Ramsy Abdelghani
Faculty
rabdelgh@tulane.edu

Ramsy Abdelghani completed his internal medicine residency at Baton Rouge General Medical Center and his pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Tulane University. He then went on to Harvard Medical School for his interventional pulmonary fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined Tulane University as assistant professor of clinical medicine.

Thomas D. Amankonah
Faculty
tamankonah@tulane.edu

Sereen Askar
Instructor
saskar@tulane.edu

Mary L. Brandt
Faculty
mlbrandt@tulane.edu

Dr. Mary Brandt is an internationally recognized pediatric surgeon, clinical researcher and educator. Prior to joining Tulane University she served as professor of surgery, pediatrics and medical ethics at Baylor College of Medicine. She also held numerous leadership roles at Baylor including program director of general surgery, vice chair of education in the Department of Surgery, and senior associate dean of student affairs. An established and successful clinical researcher, Brandt has published more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, 26 chapters and two books. In addition to pediatric surgery, she has interest and expertise in physician wellness and speaks and writes regularly on compassion fatigue, work-life balance and the art of medicine.

Erik P. Castle
Faculty
ecastle2@tulane.edu

Erik P. Castle earned his medical degree from University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School. He completed a urology residency at the University of Kansas Medical Center, followed by a laparoscopic and reconstructive urologic surgery fellowship at Mayo Clinic of Arizona. Castle's surgical expertise includes minimally invasive urologic oncology including robot-assisted radical cystectomy, prostatectomy, retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, and partial nephrectomy. At Tulane, he pioneered robot-assisted radical cystecomy in 2005; with over 15 years experience, he developed the currently used approach and technique for robot-assisted RPLND in 2008. He was the first to develop the currently used technique and approach of robot-assisted surgery for retroperitoneal tumors in testicular cancer patients. He has performed many of these surgeries as demonstrations internationally. He also serves on the Early Detection of Prostate Cancer Panel for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. His clinical and basic science research interests include prostate cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer and testicular cancer.

Jorge Castorena
Assistant Professor
jcastorenagonzalez@tulane.edu

Jorge A. Castorena is an assistant professor who has recently joined Chairman David W. Busija and the faculty at the Department of Pharmacology. Castorena received his BSc and MSc in physics from the University of Guanajuato in Leon, Mexico. In 2014, he graduated from the PhD program in bioengineering from the University of Missouri. At the same institution, and prior to coming to Tulane, Castorena worked as a postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Michael J. Davis. During his years in Missouri, Castorena acquired a strong training in blood and lymphatic vascular physiology. Castorena’s research is currently funded by the NIH, and his lab attempts to understand the mechanisms through which a dysfunctional lymphatic system can contribute to the onset and development of cardiovascular diseases. He feels particularly intrigued by the mechanisms that regulate intercellular communication in the lymphatic vasculature. Castorena also has a strong interest in applying his physics and engineering background to develop novel techniques in physiology and software tools for the automated processing and analysis of data. Castorena feels honored to have joined Tulane and is excited about forming multidisciplinary collaborations that can eventually be translated into novel advances in the biomedical sciences.

Prasun K. Datta
Associate Professor
pdatta@tulane.edu

Carlos A. Galvani
Professor
cgalvani@tulane.edu

William Gilbert
Assistant Professor
wgilbert2@tulane.edu

Frederick R. Helmcke
Faculty
fhelmcke@tulane.edu

Yasaman J. Hemmat
Faculty
yhemmat@tulane.edu

Yasaman Hemmat is a graduate of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and attended Tulane for a psychiatry residency. Her areas of interest include perinatal and immigrant mental health. At Tulane, she plans to provide psychiatric consultation for the Louisiana Mental Health Perinatal Partnership as well as outpatient care in the community.

Shannon Hextrum
Faculty
shextrum@tulane.edu

Jayachandra Induru
Faculty
jinduru@tulane.edu

John Joslyn
Faculty
jjoslyn@tulane.edu

Dr. John Joslyn is board certified in diagnostic imaging and neuroradiology, with 15 years of academic experience at the University of Maryland, Tulane and LSU. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, he is fellowship trained and did a residency at the University of South Alabama.

Bilon Khambu
Assistant Professor
bkhambu@tulane.edu

Bilon Khambu’s research has focused on understanding autophagy, its molecular mechanism, and its pathophysiological function in metabolic liver diseases such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, alcoholic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma. Khambu's recent work has focused on disease degeneration and regeneration in chronic liver disease, examining the mechanism of liver injury, inflammation, ductular reaction, fibrosis and tumorigenesis, particularly the role of hepatic factors such as HMGB1 in the development of various liver pathologies. Using multiple genetic and biochemical approaches, his study showed for the first time that the active release of HMGB1 from autophagy-deficient hepatocytes causes ductular reaction and liver tumorigenesis without affecting liver inflammation and fibrosis. His most recent work examines the cellular source of new regenerating hepatocytes in the chronically injured liver. Diverse approaches including transgenic mouse models, in vitro primary liver cells and hepatic cell lines, quantitative and analytical biochemistry, proteomics and mass spectrometry as well as bioinformatics methods are employed in these studies. His initiatives are complemented by collaborating with other groups on and off campus.

Danuel Laan
Instructor
dlaan@tulane.edu

Jeffrey Lackey
Assistant Professor
jlackey@tulane.edu

Dr. Jeff Lackey joins the Tulane dermatology team after retiring from a career in the U.S. Army, where he capped 25 years of military service by heading the Dermatology Service at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Lackey attended medical school at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and dermatology residency at Walter Reed. He subsequently completed fellowship training in micrographic surgery and dermatologic oncology (Mohs) in Boston and returned to Walter Reed, where he has served for the last seven years in both academic and leadership roles. With his expertise in managing skin cancers and his years of experience within the military healthcare system (including two deployments to the Middle East), Lackey brings a unique perspective and skill set to the Tulane community. He and his family have moved multiple times over the course of a military career. However, both Lackey and his wife, Kim, who is a New Orleans native, both received their undergraduate degrees from Tulane, so this is a homecoming for the Lackey family.

