The Graduate School :: Student Research


	Student Research
	Feinberg School of Medicine Clinical Psychology Program Rachel Jacobs Rachel Jacobs is a fourth-year doctoral candidate studying in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Division of Psychology with Mark Reinecke, PhD. A focus of her research involves the developmental psychopathology of affective disorders among youth as well as the exploration of cognitive and developmental factors that may inform effective treatments. This work, supported by a F31 (National Service Research Award) from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), examines whether dysfunctional attitudes, such as perfectionism, impact depression and suicidality outcomes among youth receiving treatment for depression. Her dissertation examines the influence of cognition on rates of relapse among adolescents enrolled in the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS). For additional information, please visit the Clinical Psychology Program. Feinberg School of Medicine Integrated Graduate Program in the Life Sciences (IGP) Greg Woodhead Greg Woodhead, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Integrated Graduate Program in the Life Sciences, investigates in his research the developing mammalian brain. Woodhead, also a student in the Medical Scientist Training Program, works in the laboratory of his advisor Assistant Professor Anjen Chenn. Using novel techniques that allow him to manipulate gene expression in embryonic brains, Woodhead explores how specific cell signaling pathways control the neural progenitor cells that generate the cerebral cortex. Woodhead has shown that the beta-catenin signaling pathway, implicated in many human cancers, is required for the proliferation and normal maturation of neural progenitor cells. Woodhead’s research on normal development provides new insights on how cell proliferation might be controlled in human diseases such as cancer and was highlighted as a paper of the week in the Journal of Neuroscience in November 2006. For additional information, please visit the Integrated Graduate Program in the Life Sciences. Feinberg School of Medicine Program in Clinical Psychology Erin Romero Erin Romero is a fourth year doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Division of Psychology. She works with Linda A. Teplin, Ph.D. and Karen M. Abram, Ph.D. on the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a prospective longitudinal study of health needs and health outcomes of delinquent youth. Romero’s research focuses on the development and persistence of HIV/AIDS risk behaviors as youth age into young adulthood. For her dissertation, she is investigating how incarceration affects HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. For further information, please visit the Division of Clinical Psychology. Interdisciplinary Programs Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology Jon Preall Jon Preall is a fourth-year doctoral student studying under Professor Erik Sontheimer in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology. His research focuses on understanding the mechanism underlying RNA interference, which is a newly discovered process in which cells regulate the activity of many of their genes. At the molecular level, many organisms interpret double-stranded RNA as a signal to silence the activity of genes containing a similar sequence. While this discovery has far-reaching clinical and scientific implications, many key steps in the RNA interference pathway remain poorly understood. Jon is currently employing a combination of biochemistry and genetics in the fruit fly model system to better understand the molecular players in RNA interference. For further information, please visit the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology. Interdisciplinary Programs Technology and Social Behavior Program Andrea Tartaro Andrea Tartaro is a Ph.D. candidate in the Technology and Social Behavior program and works with Dr. Justine Cassell. Her dissertation research involves designing, building and evaluating a new kind of "authorable" virtual peer that will allow children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to learn about social interaction with peers by building their own virtual humans and observing how they interact with people. A virtual peer is a life-sized, computer-animated character that looks like a child and interacts with children using both speech and gestures. The authorable virtual peer will offer children with ASD a space to play with social communication, social interaction and imagination – skills that come naturally to typically-developing children, but are the most challenging for children with autism. This research employs new methods in Human-Computer Interaction for designing and implementing interactive virtual characters, and improves our understanding of the educational and communication needs of children with ASD. For more information, please visit the Technology and Social Behavior Program. Kellogg School of Management Department of Finance Joseph Engelberg Joseph Engelberg, a fifth-year doctoral student in Kellogg's Department of Finance, explores how the cost of processing information affects stock price under reaction to new information. His research focuses on the difference between quantitative and qualitative information about firm earnings and he finds evidence that prices respond more slowly to qualitative, textual information. His research is part of a small - but growing - body of work, which borrows methods of language processing from fields like computer science and linguistics in order to better understand asset prices and corporate decisions. For more information, please visit Department of Finance. Kellogg School of Management