27 OSU Faculty are Promoted to 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 professor.
Crop and Soil Science
Dr. Sam Angima is a Professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Science, College of Agricultural Sciences (CAS). For the last eight years, he has held administrative positions in Extension and CAS. Currently, as the Assistant Dean for Outreach & Engagement in CAS, he oversees over 150 faculty who have Extension and outreach responsibilities both on and off-campus. As an administrator, he provides visionary and effective leadership focused on empowering faculty to develop scholarly and impact-oriented programs that have innovative approaches to program development and delivery. Dr. Angima embraces diversity and engagement as a means of uplifting individuals and communities to find research-based solutions to societal problems.
Fisheries and Wildlife
Katie M. Dugger is a population ecologist who works collaboratively with students, post-docs, and other cooperators to understand key demographic rates that drive fluctuations in wildlife populations. She works on a variety of species in Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and as far away as Antarctica, including Northern spotted owls, greater sage-grouse, Adélie penguins, black-tailed deer, and cougar. Her research on the Northern spotted owl, in particular, has made important contributions to our understanding of environmental factors affecting population dynamics in this threatened species with direct application to conservation and management across the species range.
Fisheries and Wildlife
Clint Epps is a Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University. He holds a BA in Biology (Rice University,1997) and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (University of California, 2004). He studies wildlife ecology and conservation genetics, focusing on wildlife connectivity, landscape genetics, animal movement, impacts of climate change, and disease, particularly for North American and African mammals. His teaching centers on mammals, wildlife management and conservation, and genetics. His work has influenced landscape-scale conservation in North America and Africa and management of game species, threatened species, and wildlife on public lands.
Tiffany Garia, Professor
Fisheries and Wildlife
Dr. Tiffany Garcia is a freshwater ecologist conducting innovative and actionable research on amphibian conservation. Her research program investigates flexibility in life-history strategies in response to a changing world. Broad ecological questions concerning phenotypic plasticity, invasion potential, and extinction debt have shaped the lab’s research direction, and they have explored arctic, temperate, and tropical regions to test their questions. Dr. Garcia teaches undergraduate and graduate courses designed to encourage critical evaluation of natural resource issues and thoughtful communication with peers and the public. Research and teaching have informed her professional and public service, particularly efforts to enhance equity and inclusion in the sciences.
Fisheries and Wildlife
Dr. Guillermo Giannico is a Professor and Fisheries Extension Specialist in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and with Oregon Sea Grant. The focus of his work is on freshwater fish ecology. He holds degrees in biology, resource management, and environmental studies. As part of his job, he carries out research and extension work on salmonid ecology and behavior, fish habitat restoration, land use impacts on aquatic ecosystems, fish passage, and watershed management. His extension and outreach clientele includes watershed councils and other non-government organizations, rural landowners, government agency personnel, angling clubs, school teachers, and high school students.
Crop and Soil Science
Andy Hulting is a Professor and Extension Weed Management Specialist in the Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Andy received his B.S. in Forest Science from the University of Illinois, M.S. in Weed Science from the University of Illinois, and Ph.D. in Weed Ecology from Montana State University in Bozeman. He has been in his current position since 2006. Responsibilities include state-wide weed management support for agronomic crops for farmers, OSU Regional Extension Faculty, and the diverse agricultural industry throughout Oregon.
Food Science and Technology
Juyun Lim is a sensory scientist in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Oregon State University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Food Science from Cornell University and spent two years at the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine as a post-doctoral associate. The primary focus of her research is to understand the sensory mechanisms underlying human taste and smell perception and their roles in ingestive behavior. Her research also covers sensory testing methodology and sensory evaluation of foods. Dr. Lim received the Moskowitz Jacobs Award for excellence in research on the psychophysics of human taste and smell from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences.
College of Business (OSU-Cascades Campus)
Satoris S. Howes is a Professor in the College of Business at Oregon State University. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2005. Her primary research areas include work-family issues, employment interviews, performance management, and judgment and decision making. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and Human Relations, among others. She is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s prestigious Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. In 2019, she was designated a SIOP Fellow based on her contributions to the field.
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.
R. Kipp Shearman, Professor
College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
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.