Maxwell H. Levy
Assistant Professor
mlevy2@tulane.edu

Maxwell H. Levy joins the Department of Neurology. Levy completed his undergraduate studies in mathematical economics at Tulane University and then went on to obtain his medical degree from the Tulane University School of Medicine as well. He completed his internship and residency at Duke University. He then completed a fellowship in clinical neurophysiology at the Louisiana State University Health Science Center of New Orleans. Levy is excited to stay in Louisiana to use his training to care for patients with the full spectrum of neuromuscular and seizure disorders in the clinic, the hospital, and the EEG and EMG laboratories.

Xiao Li
Associate Professor
xli68@tulane.edu

Bruce Lovelace
Assistant Professor
blovelace@tulane.edu

Jennifer A. Manuzak
Assistant Professor
jmanuzak@tulane.edu

Jennifer A. Manuzak received her PhD in immunology from the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, after which she trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute Cochin, Paris. As a senior fellow at the University of Washington and Washington National Primate Research Center, and later as a research assistant professor at the University of Miami, she refined her scientific interest in advancing the current understanding of the critical role of mucosal immunity and inflammation in HIV pathogenesis and how alterations at mucosal surfaces contribute to risk for co-infections, co-morbidities and mortality. Manuzak will continue her work at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, Division of Immunology, where she plans to investigate the mechanisms of mucosal immune dysfunction in people living with HIV that allow for greater risk of co-infection with malaria, as well as other emerging and neglected infectious diseases. Additionally, she is interested in exploring how simultaneous co-infection accelerates the development of HIV-associated co-morbidities and mortality, such as liver and neurodegenerative diseases.

Demetrius Maraganore
Faculty
dmaraganore@tulane.edu

Anthony P. Mazza
Faculty
amazza@tulane.edu

Latonya McMorris
Faculty
lmcmorris@tulane.edu

Jolie M. Montreuil
Faculty
jmontreuil@tulane.edu

Jolie Montreuil, MSN, APRN, NP-C, has served Greater New Orleans as a family nurse practitioner since 2017. She is a New Orleans native who received her Master of Science in Nursing with a family nurse practitioner focus at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette (2016) and a Bachelor of Science in nursing from the University of Holy Cross (2005). As a registered nurse she worked in critical care, pediatrics, emergency medicine and medevac. She began her nurse practitioner career at a breast reconstruction center and continued in primary care and family medicine, caring for adolescents and adults, where she developed a passion for wellness and health education. Montreuil serves as the New Orleans regional representative for the Louisiana Association of Nurse Practitioners. She is excited to join the Tulane University faculty and Tulane Living Well Clinic, where she will focus on the health and wellness of the Tulane community.

Joseph Mudd
Assistant Professor
jmudd1@tulane.edu

Joseph Mudd's lab iseeks to understand the underlying mechanisms of differential disease outcomes in progressive and non-progressive SIV infection. In the former setting, a major aspect of the work is interested in examining the immunological and virological factors favoring viral persistence in the GI tract during ART. In the latter setting, Mudd examines the molecular mechanisms governing HIV entry receptor control, a host adaptation that has evolved to allow natural hosts to subvert disease progression.

Nicole Nash
Assistant Professor
nnash@tulane.edu

Dr. Nicole Nash is a board-certified family medicine physician, treating acute and chronic conditions in children and adults. Her interests include preventive medicine and non-operative musculoskeletal care. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Nash received her undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville and her medical degree and a Master of Public Health from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock, Arkansas. She completed a family medicine residency at UAMS–Southwest in Texarkana, Arkansas. Nash has additional training in sports medicine, completing a fellowship at Southern Illinois University in Quincy, Illinois, before moving to New Orleans to join the faculty at Tulane. She is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

Harsh H. Patel
Instructor
hpatel9@tulane.edu

Dr. Harsh Patel is an academic hospitalist at Tulane Medical Center and University Medical Center and will be an attending physician on the newly launched private hospitalist service at University Medical Center. Patel received his MD from St. George University School of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency training at Medical City Fort Worth. Prior to medical school, Patel received his Bachelor of Arts from New York University and a Master's of Biomedical Sciences from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. His interests include quality improvement, patient-centric care and resident education.

Kelly H. Quinn
Instructor
kquinn4@tulane.edu

Andrew C. Anderson
Assistant Professor
aanderson10@tulane.edu

Andrew C. Anderson is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. His work aims to identify the social, behavioral and environmental drivers of health outcomes to inform the development of policy that supports high-quality, equitable health care. Prior to Tulane, Anderson was a research scientist and Phyllis Torda Health Care Quality Fellow at the National Committee for Quality Assurance and a director of quality measurement at the National Quality Forum. He is also a former health policy research scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Caryn Bell
Assistant Professor
cbell10@tulane.edu

Caryn Bell’s research focuses on the unique impacts of socioeconomic status (SES) and place on cardiovascular disease risk factors in Black Americans and racial disparities. Her work explores the nuanced ways in which SES is associated with obesity and related behaviors in Black women and men by examining the role of place and sociocultural factors. She uses varied techniques including spatial statistics and mapping approaches. She also examines how place shapes structural racism in the United States and the implications for Black health and racial health inequities. She teaches courses on health equity, racism and health, as well as place and Black health in the United States. Prior to joining the faculty at Tulane, she was an assistant pofessor of African American studies at the University of Maryland–College Park. She received her PhD in social and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a BS in chemistry from the University of Maryland–Baltimore County.

Danielle Broussard
Research Assistant Professor
dbroussard1@tulane.edu

Danielle Broussard earned a Master of Public Health from Emory University and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Miami and was previously employed from 2001 to 2007 in the Tulane Xavier Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, where she led the center’s research efforts. She is now on the faculty of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her research has focused on women’s health and maternal and child health issues, health disparities, and approaches to advancing health equity. She currently teaches Key Policies and Programs in Maternal and Child Health within the school.