Department of Management and Organizations Maxim Sytch Maxim Sytch is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management. His research, jointly with Professor Ranjay Gulati, explores the origins of social structure of interorganizational relationships and investigates how this social structure impacts economic exchange between firms. His current research projects focus on the evolution of complex social systems and also explore how firms navigate the social structure of both cooperative and conflictive relations. Using archival data on partnership and legal dispute networks among firms, in combination with econometric modeling, simulation, and network analytic techniques, Maxim Sytch investigates the role of network structures and firms’ positions in them on a variety of firms’ behavioral and performance outcomes. For more information, please visit Department of Management and Organizations. Kellogg School of Management Managerial Economics and Strategy Department Mallesh Pai Mallesh Pai is a fourth year doctoral candidate in the Managerial Economics and Strategy department at Kellogg, a joint offering of the Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences & the Management and Strategy Departments. His research has focused mainly on bridging the gap between the theory and the reality of decision making under risk, both at the individual level; and at the corporate level. In one project with Prof Nabil Al-Najjar, he studies non-standard models of learning from data. They show that in these models, language profoundly influences decision making, and certain common features of natural languages can be explained as rational responses to learning constraints. In another (ongoing) project, with Pablo Montagnes, they look to study the gap between the theory of organization in teams and practice, by looking at how various restaurant chains provide service. The project focuses on finding disparities between the predictions made by theory and the actual best practices of restaurants; and hopes to be able to either refine the theory to explain these differences, or provide evidence that restaurant organization is sub-optimal. For additional inofmration, please visit the Managerial Economics and Strategy Department. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Biomedical Engineering Vladimir Turzhitsky Vladimir Turzhitsky is a third year doctoral student studying with Vadim Backman’s group in the biomedical engineering department. The group is dedicated to the exploration of novel methods for cancer detection. They have found that light scattering is extremely sensitive to nanoscale changes in cell and tissue architecture and have developed a technique that can detect these changes, which are otherwise invisible to conventional histopathology. Vladimir has been working on applying this technology in human studies with the focus on detecting colon and pancreatic cancer. Low coherence enhanced backscattering (LEBS) and elastic light-scattering fingerprinting (ELF) have shown the promise of being able to detect subtle alterations in healthy tissue that corresponds to precancerous changes located elsewhere in the organ. In the case of colon cancer, the goal of the technology is to be used by a primary care physician who would collect non-invasive rectal measurements in order to identify people who would benefit from a full colonoscopy. The technique can be used for population wide screening in order to reduce the number of people who are required to have a full colonoscopy. If successful, this would be a less expensive, less invasive, and faster way of screening for colon cancer. In the case of pancreatic cancer, the most deadly of all cancers, the goal is to improve the prognosis of patients through ultra early detection. The initial probe and biopsy studies, including over 400 colon patients as well as over 100 pancreatic patients, demonstrate the promise of light scattering spectroscopy to improve the ease and accuracy with which colon and pancreatic cancers are detected. For additional information, please visit the Biomedical Engineering Department. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Stacey Finley Stacey Finley, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, utilizes a computational framework called BNICE to discover novel biodegradation pathways for toxic compounds that come from pesticides and industrial pollutants. This work addresses the information gap between the large number of compounds thought to be degradable and the specific reactions needed to carry out this biodegradation. Finley, under the advisement of her advisors Professor Linda J. Broadbelt and Professor Vassily Hatzimanikatis, generates novel pathways and characterizes the pathways to determine their feasibility. Here, she estimates the thermodynamic feasibility of the pathways and investigates how implementation of these pathways influences the existing metabolic network of a host organism. For additional information, please visit the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Hermioni Zouridis Hermioni Zouridis, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, investigates in her research protein synthesis, one of the processes related to gene expression in cells. Zouridis, under the mentorship of her advisors Professor Vassily Hatzimanikatis and Professor Olke Uhlenbeck, explores and makes quantitative predictions about the protein synthesis mechanism from an integrated “systems biology” perspective through the development and analysis of mathematical frameworks. She also works collaboratively with BMBCB doctoral students to test major results obtained from her mathematical models experimentally, with experimental insight gained used for refinement of the models. For additional information, please visit