Meet the New Faculty

Claire-Marie Hefner, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from University of Wisconsin, Madison; Ph.D. from Emory University

Research/teaching interests: Women’s agency and religious authority in Islam; the role of friendship in the moral formation of students; Balinese music and dance and more

Michael Sitvarin, visiting assistant professor

*Michael Sitvarin joined Union College in the winter 2024 term

Stephanie Schmiege, assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Bowdoin College; M.A., MPhil and Ph.D. from Columbia University

Sita Subbaram, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. and M.S. from Maharaja Sayajirao University; M.S. and Ph.D. from Albany Medical College

Research/teaching interests: Fundamentals of medicine; oncology; biochemistry; molecular and cellular biology; nanotechnology applications; pharmaceuticals

Sarah Gardner, lecturer

Degrees: B.A. from Transylvania University; M.S. from Oklahoma State University; Ph.D. from University of California, Riverside

Research/teaching interests: Microbial ecology, behavioral ecology and animal physiology

George Riegel, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from Lafayette College; M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota

Research/teaching interests: Synthesis of charge-enhanced organocatalysts and organic mechanistic studies; synthesis of environmentally-benign TADDOL organocatalysts for organic reactions

Jennifer Flanagan-Natoli, lecturer

Degrees: B.S. from Marist College; Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin

Research/teaching interests: Ultrafast dynamics at lipid at lipid-water interfaces; Ultrafast 2D IR spectroscopy of membrane peptides; site-specific infrared spectroscopy to capture membrane hydration and more

Saeed Nargesi, assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from Iran University of Science and Technology; M.E. and Ph.D. from University of Texas at Arlington

Research/teaching interests: Access to opportunities; transportation policy, infrastructure and mobility; disadvantaged populations and more

Shruti Mahajan, Mary H. '80 and Richard K. Templeton '80 Assistant Professor

Degrees: B.E. from Cummins College of Engineering for Women; M.S. and Ph.D. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Research/teaching interests: Human-computer interaction; accessibility in computing; tangible interfaces; user-centered research and participatory design; qualitative and mixed methods research; augmented reality

Arjun Viswanathan, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.E. from Visvesvaraya Technological University; M.C.S and Ph.D. from University of Iowa

Research/teaching interests: Integration of interactive theorem provers such as Coq with SMT solvers for solver reliability and proof automation

Mohit Arora, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from University of Delhi; M.A. from University of Hyderabad; MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University; M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Massachusetts Amherst

Research/teaching interests: Macroeconomics, development economics, quantitative methods, international finance, economic history

Joshua Chuah, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.E. from Stony Brook University; Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Research/teaching interests: Evaluating the robustness of artificial intelligence and machine learning models trained with biological data; biological research

Sagan Leggett, lecturer

Degrees: B.S. from Russell Sage College; Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Research/teaching interests: Creating a non-invasive intervention utilizing rhythmic light therapy to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)

Amy Juarez, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California, Riverside

Research/teaching interests: Medieval literature; material culture; visual arts; poetry and poetics; conceptions of embodiment; health humanities; theories of archive and practice; digital humanities

Osamu Miyawaki, assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from University of Illinois; Ph.D. from University of Chicago

Research/teaching interests: Climate change; tropical warming; topography and ocean circulation and more

Brendan Anderson, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Dartmouth College; M.S. from University of Kansas; Ph.D. from Cornell University

Research/teaching interests: The influence of the abiotic environment on macroevolution; phylogenetic paleoecology; climate change and marine biodiversity, evolution of life history traits; evolution of morphological features; paleoecology of predation; paleoclimate reconstruction and more

Ben Davidson, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Williams College; Ph.D. from New York University

Research/teaching interests: Nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. history; public history; civil war and reconstruction, slavery and emancipation and more

Sean Carney, assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from University of Michigan; Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin

Research/teaching interests: Efficient algorithms for optimization problems with PDE constraints

Grant Moles, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. and B.S.E.E. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha; M.S. and Ph.D. from Clemson University

Research/teaching interests: Factorization in orders of algebraic number fields

Fanhui Xu, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: M.S. from Nanjing University; M.S. from Xiamen University; Ph.D. from University of Southern California

Research/teaching interests: Stochastic analysis and partial differential equations

Yifei Guan, assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from Beijing Institute of Technology; two M.S. degrees and a Ph.D. from University of Washington

Research/teaching interests: Scientific machine learning; Artificial intelligence; data-driven discovery and more

Hong-yan Miao, lecturer

James McKee, assistant professor

Degrees: B.Sc. from University of Hull; Ph.D. from The University of Manchester

Research/teaching interests: Radio astronomy of pulsars; temporal variations in scattering and dispersion in the crab pulsar; precise mass measurement of PSR J2045+3633 and more

Ibrahim Oker, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.Sc. from Middle East Technical University; M.A. from Sabanci University; Ph.D. from University of Minnesota

Research/teaching interests: Comparative politics and political methodology; power, equity and diversity; labor relations

Elizabeth O'Connor, lecturer

Degrees: B.A. from State University of New York at Geneseo; M.A. from Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences; Ph.D. from Center for Economic Teaching and Research

Research/teaching interests: American labor, politics and social movements; local and metropolitan area governments; precarious work and public policy; labor regimes and labor rights; the Politics of Income Inequality; public policy and decision-making in the U.S. and Latin America; comparative political systems; labor studies

Mariah Purol, assistant professor

Degrees: B.S. from Central Michigan University; M.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University

Research/teaching interests: Close relationships, personality and well-being

Ayse Payir, assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Yeditepe University; M.A. from New York University; Ph.D. from University of North Carolina

Research/teaching interests: Invisible scientific and religious phenomena; attribution of moral judgments to human and supernatural agents; development of beliefs about stories with divine, magical, or realistic causation and more

Giselle Ferguson, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from College of William and Mary; M.A. from Stony Brook University; Ph.D. from Stony Brook University

Research/teaching interests: Introduction to psychology; statistics research methods and writing; social psychology; emotion and motivation’ personality’ lifespan developmental psychology and aging in older adulthood

Jasmine Roth, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Union College (Class of 2014); M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University

Research/teaching interests: Investigating power and agency through witnessing healing, transformation and resistance

Gabriel Thom Pasculli, lecturer

Degrees: B.A. from Dartmouth College; M.F.A. from Goddard College

Research/teaching interests: Musical performance creation; movement; text and performance; acting fundamentals

Hettie Barnhill, visiting assistant professor

Degrees: B.A. from Columbia College; M.F.A. from Goddard College

Research/teaching interests: Choreography; direction; filmmaking; education; movement

Rachel Stern, assistant professor

Degrees: B.F.A from Rhode Island School of Design; M.F.A from Columbia University