David Chae
Associate Professor
dchae@tulane.edu

Hannah Covert
Research Assistant Professor
hcovert@tulane.edu

Hannah Covert is the associate director of Tulane’s Center for Gulf Coast Environmental Health Research, Leadership and Strategic Initiatives, where she leads and evaluates research and capacity building projects. An interdisciplinary researcher, Covert’s work currently focuses on climate change adaptation, environmental health literacy, developing education and training products for environmental health professionals and community members, and community health worker program evaluation. She is also key personnel for the Caribbean Consortium for Research in Environmental and Occupational Health, which aims to strengthen research and research training partnerships in Suriname and the Caribbean region. She specializes in qualitative inquiry. Covert served as a staff member at Tulane for seven years before recently being hired for a faculty position. Prior to working at Tulane, she managed international education and graduate academic programs for 15 years, during which time she was executive director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. She received her PhD in higher education administration and her MA in Latin American Studies with a specialization in cultural anthropology from the University of Florida. She received her BA in Spanish from Middlebury College.

Emily Harris
Clinical Instructor
eharris8@tulane.edu

Emily Harris is a clinical instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and serves as the director for the Master's in Health Administration. Her academic interests lie in organizational behavior and theory, strategic management, change management, and leadership in healthcare organizations. Prior to joining the faculty at Tulane, Harris consulted for a leadership development firm, where she designed courses, class materials and management tools. She taught classes and coached administrative and clinical leaders on ethical leadership principles and accountability. Harris also held leadership positions at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Currently, she teaches courses addressing organizational behavior, healthcare systems, policy and management at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Yoriko Heianza
Research Professor
yheianza@tulane.edu

Yoriko Heianza's research focuses on genetic, nutrition and biochemical risk factors and gene-environment interactions on obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Heianza has recently investigated the role of changes in gut microbial metabolites and other metabolomic markers in the development of chronic metabolic diseases in dietary intervention trials and prospective cohort studies. Her research efforts have yielded more than 90 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Changwei Li
Assistant Professor
cli8@tulane.edu

Changwei Li earned his medical degree in preventive medicine from Peking University Health Science Center in 2007, an MPH in global health from Emory University in 2011, and a PhD in genetic epidemiology from Tulane University in 2015. Before joining Tulane, he was a tenure-track assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Georgia at Athens. His research focuses on the interplay between external environment and the human body using multiple omics approaches.

Sarah Michaels
Clinical Assistant Professor
smichael@tulane.edu

Sarah Michaels is a medical entomologist with a focus on vector-borne disease. Her background is in arbovirus surveillance, vector control, operational research and community outreach. Michaels gained experience in public health practice as an entomologist at the city of New Orleans Mosquito Control Board and an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Louisiana Office of Public Health. Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she was active in the public health response to provide emergency infectious disease surveillance. Prior to joining the faculty at Tulane, she was a lecturer at the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases in the Entomology Department at Cornell University. She has trained professionals, students and the public in vector biology and mentored many student practicum projects. Michaels is interested in supporting cooperative research projects and enhancing local field opportunities for students. She is particularly interested in assessing arboviral disease transmission potential and the impact of natural disasters, health disparities and neighborhood resilience.

Laura Blokker
Lecturer
lblokker@tulane.edu

Edson Cabalfin
Professor of Practice
ecabalfin@tulane.edu

Edson G. Cabalfin, PhD, is an educator, architect, designer, researcher and historian. He was the curator of the Philippine Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. He received his PhD in history of architecture and urban development from Cornell University in 2012. Under a Fulbright Fellowship, he obtained his Master of Science in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati in 2003. Prior to coming to the United States, he received his professional Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Master of Architecture from the University of the Philippines in 1996 and 2001, respectively. Before his appointment at Tulane, Edson was a tenured associate professor and coordinator of the Interior Design Program in the School of Architecture and Interior Design in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati, where he taught from 2009 until 2020. Cabalfin’s research in the last two decades has focused on the interdisciplinary and transnational intersections of architecture history and theory, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial theory, Southeast Asian studies, spatial justice, public interest design, and heritage conservation. A licensed and registered architect in the Philippines, Cabalfin also runs his design consultancy, Talyer Kayumanggi/Brown Workshop, based in Cincinnati and Manila, with projects in architecture, interior design, set design, costume design, fashion design, exhibition design, graphic design and design strategy in North America, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East in the last 25 years.

Jesse M. Keenan
Associate Professor
jkeenan@tulane.edu

Jesse M. Keenan is an associate professor and social scientist on the faculty of the School of Architecture at Tulane University. Keenan leads courses and seminars advancing the interdisciplinary fields of sustainable real estate and urban development. As a globally recognized thought leader, Keenan’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change adaptation and the built environment, including aspects of design, engineering, regulation, planning and financing. Keenan holds concurrent appointments as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; as special government employee advisor to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he co-leads research efforts evaluating the impacts of climate change on financial stability; and, as visiting scholar at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Keenan formerly served as the area head for real estate and built environment on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and as the research director of the Center for Urban Real Estate on the faculty of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Keenan’s research has partnered with a variety of global actors, including the American Institute of Architects, Audi, Carnegie Corporation, city of New York, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Google, Knight Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, Mori Foundation, Lennar Foundation, NASA, National Security Council, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Regional Plan Association, RAND Corporation, states of California and Massachusetts, the White House, and the United Nations. Keenan’s books include Blue Dunes: Climate Change by Design (Columbia University Press), Climate Change Adaptation in North America: Experiences, Case Studies and Best Practices (Springer) and Climate Adaptation Finance and Investment in California (Routledge). Keenan holds degrees in the law (JD, LLM) and science of the built environment (MSc), including a PhD from the Delft University of Technology.

Rafael Novai Passarelli
Research Assistant Professor
rnovaispassarelli@tulane.edu

Inga "Daniela" Rivero Bryant
Lecturer
irivero@tulane.edu

Daniela Rivero Bryant is a Bolivian-born disaster and urban economist. Her expertise in community development and disaster recovery ranges from operations to policy and implementation. She is currently a professor of urban economics, disaster resilience and policy and real estate development at the School of Architecture.