the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Raissa Ferron Raissa P. Ferron, a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, investigates the rheology, structural build-up, and formwork pressure evolution of highly flowable cementitious materials. This topic addresses a major concern in the ready-mix industry that is limiting the use of flowable concrete. Raissa uses advanced experimental techniques and methodologies (rheological, scanning electron microscopy, and focus beam reflectance measurement) to monitor in-situ flocculation and de-flocculation mechanisms. The research incorporates concepts of chemical engineering, fluid dynamics, and materials science, and it is funded by NSF and industrial research consortia. Raissa is affiliated with the Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials (ACBM) and her advisor is Professor Surendra P. Shah. Raissa will defend her dissertation in December 2007, and is interested in pursuing a career in academia. For additional information, please visit the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Pattharin Sarutipand Pattharin Sarutipand, a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, develops the optimization framework to support the management of transportation infrastructure system. This topic addresses a major concern in the strategic level of maintenance of transportation infrastructure system while accounting for the impact of the maintenance policies at operational level. Pattharin applies the operational research tool to solve for the best maintenance policies that would lead to some savings in transportation investment such as maintenance and operating budgets at the same time as the transportation infrastructure users would also benefit from the overall improvement of the level of service of the facilities in the network. The research incorporates concepts of operational research and management science and transportation system analysis & planning and is funded by Royal Thai Government Scholarship. Pattharin is affiliated with the Transportation Center (TC) and her advisor is Professor Pablo L. Durango-Cohen. Pattharin will defend her dissertation in May 2007. Upon completing her PhD degree, she will return to Thailand where she will take a position in Thailand's Department of Highways. For additional information, please visit the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics Christine Sample Christine Sample, a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, is studying the nonlinear dynamics of a double biological membrane. Under the guidance of her advisor, Professor Alexander Golovin, Christine uses both analytical and numerical techniques to investigate the shape of two coupled lipid bilayers, typical of some intracellular organelles such as mitochondria. In particular, she is interested in discovering the conditions under which the curvature and composition dependence of the membranes and the fluxes across the membranes can lead to complex structures. For additional information, please visit Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Materials Science and Engineering Bo Zhao Bo Zhao, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, studies the friction and wear properties of carbon-based thin film coatings. These coatings, nicknamed near-frictionless films, exhibit ultra-low friction coefficients and have the potential to drastically improve fuel efficiency and reduce the need for chemical lubricants. Under the guidance of her advisor, Prof. Yip-Wah Chung, Bo seeks to optimize film performance by altering film composition and nanostructure. Her research also explores the origin of this low friction effect through numerous surface science techniques. For further information, please visit the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Materials Science and Engineering Program Michelle Seitz Michelle Seitz, a fourth year doctoral student in Materials Science and Engineering, investigates the properties of self-assembled acrylic triblock copolymer gels. Unlike stiff brittle materials such as metals and ceramics which fail at low elongations, polymer gels can withstand extremely large elongations before failing in a brittle manner. One of the difficulties in understanding the processes occurring during failure of compliant brittle materials is obtaining a well-defined model system. Working with Ken Shull, Michelle has characterized these gels at low and high strains to understand how gel properties can be controlled by changing the relative block lengths. In order to understand the fracture behavior of this system, Michelle spent a month in Paris working with Tristan Baumberger. Additionally, these gels form the basis of thermoreversible gelasting, a ceramic and metal processing technique. Working with Katherine Faber, Michelle investigates how to optimize triblock design for casting as well as how triblock properties control the strength and toughness prior to sintering. For more information, please visit the Materials Science and Engineering Program. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Mechanical Engineering Joe Solomon Joe Solomon is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the guidance of Dr. Mitra Hartmann. His research explores how robotic whisker arrays can be designed to mimic the way rats tactually use their whiskers to extract detailed 3-D spatial information about their environment. In addition to potential robotic applications, the results may help neuroscientists correlate electrophysiological responses of whisker-related neurons to the mechanical state of the whisker, potentially revealing new fundamental insights into the process of active sensing. For additional information, please visit the Mechanical Engineering Department. