New faculty 2023-2024
The Eberly College of Science welcomes its newest tenure-line faculty members.
Shabnam Akhtari, professor of mathematics, is interested in number theory, an old branch of mathematics that is focused on the study of numbers, particularly integers or whole numbers. She uses concepts from different subfields of pure mathematics, including algebra, analysis and geometry, to study central and classical problems in number theory, such as whether a polynomial equation in several unknowns has solutions among integers, and, if so, how different solutions are distributed.
Akhtari received the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2021. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Mathematics, Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and Crelle.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2023, Akhtari was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Oregon from 2012 to 2022. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques in the University of Montreal in Canada from 2011 to 2012, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Germany from 2009 to 2011, and at Queen’s University in Canada in 2008. She earned a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of British Columbia in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Sharif University of Technology in Iran in 2002.
Samuel Baugh, assistant professor of statistics, focuses his research on developing statistical models to better understand the impacts of climate change, including long-term changes to oceans and the atmosphere and the probability of extreme weather events. He uses a variety of techniques, including spatiotemporal statistics, Bayesian hierarchical models, and computational approximation and collaborates with scientists in medicine and public health.
Baugh’s previous awards and honors include a Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2023, an Outstanding Ph.D. Student award in 2022 from UCLA and a Dissertation Year Fellowship in 2021 from UCLA. His research has been published in journals such as the Annals of Applied Statistics, Spatial Statistics, and Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2023, Baugh was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He earned a doctoral degree in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2022 and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in statistics from the University of Chicago in 2017 and 2016, respectively.
Marina Feric, Robert and Peggy Schlegel Early Career Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and assistant professor of chemistry, studies the biophysical mechanisms underlying the organization within a cell, including at the cellular, intracellular, and molecular level. She takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining super-resolution imaging techniques with quantitative analysis to explore the behavior and function of biomolecules within droplet-like structures called biomolecular condensates. By identifying the mechanisms by which the cell maintains the organization and activity of its condensates over time, Feric hopes her work will shed light on new approaches to improve human lifespan and treat age-related diseases.
Feric received a postdoctoral fellowship as part of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Postdoctoral Research Associate Training (PRAT) Program from 2018-2021. Her research has been published in journals such as Cell, Nature Cell Biology, The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Reports.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2023, Feric was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute from 2016 to 2021. She earned a doctoral and master’s degrees in chemical engineering at Princeton University in 2016 and 2012, respectively, and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2010.
Bryce Gadway, professor of physics, is an experimental atomic physicist who is broadly interested in developing new experimental methods for exploring emergent phenomena. His group uses systems of atoms trapped by laser light as quantum simulators to explore exotic transport behavior in lattice-like systems.
Gadway’s honors and awards include a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2020, a Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2018, an Arnold O. Beckman Research Award from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2018, and a President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students from Stony Brook University in 2013. His group’s research has been published in journals such as Science, Science Advances, and Nature Communications.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2023, Gadway was an assistant and associate professor of physics at the University of Illinois from 2014 to 2023 and a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow at JILA—a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology—from 2012 to 2014. He earned a doctoral degree in physics from Stony Brook University in 2012 and a bachelor’s degree in astronomy and physics from Colgate University in 2007.
Cory McCartan, the Hoben and Patricia Thomas and Thomas and Ann Hettmansperger Early Career Professor in Statistics, studies methodological and applied problems in the social sciences, with particular emphasis on political and geographic data. In his research he has developed algorithmic tools for studying the problem of gerrymandering in legislative redistricting. He helped start the Algorithm-Assisted Redistricting Methodology (ALARM) Project at Harvard in 2021. He also develops and maintains a number of open-source software packages in the statistical programming language R for redistricting, statistical analysis, and visualization.
Software that McCartan helped develop — redist — received the Best Statistical Software Award, for statistical software that makes a significant research contribution, from the Society for Political Methodology in 2022. McCartan has served as an expert witness in voting rights cases for the NAACP and the ACLU. His research has been published in journals including Science Advances, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Review, the Harvard Data Science Review, and the Annals of Applied Statistics.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2024, McCartan worked as a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Data Science at New York University for a year. He earned a doctoral degree in statistics at Harvard University in 2023 and a bachelor’s degree in math from Grinnell College in 2019.
Scott Schmieding, assistant professor of mathematics, studies a type of dynamical system called symbolic systems, which, like other dynamical systems, evolve over time, but are described by symbols rather than numbers. He specifically explores topological dynamical systems, which consider a system’s topology, or its geometric properties. He also incorporates ideas from the mathematical fields of aperiodic tilings, combinatorics, and K-theory.
Schmieding ‘s research has been published in journals such as Inventiones Mathematicae, International Mathematics Research Notices, and Nonlinearity.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2022, Schmieding was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Denver and a RTG postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and held a visiting position at the University of Copenhagen. He earned a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of Maryland in 2016 and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics at Montana State University in 2008 and 2010, respectively.
Yinming Shao, assistant professor of physics, studies the dynamics of “quasiparticles,” excitations of collections of particles that control the unique properties of quantum materials. He specifically uses techniques like optical and magneto-optical spectroscopies to identify elusive topological fermions as well as unique magnetic excitons. He also leverages polaritons — quasiparticles formed from the hybridization between light and matter — to explore quantum sensing at the nanoscale.
Shao’s research has been published in journals such as Nature Physics, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Advance, and Nature Communications.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2024, Shao was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University from 2020 to 2024. He started his graduate research in physics at University of California San Diego in 2013, before moving to Columbia University in 2017. He earned a doctoral degree in condensed matter physics at Columbia University in 2020, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Zhejiang University in China in 2013.
Grayson Sipe, assistant professor of biology, studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms that drive changes in brain state during vigilance and stress, including maladaptive states due to neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety and alcohol addiction. His research explores how neurons and glial cells in the brain as well as neuromodulators impact sensory processing and learning during these states.
Sipe’s honors and awards include an Infinite Kilometer Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020, and an Outstanding Student Mentor Award in 2016, an Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching in 2015, and a University of Rochester Alumni Fellowship Award in 2010, all from the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2023, Sipe was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2016 to 2022. He earned a doctoral degree in neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 2016 and a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Lafayette College in 2010.