Andrea S. Boyles
Visiting Associate Professor
aboyles@tulane.edu

Andrea S. Boyles is author of the books You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America (UC Press, 2019) and Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort (UC Press, 2015). She is a sociologist and critical criminologist and joins Tulane University as a visiting associate professor of sociology and Africana studies. As a feminist, race scholar and ethnographer, Boyles’ work accounts for social inequality and (in)justice regarding, but not limited to the following: race; the intersection of race, gender and class; Black citizen-police conflict; crime; racial-spatial politics, segregation and containment; poverty; social ties; and resistance. Boyles has served in various capacities in academia and worked with corporations and organizations such as American Airlines, Amnesty International and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement on matters pertaining to race and discrimination. Boyles has also served as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) and presently, as secretary and member of Council for Sociologists for Women in Society. She has also taught within the Missouri prison system and presented research on the effects of incarcerated parents on children. Boyles holds a BA in English and MA in sociology from Lincoln University of Missouri, and a PhD in Sociology from Kansas State University with concentrations in gender and criminology.

Christine Capetola
Visiting Assistant Professor
ccapetola@tulane.edu

Christine Capetola works at the intersections of queer, Black, sound, affect and performance studies. She is interested in how both sound and "feltness" complicate ocularcentric notions of representation. She holds a PhD in American studies from the University of Texas–Austin and a MA in performance studies from New York University. Her book project, Sonic Femmeness: Black Sounds, Felt History, and Vibrational Identity, explores how Black pop stars, activists and intellectuals in the 1980s and 2010s used femmeness to navigate their historical moments of protest and pandemic. She is published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, Bitch Media, and Los Angeles Review of Books and has work forthcoming in Journal of Popular Music Studies and the Oxford Handbook of Electronic Dance Music. She is also an essayist and music critic with a penchant for writing about popular culture.

David Colaco
Visiting Assistant Professor
dcolaco@tulane.edu

David Colaco is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. He studies the history and philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of neuroscience.

Emily Cook
Assistant Professor
ecook4@tulane.edu

Emily Cook studies higher education in the United States using methods from labor economics and industrial organization. Her research focuses on how federal and state higher-education policies affect market outcomes, including applications, admissions, tuition and financial aid. Cook earned her PhD in economics from the University of Virginia and her BA in economics from the University of Maryland–College Park. She also holds a BM in violin performance from the University of Maryland.

Cecilio M. Cooper
Visiting Assistant Professor
ccooper11@tulane.edu

Cecilio M. Cooper holds a PhD (with Distinction) in African American Studies and a graduate certificate in critical theory from Northwestern University. Cooper researches and teaches Atlantic World literary and visual cultures, with scholarly interests ranging from cartography to alchemy to demonology to medicine. Using materials from the 13th century onward, Cooper's first book manuscript examines how Blackness figures in cosmological constitutions of territory throughout Europe and the Americas. Cooper’s archival research has been supported by the John Carter Brown Library, Yale Center for British Art, American Antiquarian Society, Helmerich Center for American Research, and Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Denise Crochet
Visiting Assistant Professor
crochet@tulane.edu

Denise Crochet, CI, CT, is a visiting assistant professor and has been actively working in the interpreting field for twenty-five years. She has been trained in American Sign Language from sign-language institutes, mentorships with deaf individuals, including interpreting for a Fulbright Scholar. Crochet's work has included educational, medical, mental health, theatrical, minimal language skills, legal and video-relay interpreting. Her expertise in interpretation has led her to present workshops including ASLI Conference in Bristol, England, in 2012, at the Stella Maris School in Belize in 2015, at the Cambodian School for the Deaf in 2017, and across the United States. As interpreter coordinator for the Louisiana Jazz and Heritage Festival and Bayou Boogaloo music festival, she was a guest speaker at the National Americans with Disabilities Symposium (2018). In addition to the various schemas in which she has interpreted, Crochet formerly served as the executive director of the nonprofit Deaf Action Center, Northshore, as a mentor for the Louisiana State Department of Education, and mentor for Sorenson Video Relay Service. She provides sign language instruction for a dynamic range of clients whose interests are interpreting as a profession, as well as those who are losing their functional hearing and are seeking an alternative mode of communication. Her passion for both interpreting and mentoring led her to establish Semantikos LLC in July 2007.

Alexis Culotta
Professor of Practice
aculotta1@tulane.edu

Alexis Culotta specializes in the art and architecture of 16th-century Rome. Her research investigates the working relationships of artists and how the tensions of competition, collaboration and innovation drove artistic and architectural practice in the Eternal City and beyond. Her book, Tracing the Visual Language of Raphael’s Circle to 1527 (Brill, 2020), explores how the Renaissance artist’s style – one infused with borrowed visual quotations from other artists both past and present – proved influential in his relationship with associate Baldassare Peruzzi and in the development of the artists within his thriving workshop. Her newest project focuses on the digital visualization of this workshop and its various associates within an online platform that offers new ways to visualize the ways in which this network operated and exchanged ideas. Prior to coming to Tulane in 2020, she served as a lecturer in both the Art History, Theory, and Criticism department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Learning and Public Engagement Department of the Art Institute of Chicago. She enjoyed an appointment as a Scholar in Residence at the Newberry Library from 2017-2020 and has been invited to share her work and knowledge in lectures across the Midwest and around the world as member travel study leader for the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kelsey Cummings
Visiting Assistant Professor
kcummings@tulane.edu

Kelsey Cummings studies new media and identity. Her research has been published in the journals Television and New Media, Feminist Media Studies, Social Media + Society and Studies in the Fantastic. Cummings is currently working on a book project about whiteness and social media design. She earned her PhD in film and media studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020.

Jerome P. Dent
Assistant Professor
jdent2@tulane.edu

Jerome P. Dent Jr. was born in Los Angeles, attended the University of California–Irvine and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature and African American studies. He also attended Mount St. Mary’s University and graduated with a Master of Arts in humanities. He began his doctoral studies in visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester in 2014. He was awarded the Provost Fellowship and Slattery Fellowship in 2014, and the Celeste Hughes Bishop Award in 2016. He was also awarded a Flaherty Fellowship in 2016 and a Black Film Center/Archive Research Fellowship in 2018. During the 2019-2020 academic year, he held a position as a visiting assistant professor of Africana studies at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York. He pursued his research in visual and cultural studies under the direction of Sharon Willis.

