BSOS Welcomes New Faculty for 2019/2020 Academic Year

Shane Bolles Walsh joins the Department of African American Studies as an adjunct professor. His research interests focus on the African American in the early twentieth century and the roots of cultural presentation in mass media and the arts with a focus on the genesis of black masculinity in that era. Walsh earned a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Washington College, a master’s in African American and African Studies from Morgan State University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland. Additionally, Walsh earned a certificate in Museum Studies from UMD.

Marlaina H. Martin joins the Department of Anthropology as the Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual Culture developed in collaboration between the University of Maryland and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Martin received her Ph.D. from the Cultural Anthropology Program at Rutgers University in May 2019. Her research interests include critical race theory, colorblindness, and post-racialism; feminist and Black feminist theory; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; body and embodiment studies; cultural studies and media production studies; and anthropologies of race, gender, and media.

Bianca E. Bersani joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as an associate professor in the fall of 2019. As a life course criminologist, her research interests involve the study of patterns and predictors of offending from adolescence through adulthood. Key themes include the investigation of desistance and persistence in offending, family and intimate relationship dynamics, divergence in offending across race/ethnicity, gender, and immigration status, and the application of innovative methodologies to understanding the mechanisms of behavioral change.

Pierre De Leo joins the Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor after receiving a PhD from Boston College. His areas of interest include international finance and macroeconomics. His research focuses on the importance of expectations for the empirical identification of economic and policy shocks, the nature of exchange rate fluctuations, and the optimal conduct of monetary and exchange rate policy. In one of his papers, he proposes a new approach to decompose the effects of domestic and external shocks in small open economies, highlighting a set of related identification challenges.

Thomas Drechsel joins the Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in economics at the London School of Economics. He holds a master’s from University College London and a bachelor’s from Goethe University Frankfurt. Prior to starting his Ph.D., Drechsel worked in the research department of the European Central Bank. His research interests cover macro-finance, international macro and macroeconometrics.

Chenyu Yang joins the Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Yang's research is in the areas of industrial organization, innovation and applied econometrics. He uses structural models to study market structure and market design. His recent work examines the competition in the smartphone industries and the design of a large ride-sharing platform. Chenyu received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and was an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester (Simon Business School). 

Sinéad Louise Farrell joined the Department of Geographical Sciences as an associate professor in the fall of 2019. Dr. Farrell received her Ph.D. in Space and Climate Physics from University College London in 2007. Her primary fields of study are cryospheric sciences and remote sensing. She is a principal investigator on the NASA ICESat-2 Science Team and a member of the Mission Advisory Group for the Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter. Prior to joining the Department of Geographical Sciences, Dr. Farrell was an Associate Research Scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), at the University of Maryland.

Pierre Guillevic is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences and a member of the Terrestrial Information Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. His research is focused on mapping the properties of the Earth surface using advanced remote sensing data analyses, physical models and geographical information systems. Building collaborations with the academic, research and private sectors, Pierre is developing new atmospheric radiative transfer models, new techniques to retrieve surface biophysical parameters, surface water and energy information from satellite observations for environmental and climate study applications.

Hannah Kerner joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an Assistant Research Professor. Her research involves developing new machine learning methods for analyzing remote sensing data for agricultural monitoring, food security and scientific applications. Kerner received her PhD at Arizona State University where she developed new methods for facilitating scientific discovery in planetary exploration investigations at Mars, the Moon and Earth using machine learning.

Varada Shevade is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geographical Sciences. Shevade received her PhD in Geographical Sciences in 2018 and a MS in Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development from the University of Maryland. Her areas of interest include land cover land use change, biodiversity conservation, spatial analysis for environmental and health applications. Currently, Shevade is helping develop a satellite data driven early warning system for the monitoring / forecasting of malaria hotspots in Myanmar.

Carlos Silva is a post-doctoral associate with the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI). GEDI is a laser instrument, mounted on the International Space Station that maps Earth's forests in three dimensions. Silva’s research focuses on quantifying the amount of carbon held in forests globally in order to estimate current and future carbon uptake by Earth's forests.

Sergii Skakun is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment at the Department of Geographical Sciences and the College of Information Studies (iSchool). Prior to joining the faculty at UMD, Skakun was a Senior Engineer at Samsung SDI (South Korea), where he was responsible for developing industrial vision inspection systems. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and is a principal investigator on multiple projects funded by agencies such as NASA, Google, European Commission, EC Joint Research Center and the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation.

Zhenhua Zou joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as a post-doctoral Associate working with Dr. Chengquan Huang’s group. His current research focuses on wetland mapping and change analysis using Sentinel-1, 2 and Landsat images. Zou received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma where his research focused on surface water area mapping and surface water quality estimation using remote sensing techniques.

Shannon Carcelli joins the Department of Government and Politics as a visiting associate professor. Dr. Carcelli studies international political economy and United States foreign policy, specializing in the role of legislative and bureaucratic institutions in foreign aid and sanctions policy. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of California San Diego and a BA from Carleton College. During the 2018-2019 academic year, she served as a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance.

Christina Shields joined the Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences as an assistant clinical professor in the spring of 2019. She received her Au.D. from University of Maryland, College Park in 2013. She was a clinical audiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland for five years. Her clinical interests include vestibular/balance disorders and tinnitus/hyperacusis management.

Lacey Curry joined the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences as an assistant professor in July of 2019. She received her Au.D. from James Madison University. She started her career at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA and has most recently been Audiology Clinic Director at East Carolina University in North Carolina. Her clinical interests include hearing aid and sound amplification, cochlear implantation, vestibular and balance disorders and aural rehabilitation.

Monica Kearney is a Professional Track Faculty in the Department of Psychology. She received her Doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2019 and completed her doctoral internship at the University of Texas at Austin Counseling and Mental Health Center. Her research focuses on the relationship between gender roles and dating violence. Monica is passionate about social justice and advocacy for marginalized populations.

Benjamin Jones is currently a lecturer in the Department of Psychology. He teaches courses such as introduction to psychology, research methods, applied statistics, and upper-level social psychology capstones. He is interested in novel teaching methods that incorporate technology into the classroom learning experience and strives to engage his classes with exciting hands-on activities. He is also passionate about fostering successful educational experiences for first-generation college students, as well as students who come from underprivileged backgrounds. Much of his prior research utilizes Social Identity Theory (SIT) to answer questions related to teams and leadership.

Linda Zou received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Washington. Her research is broadly interested in intergroup relations in the U.S., with a focus on the consequences of increasing immigration and racial/ethnic diversity on the ways people think and behave.

Sharan Sharma is an Assistant Research Professor with appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Joint Program in Survey Methodology. Dr. Sharma holds a Ph.D. in Survey Methodology and a master’s in applied statistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as well as a master’s degree in management studies and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Mumbai. His research interests include interviewer effects, interviewer-respondent interaction, falsification, survey quality control, paradata, the design and implementation of international surveys, and modeling complex survey data.

Jasmón Bailey joins the Department of Sociology a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of South Florida. His research interests include the social psychology of race and racism, intersectionality, labor, and social mobility. Bailey aims to advance scholarship that focuses on how systemic and structural racism influence gendered expectations.