Monday
Pamela Prickett – Pomona College
America’s Rising Number of Unclaimed Deaths
Pamela Prickett is an associate professor of sociology at Pomona College and former journalist. She is the author of two books about Los Angeles, including The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels and Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels.
Tuesday
Deborah Finkel – University of Southern California Dornsife
Childhood Money Stress Can Leave a Lasting Mark
Deborah Finkel is a research professor (50%) at CESR. She earned her PhD in behavior genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1992. Since 2018, she has also served as professor of psychology (50%) at Jönköping University in Sweden. Her research explores genetic and environmental contributions to cognitive aging using longitudinal twin data, with related work in physical aging, self-rated health, and health disparities. She has worked extensively with Swedish twin studies, is PI of GENDER (a study of opposite-sex twins aged 70+ in Sweden), and serves on the leadership team of IGEMS (Interplay of Genes and Environment across Multiple Studies). She also collaborates on extending the Louisville Twin Study into midlife. Deborah is past president of the Behavior Genetics Association and a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
Wednesday
Christopher Baldassano – Columbia University
The Brain Organizes Narratives Into Meaningful Event Memories
Christopher Baldassano is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Columbia University. He was an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, received his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University, and was a postdoc at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. His lab’s research focuses on how knowledge about the world – including semantic knowledge, temporal structure, spatial maps, or schematic scripts – is used to understand and remember complex naturalistic experiences. By applying machine learning techniques to data from behavioral and neuroimaging experiments, his work aims to uncover how dynamic representations in the mind and brain during perception lead to the formation of event memories.
Thursday
Daile Zhang – University of North Dakota
Lightning Strikes Make Collecting Parasitic Fungus A Deadly Pursuit
Daile Zhang is an Assistant Professor at University of North Dakota. Her research focuses on atmospheric electricity and remote sensing. Daile received her PhD degree in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Arizona and was an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland.
Friday
Johanna Smith – California State University San Bernardino
Finding the Courage to Demand Delight
Johanna Smith is a Professor of Theatre Education and Entrepreneurship at California State University, San Bernardino. She has served as an artist and educator for professional theatres, museums, colleges, libraries, public schools, private schools, and preschools around the world. She is a frequent presenter on puppetry as an accessible and powerful tool for educators and is the author of the award winning education text Puppetry in Theatre and Arts Education: Head, Hands, and Heart (Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury, London). She is also very proud of the improv curriculum she created and teaches for CSUSB’s Randall W. Lewis School of Entrepreneurship.