Wayne Gard
Visiting Assistant Professor
rgard@tulane.edu

Mery Beit Halahmi
Professor of Practice
mbeithal@tulane.edu

Ruoning Han
Visiting Assistant Professor
rhan@tulane.edu

Ruoning Han received her PhD in economics at the University of Kansas in 2020. Her research engages the intersection of financial economics with other fields such as monetary economics, applied microeconomics, and/or household finance. The majority of her research concentrates on how financial frictions arise and their implications for financial economics. She is also passionate about teaching. During her PhD study, she has taught Money and Banking as an instructor since 2017. She joins Tulane as a visiting assistant professor, teaching Introduction to Macroeconomics and Economics of Money and Banking.

Stefan Hock
Visiting Assistant Professor
shock@tulane.edu

Stefan Hock is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History. His research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. His research has appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the Journal of the History of Sexuality and has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship.

Nathan Jessee
Visiting Assistant Professor
njessee@tulane.edu

Peter C. Kunze
Visiting Assistant Professor
pkunze@tulane.edu

Mélanie A. Lamotte
Assistant Professor
mlamotte@tulane.edu

Mélanie Lamotte received a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge in 2016, where she then became a junior research fellow. In 2017, she joined the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and the Humanities Center of Stanford University as a postdoctoral Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in History. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of French and Italian and the Africana Studies Program at Tulane. Lamotte is a historian of race, ethnicity and colonialism in the early modern period. Her work covers the French colonial world, with a focus on Louisiana, Guadeloupe (in the Caribbean), Senegal, Isle Bourbon (in the Southwest Indian Ocean) and French India. She has written articles on color prejudice in the French Atlantic, race, métissage, and pan-imperial connections in the French Atlantic and Indian oceans (based on a digital project), the archives available to historians of French Louisiana, and the historiography of French Colonial History. Her monograph is entitled Making Race: Policy, Sex, and Social Order in the French Atlantic and Indian Oceans, c. 1608-1756. Currently under review, this book is the first pan-imperial study of the early modern French empire in the Anglo-American historiography. It focuses on the racialization of French colonial policies targeting the peoples of African, Amerindian, Malagasy and South-Asian descent, and assesses their impact on social relations. She is now working on a new research project on the material lives of the enslaved in the 17th- and 18th-century French Atlantic and Indian oceans. Her research projects have been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Library of Congress, the Center for History and Economics at Harvard and Cambridge, the Newton Trust, and the Humanities Research Center of the Australia National University.

Golan Moskowitz
Assistant Professor
gmoskowitz@tulane.edu

Golan Moskowitz joins the Jewish Studies Department as assistant professor and Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman Faculty Fellow. He is a literary scholar, cultural historian and visual artist with a PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Moskowitz has worked as a research consultant and editor for the Anti-Defamation League and as assistant to the executive director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. He has published on gendered and queer approaches to the study of post-Holocaust family and memory. His forthcoming book, Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (Stanford University Press, 2020), situates Sendak's life and work within discourses of queer and Jewish studies and their intersections. Moskowitz has taught courses at Smith College, Tufts University and the University of Toronto, where he was also the Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow from 2019-2020.

Katie Nunnery
Visiting Assistant Professor
knunnery@tulane.edu

Katie Nunnery completed her PhD at the University of Connecticut in May 2020. Her research specializes in late Victorian literature, children's literature and childhood studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Her dissertation, "Fin-de-Siècle Decadent Writing and the Queerness of Childhood," traces the representations and queer resonances of the figure of the child in Decadent writing of the late 19th century in Britain.

Liam C. Olson-Mayes
Visiting Assistant Professor
lolsonmayes@tulane.edu

Liam Olson-Mayes holds a PhD in rhetoric and public culture from Northwestern University. His research interests are firmly rooted in the humanities and include the conceptual and representational history of poverty, social and economic inequality, and the fantasy of meritocracy. His current project, “The Broken Hermeneutics of American Poverty,” examines 20th-century American ethnographies and argues that poverty, once a powerful means for understanding social and economic inequality, has lost its capacity to make the lives of those living on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder visible to those higher up. At Northwestern, he was a research associate at the Center for Transcultural Studies, collaborating with academics from around the world on the center’s “Democratic Agendas Network Project” and served as a research associate at the Center for Global Culture and Communication.

Edward "Ned" Randolph
Visiting Assistant Professor
erandolph@tulane.edu

Ned Randolph is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Communication and the Environmental Studies Program. A former journalist and speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans, Randolph investigates intersections of power, social justice and the environment, particularly in the Gulf South. Randolph received his PhD in communication from the University of California–San Diego and teaches courses on political communication, cultural studies, the public sphere and environmental journalism. He has a forthcoming article in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and won the Randy Martin Prize for best student paper at the 2018 Cultural Studies Association Conference, which was subsequently published in Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. He recently co-authored a column on teaching environmental studies at the edge of a disappearing coast for Inside Higher Ed and wrote in The Lens about revamping his spring environmental journalism class to meet the pandemic. As a recent graduate, Randolph is developing a book proposal from his dissertation titled Clearing the Mud: the Unsung Agent in Louisiana's Environmental Tragedy, which frames mud as a material and cultural analytic for the environmental and economic history of the Lower Mississippi River Delta. Randolph is a Monroe Fellow at the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and a member of the Gulf South Anthropocene working group. An undergraduate of Tulane University, Randolph received master’s degrees in journalism from the University of California–Berkeley and in creative writing from Eastern Michigan University. He is also a governing board member of the Cultural Studies Association. 

Charles E. Connaughton
Visiting Assistant Professor
cconnaughton@tulane.edu

Charles Connaughton joins the A. B. Freeman School of Business from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. His research examines how firms can best create and benefit from breakthrough inventions. He utilizes machine learning in his research to bring a broader perspective to previously intractable research questions. Prior to pursuing his PhD, he founded several startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, and maintains an entrepreneurial approach to his academic work as well.

