Meet and Greet

Meet a dozen of CMC's newest faculty in the departments of economics, government, history, mathematics, philosophy and religious studies, and psychology-with more to come on the work and interests of other professors (17 in all) who also joined the College this fall.

Those not included below are: Eric Hughson (economics), George Thomas (government), Albert Park (history), Seth Lobis (literature), and Tomoe Kanaya (psychology).

Economics

George Batta, Assistant Professor of Economics (Accounting)
George Batta received his Ph.D. in business administration, with a concentration in accounting and control, in 2005 from Harvard and his A.B. in political economy from the University of California, Berkeley. His research centers on financial accounting and reporting, with specific emphases that include credit analysis, structured finance, and financial analysis. Batta has worked as a consultant for NERA Economic Consulting and as a financial auditor for Ernst and Young, L.L.P. Before joining the CMC faculty, Batta was a lecturer at the University of Southern California's Leventhal School of Accounting.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely become a high-strung corporate attorney."

David Bjerk, Assistant Professor of Economics
David Bjerk's research primarily examines public and labor economics issues, with particular focus on crime, the criminal justice system, and racial and gender earnings inequality. After earning his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bjerk was an assistant professor of economics at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and a research fellow in population studies at the RAND Corporation. His recent publications include "Racial Profiling, Statistical Discrimination, and the Effect of a Colorblind Policy on the Crime Rate," (Journal of Public Economic Theory), "Making the Crime Fit the Penalty: The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion Under Mandatory Minimum Sentencing"(Journal of Law and Economics), and "The Differing Nature of Black-White Wage Inequality Across Occupational Sectors" (Journal of Human Resources).

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely either been a miserable lawyer in New York or a happy ski-lift operator in Jackson Hole."

Darren Filson, Associate Professor of Economics
Darren Filson received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1996. His teaching interests include econometrics, financial economics, game theory, and industrial organization. Filson's recent work has considered the impacts of government interventions in pharmaceutical pricing on the flow of new drugs, consumer welfare, and firm value, alliance terms in the biotechnology industry, contract terms and distribution strategies in the entertainment industry, the role of small firms and the determinants of small firm growth in high technology industries, and the evolution of industries in the presence of spin-outs, licensing, and new product generations. In other research he has developed a game-theoretic model of bargaining and conflict.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely cried."

Ananda Ganguly, Associate Professor of Economics (Accounting)
Ananda Ganguly holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. His PhD dissertation won the prestigious Arthur Andersen Fellowship. His undergraduate studies in Accounting were at St. Xavier's College at the University of Calcutta. His recent research has focused on how economic decision makers cognitively process information, and recent publications include "Assurer Reputation for Competence in a Multi-Service Context" and The Riskiness of Large Audit Firm Client Portfolios and Changes in Audit Liability Regimes: Evidence from the U.S. Audit Market," both published in Contemporary Accounting Research. In 1997, he received a Caterpillar Case Development Award. Before joining the CMC faculty, Ganguly taught at Purdue University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has won teaching awards and recognition from both institutions and has consulted with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on their undergraduate curriculum revision.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely been a lot less annoying."

I. Serkan Ozbeklik, Assistant Professor of Economics
I. Serkan Ozbeklik's areas of research include labor economics, public economics, health economics, and applied econometrics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from The Ohio State University an M.A. in economics from the University of Guelph, in Canada, and a B.A. from Marmara University in Turkey. Recently, Ozbeklik has written several working papers that deal with estimating the effects of abortion legalization and estimating the effect of policy changes on participation in Medicaid.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely felt incomplete."

Government

Jennifer Taw, Assistant Professor of Government (IR)
Jennifer Taw received her Ph.D. in Political Science, with a concentration in international relations, from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before she began teaching, she spent ten years at RAND doing research on security and stability operations. Her current research interests include the effects of domestic politics on interventions. She is a contributing editor to Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and co-author on the third and fourth editions of World Politics in a New Era. In 2006-2007, Taw was a visiting assistant professor of political science at CMC.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely ... never learned about Facebook, thereby saving myself countless hours of procrastination, thus allowing me to open a bakery/bookstore, write novels and academic tomes, and finally learn how to play my guitar. Or I just might have stuck with policy analysis, becoming another lost voice against relying on the limited, short-term application of military force to achieve complex political ends."

