(Editor’s Note: Professors from the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology, the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science were featured in a previous News Center story.)
The University of Texas at Dallas welcomed one of its largest groups of new tenured and tenure-track faculty members, with 43 of them joining the University this year, including many who started this fall.
The professors bring an array of expertise in disciplines ranging from public affairs and economics to information systems and finance to geosciences and mathematics.
This year’s group includes:
School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences
Dr. Abraham Benavides, professor of public and nonprofit management
Education: PhD in urban studies and public affairs, Cleveland State University; Master of Public Administration, Brigham Young University; Bachelor of Arts in international relations, George Washington University
Research areas: municipal government including landfills, potable water and wastewater treatment plants; form of government; public health; emergency management; Hispanic/Latino communities
Dr. Alexander Burton, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice
Education: PhD and Master of Science in criminal justice, University of Cincinnati; Bachelor of Science in justice administration, Southwest Minnesota State University
Research areas: institutional and community corrections; criminal justice personnel training; public opinion on crime and justice policies
Dr. Jared Edgerton, assistant professor of political science
Education: PhD and master’s degree in political science, The Ohio State University; Bachelor of Arts in political economy, Juniata College
Research areas: international security, conflict processes, political violence, international regimes, machine learning, network science, text as data, causal inference
Dr. Camilo Granados, assistant professor of economics
Education: PhD and Master of Arts in economics, University of Washington; Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in economics, National University of Colombia
Research areas: international macroeconomics, international finance, macroeconomics, applied econometrics
Dr. Natalia Lamberova, assistant professor of political economy and technology policy
Education: PhD in comparative politics and government and Master of Science in statistics, University of California, Los Angeles; Bachelor of Arts in economics, Kazan Federal University in Russia.
Research areas: political economy of technological development, intellectual property rights, political economy, collective actions, political connections
Dr. Pengfei Zhang, assistant professor of cybersecurity and public policy
Education: PhD in economics and Master of Arts in economics, Cornell University; Bachelor of Science in mathematics and global China studies, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Research areas: cyberlaw and policy; law and economics; intellectual property; conflict and dispute resolution
Naveen Jindal School of Management
Dr. Paul Cheung, assistant professor of finance and managerial economics
Education: PhD in economics, University of Maryland; Master of Philosophy and Bachelor of Science in economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Research areas: behavioral economics, experimental economics, decision theory
Dr. Hyesook Chung, assistant professor of organizations, strategy and international management
Education: PhD and Master of Science in human resource studies, Cornell University; Master of Science in business administration, Seoul National University; Bachelor of Science in human development, Cornell University
Research areas: strategic human resource management, employee turnover, labor flexibility, human capital
Dr. Thomas Lavastida, assistant professor of information systems
Education: PhD and Master of Science in algorithms, combinatorics and optimization, Carnegie Mellon University; Bachelor of Science in computer engineering, Louisiana State University
Research areas: algorithms, optimization, machine learning
Dr. Heeseung Andrew Lee, assistant professor of information systems
Education: PhD and Master of Science in information systems and Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Research areas: economics of information technology, artificial intelligence and human collaboration; digital content consumption; digital marketing
Dr. Jennifer Lee, assistant professor of organizations, strategy and international management
Education: PhD in strategic management, Michigan State University; Master of Arts in economics, University of Southern California; Bachelor of Arts in mathematical methods in social sciences, Northwestern University
Research areas: corporate governance, shareholder activism, temporal orientation
Dr. Neda Mirzaeian, assistant professor of operations management
Education: PhD in operations management, Carnegie Mellon University; Master of Science in industrial administration, Carnegie Mellon University; Master of Science in industrial engineering, University of Pittsburgh; Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering, Sharif University of Technology in Iran
Research areas: smart city operations, specifically the potential effects of innovative technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, on highway traffic congestion, parking and the sharing economy
Dr. Christopher Reilly, assistant professor of finance and managerial economics
Education: PhD in finance, Boston College; Bachelor of Arts in economics, Georgetown University
Research areas: empirical asset pricing, focusing on exchange-traded funds and the role of nonprofessional investors in asset markets
Dr. Federico Siano, assistant professor of accounting
Education: PhD in accounting, Boston University; Master of Science in accounting and finance, London School of Economics; Master of Science in business administration and law and Bachelor of Science in business administration and management, Bocconi University in Milan
Research areas: capital markets, corporate financial disclosures, textual analysis
Dr. Yining Wang, associate professor of operations management
Education: PhD and Master of Science in machine learning, Carnegie Mellon University; Bachelor of Engineering in computer science and technology, Tsinghua University in China
Research areas: machine learning and its applications in revenue management and information systems research
School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Dr. Noirrit Kiran Chandra, assistant professor of mathematical sciences
Education: PhD in statistics and Master of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute; Bachelor of Science in statistics, University of Calcutta
Research areas: scalable computation; Gaussian graphical models; clinical trial design; model-based clustering; multiple hypothesis testing; applications in neuroscience, genetics and bioinformatics; Bayesian asymptotics
Dr. G. Andrés Cisneros, professor of physics and of chemistry and biochemistry
Education: PhD in physical chemistry, Duke University; Bachelor of Science in chemistry, National Autonomous University of Mexico
Research areas: methods and software development for computational simulation of biophysical, biochemical and condensed-phase systems; advanced force fields; DNA and RNA transaction enzymes; disease biomarkers; DNA repair; quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics
Dr. Filippo Romiti, assistant professor of chemistry
Education: PhD in chemistry, University of Glasgow; Master of Science in pharmacy, University of Parma in Italy
Research areas: organic chemistry; synthesis of complex bioactive molecules, with potential applications in treating human diseases; high-impact catalytic transformations
Dr. Zachary Sickmann, assistant professor of geosciences
Education: PhD in geological sciences, Stanford University; Bachelor of Science in geoscience, Trinity University
Research areas: evolution of modern and ancient sedimentary basins; sand mining sustainability; tracing sand supply networks with provenance analysis; sedimentology of the Anthropocene, convergent margin tectonics; geochronology
Dr. Jiayi Wang, assistant professor of mathematical sciences
Education: PhD in statistics, Texas A&M University; Bachelor of Science in statistics, Zhejiang University
Research areas: functional data; low-rank modeling; causal inference; reinforcement learning; statistical and machine-learning methods
Dr. Nan Wu, assistant professor of mathematical sciences
Education: PhD in mathematics, Master of Science in mathematics and Bachelor of Science in mathematics and physics, University of Toronto
Research areas: mathematical foundations and applications of massive data analysis; nonparametric statistics on manifolds; Riemannian geometry
Dr. Xiaojia Zhang, associate professor of physics
Education: PhD and Master of Science in space physics, University of California, Los Angeles; Bachelor of Science in space physics, Peking University in Beijing
Research areas: wave-particle interactions in the Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetospheres; incorporating plasma waves into space weather modeling; plasma kinetics in planetary magnetospheres; aurora and particle precipitation