Sean J. Flynn
Assistant Professor
sflynn1@tulane.edu

Sean Flynn joins the A. B. Freeman School of Business from Colorado State University, where he spent the last three years as an assistant professor. Prior to that he completed his PhD in finance at Arizona State University. Flynn teaches fixed income, and his research interests include corporate finance (primarily financial intermediation and regulation) and real estate capital markets. Prior to his doctoral studies Flynn worked at the Federal Reserve Board in both research and bank supervision capacities.

Mauricio Gonzalez
Professor of Practice
mauricio@tulane.edu

Mauricio Gonzalez has over 30 years of teaching, consulting and university administration experience working in Mexico for Tecnologico de Monterrey and in the United States for Tulane University. Gonzalez has taught courses in over 12 countries on three continents.

Yatish Hegde
Lecturer
yhegde@tulane.edu

Yatish Hegde is a lecturer in the A. B. Freeman School of Business. He has a wealth of experience leading the system development for research projects in machine learning, natural language processing and information systems domains. Hegde received his MS in information management and CAS in data science from Syracuse University.

Hee Ryung Kim
Visiting Assistant Professor
hkim14@tulane.edu

Mathias J. Kronlund
Assistant Professor
mkronlund@tulane.edu

Mathias Kronlund joins the A. B. Freeman School of Business from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he served as an assistant professor. He will teach Financial Management at the Freeman School. Kronlund earned his PhD in finance and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research interests include corporate investments, payout policy, executive compensation, bond markets, credit ratings and mutual funds. His articles have been published in leading journals in the field, featured in major media outlets, and cited by both U.S. and European policymakers. Before his doctoral studies, he studied industrial engineering at Aalto University in Finland.

Jake J. Krupa
Assistant Professor
jkrupa@tulane.edu

Jake Krupa joins the A. B. Freeman School from the University of Miami, where he earned his PhD in business administration. He teaches advanced financial accounting in the Master of Accounting program, and his research primarily focuses on corporate disclosure and information intermediaries, using textual analysis methodologies to analyze how information transfers between corporations and external stakeholders. He has published his research in the Review of Accounting Studies. Prior to pursuing his doctoral studies, Krupa spent two years in public accounting with PricewaterhouseCoopers where he obtained his CPA license. He also holds a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Miami.

Simin Li
Assistant Professor
sli41@tulane.edu

Simin Li joins A. B. Freeman School of Business from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where she earned her PhD in operations management in 2020. Her research interests lie in empirical service operations, focusing on addressing the operational challenges and innovations in service industries and how service providers could use wisely designed business models and service systems to induce preferable customer behaviors, and therefore manage demand and optimize revenue. Prior to pursing her doctoral studies, she worked as a data scientist at Microsoft. She holds a master’s degree in operations research from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from National University of Singapore.

Yue "Zoe" Lu
Assistant Professor
ylu22@tulane.edu

Zoe Lu joins the Tulane University from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she earned her PhD in marketing with a minor in psychology. At the A. B. Freeman School of Business, she will be teaching marketing fundamentals. Lu has broad research interests, including consumer psychology, judgment and decision-making, and subjective well-being. Recently, she has been studying the role of psychological ownership in incentive effectiveness and advertisement design. Her work has been published in Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Science. Lu holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in business administration from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a product manager in the telecommunication industry, optimizing both inbound and outbound marketing activities.

Anyi Ma
Assistant Professor
manyi@tulane.edu

Anyi Ma teaches negotiations at the A. B. Freeman School of Business. She comes to Freeman from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where she earned her PhD in management. Her research concerns the topic of agency: Organizations often tell employees to take charge and assert themselves – or to be agentic – at work. She studies how agentic employees are perceived by others and the implications of these perceptions for gender and leadership. She also examines what agentic experiences feel like from the employee’s perspective and the wide-ranging – and often counter-intuitive – consequences of these experiences. Her research has been published in Organizational Behavior, Human Decision Processes, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and The Leadership Quarterly. Ma holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and management from National University of Singapore.

Yang Pan
Assistant Professor
ypan8@tulane.edu

Yang Pan teaches advanced data management in the Master of Business Analytics program. She joins A. B. Freeman School of Business from Louisiana State University, where she served as an assistant professor of information systems and taught database management and data analytics in the master's program. She received her PhD in 2017 from the University of Maryland–College Park. Her research focuses on incumbent firms’ behaviors in the IT industry, responding to new entry threats. She has developed a novel measure of threats from entrepreneurial firms using big unstructured data and text mining. She uses various business analytics methods, such as econometrics, text mining and machine learning in her research. Her work has appeared in Information Systems Research and Management Information Systems Quarterly. Pan holds a master’s degree in software engineering from Peking University. Prior to entering academia, she worked at IBM, where she consulted for IBM’s major customers on issues related to technology transfer.

Aron Culotta
Associate Professor
aculotta@tulane.edu

Aron Culotta's research investigates computational methods to learn about human behavior from online social networks, combining machine learning, natural language processing and social network analysis. Examples include tracking diseases, measuring effectiveness of public health campaigns, informing crisis response, preventing online harassment, detecting deceptive marketing and identifying unsafe products. He obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 2008, was a Microsoft Live Labs Fellow, a Nayar Prize Finalist and recipient of best paper awards from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Conference on Computer-Supported Social Work and Social Computing. His interdisciplinary research is supported by several NSF-funded collaborations with researchers in public health, political science, marketing and emergency management.

Allan Ding
Assistant Professor
allanzmding@gmail.com

Folasade Faulkner
Professor of Practice
ffaulkne@tulane.edu

Hannah K. Frank
Assistant Professor
hkfrank@tulane.edu

Hannah Frank earned her PhD in biology (ecology and evolution) at Stanford University in 2017 before conducting postdoctoral work as a Life Sciences Research Foundation fellow in the Pathology department in the Stanford School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding the relationship between animals, particularly bats, and infections in an ecological and evolutionary context using a combination of fieldwork and genomic techniques.

Elizabeth Fucich
Professor of Practice
efucich@tulane.edu

Elizabeth Fucich teaches undergraduate and graduate students in the neuroscience program. She joins the School of Science and Engineering from LSU Health New Orleans, where she spent the last three years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology. She holds a BS in biochemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi and a PhD in pharmacology/neuroscience from UT Health San Antonio. Her research interests span stress- and brain injury-related psychiatric illnesses, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder.