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Cindy Grimm works in the area of robotic grasping and manipulation for both industry and agriculture, as well as ethics, law and policy related to robotics. Her previous projects include modeling the developing heart, understanding how the shape of bat ears influences their sonar patterns, 3D sketching, and interfaces for 3D medical image segmentation. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1995 in the area of surface modeling, spent two years working at Microsoft Research on facial animation, then ten years as faculty in Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. She is now in the Mechanical Engineering department at Oregon State University.
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Jonathan W. Hurst is a Professor of Robotics in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. He co-founded the Robotics graduate program at OSU and leads research on legged locomotion in the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory. Dr. Hurst is also Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Agility Robotics, licensing his OSU research and applying the technology to commercial markets. Through both the company and the university research, Dr. Hurst is working towards a day when robots can go where people go, generate greater productivity across the economy, and improve the quality of life for all.
Civil and Construction Engineering
David S. Hurwitz, professor of Transportation Engineering and the Eric H.I. and Janice Hoffman Faculty Scholar, is the director of the Oregon State University Driving and Bicycling Research Laboratory. Hurwitz serves as the associate director at Oregon State for the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Hurwitz conducts research in the areas of transportation safety, traffic control devices, transportation human factors, and engineering education. In particular, Hurwitz is interested in the consideration of user behavior in the design and innovation of transportation systems.
Armin Stuedlein, Professor
Civil and Construction Engineering
Armin Stuedlein, Professor of Geotechnical Engineering, focuses his research on ground improvement, in-situ and laboratory-based liquefaction testing, soil-structure interaction, and probabilistic geotechnical analyses. His research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, departments of transportation, and other sources and has been published in over 100 peer-reviewed articles. He is the vice-chair of the ICSMGE TC304 Engineering Practice of Risk Assessment and Management, the secretary for the Soil Improvement Committee (ASCE G-I), a member of the editorial boards for Georisk, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, and the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (JGGE).
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Sinisa Todorovic is a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at OSU, conducting research in computer vision. He joined OSU in 2008, after three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida in 2005. He co-authored more than 100 papers published in high-impact journals and conferences. He served as a co-Program Chair of the IEEE International Conference FG 2015 and co-organized many workshops at top vision conferences. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Image and Vision Computing journal. He received the OSU COE Research Collaboration Award in 2016.
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Weng-Keen Wong is a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University. He received his Ph.D. (2004) and M.S. (2001) in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and his B.Sc. (1997) from the University of British Columbia. From 2016-2018, he served as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation under the Robust Intelligence program in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems. His research areas are in data mining and machine learning, with specific interests in anomaly detection, probabilistic graphical models, computational sustainability, and human-in-the-loop learning.
Forest Ecosystems and Society
Dr. Still joined the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in 2015. Dr. Still’s research involves modeling and measurements of ecosystem metabolism and biogeography. His research integrates ecosystem science with plant physiological ecology and earth system science, and has many aspects related to climate and global environmental change. Dr. Still has worked on a variety of topics, but especially on the biogeography and biogeochemistry of C4 grasses and on ecosystem-atmosphere carbon and water cycling, with studies ranging from field-based isotopic, physiological, and thermal imaging measurements to global-scale modeling of plant distributions and carbon cycling.
Psychological Science
Dr. David Kerr is a clinical psychologist in the School of Psychological Science at OSU. He completed his Ph.D., clinical internship, and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. His research and teaching interests include suicide prevention, family risks for substance abuse, and the effects of marijuana legalization.
Language, Culture, and Society
Ron Mize teaches in the School of Language, Culture, and Society. In 2016, he was Fulbright-Garcia Robles Chair in U.S. Studies at ITAM (Mexico). He previously taught at Humboldt State, Cornell, University of Saint Francis-Fort Wayne, CSU-San Marcos, University of California San Diego, Southwestern College, Colorado State University, and University of Wisconsin Rock County. His scholarly research focuses on the historical origins of racial, class, and gender oppression in the lives of Mexicano/as and Latina/os residing in the United States. Research to date has yielded over 50 scholarly publications, including 4 books, the most recent being Latina/o Studies (2019: Polity).
