Academic Minute from 5.23 – 5.27
Monday, May 23
Christopher Wrede – Michigan State University
Pre-Solar Grains
Prof. Wrede in an experimental nuclear astrophysicist who received a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University in 2008. From 2008-2011, he was a Research Associate at the University of Washington’s Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. Since 2011, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University conducting research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, the future site of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.
Tuesday, May 24
Lori Poloni-Staudinger – Northern Arizona University
Female Terrorists
Lori Poloni-Staudinger is a professor of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University. Her areas of research include terrorism, transnational social movements and political participation.
Wednesday, May 25
Molly Cummings – University of Texas at Austin
Fish Skin Provides Invisibility in Open Ocean
Molly Cummings studies the evolutionary forces that shape the ways that animals communicate. She studies how fish and frogs camouflage themselves from predators, how they evolve signals to attract potential mates, and how the visual system and brain processes these different signals. Her recent research has explored how fish use polarized light to both hide and communicate, as well as identified what brain regions and genomic pathways are involved in mate choice decision-making.
Thursday, May 26
Rebecca Lakin Gullan – Gwynedd Mercy University
Mentors That Matter
Associate professor of psychology Rebecca Lakin Gullan, PhD has been a faculty member at Gwynedd Mercy University since 2009. Gullan received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cornell University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology (with a specialization in children and families) from Bowling Green State University. Her research interests include empowerment, sense of community, civic engagement, and identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Gullan has collaborated with colleagues at Rutgers University and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine on intervention and measurement development research related to health violence prevention, empowerment, and mentorship. She has also published research on marital and parent-child interactions in clinic-referred families. In addition to her research, Gullan has served on for both regional and national child advocacy organizations. Gullan was also on the Editorial Board for School Psychology Quarterly, the official school psychology journal of the American Psychological Association and serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for a number of professional journals. Gullan teaches ethics, research methodology and experimentation, and the psychology capstone course.
Friday, May 27
David Frederick – Chapman University
Obesity Framing in the Media
Dr. David Frederick is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. He began teaching at Chapman in 2012. Growing up in rural upstate New York, he became fascinated with animal behavior, and his original dream was to chase monkeys around Africa as a primatologist. This spurred him to study how social and biological factors interact to shape the bodies, brains, and preferences of human and nonhuman animals. He enjoys teaching Research Methods, where students are taught how to use experimental and correlational research designs to understand studies on current issues such as debates over affirmative action and the causes of the wage gap between men and women, to how we can accurately measure people’s emotions. He also enjoys teaching Human Sexuality, where students learn how hormones, evolved biological systems, and social constructions can explain cross-cultural differences in sexuality, people’s mating preferences, factors shaping sexual orientation, and how doctors respond to intersex babies.
