This fall, 13 new researchers and instructors join five natural science departments and programs in Arts & Sciences. New faculty in the humanities and social sciences will be introduced in the coming weeks.
Welcome to our incoming faculty!
Biology
Kevin Cox joins the Department of Biology as an assistant professor. He is also an assistant member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Cox’s research group uses spatial and single-cell genomics, imaging, and molecular biology to uncover the spatial organization of genes in plants, with a core objective of unraveling the communication mechanisms within plant cells. Cox earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and his doctorate at Texas A&M University. Before joining WashU, he was an HHMI Hanna H. Gray Postdoctoral Fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
Andreas Kautt joins the Department of Biology as an assistant professor. He is an evolutionary biologist interested in the mechanisms and conditions driving (or constraining) the evolution of biological diversity. His current research focuses on uncovering how coding or regulatory genetic changes act through the nervous system, resulting in behavioral differences in North American deer mice. He joined WashU after completing his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Kautt earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
Chemistry
Kelly Powderly joins the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor. Her research seeks to develop and utilize new synthetic pathways to discover extended solids with magnetic, electronic, and non-trivial topological properties of interest in quantum information science, and to explore new fundamental bonding in materials. Before joining WashU, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Powderly earned her bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University and her doctorate at Princeton University.
Environmental Studies
Christian George joins the Environmental Studies Program as a senior lecturer. George has more than 25 years of experience working with geographic information science (GIS) and has been a professor for 10 years. He has used GIS to address a variety of spatial questions and has mentored students to use the technology to solve problems in ecology, environmental science, public health, and social science. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College, a master’s degree from the University of Florida, and a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.
Physics
Shaffique Adam joins the Department of Physics as a professor. His current research explores the complex and surprising ways electrons behave when subjected to the interplay of quantum mechanics, material imperfections, confined geometries, and interactions with other electrons. He is a recipient of the Singaporean National Research Foundation Fellowship, the National University of Singapore Young Investigator Award, and the Singapore National Research Foundation Investigator Award. Before joining WashU, he was an associate professor at Yale-NUS College and the National University of Singapore. Adam earned his bachelor’s degree at Stanford University and his doctorate at Cornell University.
Karthik Ramanathan joins the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. He is an astroparticle experimentalist hunting for dark matter. Ramanathan is interested in using novel technologies, ideas, and tabletop-type experiments to answer fundamental questions. Prior to joining WashU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Ramanathan earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto, a master’s degree in finance from the London School of Economics, and a master’s and doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago.
Statistics and Data Science
Ran Chen joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as an assistant professor. Previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she works on a wide range of statistical issues, including machine learning and data-driven decision-making with implications for business and health care. Her research interests also include optimization and revenue management. Chen earned her bachelor’s degree at Tsinghua University and her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Joseph Guinness joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as an associate professor. He studies modeling and computational issues that arise in the analysis of large datasets with a focus on applications in Earth sciences, including soil, weather, and climate. He previously served as an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies for the biometry and statistics, and statistical science majors at Cornell University. Guinness earned his bachelor’s degree at WashU and his doctorate at the University of Chicago.
Hong Hu joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as an assistant professor with a primary appointment in the McKelvey School of Engineering’s Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering. Previously, Hu was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests lie in the fields of signal processing, statistics, and machine learning, with a particular focus on developing theoretical underpinnings for algorithms that process high-dimensional data. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University and a doctorate from Harvard University.
Vasileios (Bill) Katsianos joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as a lecturer. His work has centered on statistical genetics with an emphasis on developing methods for the association analysis of infectious disease phenotypes jointly influenced by multiple interacting organisms. His other research interests include multiple testing with dependence, graphical models, Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, time series analysis, and model-based clustering. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a doctorate from the University of Chicago.
Bo Li joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as a professor. Previously the chair of statistics at the University of Illinois, Li is a leading statistician specializing in spatial and spatio-temporal statistics and environmental statistics concerning problems in climatology, atmospheric sciences, public health, forestry, and agriculture. She is also interested in Bayesian hierarchical modeling, functional data methods, and spatial extremes. Li earned a bachelor’s degree at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, master’s degrees at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Texas A&M University, and a doctorate at Texas A&M.
Carlos Misael Madrid Padilla joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as an assistant professor. He studies high-dimensional statistics, a mathematical approach for extremely large and complicated data sets. His research interests include change-point detection, scalable Bayesian computation, graphical models, functional data analysis, network analysis, and nonparametric statistics. Padilla earned his bachelor’s degree at the Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas (CIMAT) in Mexico and his master’s and doctorate at the University of Notre Dame.
Lizda Nazdira Moncada Morales joins the Department of Statistics and Data Science as a lecturer. Her research interests include machine learning methods for time series problems, with a focus on recurrent neural networks, as well as Bayesian Statistics. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico and a master's and doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.
