The Academic Minute for 2017.5.29-6.2

Academic Minute from 5.29 – 6.2

Monday, May 29th
Keren Ladin – Tufts University
Liver Transplants and Geography
Dr. Ladin incorporates quantitative, qualitative, and normative approaches to study how systemic disadvantage affects health and the ability of individuals to make and pursue lifeplans. Specifically, her research aims to better understand how social networks impact health disparities, acute medical decision-making, and resilience in major life transitions. Her research aims to: (1) understand the role of social networks in complex medical decision-making, (2) harness social networks and social support to improve health care utilization among vulnerable populations, and (3) evaluate the impact of public policies on the health of vulnerable populations. Dr. Ladin’s research addresses health disparities in transplantation, mental health treatment, aging, and immigrant health. Dr. Ladin has conducted research in a number of health care settings, including in Chile and Germany. She is also currently a member of the Ethics Committee for the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS).

Tuesday, May 30th
Marla Sokolowski – University of Toronto
Fruit Flies and Obesity
Marla B. Sokolowski, B.Sc. (1977, University of Toronto), Ph.D. (1981, University of Toronto) is a University Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto. Her innovative work is esteemed worldwide as a clear, integrative mechanistic paragon of the manner in which genes can interact with the environment, thus impacting behaviour. She has trail-blazed the development of a branch of Behaviour Genetics that addresses the genetic and molecular bases of natural individual differences in behaviour and is best known for her discovery of the foraging gene. She has published well over 140 publications and given close to 250 invited lectures. Professor Sokolowski is an award winning teacher and highly accomplished lecturer. She has supervised over 20 postdoctoral fellows and 35 graduate students with many of her trainees ascending to prestigious national and international academic positions. She has received Distinguished Visiting Professorships in the US and Europe where she contributes regularly to graduate education. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1998 for her pioneering work in the field of Behavioural Genetics and holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genetics and Behavioural Neurology since 2001. In 2004 she became a Fellow of Massey College and in 2007 she received the Genetics Society of Canada’s Award of Excellence. She co-directs the Child and Brain Development Programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research where she is the Weston Fellow. She was the Director of the Life Sciences Division of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada from 2009-2012. She was named a University Professor at University of Toronto in 2010. In 2013 she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Distinguished Investigator Award from the International Behaviour and Neurogenetics Society (2014).

Wednesday, May 31st
David Festinger – Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Opioid Crisis
Dr. Festinger holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and master’s degrees in counseling and clinical health psychology, and is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Festinger is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and is currently president of APA’s Division 28 (Substance Abuse and Psychopharmacology). His National Institutes of Health-funded research has focused primarily on empirically isolating the active mechanisms of drug courts, developing empirically based dispositional procedures for offenders with substance use disorders, integrating disease prevention and healthcare into criminal justice programs for substance users, and bringing experimental research methods to bear on major ethical questions and human subject protections involving research participants.

Thursday, June 1st
Vanessa LoBue – Rutgers University
The Importance of Face Time for Children
Dr. LoBue is interested in the development of infants and young children in multiple domains, including emotional, cognitive, and perceptual. She received her B.S. at Carnegie Mellon University where she worked as an undergraduate research assistant in an infant cognition lab. From there, she went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Virginia, and then completed a 2-year post-doc at New York University. She joined the faculty at Rutgers-Newark in the spring of 2011.

Dr. LoBue’s research focuses on the perception of emotionally valenced stimuli over the lifespan. Emotional stimuli constitute a unique class of stimuli for humans, and research suggests that they may hold a special status in human perception. In her work, Dr. LoBue asks: How do humans respond to emotional stimuli? Are they perceived faster than neutral stimuli? Does emotional valence affect the way humans learn about objects? While these questions are relevant to humans over the entire lifespan, Dr. LoBue focuses specifically on young children and infants. By focusing on young children, the development of these perceptual and learning systems can be examined, and we can find out how emotions and experiences may change the way we see the world around us.

Friday, June 2nd
Richard Ocejo – John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Are Low Status Jobs Cool?
I am an associate professor of sociology at John Jay College, and also a member of the doctoral faculty in sociology at the Graduate Center.  My forthcoming book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press; spring 2017), is about the transformation of low-status occupations into “cool,” cultural taste-making jobs (cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men’s barbers, and whole animal butchers).  My first book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City, about nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods, was also published by Princeton University Press in 2014.  My work has appeared in City & Community, Poetics, Ethnography, and the European Journal of Cultural Studies.  I am also the editor of Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge; 2012) and serve on the editorical boards of the journals Metropolitics, Work and Occupations, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography.  I am currently working on two research projects: one on the development, design, and social dynamics of Penn Station and the other on small town gentrification in the Hudson Valley, NY.  My overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods).