2020 Newly Tenured Faculty

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Sergio Arispe, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Animal & Rangeland Sciences with a Livestock & Rangeland Extension Service appointment in Malheur County. His extension and research programs focus on cattle management, facilities, tools, and training, as well as rangeland monitoring & assessment, and landscape-scale ecological collaborations. He is particularly interested in how to develop an innovative extension curriculum to reach broader and more diverse audiences. His research interests focus on alternative feedstuffs, maintaining robust landscapes in the sagebrush steppe, and cattle behavior on rugged rangelands of the northern Great Basin. Sergio is also the state of Oregon Beef Quality Assurance Coordinator, which profoundly influences his research and extension endeavors.

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Jeremiah Dung joined the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology as an Assistant Professor in December 2013. He is based at the Central Oregon Agricultural Research and Extension Center (COAREC) in Madras, OR. Before arriving at COAREC, Jeremiah earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Plant Pathology at Washington State University and was a postdoctoral scholar at the OSU Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Jeremiah’s current research focuses on the epidemiology, population biology, and integrated disease management of plant diseases affecting seed and specialty crops in central Oregon.

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Bryan Endress is an Associate Professor working in the Eastern Oregon Agriculture and Natural Resource Program in La Grande. He is a plant ecologist whose research addresses current and emerging natural resource challenges. He collaborates with partners at the research-management interface to advance our understanding of ecosystems and inform management, stewardship, and restoration. Teaching centers on preparing and training future generations to understand, engage, and ultimately solve natural resource challenges across the globe. Previously, Bryan served as the Director of Applied Plant Ecology for the Zoological Society of San Diego. He has authored over 45 publications and generated over $2 million in grant support.

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David Kling, Associate Professor
Applied Economics

David M. Kling is a natural resource economist who specializes in valuing biological resources and designing policies to promote their conservation. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis in 2013. Methods he employs in his research include bioeconomic modeling and nonmarket valuation. Topics of his current work include the value of forest measurement information, the implications of age structure for invasive species control, and conservation values in natural capital accounting. He has spent most of his life in the Pacific Northwest, an ideal setting for teaching about natural resource economics and policy.

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Rory Mc Donnell, Associate Professor
Crop and Soil Science

Rory Mc Donnell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Science. Originally from Ireland, he received his Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research and Extension program at OSU is focused on 1) understanding the ecology of invasive slugs and snails in agriculture, horticulture, urban areas, and the natural environment, and 2) developing and implementing novel strategies for the management of these pests. He is currently investigating the potential for using plant extracts as novel pesticides, assessing natural enemies as biocontrol agents, and identifying novel attractants for both trapping, and attract-and-kill strategies.

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Amber Moore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Science. The focus of her position as an extension soils specialist is to conduct applied research and to develop nutrient and lime recommendations that improve nutrient use efficiency by large acreage crops grown in Oregon. The crops of primary focus are on grass grown for seed, cereals, and potatoes, with a secondary focus on minor crops (other seed crops, peppermint, forages, vegetables, berries, Christmas trees, etc.) Research and extension interests include fertilizer response, nitrogen mineralization, acidification caused by nitrogen fertilizers, lime response, plant nutrient uptake, and soil nutrient dynamics.

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Susan Tilton is an Associate Professor in the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her Ph.D. in Toxicology from Oregon State University. Before joining OSU in 2014, she was a Senior Scientist in Computational Biology at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Dr. Tilton’s background is in molecular and computational toxicology with expertise in the development of advanced cell culture models for toxicity testing. Her current research focuses on improving predictions for chemical toxicity in humans from non-animal studies and understanding mechanisms of susceptibility from combined environmental factors contributing to lung disease.

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Dr. Leigh Torres is a marine ecologist interested in understanding how marine megafauna, such as marine mammals and seabirds, use their environment in the context of behavior, habitat, space and time. Leigh’s research explores how marine predators select and find essential habitat and prey within variable marine ecosystems, and how animal health varies under different conditions. Leigh frequently collaborates with diverse stakeholder groups to address pressing management issues that must balance the protection of threatened species with economic and cultural sustainability needs. Leigh enjoys developing novel research methods to inform efforts to separate threats and marine animals in time and space.