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Mechanical Engineering David Farrell David Farrell is a PhD candidate for Mechanical Engineering, the subject of his research is the initiation of damage in ceramic materials that are of interest as structural components in nuclear fusion-based reactors. In particular, this research looks to examine the idea that 'voids' in a material, can initiate on the scale of the atomic structure through the coalescence of small defects in the material's crystal structure (so-called 'point defects'). The goal of his dissertation is to make use of atomic-scale simulations to characterize the evolution of radiation induced point defects from the initial damage structure through the relaxation and clustering phases. For additional information, please visit the Mechanical Engineering Department. School of Communication Communication Sciences and Disorders Gabriella Musacchia Gabriella Musacchia is in her last year of doctoral candidacy in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Division of the School of Speech. She works with Nina Kraus, Ph.D., on the neurophysiology of speech and music communication. Recently, Gabriella’s work on how playing music shapes our brain activity was published in a highly competitive, peer-reviewed journal (Musacchia et al., 2007 Proc Nat Sci Acad.). Her dissertation research focuses on how experience shapes the way our brain responds to multisensory communication signals. She plans to continue her research in a post-doctoral position at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in NY. For more information, please visit the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and NICO Language, Music, and Communication. School of Communication Department of Performance Studies Lori Baptista Lori Barcliff Baptista, a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Performance Studies, investigates the role of food in the Ironbound neighborhood of her hometown, Newark, New Jersey. Lori analyzes a diverse collection of archival documents, films, cookbooks and recipes, and conducts ethnographic fieldwork to assess how Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants have adapted traditional food practices from regions of their home countries into a local dining style that has come to represent the Ironbound. Lori critically interrogates certain assumptions and discourses about Newark, the Ironbound neighborhood, its residents, guests, and its function as a spectacular public dining destination characterized by low prices, large portions, and "food with tastes all its own." Under the guidance of her dissertation committee, directed by Margaret Thompson Drewal, she considers how food operates within a complex system of performance practices and epistemologies through which various interests are articulated. For additional information, please visit the Department of Performance Studies. School of Communication Department of Radio/Television/Film Alan Arrivée Alan Arrivée, a second year graduate student in the Radio/Television/Film Department's MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage Program explored regional identity and the ownership of story in his 29 minute, 35mm film 'Silent Radio' which has to date screened at over twenty international film festivals world wide. The film has won the 2007 European Independent Film Festival's Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography awards, the 2007 Long Island International Film Expo's Best Actor Award and its Triple Play Award for Best Technical Integration as well as the Best Short Subject Award at the 2007 Ellensburg Film Festival in Washington. His next film, 'Man at the Door', on which he will collaborate with MFA in Production student and recent Princess Grace Award recipient Thomas Castillo (Cinematographer) and RTVF senior Ryan Crist (Producer) will again study regional identity, but also current racial and economic tensions when an upper middle class white woman living in Chicago literally finds an illegal Mexican immigrant bleeding to death on her doorstep. The film will be shot on Fujicolor film stock awarded to Alan by the European Independent Film Festival and will be funded through a grant offered as part of the second year of the MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage Program. Alan's short play 'The Original I.Q. Tester' is a finalist for the 2007 Heideman Award. He is excited to be currently team teaching the RTVF course 'The Foundations of Screenwriting' with fellow MFA, Lingxia Song. He has also been invited to be a judge at the upcoming 2008 European Independent Film Festival which will be held at the Bibliotheque National in Paris, an experience which will give him the rare opportunity of seeing things from the other side. School of Communication Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama Christina McMahon Christina S. McMahon is a candidate in her fourth year in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama program. In her research, McMahon investigates the intersection between theatre and national identity in the small West African archipelago of Cape Verde. Drawing on the country’s Mindelact International Theatre Festival as her primary case study, McMahon analyzes how the conditions of global circulation inherent to the festival—funding from cultural centers and government institutes, the politics of intercultural exchange—critically inform how Cape Verdean actors perform plays rooted in oral history, Creole-language adaptations of Western classics, and theatre and dance pieces celebrating quotidian island life. She is advised by Dr. Sandra L. Richards. Currently, McMahon is conducting a year of ethnographic and archival research in Cape Verde, with the support of a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant