Seven New Faculty Join UMass Amherst in Range of Scientific Disciplines

Dec. 7, 2001

AMHERST, Mass. - New faculty members in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts this fall include an astronomer, a biologist, a physicist, computer scientists, and polymer scientists. They are as follows:

Grant Wilson – Grant Wilson has been named an assistant professor in astronomy. He earned his Ph.D. and his master's degree at Brown University, and did his undergraduate work at Tufts University. He has served as a research scientist at the University of Chicago, where he worked on the TopHat cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy instrument. He also was a visiting scholar at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, and was a graduate student researcher-fellow with NASA. His primary research interest is in the study of the origin and evolution of the structure of the universe. He has worked on two well-known telescopes, the Large Millimeter Telescope, and the TopHat telescope. In general, Wilson is interested in instrumentation, cosmic microwave background radiation, and cosmic infrared background.

Elizabeth Dumont – Elizabeth Dumont has been named assistant professor of biology. She is also serving as curator of mammals for the biology department. She received her master's and doctoral degrees from SUNY at Stony Brook, and earned her bachelor’s degree at Indiana University. She has previously taught at Stony Brook, the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, and Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. Dumont has won several National Science Foundation grants focusing on physiological evolution, and has authored numerous articles and book chapters. Her research is focused on understanding the evolution of feeding strategies in mammals. Most recently, Dumont has studied fruit bats as model organisms for answering questions about the evolution of feeding in mammals.

Sridhar Mahadevan – Sridhar Mahadevan has joined the University as an associate professor in the computer science department. He earned his Ph.D. at Rutgers University, his master's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, and his bachelor's degree at the Regional Engineering College in Tiruchirapall, India. Before joining the UMass faculty, he served as a faculty member at Michigan State University and the University of South Florida. He also served as a research scientist in industry, at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Laboratories in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. His areas of interest include artificial intelligence, cognitive science, machine learning, and robotics. He has served on several editorial boards, and has received numerous awards and grants, including a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Michigan State Teacher-Scholar Award. He is co-editor of the academic book, "Robot Learning," originally published in 1993 by Kluwer Press.

Hava Siegelmann – Hava Siegelmann has been named an associate professor of computer science. She earned her doctorate at Rutgers University, her master's degree at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and her bachelor's degree at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. She served most recently as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was head of the information systems engineering department at the Israel Institute of Technology. Siegelmann was a postdoctoral researcher at Bar-Ilan University. She has also held numerous summer research positions, including as a researcher at the Mathematical Science Research Institute at the University of California Berkeley, the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University, the Salk Institute of Neurobiological Studies, Bell Laboratories, and the Oregon Graduate Institute. Her research interests include neural computation, non-standard models of computation, information and decision systems, the Internet, and engineering applications. She is the author of the book, "Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit," published by Birkhauser in 1998.

Anthony Dinsmore – Anthony Dinsmore has been named an assistant professor of physics. He earned his doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania, and did his undergraduate work at Yale University. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University, and the Naval Research Laboratory. He has won several awards for outstanding publications. His research interests lie in the statistical mechanics of soft condensed matter, including colloids, vesicles, emulsions, and nanoparticle suspensions. He also studies self-assembling molecules at the nanoscale level.

Maria Santore – Maria Santore has been named a full professor of polymer science and chemical engineering. She earned her Ph.D.at Princeton University, and did her undergraduate work at Carnegie Mellon University. She was on the chemical engineering faculty at Lehigh University for 10 years prior to coming to UMass. At Lehigh, she held the Class of '61 Chaired Associate Professorship in Chemical Engineering. Also, she was a visiting associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999-2000. She is interested in synthetic and biological polymers, novel sensors, "smart adhesives," chemical and pharmaceutical delivery, and biomedical topics such as polymer-based artificial cells.

Gregory Tew – Gregory Tew has been named an assistant professor of polymer science and engineering. He earned his bachelor's degree at North Carolina State University and doctoral degree at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, before moving to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School for postdoctoral studies. His research interests lie in creating well-defined macromolecular architectures for molecular self-organization, organic-inorganic hybrid materials, and bio-inspired or medical materials.

He relies on the tools of synthetic chemistry to build new kinds of molecules. These molecules will have properties that lead to the assembly of very large structures based on interactions inspired by biology, Tew says. In addition, his research group hopes to create "smart" materials for tissue repair or replacement. This work will be done in collaboration with colleagues at the UMass Medical School in Worcester. Another area of Tew's future research lies in creating synthetic macromolecules that mimic the structure and function of biological proteins. The group has seen some success in this area, in the development of new anti-microbial materials, says Tew.

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