Faculty

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Jon Witten

Land use planning; local government law; natural resources policy
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Nathan Wolff

Nineteenth-century American literature and culture Affect and emotion Politics of New Materialisms Sex, gender, sexuality Critical Theory Democracy, bureaucracy, populism
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Taritree Wongjirad

My current focus is on measuring the properties of the neutrino, one of the fundamental particles of the Standard Model. We know a few things about the neutrino: it has a very small mass, has no electric charge, comes in three types — or flavors — and interacts only via the weak force and gravity. However, there are many things we do not know. What is the exact mass of the neutrino? And how does it get its mass? Are the three we know about the only kinds that exist? Answers to these questions impact not only our understanding of the fundamental laws of matter but also have consequences for our understanding of how the universe evolved. These and many other questions make the neutrino a fascinating particle. However, as mentioned above, neutrinos interact only via the weak force. They interact so rarely that, at the energies, we typically work with, neutrinos can pass through light-years long block of lead without striking it. This makes neutrino experiments challenging as we need to build massive, building-sized detectors which are instrumented with relatively, low-cost sensors. However, the challenge is often fun, as we are often forced to apply the newest technologies in both hardware and software to design and complete our experiments.
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Jean Wu

Asian American studies; anti-racist education; community-based action
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Man Xu

Middle Period China, Late Imperial China, Women's History, the History of Material Culture
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Adriana Zavala

Modern and Contemporary U.S. Latinx and Mexican art; Latin American art; Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora
Academic Leave
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Souhad Zendah

Arabic pedagogy and curriculum design, Language and Literacy acquisition K-12, and Arabic modern literature
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Yu Zhang

Inorganic chemistry, Organometallic chemistry, Photochemistry, Bioinorganic Chemistry. Transition metal complexes are crucial for catalysis, energy conversion, and biological functions. Our research group is dedicated to synthesizing innovative transition metal complexes for sustainable applications. Our primary areas of interest encompass: 1) developing molecular inorganic complexes for solar energy conversion; 2) exploring organometallic catalysis and small molecule activation; and 3) investigating the mechanisms underlying significant natural and industrial processes.