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Simon de Szoeke, Professor
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

Simon de Szoeke observes atmosphere-ocean interactions and clouds, often from research vessels. He studies the processes that transfer momentum, heat, and water from the ocean surface, through the turbulent atmospheric mixed layer, and into clouds; and how these clouds affect earth’s weather and climate.

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Dr. Kipp Shearman is a physical oceanographer. He uses a variety of observational tools to study fronts and eddies in the ocean, to understand how these features evolve and impact the global and regional distributions of heat, salt, and nutrients. Dr. Shearman specializes in the use of autonomous underwater vehicle gliders – buoyancy propelled robots – in combination with ships and aircraft to resolve complex physical structures in the ocean. He enjoys the challenge of working at sea, and especially loves the camaraderie built by working with a team of scientists to reveal the ocean's secrets.

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Joe Baio joined the faculty of the College of Engineering in 2013. His research program runs along two threads: the characterization of biological materials and the development of biomimetic materials. His work to date has impacted disciplines as diverse as cell biology, bio-sensor research, and material science. He holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (2004), and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Washington (2011). Prior to his appointment at Oregon State, he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research.

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Dr. Rakesh Bobba’s research interests are in the design of secure and trustworthy networked and distributed computer systems, with a current focus on cyber-physical critical infrastructures, shared computing infrastructures, and real-time systems. Dr. Bobba has co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in premier conferences and journals in his field. His research has been recognized with Best Paper Award at IEEE SmartGridComm 2014, National Security Agency (NSA) Significant Research in Cyber Security Citation in 2015, and Outstanding and Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) 2016. His research has been funded by DOE, ARPA-E, ONR, AFRL/AFOSR, and NSF.

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Lizhong Chen’s research interests are in the broad area of computer architecture and systems, from small wearable and mobile devices to many-core CPUs and GPUs to large supercomputers and data centers. His recent search focuses on designing novel accelerators for machine learning algorithms, as well as utilizing AI to improve computer architecture. Before joining Oregon State University, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California. He is a receipt of the NSF CAREER Award (2018), a Senior Member of the IEEE (2019), and an inductee of the HPCA Hall of Fame (2020).

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Erdem Coleri, Associate Professor of infrastructure materials, is director of the Oregon State University Asphalt Materials Performance Laboratory. Coleri received his doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis with a specialization in pavement materials and structures. His research interests are in the areas of sustainable pavement materials and structures, energy-efficient pavement design strategies, and infrastructure health monitoring. Coleri has taught courses in engineering materials, advanced pavement materials, pavement management systems, and pavement design and sustainability. He has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, and conference papers.

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Dr. Brian Fronk is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the School of MIME and serves as an Assistant Director of the OSU Industrial Assessment Center. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He worked previously at Carrier Corp., working in the area of refrigeration. His research interests include solar thermal driven processes, thermochemical energy storage, advanced manufacturing of novel heat exchangers, and multiphase/supercritical heat transfer. He received the 2017 ASHRAE New Investigator Award and the 2017 OSU International Service Award and is a registered professional engineer in Oregon.

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Liang Huang (Ph.D., UPenn, 2008) joined OSU in 2015. He was an Assistant Professor (3 years) at City University of New York, Research Assistant Professor at USC, and Research Scientist at Google. He spent 2018--2019 academic year as Distinguished Scientist, Baidu Research USA. He studies natural language processing (NLP) and computational biology. He honors include ACL 2008 Best Paper Award, EMNLP 2016 Best Paper Honorable Mention (with OSU student), two Google Faculty Research Awards, ACL 2019 keynote speech (2,000+ attendees), Aminer 10-year most influential scholars in NLP, and numerous media reports. He has graduated 4 PhDs (3 at OSU).

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Matthew Johnston, Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Matthew Johnston combines sensors, circuits, and systems to develop integrated technology platforms for chemical and biological applications. Before joining Oregon State, he was a graduate student and postdoc at Columbia University in the Bioelectronic Systems Lab. Matt was previously a co-founder of Helixis, a Caltech-based startup company developing low-cost, real-time PCR systems that was acquired by Illumina in 2010. He has since worked with a few other emerging technology companies on electronic instrumentation for the life sciences. Matt’s current research interests include biosensor and bioelectronic platforms, lab-on-chip technologies for medical diagnostics, stretchable circuits, and bio-energy harvesting.

