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Dorothy Beam, English, Purple Pleasures: Highly Wrought Fiction by 19th-Century American Women
Dorothy Beam, Assistant Professor in the Department of English, specializes in the area of nineteenth-century American literature. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation, Purple Pleasures: Highly Wrought Fiction by Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers, explores the ways in which the sentimental novel and the domestic ethos competed with a more radical mode of feminine expression that contemporary reviewers call the "highly wrought novel." Her recovery of these novels revises our understanding of nineteenth-century fiction, particularly fiction written by women. Professor Beam comes to Berkeley with a significant amount of teaching experience.
Oscar Dubon, Materials Science Engineering, Synthesis of Ferromagnetic Semiconductors
Oscar Dubon received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Mineral Engineering from UC Berkeley, after which he conducted postdoctoral fellow research at Harvard, studying metal-mediated growth of semiconductors, low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy, homoepitaxial growth of As delta-doped silicon mediated by Pb overlayers, dopant activation in heavily doped Si, desorption dynamics of Pb from the Si surface. His experimental techniques included Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS), ion channeling, and low energy electron diffraction (LEED). Professor Dubon's research encompasses the areas of electronic materials processing, low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), growth and properties of group IV alloys, ion-beam and laser processing of ferromagnetic semiconductors, synthesis of semiconductor nanostructures.
Jack Glaser, Public Policy, The Effect of Knowledge of the Possibility of Death Sentence on Jurors' Judgments of Guilt
Jack Glaser received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1999. He is a social psychologist whose primary research interest is in stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. He studies these intergroup biases at multiple levels of analysis. For example, he investigates the unconscious operation of stereotypes and prejudice using modern, computerized methods, and is investigating the implications of such subtle forms of bias for discrimination law. He is also interested in the police practice of racial profiling, especially as it relates to the psychology of stereotyping, and the self-fulfilling effects of such stereotype-based discrimination. Additionally, Professor Glaser conducts research on a very extreme manifestation of intergroup bias – hate crime – and has carried out analyses of historical data as well as racist rhetoric on the Internet to challenge assumptions about economic predictors of intergroup violence. Another area of interest is in electoral politics and political ideology. He is specifically interested in the role of emotion (as experienced and expressed) in politics, and in the psychological underpinnings of liberalism and conservatism. In addition to teaching and conducting research at GSPP, Professor Glaser has become involved in training California State judges in the psychology of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, and how they might operate implicitly, and undermine fairness, in the courtroom.
Alexander Katz, Chemical Engineering, Engineering Materials on the Nanoscale for Enantioselective Molecular Recognition and Fullerene Separations
Alexander Katz received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1999. His research interests include the study of a progressive trend in materials research, driven in part by the continuing miniaturization of technology, towards the synthesis of materials at a resolution complementary to an individual molecule of interest. His research philosophy deals with the rational design of materials on this length scale for applications in adsorption, catalysis, nucleation and chemical sensing. Professor Katz's research objective is to synthesize amorphous materials that possess a precise functional group arrangement within a pore whose size and shape is controlled over the length scale of several Ångstroms to nanometers.
Botond Koszegi, Economics, Economic Models of Utility from Anticipation
Botond Koszegi, a recent graduate of MIT, joined the Berkeley Economics faculty in 2000 specializing in Pure and Applied Economic Theory and Public Finance. While Professor Koszegi has wide-ranging interests, his dissertation focuses on the economics of self delusion, specifically self-serving biases. For example, he argues that as individuals develop well being from positive self images, they tend to ignore key information which does not reinforce such favorable self assessment. This phenomenon leads us to view ourselves as more capable than our abilities actually allow. Professor Koszegi's dissertation also addresses the economics of self-control problems with respect to addiction and retirement decisions. Botond Koszegi also has a wide range of teaching experience in both mathematics and economics and has received Harvard's Bok Center Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Joel Moore, Physics, Theory of Collective Quantum Phenomena in Nanostructured Materials
Joel Moore received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2000 and joined the Berkeley Physics Department in 2002 as an Assistant Professor from Bell Labs where he was a postdoctoral researcher. His main interest is strongly correlated condensed matter systems. Professor Moore's work explaining the magnetic field induced splitting of the Kondo resonance has had a strong impact on the fields of mesoscopic physics and correlated electron systems. Currently he is working on the physics of zero-, one-, and two-dimensional correlated electron systems, especially as revealed in nonequilibrium measurements, and on a self-consistent theory of the quantum Hall plateau transition.
