31 OSU Faculty are Promoted to Associate Professor
As Oregon's land grant university, Oregon State University is committed to educating, both on and off-campus, the citizens of Oregon, the nation, and the international community, and in expanding and applying knowledge. Candidates for promotion are evaluated objectively for evidence of distinction in their performance of assigned duties and in their scholarship or creative activity. The excellence of our faculty is paramount and we are very proud of the faculty recently promoted to the rank of associate professor.
Kristine Buckland
Associate Professor | Horticulture
Kristie Buckland is the Vegetable and Specialty Seed Specialist at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center. Her program strives to identify management strategies to increase farm sustainability using a systems approach. Kristie has worked for 11 years in both conventional and organic vegetable and seed production systems. She focuses on integrated management strategies such as inter-cropping, trap cropping, crop rotations, as well as new crop options for the Willamette Valley. Kristie earned a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy. She completed her M.S. and Ph.D. at Utah State University.
Gordon Jones
Associate Professor of Practice | Crop and Soil Science
Gordon Jones is extension agriculture faculty at the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center located in the Rogue Valley. He holds a B.S. in Sustainable Agriculture from Warren Wilson College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences from Virginia Tech. Gordon conducts research, teaches extension classes, and provides technical assistance around pasture, hay, and hemp management, soil fertility, cover crops, and pesticide stewardship in Jackson and Josephine counties.
Achala KC
Associate Professor | Botany and Plant Pathology
Achala KC joined the department of Botany and Plant Pathology in October 2016. She is stationed at Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center (SOREC), Central Point, OR. She completed her Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND in 2013 and was a post-doctoral research associate at University of Florida. Her primary focus at SOREC is to develop applied research programs that include disease diagnosis, population biology, epidemiology, and integrated disease management towards developing sustainable and cost effective disease management programs. She also engages in extension and outreach to the tree fruit, wine grape, and hemp industries in Southern Oregon.
Katherine McLaughlin
Associate Professor | Statistics
Katherine McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Oregon State University and has an adjunct appointment in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. She received her PhD in Statistics in 2016 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests focus broadly on sampling methodology, social network analysis, and social science applications of statistics, particularly for hidden populations. She has developed methodology for the design and analysis of many sampling-related projects, including for trafficked populations, populations at high risk for HIV/AIDS, agricultural science applications, and adaptive strategies for COVID-19 prevalence studies.
Marcelo Moretti
Associate Professor | Horticulture
Dr. Marcelo L Moretti is an assistant professor in weed science in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. He serves as the state-wide research and extension specialist for weed science in perennial horticultural crops. Dr. Moretti’s research program is focused on integrated weed management aiming to develop strategies that are effective and economical to manage weeds in organic and conventional production systems. Moretti is particularly interested in non-chemical weed control strategies.
Si Hong Park
Associate Professor | Food Science and Technology
Dr. Si Hong Park is an assistant professor of food microbiology and food safety in the Department of Food Science and Technology since 2017. Dr. Park’s research is focusing on the food and human microbiome supplemented with food additives (prebiotics/probiotics) to understand the interaction between the host and microbes related to food safety and quality. To date, Dr. Park published over 110 peer-reviewed research papers and provided 49 talks nationally and internationally. Dr. Park was a recipient of the 2019 Distinguished New Professor of the Year Award by the CAS students, 2020 Larry Beuchat Young Researcher Award by the International Association for Food Protection.
Nadia Streletskaya
Associate Professor | Applied Economics
Nadia A. Streletskaya is an Assistant Professor in the Applied Economics Department at Oregon State University, the Director of the Applied Experimental Economics Lab and a Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental Research (CBEAR) Fellow. Her experience and education are in the field of applied experimental and behavioral economics, particularly in the area of food demand. Her work combines the use of laboratory and field experiments with behavioral modeling to look at consumer demand in the presence of food labeling, food tourism policies, food choices under various anti-obesity and healthy diets policies, advertising, and considers the long-term effects of information social influences on consumer demand.
Chet Udell
Associate Professor, Senior Research | Biological and Ecological Engineering
Chet Udell was born 7.5lbs, 20.35 inches when David Bowie released the album "Lets Dance." Chet grew at a nominal rate in the swamps of Florida until he reached 160lbs and 70 inches and completed his PhD in Music Composition with cognate in Electrical Engineering. At OSU, he is the founding director of the Openly Published Environmental Sensing Lab, which has served over 200 undergraduate student researchers with hands-on technical training and multidisciplinary design projects that advance environmental sciences, hazard monitoring, and precision agriculture. He also supports many Arts+Technology initiatives across colleges through the Design for Social Impact Provost initiative.
Toby Westberry
Associate Professor, Senior Reserach | Botany and Plant Pathology
Toby Westberry joined the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology as an Assistant Professor (Sr. Research) in 2012. He did both his undergraduate (B.S., Geography, B.A. Aquatic Biology) and graduate studies (M.S. Geography, Ph.D. Marine Science) at the University of California Santa Barbara. Toby’s research investigates the role and functioning of marine phytoplankton in the ocean ecosystem: What controls their distributions, patterns of productivity, and how are they changing with time? His expertise is in the field of bio-optics and satellite remote sensing, which provides insight from the cellular sub-micron scale all the way up to the planetary scales.
Laura Rees
Associate Professor | Management, Entrepreneurship, and Supply Chain
Laura Rees is an Assistant Professor in the College of Business at Oregon State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard and her Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from the University of Michigan. Laura’s research focuses on emotions, attitudes, and automatic behavior (habits) in the contexts of negotiation, decision accuracy and performance, persuasion and cooperation, and interpersonal perceptions and interactions in the workplace. Her work has appeared in Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, and others. Before academia, Laura was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.
Christo Buizert
Associate Professor | College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Dr. Christo Buizert is an Assistant Professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research uses ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland to reconstruct Earth’s climate and atmospheric composition during the last 2.5 million years. He has worked on a wide range of topics, including abrupt climate change, the ice age cycle, and anthropogenic global warming. He is currently involved in the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), to recover the oldest ice from Antarctica and make polar sciences more inclusive.
Jennifer Fehrenbacher
Associate Professor | College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Dr. Jennifer Fehrenbacher is an interdisciplinary biogeochemist and paleoceanographer. Her research focuses on modern and paleoceanography, primarily using the ecology and geochemistry of foraminifera, a microscopic marine plankton. Recent research projects include live culture experiments, biomineralization, paleo-proxy development, and paleoceanographic reconstructions. She teaches courses in paleoceanography, biogeochemistry, and oceanography. She has a B.S. degree in Geology from Northern Illinois University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Department of Geophysical Sciences. She spent 5 years as a Postdoctoral Scholar and Research Scientist at UC Davis before joining the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences in 2016.
Gregory Wilson
Associate Professor | College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Dr. Gregory Wilson is an assistant professor in the College of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, whose research focuses on the physical dynamics of the nearshore coastal ocean and beaches. His group uses field observations to improve theories and models for wave-driven fluid dynamics and sediment transport, with applications to coastal engineering. Greg holds a Bachelor of Science degree from University of Victoria, and a PhD in Oceanography from Oregon State University. Prior to joining the OSU faculty in 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Dalhousie University.
Edward Ewe
Associate Professor, Clinical | College of Education
Dr. Edward Ewe is an assistant clinical professor and community clinic director at Oregon State University-Cascades. He is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed mental health counselor in Washington and Oregon. He is a national certified counselor, approved clinical supervisor, and an approved Washington and Oregon state clinical supervisor. He has a private practice in Bend, Oregon where he works with individuals and couples. His research interests include professional identity development, gatekeeping, grief and loss, and clinical supervision. He has presented in various national and regional counseling conferences.
Kevin Brown
Associate Professor, Clinical | Pharmaceutical Sciences/School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Kevin Brown is a complex systems scientist, with focus areas in molecular biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. He applies graph theory, machine learning, and dynamical systems theory to diverse areas, including biological signal transduction and the cognitive neuroscience of language. He has undergraduate degrees in math and physics from LSU, a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before coming to Oregon State, Dr. Brown was an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Connecticut for four years. Dr. Brown has a joint appointment in the OSU College of Pharmacy and the School of Chemical, Biological, and Ecological Engineering
Erica Fischer
Associate Professor | Civil and Construction Engineering
Erica Fischer, PhD, PE is an Assistant Professor and Loosely Faculty Fellow of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. Fischer’s research interests revolve around innovative approaches to improve the resilience and robustness of structural systems affected by natural and man-made hazards. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, the Executive Committee of the Structural Stability Research Council, Co-Chair of the ASCE Fire Protection Committee, and a voting member of AISC Committee on Manuals, AISC Task Committee 5, and AISC Task Committee 8. Erica was awarded the AISC Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award and an NSF CAREER Award in 2021.