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Amir Nayyeri, Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Amir Nayyeri began at OSU as an Associate Professor in computer science in January 2014. Amir’s main research interest is algorithm design and analysis, especially for geometric and topological problems. Particularly, his research on geometric object matching, understanding cycle spaces of graphs, and the interplay between topology, scientific computing, and data analysis is supported by multiple NSF awards. Previously, Amir held a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Gary Miller on computational problems in linear algebra. Amir received his Ph.D. in theoretical computer science in 2012 from the University of Illinois, under the supervision of Jeff Erickson.

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Dr. Kyle Niemeyer is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 2013, after finishing his B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering there as well. Dr. Niemeyer’s research interests include computational modeling of reacting and non-reacting fluid flows at various scales and levels of fidelity; analysis, reduction, and validation of chemical kinetic models; and GPU computing. He is also an ardent advocate of open science, and an Associate Editor in Chief of the Journal of Open Source Software.

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Christopher Parrish, Associate Professor of geomatics, holds a doctorate in civil engineering with an emphasis in geospatial information engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in civil and coastal engineering with an emphasis in geomatics from the University of Florida. His research focuses on full-waveform and topographic-bathymetric lidar, hyperspectral imagery, uncertainty modeling, and unmanned aircraft systems for coastal applications. Parrish is the director of OregonView and a member of the NASA Surface Topography and Vegetation Incubation Study Team, as well as the former director of the ASPRS Lidar Division. Previously, he served as the lead physical scientist in NOAA NGS.

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Arash Termehchy received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in large-scale data management and analytics in a broad sense. His research is recognized by an ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award (2019), two Best of Conference Selections (SIGMOD 2018, ICDE 2011), a Best Student Paper Award in ICDE 2011, and a Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award. He has served in organizing positions and program committees of several flagship conferences in data management and analytics where his effort is recognized by a Distinguished PC Member Award in SIGMOD 2017. His work is supported by NSF, DARPA, NIH, Intel, Amazon, and Microsoft.

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Wesley Brewer serves on the OSU faculty as Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music Education. Brewer previously served as Associate Professor and Director of Music Education at Roosevelt University. Brewer is the author of multiple peer-reviewed publications and has presented findings from his research conferences throughout the United States and in Finland and Norway and was conference co-chair for The Fifth International Conference on Narrative Inquiry in Music Education. In 2010, Dr. Brewer was named the recipient of the national Outstanding Dissertation Award in Music Education.

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Nick Dybek’s first novel, When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man, was the winner of the 2013 Society of Midland Authors Award, a finalist for the VCU-Cabell First Novelist Award and has been translated into five languages. His second novel, The Verdun Affair, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction, was published in the United States, the UK, and France in 2018. He’s a recipient of a Granta New Voices selection, a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a Maytag Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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Drew Gerkey is an anthropologist studying the intersections of culture, environment, evolution, and economy. His research is grounded in long-term ethnographic research with Indigenous communities in the Arctic (Siberia & Alaska). Using qualitative and quantitative methods, he focuses on social and ecological dynamics of cooperation and collective action in a variety of contexts, from subsistence economies, social networks, and institutions to conservation, environmental governance, and sustainability. This work generates insights on social dilemmas that arise when individual interests and the common good imperfectly align, supporting efforts to enhance environmentally sustainable and socially just connections between people and nature.

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Dr. Stephanie C. Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Oregon State University. She is the co-founder and former co-director of the Phronesis Lab for Engaged Ethics, as well as the current Director of the Oregon State University Disability Network. Her research and teaching interests include feminist philosophy, disability studies, critical animal studies, and ethics. In addition to publishing scholarly articles in moral philosophy, she is a co-editor of the forthcoming book, Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies, as well as a special issue of the Public Philosophy Journal.

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Kelsy Kretschmer writes and teaches in the areas of social movements, organizations, and gender. Her book, Fighting for NOW: Diversity and Discord in the National Organization for Women (2019, University of Minnesota Press), examines factionalism in the American feminist movement. She is currently working on an NSF funded project focused on how activists make technological decisions. Her work has been published in various journals, including Mobilization, PLOS ONE, Political Research Quarterly, and Sociological Forum, among others.

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Rena Lauer teaches medieval history, world history, and Jewish studies in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion. Her research focuses on marginalized and minority communities in the late medieval eastern Mediterranean, particularly through the lens of gender and law. She is the author of Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete (Penn Press 2019), as well as a number of articles including those published in Gender & History, Mediterranean Historical Review, and Critical Analysis of Law. A passionate and dedicated teacher, Dr. Lauer won SHPR’s inaugural Trow Award for Teaching Excellence in 2015.