Greg Niemeyer, Art Practice, Interactive Voice Box Simulation
Greg Niemeyer studied Classics and Photography in Switzerland before he came to the US in 1992. Through photography, Greg experienced the contest between reality and ideal in his perception of the world, especially in documenting the 1991-1992 collapse of the GDR and in photographing a story about the perception of time among Catholic monks. Based on these experiences, he understands media art as a "reality engine", as a possible source of increased experience of our reality. Because of the ability of computers to document and display a wider array of information than traditional photography, Professor Niemeyer engaged information technology as a key component of his creative practice. He enrolled in Stanford's MFA program in New Genres in 1996 with the intention to explore science and information technology as a context for art. In 1997, he founded SUDAC, the Stanford University Digital Art Center, in anticipation of the need for an academic space dedicated to the practical and theoretical exploration of information technology and art. Seeking a stronger community of digital media artists, Greg Niemeyer moved to UC Berkeley in 2001 to join Shawn Brixey's and Linda Williams growing program in Digital Media at the Departments of Art Practice and Film Studies. His courses focus on computer graphics animation ogallala.berkeley.edu. Here, Professor Niemeyer also found the academic context to study the cultural implications of digital media, in particular of CG simulations. These studies will lead to a book publication with co-author Celia Pierce currently titled "Transfusion: Transgressions in Physical and Virtual Architecture". In the interest of forming a more communicative digital art community, Professor Niemeyer serves on the boards of CCAC (Digital Media), SMAC (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Media Arts Council), GenArt and GroundZero.
Per Jakob Palsboll, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, Molecular Scatology
Per Jakob Palsboll is an assistant professor of ecosystem science in the UCB Conservation Genetics Laboratory at Ecosystem Sciences. His research focuses on the evolution of natural populations, based upon collection and analyses of empirical data (nucleotide sequence data as well as microsatellite genotypes) in conjunction with population genetic computer simulations. The research has so far concentrated on cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) working towards inter-specific comparisons, but is currently expanding to include other marine organisms in order to address more fundamental issues that have arisen from the cetacean work. His research has contemporary as well as historical components. Traditional population genetic and phylogeographic approaches address the historical components. But, with an individual-based approach, molecular methods are fully capable of addressing contemporary aspects as well as in this manner complementing the historical perspective.
Eliot Quataert, Astronomy, Supernovae and the Birth of Compact Objects
Eliot Quataert received his B.S. in Phsyics from MIT in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard in 1999. He was a postdoc in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study for 2 years before coming to Berkeley in 2001. Professor Quataert's research interests include compact objects, particularly black holes and the accretion of matter onto black holes, plasma astrophysics, and high energy astrophysics more generally. He sometimes works on the solar wind and solar corona and, even less frequently, on the structure of protoplanetary disks, and the migration and evolution of planets in such disks. In the past he has studied helioseismology (the oscillations of the sun) and tidal effects in close binary star systems.
Ananya Roy, City and Regional Planning, The Feminization of Policy: A New Development Paradigm?
Ananya Roy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning where she teaches in the fields of comparative urban studies and development planning. She holds a B.A. (1992) in Comparative Urban Studies from Mills College, a M.C.P. (1994) and a Ph.D. (1999) from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1993 to 1998, she was Executive Coordinator of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), a research organization housed in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. In 1996, she was a visiting lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Mills College, teaching courses in urban sociology.
Jennifer Michel Spear, History, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Colonial New Orleans
Jennifer Spear received a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1999 and is a specialist on the history of Colonial America. Her dissertation and most of her published work thus far deals with the issues of race, gender, and class in Louisiana under French and Spanish rule. She currently is at work revising her dissertation with the working title "Intimacies of Colonial Politics: Race, Sexuality, and Social Order in Colonial Louisiana." The project concentrates on the interaction of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans and the construction of a racialized social order. Spear has extensive teaching experience as a teaching assistant at Minnesota, an instructor at Macalester College, and as an Assistant Professor at Dickinson College. She has taught a wide range of classes: American Indian history, the Peoples of Early America, U.S. History at Minnesota, courses on gender in early American and 20th century U.S. Women's history at Macalester, and offerings on American History to 1865, early American history, Native People of Eastern North America, Racial Meanings in American History, and African-American history at Dickinson.
Niek Veldhuis, Near Eastern Studies, Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts
Niek Veldhuis is an accomplished scholar in Assyriology, with primary expertise in Sumerian along with impressive strengths in Akkadian. Hired as an Assistant Professor in 2002, Dr. Veldhuis received his Ph.D. from the University of Groningen, and held there a prestigious Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Research Fellowship in Assyriology. Professor Veldhuis' long-range research projects include studies of religion, literature, and scholarship in ancient Mesopotamia, and a computer project to digitize all of the cuneiform lexical texts.
Kipling Will, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, Poison Beetles
Kipling Will is an Assistant Professor in the ESPM Division of Insect Biology. His research interests center on the systematics, taxonomy and natural history of insects. In his research he draws on morphological data obtained from a variety of specimen preparation and dissection methods. Professor Will studies characteristics comparatively using various imaging techniques and illustrations. These data can then be cast as phylogenetic characters and combined with molecular sequence data to develop phylogenetic hypotheses. All available data contribute to monographic revisions that include the description of new species and development of keys for identification. Professor Will's focus taxon is ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and primarily taxa in the tribe Pterostichini. However, his work is at all levels from species to subfamilies within the family. He is particularly interested in morphology, the chemical defense system and other chemical production systems, biogeographical patterns and reproductive biology. He intends his research to further the cause of systematics, which he believes is to expand knowledge and understanding of the natural world and provide necessary basic knowledge for other biological studies. In order to develop a broader understanding of insects, Professor Will emphasizes field work and observation of the living animals whenever possible.
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