Xiao Fu
Associate Professor | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Xiao Fu joined EECS in 2017. He received the Ph.D. degree in EE from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2014. His research interest lies in signal processing and machine learning. Dr. Fu received a Best Student Paper Award at IEEE ICASSP 2014, a 2022 IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) Best Paper Award, and the 2022 IEEE SPS Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2022. He serves as Associate Editors of Signal Processing and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
Joseph Louis
Associate Professor | Civil and Construction Engineering
Joseph Louis is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. His research interest lies at the intersection of simulation, visualization, and automation within the construction context. He draws upon his expertise to improve how construction managers plan, monitor, and control their operations to benefits their safety, productivity of operations. Dr. Louis aims to transfer his research findings to industry by developing customized software and hardware solutions for immediate deployment. He enjoys engaging with students and teaches classes in heavy civil operations and equipment, analytical methods for construction, and risk management.
Somayeh Pasebani
Associate Professor | Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Dr. Pasebani is an assistant professor of advanced manufacturing in the school of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (MIME) at the Oregon State University (OSU). She is the Principal Investigator and Director of Powder Metallurgy and Additive Manufacturing Laboratory (PMAM) Laboratory. She received her B.S. and M.S. degree with honor in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the Isfahan University of Technology and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at University of Idaho in 2014. She received UIdaho College of Engineering the “Outstanding Graduate Student” award, UIdaho Alumni Excellence Award, TMS 2013 best graduate student’s poster in Structural Materials Division, American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) Henry DeWitt Scholarship and American Nuclear Society (ANS) Neutron Silver Award. After graduation, she worked as an Innovation Engineer for the North American Hoganas in Johnstown, PA where she designed and developed water atomized 17-4 PH and duplex stainless-steel powder alloys for SLM and metal injection molding processes. She joined the school of MIME in September of 2016 and established PMAM laboratory located in the Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Institute (ATAMI).
Cory Simon
Associate Professor | Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Cory Simon is an assistant professor in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering. His research group develops mathematical models, trains machine learning models, and conducts simulations to tackle or deliver insights into problems in chemistry and materials science. He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley.
Kelsey Stoerzinger
Associate Professor | Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Kelsey Stoerzinger is an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering at OSU. Her research group focuses on designing and understanding materials that are selective and efficient in the conversion and storage of renewable energy. Stoerzinger holds a joint appointment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where she was a Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow until 2018. She received a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, an M.Phil. in Physics from the University of Cambridge, and a B.S. from Northwestern University. She is the recipient of NSF CAREER, and DOE Early Career Awards, among others.
Donghua Xu
Associate Professor | Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Donghua Xu’s research centers around thermally driven and/or irradiation induced kinetic processes in materials. He is particularly interested in materials microstructural and microchemical evolution under neutral or charged particle irradiation, and formation, devitrification and properties of amorphous metals/alloys (a.k.a. metallic glasses). His research involves both computation (cluster dynamics, object kinetic Monte Carlo, nucleation and growth theory, etc.) and experiments (melting, casting, annealing, microstructural characterization etc.)
Mindy Crandall
Associate Professor | Forest Engineering, Resources and Management
Dr. Crandall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management in the College of Forestry. Dr. Crandall’s research explores the nexus of forest management and human community vitality to better sustain both forest ecosystems and rural places. She earned her PhD in Applied Economics with a minor in Forest Resources from OSU. She successfully covers a range of important and innovative work at the intersection of forest economics, rural development, and policy.
Ian Munanura
Associate Professor | Forest Ecosystems and Society
Dr. Ian Munanura is an Associate Professor of nature-based tourism at in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in the College of Forestry. He earned his PhD in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management from Clemson. Dr. Munanura's research in the US seeks to comprehend the restrictions on forest-based recreation for people of color. His research in Africa focuses on the causes of human-wildlife conflict and the remedial potential of sustainable nature-based tourism practices. Previously in Africa, Dr. Munanura directed and advised USAID-funded ecotourism initiatives, worked as country director for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Rwanda, and oversaw the IUCN Forest Landscape Restoration Program for East and Southern Africa. .
James Rivers
Associate Professor | Forest, Engineering, Resources and Mangement
Dr. Rivers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management in the College of Forestry. He earned his PhD from UC Santa Barbara. A core component of his research program at OSU is centered on understanding the behavioral, physiological and ecological mechanisms that are linked to animal vital rates. Members of his lab group work on a variety of organisms, including forest-nesting seabirds, woodpeckers, early-successional songbirds, and native insect pollinators, and much of the research they undertake has implications for applied management issues.
Tekla Bude
Associate Professor | Writing, Literature, and Film
Tekla Bude is a medievalist who works on the relationship between science and literature. She is particularly interested in how literary texts served as mathematical laboratories in the late medieval period. After getting her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (2013), she worked at the University of the Witwatersrand and held a Junior Research Fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge.
