

Associate Professor of Biology Rachel Hoang presented student research results at three different conferences this summer. She presented“Evolution Of Gastrulation In Dipterans: Insights From Comparative Studies Of The Folded Gastrulation And T48 Genes” at the Mid-Atlantic Society for Developmental Biology Annual Conference at Johns Hopkins University in May. Next, she presented“Understanding Gastrulation In Anopheles Gambiae Embryos – Extending A Study From Drosophila melanogaster” at the“Beating Malaria” Euroscion Conference in London, U.K., in July. Then she gave the presentation,“Evolution Of Morphogenesis: Insights From Comparative Gastrulation Studies In Dipteran Insects” at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Manchester, U.K., later that month. Hoang also attended the Welcome Trust's“1000 Genomes Project and Beyond” Conference in Cambridge, U.K., in June. She also participated in a Skype session with schoolchildren in an“Advanced Biology” class at Abington Friends School taught by Haverford College alum Christine Hunter '92 along with Ruben Monarrez '14, Wenyu Pan (BMC '14), Alexa Santomero '14, and Lawrence Wang '14.

C.V. Starr Professor of Asian Studies and Associate Professor of Chinese and Linguistics Shizhe Huang published a chapter,“Type Theory, Type Shifting, and Studies of Modification in Chinese,” in Western Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Linguistics (China Renmin University Press). Huang also published a paper,“Nominal Modification in Chinese and Thai,” in Proceedings of the 31st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, with co-author Peter Jenks of the University of California, Berkeley.

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Danielle Lillehaugen gave an invited talk,“A Digital Edition Of A Colonial Text: Motivations, Methods & Curiosities,” at the American Indian Seminar at the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, in June.

Associate Professor of Physics Peter Love published two papers,“A Variational Eigenvalue Solver On A Photonic Quantum Processor” in Nature Communications 5 and“Bounding Polynomial Entanglement Measures For Mixed States,” co-authored with Samuel Rodriques '13, in Physical Review A.

Associate Professor of English Maud McInerney presented a paper on medieval horsemanship at the 19th Biennial New Chaucer Society Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, in July.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Justine Melo was selected through a competitive process to give a talk,“Neuronal Control of Microbial Aversion,” at the“C. elegans Aging, Stress, Pathogenesis and Metabolism” conference in Madision, Wis., in July. One of her students, Darwin Keung '14 also attended and presented a poster that was awarded an honorable mention in competition.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Weiwen Miao published a paper,“New Statistical Tests for Detecting Disparate Impact Arising From Two-Stage Selection Processes,” in The American Statistician and gave a talk,“Statistical Issues Arising in Class Action Cases: Application to the Analysis Presented to the Court in Dukes v. Wal-Mart II,” at the 9th International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics in Leiden, Netherlands, in August.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology Joshua Moses piloted a field school in Kotzebue, Ala., with two Haverford students, Idun Klakegg '15 and Katie Rowlett '16, three others from the University of Massachusetts, and Professor Lisa Wexler. Moses worked closely with community organizations on a community-based participatory research project focusing on leadership and civic engagement in the context of large-scale environmental change and resource extraction.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan worked with Julie Ta '16, Carman Romano '16, Vanessa Felso (BMC '15), Blair Rush '16, and librarians? Laurie Allen, and Michael Zarafonetis to develop“The Bridge,” a free, web-based app that allows students and instructors to create customizable Greek and Latin vocabulary lists. He also published a revised edition of his commentary on Cornelius Nepos' Life of Hannibal (2nd edition) and the article“Gout, Beasts, and Other Metaphorical Punishments in the Anthologia Palatina 11.226-231” in the journal Mnemosyne.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Joshua Sabloff published a paper,“Topologically Distinct Lagrangian and Symplectic Fillings,” in Mathematical Research Letters with Chang Cao '13, Nate Gallup '13, and Kyle Hayden '13. The paper introduces some novel constructions of two-dimensional surfaces in four-dimensional space to answer a decade-old question in complex geometry.

Visiting Professor of Independent College Programs Carol Schilling was invited to make two presentations. First she gave“Disability Stories Beyond the Clinic” at the Disability Life Course Curriculum at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in April. Then, in June, she spoke about“Bodies of Injustice: Health, Illness, and Healing in Contexts of Inequality” as part of a panel,“Social Justice and Academic Integration,” at the Friends Association for Higher Education and Friends Council on Education Joint Conference at Haverford College. Also on the panel were the CPGC's Janice Lyons and Haverford House Fellows Hannah Brower '13, Jemma Benson '13, and Sumin Park '13.

Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature Ulrich Schönherr published his book, Klang-Bild-Sprache. Musikalisch-akustische Konfigurationen in der Literatur und im Film der Gegenwart (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2014), and his article,“Intermediale Grenzgänge: Technologie, Sprache und Musik in Georges Perecs Hörspiel 'Die Maschine',” will appear in the next issue of Monatshefte (Madison).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier was awarded the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. He co-authored a paper,“Helium Isotope Enrichment by Resonant Tunneling through Nanoporous Graphene Bilayers” with collaborators from the University of Milan that appeared in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. He presented work on“Quantum Chemical Engineering: Can We Use Quantum Tunneling To Improve Gas Separations?” at the American Conference on Theoretical Chemistry in July, along with Kylen Solvik '15, who presented his work on“Noble Gas Separation Through the 2DSP and P(TI) Porous Polymer Membranes." He also gave a number of talks, including  â€œHelium Isotope Enrichment By Resonant Tunneling Through Nanoporous Graphene Bilayers” and“Eqeq+C: An Empirical Bond-Order Corrected Extended Charge Equilibration Method” at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco;“The Dark Reaction Project: Archiving and Deriving Value From Unreported ‘Failed' Hydrothermal Synthesis Reactions,” at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and an outreach presentation on careers in science to sixth through eighth graders at Academy One public school in Jersey City, N.J. Schrier also organized a four-day symposium,“Applications of Theoretical Chemistry for Energy and Fuel Production,” for the 248th American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco.

Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer spent three weeks in June observing the Mladic trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Helen K. White was appointed as a member of The Franklin Institute Committee on Science and the Arts, Earth & Environmental Science Cluster. She was also awarded an ACS Petroleum Research Fund grant in the amount of $70,000 for the period Sept. 2014 through Aug. 2017 to support her proposed research,“Exploring The Mechanisms Of Organic Matter Degradation By Marine Fungi.” White's paper,“Long-Term Persistence of Dispersants Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” was published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. That work, which was co-authored with students Shelby L. Lyons '15, Sarah J. Harrison '13, and David M. Findley '15, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution collaborators Yina Liu and Elizabeth B. Kujawinski, discusses how dispersant from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still found on Gulf Coast beaches up to four years later.

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography William Williams had his photographs featured in the show Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial, which was on view at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., from September 15 to January 20, 2014, and traveled to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston for a three-month run ending May 23. The National Gallery acquired four of Williams' pieces for its permanent collection. Two of Williams' photographs that are part of the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art were included in the exhibition Artificial Light Photography in the Twentieth Century from May 21 through August 3. Williams' solo show, A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom 1619 to 1865, which was shown in the College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery last year, was on exhibit at the Lehigh University Art Gallery from January 22 to May 25. That show included 80 of his photographs and 50 works from Williams' historic collection of African American art and manuscripts. A Stirring Song Sung Heroic has been selected for the upcoming INFOCUS Juried Exhibition of Self-Published Photobooks, which is currently on view at the Phoenix Art Museum through September 28.