and a Mellon Travel grant from the Kaplan Humanities Center. For additional information, please visit the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program. School of Communication Media, Technology, and Society John Laprise John Laprise is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society Program in the School of Communications exploring the history of computers in the White House during the 1970’s with Professors James Schwoch, Shane Greenstein, and Rick Morris. Extensive research at the National Archives, Nixon, Ford, and Carter Presidential Libraries, and other private collections are allowing him to explore how the White House began to adopt computers during the 1970’s and how the White House’s use of computers influenced US information and communications policy. His research provides a new historical perspective on the relationship between national security, privacy, and information by showing the pervasive influence of the Cold War during a period of great technological innovation. For further information, please visit the Department of Media, Technology, and Society. School of Communication Media, Technology, and Society Tom Ksaizek Tom Ksiazek is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies' program in Media, Technology, and Society. Under the direction of Professors James Webster, James Ettema and Noshir Contractor, his research focuses on mediated communication technologies and audience behavior. Through quantitative analysis across multiple media and audience segments, he studies the interplay between structures and agents in determining and predicting audience behavior, technology use and media environments, as well as patterns of polarization and fragmentation. Past projects have looked at the role of language in patterns of cultural polarization and multicultural fluency across television and radio (slated for publication in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Fall 2008), discourse surrounding the pre and post-9/11 role of United States government-funded international broadcasting, and the polarization of news consumption across six different media and the implications for civic participation. Current projects include an analysis of the structural and individual determinants of DVR time-shifting, predictors of successful online video news content, and a network analytic approach to studying the evolution of media environments through patterns of audience duplication across television and radio outlets over time. He values interdisciplinarity and regularly collaborates with both students and faculty from within his department as well as faculty from Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill and the Media Management Center. For further information, please visit the Department of Media, Technology, and Society. School of Communication Media, Technology, and Society Brooke Foucault Brooke Foucault is a second-year doctoral student studying with Professor Justine Cassell in the Media, Technology, and Society Program. Her research focuses on the role that technology can play in understanding and reducing response bias in survey interviews. We know that for survey data to be useful respondents must give honest answers, even to sensitive questions. However, there is considerable disagreement in the literature about how survey interviewers can increase the chances that respondents will answer openly and honestly. On one hand, some researchers believe that when interviewers establish rapport with respondents, respondents will be less likely to lie about their sensitive behaviors. But, on the other hand, some researchers have demonstrated the opposite effect – in their studies rapport increases respondents' likelihood of distorting their answers to sensitive questions in order to get interviewers to like them. Until recently, it has been very difficult to conduct reliable empirical studies of the true effect of rapport in survey interviews because the behaviors associated with rapport are very hard for human interviewers to control. However, using highly-controllable virtual human interviewers who interact with respondents using both speech and gestures, Brooke aims to isolate and test different interviewer behaviors in order to identify precisely how various verbal and non-verbal behaviors contribute to interview rapport and affect survey responding. She hopes to use the findings of her research to develop training and interviewing tools that will help improve survey response validity. This work is sponsored by an Innovations grant from the School of Communication, and by a grant from the Charles Cannell fund in Survey Metholodogy. For more information, please visit the department of Media, Technology, and Society and the ArticuLab. School of Music Program in Music - Music Education Kate Fitzpatrick Kate Fitzpatrick, a third year PhD candidate in music education, is investigating the teaching of instrumental music in the urban schools under the mentorship of Dr. Maud Hickey. Through the use of mixed methods such as focus groups, surveys, direct observations, and interviews, Fitzpatrick’s research explores the ways in which band and orchestra teachers in the Chicago Public Schools navigate the complex urban landscape in order to provide their students with opportunities for music performance. For additional information, please visit the School of Music. School of Music Program in Music - Music Education Lois Veenhoven Guderian Lois Veenhoven Guderian, a PhD candidate in music education investigates the effectiveness of an approach to music education where opportunities for creative work – in this case, music composition and improvisation – are embedded into the curriculum. By quantitative methods, Lois compares the resulting evaluation products from two