History

Shane Bjornlie, Assistant Professor of History
Shane Bjornlie received his Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2006, where he studied classical and medieval history. His primary field of interest is late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. More recently, his work has focused on late-antique epistolary collections, including contributions to forthcoming editions of The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages and the Biographical Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists. Before joining the CMC faculty, Bjornlie taught at Bryn Mawr College and worked with the department of archaeology at the University of Padova excavating a sixth-century villa at Desenzano del Garda, Italy. More immediate endeavors include participation this summer in an interdisciplinary conference on ancient and medieval friendship (De Amicitia—Social Networks and Relationships from Antiquity to the Middle Ages) at the University of Tampere, Finland.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely remained a student. The academia and engagement with the world of ideas has too strong a gravitational pull for me to do otherwise."

Mathematics

Harish Bhat, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Harish Bhat studies dynamical systems and waves in discrete, inhomogenous, or dispersive media, with areas of application that include high-speed analog electronics, gas dynamics, and shock waves. After graduating from Harvard with an A.B. in mathematics, Bhat earned a Ph.D. in control and dynamical systems from the California Institute of Technology. In 2005, Bhat and two other collaborators won the Stanford-Berkeley-Caltech Innovators Challenge for Solitonic Pulse Shaping on Silicon.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have traveled the globe, hiking and biking in far-flung places and stopping often to take pictures, frequenting all manner of musical venues and film festivals, and sampling cuisines from different cultures, all the while trying to figure out what to do with myself. Eventually I would have run out of money and then been forced to live at home with my parents in the Bay Area, hoping that a firm somewhere might yet hire a mathematician with a nose for differential equations."

Lenny Fukshansky, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Lenny Fukshansky received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Texas, Austin, and a B.S. in applied mathematics with a specialization in computing from UCLA. A researcher whose major interests include number theory, discrete and convex geometry, and arithmetic geometry, Fukshansky has been a visiting scholar at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique in Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and the Max Planck Institut für Mathematik in Bonn, Germany. Before coming to CMC, Fukshansky was on the faculty at Texas A&M University.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely worked as a software engineer or a computer scientist."

Philosophy & Religious Studies

James Kreines, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
James Kreines has research interests that encompass the works of Kant, Hegel and German Idealism as well as later European philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Philosophy and Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 2001, after completing undergraduate studies at Princeton University and studying at the University of Bonn as part of a Fulbright Fellowship. Kreines' recent work has been published in The European Journal of Philosophy, Inquiry, Philosophy Compass and Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, and will soon appear in a new Cambridge Companion to Hegel. He is currently writing a book that argues for a new interpretation of Hegel's theoretical philosophy, with a focus on Hegel's response to Kant.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely ... worked as a computer programmer making millions in stock options, until they all became worthless when the dot-com bubble burst."

Daniel Michon, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Daniel Michon's research and writings focus on the history and religions of South Asia. He received a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, after winning a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship. Michon is a contributor to Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia, and Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia, and his work has been published in the Journal of Punjab Studies. Before coming to CMC, Michon was a visiting professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Psychology

Catherine Reed, Associate Professor of Psychology
Catherine Reed studies embodied cognition. She seeks to understand the role that the body plays in directing our perception and cognition to the actions of ourselves and others. Further, she determines how this understanding of others' actions differs in developmentally delayed, and patient populations. She received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1991. Reed has been the co-investigator for a National Science Foundation grant and a National Center for Research Resources Grant. With recent publications appearing in Social Neuroscience, Brain and Behavioral Sciences, and Neuropsychologia, Reed's research has also been discussed in popular journals and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, Mothering Magazine, and Science News.

"If I hadn't become a professor, I would have most likely become a human factors scientist."

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George Batta