Columbian College welcomed 12 new full-time faculty members this year, bringing the total number of full-time scholars to 496. Each of these individuals adds skills and expertise that enhance the college’s strengths in disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Emre Barut, Department of Statistics, earned a PhD in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University. His research focuses on variable selection and prediction in high dimensional problems, often found in finance, genetics and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. He is a former analyst for Black River Asset Management in Turkey.
Brenda Bradley, Department of Anthropology, holds a PhD in anthropological sciences from Stony Brook University. Her research uses genetic analyses to answer questions about the behavior, ecology and evolution of primates. She comes to GW from Yale University, where she served as assistant professor of anthropology and director of the Yale Molecular Anthropology Laboratory.
Natalia Jacobsen, English for Academic Purposes Program, earned a PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. Her research interests include computer-assisted teaching methodologies in English, second language acquisition and cognitive linguistics. She has been a visiting assistant professor at GW since 2011 and worked as a research associate at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
Corrine McConnaughy, Department of Political Science, received her PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on identity politics, primarily the roles race and gender play in American politics and in the development of political institutions. She is currently working with Associate Professor of Political Science Ismail White on a study of the intersection of race and gender in American political attitudes.
Sanjay K. Pandey, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, received his PhD in social science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His scholarship focuses on public management, health policy, nonprofit organizations and social entrepreneurship, serving as lead investigator of two landmark surveys of public organizations for the National Administrative Studies Project.. Pandey holds the Shapiro Chair at the Trachtenberg School.
Katrina L. Pariera, Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication, received her PhD in communication from the University of Southern California. Her research draws on health communication and interpersonal communication, particularly on issues related to sexual communication and sexual health. She has studied parent-child communication about sex, social norms about sexual communication and media portrayals of sexual health.
Christopher Rollston, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, earned his PhD in ancient Northwest Semitic languages and literatures from Johns Hopkins University. His areas of expertise include the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament Apocrypha, Northwest Semitic literature, paleography and biblical languages. A former visiting professor at GW, Rollston held professorships at Johns Hopkins and the Emmanuel School of Religion in Tennessee.
Aisha Sayidina, English for Academic Purposes Program, earned her PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Her areas of interest include cultural impact on illiteracies, thought patterns and discourse organization. She was an assistant professor of English at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and an EAP instructor with the University of Alberta, Canada.
Alicia Suarez Touzon, Department of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic Languages & Literatures, holds an MA in second language acquisition from the University of La Rioja in Spain. She has worked at GW as a visiting/adjunct instructor of Spanish since 2012. She previously taught Spanish for the World Bank and the European Union in Kampala, Uganda.
Abdourahman Waberi, Department of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic Languages & Literatures, received his PhD in French and francophone literature from Université Paris Ouest Nanterre. He is a novelist, essayist, poet and short-story writer whose work, originally published in French, has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian and many other languages. His interests include French/francophone literature and culture, postcolonial theory, African studies, poetry and creative writing.
Ismail K. White, Department of Political Science, holds a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on African American politics, public opinion and political participation. Prior to coming to GW, he held assistant professorships at Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin, and was a research scholar at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics.
Judy Wang, Department of Statistics, earned her PhD in statistics from the University of Illinois. Her research interests include bioinformatics, extreme value theory and applications, survival analysis and measurement error. Wang comes to GW from Columbia University where she was a visiting professor of biostatistics and received the 2012 Tweedie New Researcher Award from the Institute of Mathematical Studies.