Ryan M. Gelfand
Professor of Practice
rgelfand1@tulane.edu

Xiang Ji
Assistant Professor
xji4@tulane.edu

Xiang Ji is an assistant professor in the math department at Tulane University. He completed his postdoc training with Marc Suchard at University of California–Los Angeles. He earned a PhD degree in bio-informatics and statistics from North Carolina State University under Jeff Thorne’s direction. He earned his MS degree in material science and engineering at NC State as well. His thesis advisor was John Muth. Before coming to the United States, he earned his BS degrees in physics and economics from Peking University, China.

Alexander J. McSkimming
Assistant Professor
amcskimming@tulane.edu

Born in Sydney, Australia, Alex McSkimming obtained his PhD from the University of New South Wales in 2013 under the direction of Steve Colbran, studying metal complexes with tethered organohydride groups. In 2014, McSkimming moved to the United States for postdoctoral work under Hill Harman at the University of California–Riverside, preparing iron dinitrogen complexes inspired by nitrogenase enzymes. Prior to Tulane, McSkimming worked under Dan Suess at MIT, studying the reaction chemistry of synthetic iron-sulfur clusters.

Travis J. Miller
Visiting Assistant Professor
tmiller13@tulane.edu

Travis Miller received his PhD in psychology from the University of California–Riverside in 2020, where he studied personality and daily behavior. He will be teaching undergraduate courses in Experimental Psychology, Introductory Psychology, and Personality and Measurement.

Kalina Mincheva
Assistant Professor
kmincheva@tulane.edu

Kalina Mincheva is joining Tulane's mathematics department as an assistant professor. Previously, she was a Gibbs Assistant Professor at Yale University. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Her research is in algebraic and tropical geometry.

Ali Mohajer
Assistant Professor
ali.mohajer@gmail.com

Ali Mohajer earned his PhD in mathematics from The University of Illinois–Chicago in 2018. Prior to joining the Tulane faculty, he taught mathematics at UIC, at Loyola University New Orleans, and at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. At UIC, he also supervised and directed student research in the Mathematical Computing Laboratory. He has also worked in community outreach through mathematics education under the auspices of Math Circles of Chicago. His areas of research interest are discrete optimization and biostatistics, and he currently consults to the pharmaceutical industry in the rare disease and orphan drug space. His current research is inspired and motivated by his early interest in inorganic chemistry. Prior to his career in mathematics, he worked as a program manager in the Windows product group at Microsoft; as a technology consultant in the media, transportation and manufacturing industries; and as an operations manager at a few Silicon Valley startups.

Susan Davies
Professor

Susan Davies joins the School of Social Work as professor and associate dean for research. She comes from the University of Alabama–Birmingham (UAB), where she led multiple NIH- and CDC-funded studies as PI or co-PI, and collaborated on many translational studies ranging from tailored clinical interventions to population-focused dissemination projects. Her research focuses on reducing HIV/STIs and unintended pregnancy among adolescents, and promoting maternal mental health and social support of caregivers living in poverty. Former studies identified family patterns and neighborhood factors associated with adolescent risk and resilience, and developed tailored cognitive-behavioral interventions to advance health equity. She has taught courses in adolescent health, intervention development, family and community health, health behavior theory, research methods and evaluation. Alma maters include Florida State University, George Mason University and UAB. She is excited to increase the School of Social Work’s research portfolio through multidisciplinary collaborations across campus, and she looks forward to working with faculty, staff and students to expand community-based participatory research opportunities in local communities.

Margaret Mary B. Downey
Assistant Professor
mdowney2@tulane.edu

Irang Kim
Assistant Professor
ikim@tulane.edu

Irang Kim’s research builds on more than 10 years of professional experience supporting individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities (DDs) and their families. Her study is focused on two areas: 1) examination of disparities in underserved communities of children with autism and other DDs; and 2) development of empirically based, culturally relevant interventions for parents of young children with autism. Kim received a MSW from the University of South Carolina and a PhD from the University of Georgia. Given the lack of knowledge of ethnic minority families, her dissertation focused on caregiving experiences of Korean American immigrant parents of children with DDs. With funding from the Organization for Autism Research, she conducted a rigorous qualitative study. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship and dedicated her time to two community-based studies in Maryland. First, she coordinated a feasibility study of a peer-led program for Black families in low-income Baltimore communities raising young children with autism. Second, she led the project to better understand service need and barriers of Asian American families raising children with DDs in Maryland. She will continue to do research on services and support for individuals with autism and other DDs and their families.

Mark Davis
Research Professor
msdavis@tulane.edu

A widely consulted and quoted authority on water law and management, Mark Davis joined Tulane Law School in 2007 as a senior research fellow and founding director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. In 2017 he also became the director of Tulane’s ByWater Institute, which is focused on the interdisciplinary aspects of water stewardship and community resilience. In 2019 he was named the founding director of the Tulane Center for Environmental Law and in 2020 was promoted to research professor. He lectures on water resource management, is directly involved in helping Louisiana overhaul its long-term water planning, and has testified frequently before Congress on the need for a focused and effective commitment to the viability of coastal Louisiana and other vital natural treasures. Davis spent 14 years as executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, where he helped shape programs and policies at the state and federal level to improve the stewardship of the wetlands and waters of coastal Louisiana. He has practiced law in Indianapolis, the District of Columbia and Chicago and has taught at the Indiana University (Indianapolis) School of Business and the Illinois Institute of Technology–Chicago Kent School of Law.

Laura A. Lane-Steele
Instructor
llanesteele@tulane.edu

Laura Lane-Steele earned her JD from Harvard Law School in 2016 and her BA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. After law school, she clerked for the Hon. Jane R. Roth on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also practiced law at Steptoe & Johnson, LLP, in Washington, D.C., focusing on complex commercial litigation. Her research focuses on sex and gender in American equality law and family law.

