Introducing New A&S Faculty

From our natural sciences division to the visual and performing arts, new faculty join eight of the 21 departments in our college.

	Constance Bailey is a new assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. She earned her PhD from the University of Texas at August and was the NIH Ruth L. Kirschtein National Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Joint BioEnergy Institute from 2016-2018. Bailey aims to harness the chemical potential of the biosynthetic machinery that generates medicinally relevant natural products, such as the polyketide erythromycin. This complex chemistry, while it has varied pharmaceutical applications, can also be utilized to generate valuable chemicals more broadly, including specialty and commodity chemicals.
	Shaneda Destine is a new assistant professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Sociology and Africana studies. She received her PhD from Howard University. Her research highlights the unique ways black women are affected by state violence and the ways in which they strategize, organize, lead and care for movement participants, as part of their political practice.
	Thanh Do is a new assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. He earned his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2015 and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his research, Do combines ion-mobility mass spectrometry, mass spectrometry imaging, and computational modeling to bring a chemical physics outlook to problems of broad chemical interest.
	Stephanie Kivlin is a new assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine in 2012. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Austin from 2012 to 2015 and at the University of New Mexico from 2015 to 2017. Kivlin runs an impressive and original research program using phylogenetic and trait-based approaches to predict microbial composition and function across scales in current and future climates. This novel approach provides a unique lens through which new hypotheses focused on pathogenic, mutualistic and generalist microbes can be tested and, thus, previously unseen patterns detected.
	Rajan Lamicchane is a new assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular & Molecular Biology. He earned his PhD at Wayne State University in 2011 and completed postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Lamicchane is interested in the dynamics and interactions of individual biomolecules in complex biomolecular interactions such as those happening within a protein complex or a cell.
	Susan Lawrence is a new professor in the Department of History. She received her PhD from the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. Lawrence is working on a book about when and why Americans began to give their bodies to medical schools, which has grown out of her long interest in the history of anatomy and human dissection in medical education.
	David Manderscheid is a new professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Provost for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He earned his PhD in mathematics from Yale University and received a prestigious NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Iowa, where he rose through the ranks to become chair of the department. During that period he was a visiting researcher at the world’s top two mathematics institutes – the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. In 2007, Manderscheid became a mathematics professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2013, he became executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State University, in the same year that he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
	Victor Petrov is a new assistant professor in the Department of History. He earned his PhD in history from Columbia University in 2017. For the past year, he has been a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Petrov focuses broadly on the Balkans and the Cold War, as well as the intersection of technology and society. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of socialism’s biggest computer industry, based in Bulgaria, and how it influenced social and political thinking.
	Lauren Roark is a new assistant professor in the Department of Theatre. She received her MFA in costume design from the University of Missouri, Kansas, and has an active and impressive professional design profile. Her most recent designs have been seen at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Milwaukee Repertory Company. Professor Roark will supervise the MFA Costume Design program as well as design her first production at the Clarence Brown Theatre: King Charles the Third.
	David Talmy is a new assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology. He has degrees in mathematics and environmental science and joins UT from MIT where he was a post-doctoral associate and research scientist. Talmy uses computational and analytical tools to study biological and environmental phenomena, including energy and nutrient flow in marine ecosystems and the dynamics of predator-prey relationships.