Biographies of 2017 Chancellor Faculty Fellows
, associate professor of Jewish studies
Research Focus:听Modern Jewish, Sephardic & Ottoman Empire History
Professor Cohen researches a variety of topics in modern Jewish history, the comparative urban histories of Europe and the Middle East, Jewish-Muslim relations, and the Ottoman Empire.
She is the author of听Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era听(New York: Oxford Press, 2014). Together with Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Cohen is also co-editor of听Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950听(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).
Cohen has served in leadership capacities for the Association for Jewish Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies.
, associate professor of health policy
Research Focus:听Vaccine Policy, Pharmacoepidemiology, Infectious Disease
Professor Grijalva鈥檚 research interests include the evaluation of medications鈥� safety and effectiveness; the design of observational studies; and the methodologies for comparative effectiveness research.
Grijalva is experienced designing and conducting studies of medications effects using large databases, and his research focuses on the assessments of medications used for diabetes, opioid analgesics, biologic medications, vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases 鈥� especially pneumococcal and influenza infections 鈥� and the evaluation of the effectiveness of vaccination and other preventive programs. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and mentored several junior investigators.
, professor of law
Research Focus:听Role of Emotion in Law
Professor Maroney researches law and human behavior, law and emotion, juvenile justice, and judicial excellence. She was selected as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University to pursue a theoretical and empirical investigation on the role of emotion in judicial behavior and decision-making; she will continue that work as a 2017-19 天美传媒官网 Chancellor鈥檚 Faculty Fellow.
Her scholarship on judges鈥� emotions鈥攊ncluding 鈥淎ngry Judges,鈥� 鈥淓motional Regulation and Judicial Behavior鈥� and 鈥淭he Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion鈥濃�攈as been widely read by both judges and scholars of judicial behavior.
, associate professor of biomedical engineering
Research Focus:听Cardiovascular & Pulmonary Mechanobiology, Cell & Soft Tissue Biomechanics
Professor Merryman researches how mechanical forces or deformations after cellular signaling, phenotype, and biosynthetic function. Specifically, Merryman and his lab are interested in cardiovascular mechanobiology and in particular, heart valves.
Merryman Mechanobiology Lab also focuses on potential therapeutic strategies against heart valve disease and pulmonary hypertension via serotonergic receptors, percutaneous interventions for heart valve disease, and mechanically tunable biomaterials for cardiovascular tissue engineering. The lab has been or is supported by the American Heart Association, NIH, and NSF.
, associate professor of mathematics
Research Focus:听Von Neumann Algebras
Professor Peterson鈥檚 primary research interest lies in the area of von Neumann algebras and their applications to related fields such as group theory and orbit equivalence ergodic theory. He is a member of the Mathematics department鈥檚 Noncommutative Geometry and Operator Algebras research group and a co-organizer of the weekly Subfactor Seminar as well as of the annual Noncommutative Geometry and Operator Algebras Spring Institute held at Vanderbilt.
, associate professor of chemistry
Research Focus:听Proteomics & Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease
Professor Robinson researches the role that peripheral organs鈥攕uch as the heart, liver and kidneys鈥攑lay in Alzheimer鈥檚. Her lab looks for changes in the proteins that these organs produce that are carried to the brain and might trigger the disease, demonstrating its systemwide complexity, and her lab studies the role of lipid-related proteins in Alzheimer鈥檚 and their contribution to health disparities in the disease.
These areas require high-throughput analytical methodology and Robinson and her lab specialize in developing novel proteomics approaches involving mass spectrometry that are useful for analyzing complex biological tissues.
, associate professor of radiology and radiological sciences
Research Focus:听Translational Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Professor Smith鈥檚 research is focused on translation of advanced, quantitative MRI methods into human diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Optic Neuropathies focusing on quantitative assessment of the spinal cord and optic nerves at both high and low field strengths. Specifically, Smith is focused on ultra-high field (7T) CEST, Diffusion (conventional diffusion tensor and advanced diffusion weighted MRI), Magnetization Transfer, and quantiative T2.
Since 2010, he has served as Director of the Center for Human Imaging at 天美传媒官网 Institute of Imaging Science.
, associate professor of psychology and human development
Research Focus:听Quantitative Psychology
Professor Sterba鈥檚 research topics include latent variable models for longitudinal and cross-sectional data, mixture models, and multilevel models, with a focus on advancing developmental psychopathology research. She focuses on methodological issues that commonly arise in psychology applications 鈥� particularly in the context of developmental psychopathology research.
Her research involves developing methods to handle alternative kinds of missing data when fitting mixture models, studying how mixtures can be used to recover interactive relationships, and disseminating pedagogical information about mixtures to clarify how they can be interpreted in practice.
, associate professor of anthropology
Research Focus:听Anthropological Bioarchaeology
Professor Tung examines mummies and skeletons from archaeological contexts to evaluate the health and disease status of ancient populations from the Peruvian Andes. Her primary research focuses on the 鈥榖ioarchaeology of imperialism鈥�, which includes the study of paleopathology and violence-related trauma to elucidate the impact of imperialism on community health and lifeways and individual life histories. Her ongoing research in the Peruvian Andes examines how Wari imperial structures (AD 600 鈥� 1000) affected, and were affected by, heartland and hinterland communities, documenting such things as diet and disease, migration patterns, body modification practices, rates of violence, and specific kinds of culturally mediated violence.
, associate professor of psychology
Research Focus:听Cognitive Neuroscience
Professor Woodman鈥檚 research examines how mechanisms of visual attention and visual working memory influence how we interact with the world around us. Specifically, how the primate visual system performs figure-ground segregation, attentional deployment during the processing of complex scenes, temporary storage of information in visual working memory, and cognitive control during task performance. To study how brains perform these feats, Woodman鈥檚 Vanderbilt Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory uses a variety of methods.
, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering
Research Focus:听Metabolic Engineering
Professor Young applies engineering, biochemistry, and molecular biology to quantitatively analyze and redirect cellular metabolism. In particular, the Young Lab uses an approach called metabolic flux analysis (MFA) to quantify the rates, or 鈥渇luxes鈥�, of intracellular metabolic pathways in a variety of cell models of relevance to medicine and biotechnology. In addition to tool-oriented research aimed at Enhancing MFA Methodologies, Young and his lab are actively pursuing research in four specific application areas: Diabetes & Obesity, Cancer Metabolism, Cell Culture Engineering, and Photosynthesis Research.
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