Carlotta Lepingwell
Clinical Instructor
clepingwell@tulane.edu

Carlotta Lepingwell joins Tulane Law School's Women's Prison Project after 11 years of practicing as a public defender in New Orleans and the Bronx, and as a capital post-conviction attorney in Texas. She received her BA in classics and political science from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and her JD from University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.

Devin A. Lowell
Clinical Instructor
dlowell@tulane.edu

Devin Lowell joined the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in 2020, after beginning his career with a small plaintiff firm in New Orleans. In private practice, he litigated a variety of complex matters in both state and federal court, including environmental damage claims, workplace asbestos injuries, pharmaceutical product liability and consumer class actions. He earned a BA in political science and a BS in journalism from the University of Kansas and a JD from the Tulane University Law School.

Stanislav "Stas" Moroz
Clinical Instructor
smoroz@tulane.edu

Stas Moroz joined Tulane in 2020 as a clinical instructor with the Women’s Prison Project. Prior to joining Tulane, Moroz worked as a public defender with the Orleans Public Defenders for nearly six years, serving both as a member the trial division and the special litigation division. As a member of the trial division, Moroz represented thousands of clients on charges ranging from minor municipal violations to second-degree murder. As a member of the special litigation division, he led efforts to resentence over 40 individuals serving life sentences under Louisiana’s habitual offender law. He also worked to end Louisiana’s pervasive practice of holding individuals in jails and prisons after their legal release dates. In addition to these two areas of focus, Moroz assisted trial attorneys with writ applications to Louisiana appellate courts and taught CLEs on sentencing and related matters.

Tamar G. Gregorian
Professor of Practice
tamar@tulane.edu

Tamar Meguerditchian Gregorian, PhD, APR, is an award-winning communicator with over 15 years of experience in creating strategic communication campaigns in both the private and public sectors. A native New Orleanian, Gregorian graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with a BA in 2004, Louisiana State University with a master's in 2007 and The University of Southern Mississippi with a PhD in 2018. Aside from her work as a consultant, she has taught a variety of public relations and communications courses at Tulane, Loyola University New Orleans, The University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Southern California over the past 12 years. In July 2020, she joined the University School of Professional Advancement as the public relations and digital media marketing professor of practice.

Sukari Ivester
Professor of Practice
Sukari.berkeley@gmail.com

Sukari Ivester is an urban sociologist with broad interests in urban planning, the social determinants of health, the politics of resistance and urban history. Her recent work explores the social impacts of gentrification and displacement in Rio de Janeiro and the San Francisco Bay Area. Ivester’s current research includes urban planning for population loss in the gulf parishes, in addition to a comparative social history of urban slavery in New Orleans and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Her coursework in the School of Professional Advancement's Humanities and Social Sciences Program includes: Urban Space, Place, and Inequality; Health, Medicine, and Society; Sociology of Travel and Tourism; and Social Justice, Inequality, and Activism in 21st Century Brazil. Ivester previously taught at the University of Chicago, University of California–Berkeley and California State University. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago and a BA in sociology from the University of California–Berkeley. Following the completion of her PhD, Ivester was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Public Health at UC–Berkeley.

Lauren P. Lukkarila
Senior Professor of Practice
llukkarila@tulane.edu

Lauren Lukkarila, PhD, joins Tulane from Georgia Tech, where she was the assistant director of the Georgia Tech Language Institute and a senior lecturer. She received her doctoral degree in applied linguistics from Georgia State University, and her master’s degree in Hispanic literature from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. She teaches in the areas of humanities and social sciences and Teacher Preparation and Certification in the School of Professional Advancement. She also serves as the academic development and resource specialist for the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. She specializes in developing and designing innovative curricula and materials for specific academic and professional audiences. In recent years, she has focused on developing courses and workshops for domestic and international graduate students, pre- and in-service ESL/EFL teachers, and professionals who do not have English as a first language but work in international academic/business contexts where English is the primary language of the workplace. Lukkarila has developed on-ground, hybrid and online courses and workshops on topics like academic research writing for graduate students, strategic reading, strategic listening, public speaking, oral communication, pronunciation, intercultural communication, personal leadership for effective teaching, preparing and planning for effective learning, assessment and evaluation, and learner-centered teaching. She co-authored Successful Academic Writing: A Complete Guide for Social and Behavioral Scientists (Guilford Press, 2017). Lukkarila is passionate about developing culturally responsive educational approaches and practices that center learning and learners, prioritizing the development of confidence, autonomy and voice.

Matthew King
Visiting Research Professor
mking15@tulane.edu

Matt King joins the Murphy Institute as a faculty fellow for the academic year 2020-2021. He is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama–Birmingham, where he has taught since 2014. His academic journey began with a PhD from the University of Maryland in 2008, leading to appointments at Carleton College, Virginia Tech, St. Bonaventure University, and UCLA School of Law. His work focuses on what it takes to be responsible for the things we do and our practices of holding each other responsible, and has appeared in various journals such as Ethics, European Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. He’s also co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions with Oxford University Press. While at the Murphy Institute, he’ll be working on a project drawing on parallels between our practices of praising and blaming in both moral and non-moral contexts to ground a new general theory of responsibility.

Abelard Podgorski
Visiting Research Professor
apodgorski@tulane.edu

Julia Lang
Professor of Practice
jlang@tulane.edu

Julia Lang is the associate director of career education and life design and a professor of practice with the School of Architecture and the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking. In this role, Lang supports undergraduate and graduate students in identifying their changemaker paths – where their academic interests and career aspirations intersect with a commitment to make positive social impact throughout life. Lang’s life design curriculum is available open-source for any educator and is used by over 150 educators worldwide. Lang has a BS in human development from Cornell University and a MS in education from Oregon State University.

Rebecca Otten
Professor of Practice
rotten@tulane.edu

Rebecca Otten examines the ways in which communities and structures can encourage inclusion and equity, incorporating her diverse interests in youth development, systems theory and social impact in higher education. Her current research explores a dynamic, long-term partnership between the Taylor Center and Grow Dat Youth Farm, a local organization that nurtures a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing food. As director of strategy and engagement at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking, she facilitates the center’s field leadership, campus and community partnerships, and program assessment.