The School of Science is pleased to welcome six new faculty members for Fall 2015. Brief biographical sketches for our new colleagues are listed below.
Angie Capece (Assistant Professor of Physics) is an experimental physicist specializing in plasma-materials interactions. She completed her baccalaureate degree in mechanical engineering at Lehigh University and earned a PhD in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology where she studied plasma-materials interactions in tungsten cathodes for electric thrusters. Prior to joining TCNJ, she held a postdoctoral position at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory where she used atomic-level diagnostics to understand the surface processes that occur at the plasma edge in fusion devices. Her research interests are in secondary electron emission from liquid and solid surfaces, the transport of reactive species in plasma discharges, and plasma-liquid interactions for nanomaterials synthesis and medical applications.
Vinayak Elangovan (Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science) is an active researcher specializing in computer vision, sequential data analysis, and digital image processing. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems Engineering at Tennessee State University (TSU). He continued his research and teaching as a Post Doc in the engineering department at TSU. He also has considerable work experience in engineering and software industries. His primary research focus is in the area of computer vision and machine vision with keen interest in software applications development and database management. He has worked on number of funded projects related to Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security applications. He has number of publications in peer-reviewed conference proceedings.
Christopher H. Fazen (Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry/Teacher-Scholar Fellow) earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Syracuse University focusing on the development of a vitamin–peptide drug conjugate as a novel obesity therapeutic. Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral appointment at Princeton University in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. While at Princeton, he studied the metabolic regulation of bacterial persistence in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He is passionate about using interdisciplinary chemical, biological, and engineering approaches to develop new therapeutics. While at TCNJ, he plans to research the interaction between antimicrobial peptides and persister cells. His research will utilize techniques in biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and synthetic chemistry to combat the ever-growing global public health problem of antibiotic resistance. Ultimately, he aims to explore and characterize the effectiveness and mode(s) of action of antimicrobial peptides against bacterial persisters with the intent of developing new therapeutics for the treatment of bacterial infections. During his graduate and postdoctoral training, Dr. Fazen was actively involved in the mentoring of undergraduate students in research. He has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and has presented his work at regional and national meetings.
A J Richards (Assistant Professor of Physics) is a specialist in Physics Education Research. He received his bachelors degree in physics from TCNJ before moving on to Rutgers University for his masters degree in physics specializing in experimental high-energy physics. He then completed his Ph.D. in physics from Rutgers University with a focus in physics education research. His primary research investigates how students synthesize bits of prior knowledge to form understanding of advanced physics topics. In addition, he is interested in studying physics teacher education and how instructors can effectively use questioning in the physics classroom to improve their students’ learning gains. In his previous position as a visiting assistant professor at TCNJ, he developed new curricular materials and lab activities. His research is published in physics education journals and conference proceedings, and he has presented his work at national physics education meetings.
Jia Tao (Assistant Professor of Computer Science) is a computer scientist who completed her baccalaureate degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University in China and then earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Iowa State University. Before joining TCNJ she was a visiting assistant professor of Computer Science at Bryn Mawr College. Dr. Tao has broad interests in different areas in Computer Science. She has conducted research in the areas of multilevel security databases, semantics for object-oriented programming languages, game theory, and artificial intelligence. In the past several years, her research focuses on knowledge representation and reasoning. She is particularly interested in using logical approaches to model real world phenomena, such as secrecy/privacy preserving reasoning and budget-constrained knowledge. Dr. Tao is also involved in mentoring undergraduates in research, especially in data analysis. She has published in peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journals.
David J. Wynne (Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology/Teacher-Scholar Fellow) is a molecular and cell biologist whose research focuses on chromosome structure and dynamics. He began studying biology as an undergraduate at Amherst College where he was first exposed to research using the nematode worm C. elegans, a powerful genetic model organism. He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley where he used C. elegans to study the process by which homologous chromosomes identify one another in the specialized cell division of meiosis. He took a break from the worm during postdoctoral research at The Rockefeller University where he used Xenopus egg extracts, a biochemical system used to probe chromosome structure and the biochemistry of the cell cycle, to study how the kinetochore orchestrates chromosome motion. David is interested in understanding how structures built on chromosomes are able to direct their movement and influence cell division to ensure that the correct number of chromosomes are passed on to daughter cells. Errors in chromosome segregation are a hallmark of cancer and cause birth defects and infertility. His research combines high-resolution microscopy and quantitative image analysis with classical genetic and cell biological tools to understand fundamental aspects of chromosome biology.