Arts and Communication
Professor Kirsi Peltomäki is a contemporary art historian with a focus on experiential and participatory strategies in late modernist sculpture, conceptual art and institutional critique. Peltomäki’s recent publications include the book Situation Aesthetics: The Work of Michael Asher (The MIT Press, 2010) and the edited collection Public Knowledge: Selected Writings by Michael Asher (The MIT Press, 2019) as well as articles in the journals Art Journal, Afterimage, and Tacet: Experimental Music Review. Peltomäki’s research has been funded by a Fulbright grant, a Henry Moore Institute Fellowship, the Academy of Finland, and numerous grants by Oregon State University.
Pharmacy Practice
Dan Hartung's research focus involves evaluating population-level use of prescription drugs using large automated data sets, studying the impact of drug policy on health outcomes, pharmacoepidemiology, and health economics. Areas of specific study include evaluating cost-sharing policies, drug prior authorization policies, and examining drug safety issues using observational epidemiologic techniques. He also practices as a drug policy analyst for the College's Drug Use Research and Management group.
Biological and Population Health Sciences
Patty Case received her B.S. in Dietetics in 1984 at the University of California-Davis and her Masters in 1987 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she also completed her dietetic internship. A Registered Dietitian since 1986, Patty started her dietetics career managing the nutrition department in a small hospital in Yreka, California. In 1990, she moved to Klamath Falls to work at the medical center covering clinical and outpatient care needs and specialized in diabetes education, receiving her CDE in 1993. In 2000, she joined Klamath County Extension as an Assistant Professor in Extension Family and Community Development Program. Her role is to assess community needs related to healthy eating and active living and address these needs through innovation/best practice strategies in collaboration with local organizations such as Healthy Klamath, Blue Zones, County & City Schools, SNAP-Ed and Farm to School.
Karen Volmar, Professor, Clinical
Social and Behavioral Health Sciences
Karen Volmar's research interests intersect public health policy, health care administration, and international health. Her work focuses on health plan design, the impact of insurance on health care delivery, legal issues in health care financing, and delivery and comparative health systems.
Social and Behavioral Health Sciences
Dr. David J. White is a 4-H Specialist for Outdoor Education & Recreation and Vocational Health & Safety. He is concurrently an interim county 4-H Educator. Dr. White’s non-credit workshops reach more than 14,000 participants. His research, presentation, and publication collaborations include national and international colleagues. His fund development efforts total more than 1.3milllion dollars. He co-founded and co-chaired the Youth Focused Evaluation Topical Interest Group of the American Evaluation Association. He is a western region representative on the National 4-H Shooting Sports Committee where he provides leadership for coordinator instructor training, program advising, and national research and evaluation.
Radiation Center, Research Office
Compositional analyses of archaeological materials play a significant role in the investigation of past human behavior and ancient economies. Through trace-element characterization of artifacts, raw materials, human remains, and botanical samples, archaeologists are able to address a host of questions concerning resource utilization, trade and exchange, subsistence practices, and the environmental adaptations of past cultures. At OSU, we’re fortunate to have ready access to the premier method of trace-element characterization - Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). Professor Minc heads the INAA program at the Radiation Center (OSU-RC) and serves as a liaison to researchers using irradiation facilities and detector instrumentation. She also has an active research program in archaeometry and compositional analysis. Recent and on-going projects include analyses of Colonial-era bricks from Maryland, Aztec ceramics from central Mexico, chert from Idaho, and obsidian from Armenia.
Davide Lazzati, Professor
Physics
The Lazzati Group performs research in theoretical astrophysics. Current research focuses on understanding the physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts and of Cosmic Dust. Dr. Lazzati received his Ph.D. from the University of Milan.
Physics
Dr. Minot focuses on experimental physics in the Department of Physics at Oregon State University. He investigates applied physics questions related to nanoscale systems such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. The broader impact of our work ranges from solar energy harvesting to medical diagnostics.
Biomedical Sciences/Integrative Biology
Dr. Anna Jolles is a disease ecologist and epidemiologist at Oregon State University, where she has appointments in the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Integrative Biology. She studied Physics at Freiburg University in Germany and Biology at Oxford University, England. She came to the United States as a graduate student and earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dr. Jolles studies infectious diseases in wild mammals.