New Faculty
Science Journal, Fall 1995 Vol 13, No. 1
James J. Beatty studies the composition and energy spectra of high-energy cosmic-ray particles, the subatomic particles and nuclei accelerated to nearly the speed of light by violent astrophysical events. "Some of these particles arrive at Earth, where they can be measured either directly with experiments on high-altitude balloons or in space, or indirectly by studying showers of particles produced when cosmic rays impact the Earth's atmosphere," Beatty explains. His current projects include the High-Energy Antimatter Telescope (HEAT) balloon-borne magnetic spectrometer, and the Auger project, which is an international effort to build a 1500-square-mile detector for cosmic-ray showers on the ground.
Beatty earned a bachelor's degree with honors in chemistry in 1982, a master's degree in chemistry in 1984, and a doctoral degree in chemistry in 1986, all at the University of Chicago. Before joining the Penn State faculty, he was a research associate at the University of Chicago during 1986, a research assistant professor then assistant professor of physics at Boston University from 1986 to 1989, and an assistant professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis from 1991 to 1994, where he was associate professor of physics from 1994 to 1995.
J. Martin Bollinger, Jr., '86 Chem,
assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular
biology
J. Martin Bollinger, Jr.'s research concerns mechanisms of assembly of complex metal ion cofactors in enzymes and regulatory proteins. He says, "Nature routinely employs chemical reactions that are difficult for chemists to carry out. Many of these reactions are catalyzed by enzymes that use clusters of metal ions and modified amino acids at their catalytic centers. If we hope to learn from nature's chemical experience, an important question we must answer is how these complex metal ion cofactors are built into the enzymes and proteins in which they ultimately function. My research will address this issue in several systems with relevance to human health."
Bollinger earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1986 at Penn State and a doctoral degree in biochemistry in 1993 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School before joining the Penn State faculty this summer.
Dimitri Burago's primary field of interest is differential geometry. He says "I am especially interested in large-scale metric invariants of manifolds with cocompact action of isometry groups. I also am interested in comparing qualitative properties of Riemannian and Finsler manifolds." He also is interested in problems involving the combinatorial theory of algorithms; for example, optimal strategies and lower bounds.
Burago earned a masters degree in mathematics, summa cum laude, in 1986 and a doctoral degree in physical and mathematical sciences in 1992, both at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. He was a scientific researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1986 to 1994, when he took a leave of absence to become a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Penn State faculty this fall.
Wenwu Cao applies mathematical methods, such as differential equations and numerical analysis, to fundamental physical principles as a means of studying ferroelectric and ferroelastic materials and piezoelectric composites. He has developed several theoretical models to solve practical problems in materials research such as phase transitions, domain pattern formation, and domain dynamics in ferroelectric and ferroelastic systems; phase partitioning in complete-solid-solution systems; and inhomogeneous structural deformation in piezoelectric composites.
Cao is an active participant in university-industry interactions, using finite-element methods to model and optimize designs for such industrial applications as piezoelectric composites, ultrasonic transducers, and piezoelectric actuators. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics and the Intercollege Materials Research Laboratory.
Cao received a bachelor's degree in physics at Jilin University in China in 1982 and a doctoral degree in physics from Penn State in 1987. Before joining the college as a member of the mathematics faculty, Cao held research positions at the Penn State Intercollege Materials Research Laboratory from 1982 to 1988 and from 1990 to the present. He was a research associate at the Cornell University Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics from 1989 to 1990. In 1992 he became an assistant professor of materials at Penn State, then was promoted to associate professor of materials in 1993.
James Gregory Ferry,
professor of biochemistry and molecular biology
James Gregory Ferry says the major goal of his research is "to obtain a molecular understanding of the metabolism of methanogenic microbes with the greatest impact on activities important to humans, including environmental factors that influence the biological release of methane, factors that minimize and stabilize controlled methanogenic fermentations for waste management or alternative fuel production, metalloenzyme catalysis responsible for the dehalogenation and detoxification of hazardous compounds, and fundamental cellular processes applicable to the wider world of biological understanding."
Ferry explains that "approximately one-quarter of the Earth's protoplasm is anaerobic microbes, which function in the global carbon cycle to degrade plant and animal biomass to carbon dioxide and methane. Methane is a major component of greenhouse gasses and reflects nearly 30-fold more radiation back to Earth than does carbon dioxide. The process of methane formation from biomass has several beneficial uses, including the inexpensive disposal of domestic and agricultural wastes, production of methane fuel from renewable biomass and waste materials, utilization of low-value lignin-containing feed stocks by cattle, and the anaerobic detoxification of halogenated pesticides and other toxic wastes.
Ferry earned a bachelor's degree in agronomy and soil microbiology at the University of Georgia in 1968 and a doctoral degree in microbiology and biochemistry at the University of Illinois in 1974. He was assistant professor of microbiology at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 1976 to 1981, then associate professor from 1981 to 1986 and professor from 1986 until joining the Penn State faculty this fall. He is editor of the Journal of Bacteriology.
Qi Li's research involves the physics and application of superlattices and ultrathin films, particularly high-temperature superconductors and ferromagnetic oxides that she describes as having a "giant magnetoresistance effect." She says some of her specific interests include "two-dimensional effects in superconductor and ferromagnetic ultrathin films, dimensional crossover behavior of vortices in superconductors, interface-related and surface-related effects such as charge transfer and proximity effects, the metal-insulator transition, and colossal magnetoresistance effects in magnetic-oxide thin-film and multilayer systems.
She earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1982, a master's degree
in physics in 1985, and a doctoral degree in physics in 1988, all at Peking
University in China. She was a visiting scientist at Kernforchungszentrum
Karlsruhe in Germany from 1988 to 1989, a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers
University and Bellcore Corporation from 1989 to 1990, and an assistant
research scientist at the center for superconductivity research at the
University of Maryland from 1991 until 1995, when she became a member of
the Penn State faculty.
Richard Ordway says he uses the fruit fly, Dropsophilia melanogaster, in his research to apply a unique combination of genetic, molecular, and in-situ electrophysiological approaches to problems in cellular neurobiology. "My recent work has focused on synaptu transmission; specifically, on the mechanisms underlying the exocytotic release of neurotransmitters by regulated fusion of synaptu vesicles with the presynaptu membrane."
Ordway earned a bachelor's degree in biology at Assumption College in 1984 and a doctoral degree in physiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1990. He held postdoctoral positions from 1987 to 1992 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, then became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1992, where he worked until joining the Penn State faculty this fall.
Ramesh Raina uses molecular genetics techniques to understand how DNA sequences from maize plants known as suppressor-mutator transposable elements are genetically regulated. "DNA methylation has been implicated in controlling a number of cellular processes in eukaryotes, including transcription, imprinting, transposition, DNA repair, chromatin organization, and a variety of epigenetic phenomenon," he says. "I am attempting to understand how the methylation state of the suppressor-mutator transposable element is regulated at the molecular level." Raina says his long-term goal is to "understand the molecular events involved in the regulation of plant gene expression by DNA methylation."
He received a bachelor's degree with honors in chemistry at Banaras Hindu University in India in 1982 and a master's degree in biochemistry there in 1985. He received a master's degree in molecular biology in 1987 and a doctoral degree in molecular biology in 1991, both at Jawaharalal Nehru University in India. Before joining the Penn State faculty, he was a research scientist at Jawaharalal Nehru University from 1990 to 1992 and a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution beginning in 1992.
Alan Walker's research concerns the origins of primates and humans. He is the discoverer of many important fossils, including a famous australopithecine known as "The Black Skull." He was involved in the excavation of the most complete early hominid skeleton ever found, along with Richard Leakey, an anthropologist with whom he has collaborated since 1969. The volume he coauthored with Leakey describing and analyzing this Homo erectus skeleton was awarded the Association of American Publishers Prize for Best Book in Sociology and Anthropology in 1993.
Walker's work involves searching for primate and human fossils in rocks dated from about 30 to 1 million years ago and laboratory analyses of the fossils to extract as much environmental and behavioral information from them as possible.
He was born and educated in England, where he earned a bachelor's degree with honors in geology and biology from Cambridge University in 1962 and a doctoral degree in anatomy and paleontology from London University in 1967. He taught anatomy to medical students at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London; the Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Nairobi, Kenya, before moving to the United States in 1973. He was a member of Harvard University, where he was associated with Harvard Medical School, the Peabody Museum, and the Department of Biology from 1974 to 1978. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 and was awarded a 5-year "no strings attached" MacArthur Fellowship in 1988. He was professor of cell biology and anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1978 until joining the Penn State faculty this fall with a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Biology. He is associate editor of the Journal of Human Evolution.
Daqing Wan studies number theory and algebraic geometry over finite fields. His current research interests include various fundamental questions on zeta functions and L-functions of algebraic variables over finite fields, such as the rationality, meromorphic continuation, entireness, Riemann hypothesis, and order of poles of such functions. His main tools are from algebraic geometry and p-adic analysis. He also is interested in various applications of finite fields to combinatorics and coding theory, as well as algorithmic aspects of finite fields.
Wan earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1982 at the Chengdu Institute of Geology in China, a master's degree in 1986 at Sichuan University in China, and a doctoral degree in mathematics in 1991 at the University of Washington. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1993 to 1994 and an assistant professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas from 1991 until joining the Penn State faculty this fall.
Xiao Xing Xi's research concerns the physics underlying the electronic and photonic applications of metal-oxide thin films. Metal oxides used in a variety of devices include superconductor, ferroelectric, nonlinear-optical, electro-optical, and magnetic materials. Xi says, "My research focuses on the understanding of fundamental electrical and optical properties of these materials and the effects on them of structural and interfacial defects." Xi uses the pulsed laser deposition technique, which he says is particularly powerful for fabricating the thin films of oxides and multicomponent materials that he tailors for applications involving specific devices. "So my research will have a technological impact, it often involves multidisciplinary collaborations with other departments, industries, and national laboratories," he says.
Xi earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1982 and a doctoral degree in physics in 1987, both at Peking University in China. Before joining the Penn State faculty, he was a visiting scientist at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center in Germany from 1987 to 1989, a research associate at Rutgers University and the Bellcore Corporation from 1989 to 1990, a research scientist at the University of Maryland from 1990 to 1995, a research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 1993 to 1994, and a member of the technical staff of Superconducting Core Technologies in Golden, Colorado, during the first half of 1995.
Ping Xu's primary fields of interest are symplectic geometry, especially Poisson geometry; noncommutative differential geometry; and mathematical physics. He says, "I particularly am interested in problems related to quantization. In classical mechanics, observables can be described by functions on certain Poisson manifolds, while the space of quantum observables require noncommutative algebras. Quantization, roughly speaking, is a way to reveal the relation between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. My research will focus on studying various geometries related to this subject."
Xu received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1984 at Beijing University in China and a doctoral degree in mathematics in 1990 at the University of California at Berkeley.
He was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 until joining the Penn State faculty this fall.