Introducing New Members of the Faculty

To help introduce to the Cornell community the new members of the university's faculty, the Cornell Chronicle is publishing brief, new-faculty profiles each week during the semester.

Ephrahim Garcia

Associate professor, mechanical and aerospace engineering
College: Engineering
Academic focus: Applications of novel transduction technologies such as piezoelectric and shape memory materials applied to adaptive structural systems, including robotics, aircraft and space structures; development of novel actuators and power converters from the micro to mesoscale by using both active materials and lithographic fabrication techniques (micro-electromechanical systems); bioinspired engineering using natural structures and phenomena to create new devices and machines.
Previous position: Program manager, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense, 1998 to 2002; assistant and associate professor of mechanical engineering, Vanderbilt University, 1991-98.
Academic background: B.S., aerospace engineering, 1985; M.S., "System Identification in the Microcomputer Environment," 1988; and Ph.D., "On the Modeling and Control of Slewing Flexible Structures," 1990, all from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Jian Hua

Assistant professor, plant biology
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Academic focus: Hua studies how plants regulate their growth in response to temperature variations. In the long-term, she hopes to understand the perception and transduction of the temperature signals and their modulatio n on the cellular growth machinery.
Previous position: Postdoctoral fellow, Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Mass.
Academic background: B.S., biology, Fudan University, China, 1989; M.S., plant biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology, China, 1992; and Ph.D., genetics, California Institute of Technology, 1998.

Nikolaus (Klaus) Osterrieder

Associate professor, virology
College: Veterinary Medicine
Academic focus: Pathobiology and immunology of equine herpes virus and Merek's disease virus.
Previous position: Group leader, Federal Research Centre for Virus Diseases of Animals, Germany.
Academic background: Dr. med. vet., 1993, and Dr. med. vet. habil., 1997, both from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

John Rizzo

Professor, policy analysis and management; director of the Sloan Program in Health Care Administration
College: Human Ecology
Academic focus: Competition in medical markets, pharmacoeconomics, outcomes research, economic value of hospital admitting privileges to physicians, welfare effects of hospital mergers, impact of advertising on competition in medical markets.
Previous position: Professor, Graduate Program in Health Services Management and Policy, School of Public Health and senior research scholar in the Center for HOPES, Ohio State University, 2000-02; associate professor of public health, Yale University School of Medicine, 1991-2000; research fellow, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 1988-91.
Academic background: B.A., economics, University of New Hampshire, 1979; and M.A., 1980, and Ph.D., 1985, both in economics from Brown University.

Jed P. Sparks

Assistant professor, ecology and evolutionary biology
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Research in physiological characteristics of plants that control interaction of plant communities with atmosphere and pedosphere (soil); teaching physiological plant ecology, ecology and the environment.
Previous position: Research associate, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado.
Academic background: B.S., biology, University of Utah, 1994; Ph.D., botany, Washington State University, 1998.

November 7, 2002