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Dr. Kristen Macuga is the Director of the Cognition and Action in Real and Virtual Environments (CARVE) Laboratory and an Associate Professor in the School of Psychological Science. She studies the multisensory control of action from an integrative perspective to uncover the neurological and behavioral processes involved, with the applied aims of improving safety, training, and interface design. Her primary research focuses on understanding how people use and combine different sources of perceptual information when engaging in goal-directed movements, and also when learning new tasks. These sensorimotor processes are critical for skilled actions, such as tool-use, dancing, or driving.

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Dr. Marino is interested in the relationships among climate change, vulnerability, slow and rapid onset disasters, human migration, and sense of place. Her research focuses on how historically and socially constructed vulnerabilities interact with climate change and disasters –including disaster policy, biophysical outcomes of disasters and climate change, and disaster discourses. She is also interested in how people make sense and meaning out of changing environmental and social conditions; and how people interpret risk. Her book Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: an Ethnography of Climate Change was released in 2015 and is being used in classrooms throughout North America and Europe. In 2019 she was awarded a 3-year NSF grant, in collaboration with the Shishmaref IRA, to investigate policy and cultural determinants of adaptation to repetitive flooding and sea-level rise. She is also Co-Director of CADAN and Co-Founder of the laboratory for the American Conversation at OSU-Cascades.

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Jun Bum Shin is an Associate Professor of graphic design in the School of Arts and Communication at Oregon State University since 2015. Before he joined OSU, He taught at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. 2011–2015. He completed his Master of Fine Arts at Purdue University and studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. His research interests lie in the area of Brand Identity, Typography, Poster Design, Human-centered Design, Interaction Design ranging from theory to design to implementation. He’s an award-winning artist and designer whose scholarly work has presented nationally and internationally.

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Kerry Skarbakka creates performance-based photographic works that have been exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs internationally. A 2005 Creative Capital grantee, he has received funding from the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Chicago Center of Cultural Affairs. He was also awarded a commission from the City of Seattle through the 1% for the Arts Program. Skarbakka’s work has been featured in notable publications including Aperture, Art and America, and ArtReview International. Skarbakka received his B.A. from the University of Washington and an M.F.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago.

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Dr. Paul N. Thompson is a public economist specializing in the economics of education. His research examines critical policy issues –primarily financial intervention systems and four-day school weeks –relating to financially-troubled communities. His research has been featured in outlets, such as the Journal of Urban Economics and Economics of Education Review. He was also the 2019 recipient of the College of Liberal Arts Wilkins Faculty Development Award. Prior to joining Oregon State University in the fall of 2014, he received his B.A. in Economics from the College of Wooster and his Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University.

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Megan Ward’s research interests are in Victorian literature, the history of technology, and the history of the novel. Her book, Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and Victorian Realist Character (Ohio State University Press, 2018), was short-listed for the British Science and Literature Society Book Prize. She co-directs Livingstone Online (www.livingstoneoneline.org), a digital archive related to the British explorer David Livingstone. She also writes about the Victorian antecedents of contemporary culture for public audiences, with pieces in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Dr. Sahay completed his postdoctoral research at MIT and received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Sahay’s lab is developing novel nanotechnology-based platforms for effective delivery of messenger RNA therapeutics for the treatment of rare disorders including cystic fibrosis, retinal degeneration and lysosomal storage disorders. He has more than 43 peer-reviewed publications in top tier journals including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Nanotechnology, Journal of Controlled Release, Nano Letters, etc. He is the winner of a 2013 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Postdoctoral Fellow Award, the 2015 Controlled Release Society (CRS) T. Nagai Award, a 2016 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) New Investigator Award, and a 2019 Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) Distinguished Faculty Senate Award for Collaboration. He was the Chair of the 2018 NanoMedicine and Drug Delivery Symposium (NanoDDS, Portland, OR) and is the current Chair of CRS Gene Delivery and Gene Editing Focus Group.

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Professor Orr conducts research in topics spanning behavioral ecology, restoration ecology, and the application of restoration ecology to medicine. Being a scientific generalist has helped him to explore fields from a trans-disciplinary perspective and offer undergraduate students a wide array of research experiences that match their interests.