Clara Llebot Lorente
Associate Professor | OSU Libraries
Clara Llebot Lorente is the Data Management Specialist at OSU Libraries and Press. Her work focuses on supporting OSU researchers to organize, share, archive and preserve their research data, which includes writing data management plans for grant proposals and submitting datasets for publication in the institutional OSU repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU. Clara’s research focuses on how robust data management practices contribute to make research more reproducible, transparent and ethical, and the role that libraries can play in supporting this work. Clara received her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, and worked as a postdoc at OSU before transitioning to the library world
Lorinda Anderson
Associate Professor, Clinical | Pharmacy Practice
Lorinda Anderson, PharmD, BCPS, is a faculty member at the Oregon State University College of Pharmacy. She teaches Pharmacy Practice and women’s health and has a clinical site at the Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. Dr. Anderson’s research and professional advocacy focus on autonomous pharmacist prescribing. She has developed several training programs, including the first certification for pharmacist-prescribed hormonal contraception. Dr. Anderson also serves on State committees that develop and approve statewide protocols for pharmacist-prescribing. These include the Oregon Board of Pharmacy workgroup on hormonal contraception and as chair for the governor-appointed Public Health and Pharmacy Formulary Advisory Committee.
Kevin Brown
Associate Professor, Clinical | Pharmaceutical Sciences/School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Kevin Brown is a complex systems scientist, with focus areas in molecular biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. He applies graph theory, machine learning, and dynamical systems theory to diverse areas, including biological signal transduction and the cognitive neuroscience of language. He has undergraduate degrees in math and physics from LSU, a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before coming to Oregon State, Dr. Brown was an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Connecticut for four years. Dr. Brown has a joint appointment in the OSU College of Pharmacy and the School of Chemical, Biological, and Ecological Engineering
Jennifer Jackson
Associate Professor, Clinical | Biological and Population Health Sciences
Jenny is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Director of the OSU Dietetic Internship Programs. She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Health and Well-being Coach. Jenny’s research interests include community-based and epidemiological investigations focused on food security and the promotion of healthy eating and physical activity behaviors across the lifespan. Her current projects address food insecurity among U.S. college students. Previous projects include development of family-home and school environmental assessment tools that help researchers understand environmental conditions that enable or hinder healthy eating and physical activity behaviors. Jenny earned a bachelor’s degree in Animal Sciences, a master’s degree in Nutrition and Food Management, and her PhD in Public Health from Oregon State University. Following her PhD, she was a post-doctoral research associate with a focus on nutritional epidemiology.
Tao Li
Associate Professor | Social and Behavioral Health Sciences
Dr. Li received his PhD in Health Services Research and Administration at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and his MD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. Before joining the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Dr. Li was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Department of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Li’s research expertise focuses on implementing economic evaluation methods to advance value-based care and to inform decisions about healthcare investment. The overall goal of his research is to improve the cost-effectiveness of health care through interdisciplinary and patient-centric mechanisms.
Marilyn Mackiewicz
Associate Professor | Chemistry
Marilyn Rampersad Mackiewicz is a Trinidadian-born-American Chemist and currently an Assistant professor at Oregon State University. Dr. Mackiewicz earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Chemistry at Hunter College the City University of New York where she was a scholar in the NIH Minority Access to Research Careers(MARC) program. In 2005, Dr. Mackiewicz earned her Ph.D. from Texas A and M University, College Station Texas working with Marcetta Y. Darensbourg in Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry and was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA). Before moving to OSU, she was at Portland State University as a non-tenure track Research Assistant Professor investigator leading an undergraduate research program for 12 years. Her research focuses on the development of safe nanomaterials for clinical translation and constructing a systems-level understanding of nanoparticle-biological interactions (NBIs) and toxicity and has led to the discovery of parameters for safer NMs design with minimal human and environmental impact. The lab is an inclusive training space for students in bionanomaterials design and study for applications in cancer, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and Alzheimer's disease and has been supported with funding from NSF and NIH. She received the prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2022. Dr. Mackiewicz has a strong passion for mentoring, supporting, and advocating for students, particularly those from underserved communities. She received the 2017 Portland State University Presidents Diversity, the 2020 American Chemical Society Stanley Israel award, and most recently the 2022 College of Science Inclusive Excellence award. Recently she designed courses that address barriers to success and the “hidden curriculum” skills that enable her to empower and advance women and folks from marginalized backgrounds in STEM by building strong scientific and professional student identities.
Katherine McLaughlin
Associate Professor | Statistics
Katherine McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Oregon State University and has an adjunct appointment in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. She received her PhD in Statistics in 2016 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests focus broadly on sampling methodology, social network analysis, and social science applications of statistics, particularly for hidden populations. She has developed methodology for the design and analysis of many sampling-related projects, including for trafficked populations, populations at high risk for HIV/AIDS, agricultural science applications, and adaptive strategies for COVID-19 prevalence studies.