groups of children – heterogeneously grouped and same age – who are given the same curriculum content and style of instruction in music theory, sight reading, and instrument playing however with different follow up: one group receives open-ended assignments in improvisation and composition that are directly related to the curricular-determined musical concepts and skills they have just experienced in their class instruction and the other group is given the same amount of time to follow up on their identical classroom “learnings” through traditional drill and practice. Qualitative methods including field notes and an open-ended student questionnaire allow for examination of students’ overall reflections and attitudes regarding their participation in the study. As context for her research, Lois draws from many sources: music education researchers including Northwestern’s Doctors Peter Webster, Bennett Reimer and Maud Hickey; from researchers in developmental and cognitive psychology, and creativity; education and arts philosophers; past and present teaching and learning theory and practice; and her own experiences as a music educator, student, child and adult composer, and performing musician. Against this comprehensive background, Lois examines the effectiveness of her research in varied educational settings. Texts created by Guderian in support of her ideas for music education are recently published by The National Association for Music Education/Rowman & Littlefield: Playing the Soprano Recorder for Church, School, Community and the Private Studio and Playing the Soprano Recorder for School, Community and the Private Studio (see April issue of Music Educators Journal or www.MENC.org.) For more information, please contact the School of Music. School of Music Program in Music - Musicology Samuel Dorf Samuel N. Dorf, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Music Studies, researches how discourses of gender and sexuality interact with fantasies of ancient Greece in Third Republic French musical and dance culture. Revisiting well known works such as Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1895) and Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé (1912), as well as lesser known works by composers like Erik Satie and Louis Ganné, he investigates their reception by a group of prominent art patrons in turn of the century France. Under the supervision of his interdisciplinary dissertation committee, Dorf uses a variety of sources (diaries, musical scores, production photos, choreography notes, and contemporary popular periodicals) to explore what ancient Greece meant to these individuals who brought musical and dance versions of the past to the contemporary stage or salon. For more information, please visit the Department of Music Studies. The Family Institute Degree Programs Counseling Psychology Program Mara Gustafson Mara Gustafson, a second year masters student in the Counseling Psychology program, is investigating the conflicts surrounding leadership succession in family businesses. Gustafson is a research assistant for the Family Business Program, a research and consultation group within the Family Institute headed by faculty member Doug Breunlin. Along with the six other members of the research team, Gustafson is analyzing the coded interview data of ten family business owners who are facing retirement. The group seeks to understand how identity development, familial relationships, and the boundaries between the family and business systems affect succession decisions. Results of this research will be used to develop strategies that promote effective leadership transitions within family businesses. For more information, please visit Counseling Psychology Program. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Art History Shalini Le Gall Shalini Le Gall, a fifth year doctoral student in the Art History Department, studies nineteenth-century religious imagery, specifically paintings produced by the British Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt during his travels to Christian holy sites in Palestine. With the guidance of her advisor, Professor Stephen Eisenman, Le Gall examines paintings, drawings, and prints and traces the growing influence of Evangelicals in Britain and the Middle East and the increased demand for biblical imagery from "the Holy Land." Placed within this context, Hunt's paintings mark the development of a new type of religious imagery and signal the intersection between Britain's imperialist and evangelical agendas in the Middle East. For additional information, please visit the Department of Art History. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry Sang-Min Lee Sang-Min Lee, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry, is formulating “smart” drug delivery nanoparticles that can search out and selectively destroy cancer cells while limiting the devastating side-effects that are commonly associating with conventional small-molecule chemotherapy. Such particles can encapsulate cytotoxic anti-cancer agents, such as arsenic oxide and doxorubicin, and prevent them from interacting with healthy organs during the normal circulation in patients, thus eliminating most unfavorable side effects. However, once they enter a targeted site such as tumor tissue, they release their chemotherapeutic payloads in a preprogrammed way to kill only the diseased cells, effectively acting as “Magic Bullets.” Lee, under the mentorship of Profs. SonBinh T. Nguyen and Thomas V. O’Halloran, employs biologically compatible liposomes as encapsulators of the toxic drugs. He then builds a cage around these loaded nanoparticels using a “smart” polymer material to enhance the stability of the carriers and to engender them with targeting ability as well as environmental-responsive triggers for drug-release only in specific target tissue. For additional information, please visit the Department of Chemistry. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Lingling Wu Lingling Wu, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, investigates in her research the microbe-rock interactions under simulated Earth surface conditions. Wu, under the mentorship of her advisor Professor Andrew Jacobson, explores, through laboratory experiments and theoretical modeling, how the microorganisms influence the rates and mechanisms of elemental release during microbe-rock interactions and thus impact the geochemistry of the Earth's surface. For more information, please visit the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Economics Aaron Sojourner Aaron Sojourner, a fourth year PhD student in economics and a fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Education Science, aims to generate new insights by applying rigorous economic analysis to issues of importance across academic and policy communities. In one project, he works with a team of economists and human development experts to explore how investments in children at different ages pay off and what this implies for the optimal timing of public, early-childhood investments. The project uses a mix of experimental and non-experimental data. In a second project, he develops more credible ways to measure the social value of reducing public risks. Conventional methods rely on unrealistic, overly-strong assumptions and may misguide policy makers using them for cost-benefit analysis. Sojourner’s approach reveals the range of values consistent with the data under more credible assumptions. For additional information, please visit the Department of Economics. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of English Gayle Rogers Gayle Rogers, a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of English, reconstructs in his dissertation a critical dialogue between British modernist writers and their Spanish contemporaries between the two World Wars. Under the direction of Professor Christine Froula, he investigates a set of interchanges between T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and José Ortega y Gasset, Federico García Lorca, and others on their shared sense of the urgent task of remaining the cultural heritage of Europe after a cataclysmic war. His work thus examines journals, novels, poetry, and translations to understand Spain’s movement from Europe’s margins to its center during its civil war within the context of British modernists’ renovation of the project of cosmopolitanism that Kant initiated. For additional information, please visit the Department of English. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of English Joanne Diaz Joanne Diaz is working on a dissertation titled "Grief as Medicine for Grief: Complaint Poetry in Early Modern England, 1557-1609." Diaz, under the mentorship of her advisor Professor Wendy Wall, argues that complaint poetry was a site of experimentation for poets who wanted to explore the ambivalence surrounding auricular confession, writing practices, and the changing status of the body as a reliable source of knowledge and truth. She argues that complaint—in sonnet sequences, ballads and broadsides, poetic miscellanies, and dramatic texts—was compelling to readers because it engaged with and critiqued auricular confession in the years after Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church, when auricular confession was no longer a required sacrament. For additional information, please visit the Department of English. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Linguistics James German James German, a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics, investigates the phenomenon known as "focus", whereby speakers use pitch and stress to partition the information conveyed by a sentence into two parts: that which is already in the set of the beliefs shared by the speech participants (i.e., the presuppositions), and that which is not (i.e., the assertions). Through a series of experiments involving analysis of recorded speech as well as measurements of listeners' responses to auditory stimuli, German explores how focus influences the way that pronouns are interpreted in spoken discourse. A previous study, which German conducted in collaboration with his advisor, Janet Pierrehumbert, and Stefan Kaufmann (also on his committee), explored the tendency for certain classes of words, such as prepositions, to interfere with a speaker's ability to express focus. The study appeared in the March 2006 issue of the journal Language. For additional information, please visit the Department of Linguistics. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Linguistics Robert Daland Development of word segmentation in Russian and English - Unlike writing, speech does not contain pauses between the words, as is apparent from listening to an unfamiliar language. Nonetheless, fluent listeners perceive speech as a sequence of discrete, word-like units -- a process known as word segmentation. Infant and second-language learners learn to segment speech before they learn very many words. How do they do this? Robert Daland, a 5th-year linguistics student in Janet Pierrehumbert's Language Dynamics group, is studying how people learn to segment Russian and English speech using computational modelling and behavioral experiments. This research may ultimately result in better automatic speech recognition technology, and/or better tools for second-language instruction. For additional information, please visit the Department of Linguistics. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Philosophy Emilie Prattico Emilie Prattico, a fifth year student in the Department of Philosophy, examines the problems raised by relying on experts in democratic decision-making. With reference to Habermas’s theory of deliberative politics, she elucidates the precise nature of these problems, showing that the self-government of citizens is sometimes thwarted when experts are given predominant roles in certain areas of politics. She argues, thanks to a close analysis of the different kinds political issues, that these problems can be solved while accommodating the contributions of experts. For more information, please visit Department of Philosophy. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Physics & Astronomy Paul Cadden-Zimansky Fifth-year doctoral student Paul Cadden-Zimansky of the Physics and Astronomy department experiments with very small things at very low temperatures. Cadden-Zimansky, working with Professor Venkat Chandrasekhar, makes nanometer-sized devices out of conventional metals, magnets, and superconductors, and cools them down to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. At these sizes and temperatures the operating principles of the devices are governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, allowing them to exhibit novel and counterintuitive behavior. For additional information, please visit the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Physics and Astronomy Genya Takeda Genya Takeda, a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, works on the long-term dynamics of extrasolar systems in binaries. Since 1995 more than 250 planets have been detected around other solar-type stars in the Galaxy. These "extrasolar systems" manifest diverse architectures and orbital properties that are quite different from the planets in our own Solar System; many extrasolar planets are detected in highly elongated orbits, very tight orbits with orbital periods of only a few days, or orbits around a member of binary star systems. Takeda investigates, in the NU Theoretical Astrophysics Group under the mentorship of Prof. Frederic Rasio, the long-term orbital evolution of planets in binary star systems using analytical theories and numerical simulations, particularly focusing on the long-term stability and final orbital configurations of the planets. For more details on the research conducted in the NU Theoretical Astrophysics Group, please visit the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology Paul Eastwick Paul Eastwick is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Psychology. His research examines how people initiate romantic relationships and how relationships develop over time. In one line of research, Paul has explored how people's vision of an ideal romantic partner impacts their decision to pursue or not to pursue particular romantic relationships. Of course, people differ when reporting the characteristics that they ideally desire in a romantic partner: Some people express a desire for a partner who is physically attractive, for example, whereas others express a preference for someone who is ambitious or perhaps dependable. But do people reliably pursue those potential romantic partners who most closely approximate their stated ideals? Using speed-dating and intensive longitudinal methods, Paul Eastwick and his collaborator Dr. Eli Finkel have discovered that the answer to this question appears to be "no". That is, people are unlikely to consult their ideals when initiating a romantic relationship, and Paul's current research explores the implication of this finding for the health and longevity of relationships. For more information about Paul's research and the research conducted by other graduate students in psychology, please visit the Department of Psychology for additional information. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology Jonathan Adler Jonathan M. Adler is a fifth-year doctoral student in Clinical and Personality Psychology at Northwestern University. Working with has advisor, Professor Dan McAdams, his research focuses on adult personality development and psychotherapy. Specifically, his work has focused on the role people’s experiences in psychotherapy play in their evolving sense of identity, as captured in personal narratives. His dissertation will follow a group of outpatient psychotherapy clients over twelve sessions of treatment and assess changes in their personal narratives alongside changes in their psychiatric symptoms. In doing so, he will determine how people’s narrative identity changes over the course of therapy and how these changes relate to symptom improvement. For additional information, please visit the School of Education and Social Policy. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology Sara Unsworth Sara Unsworth is a fifth year doctoral candidate working with Douglas Medin in the Department of Psychology. A great deal of research in cognitive and developmental psychology focuses on urban middle-class, European American populations. Sara studies the extent to which concepts and reasoning strategies vary across cultural communities. Specifically, she examines whether culturally varying discourse practices influence concept formation in the domain of folkbiology (i.e., intuitive understandings of the biological world). In her dissertation work, she has found that Menominee Native American hunters in rural Wisconsin are more likely than European American hunters in neighboring communities to tell highly descriptive narratives about personal experiences in nature that focus on animal behavior and animal habitat. These differences align with results showing that Menominee Native Americans are more likely than European Americans to engage in ecological reasoning and to see themselves as a part of nature rather than apart from nature. She is currently examining the specific ways in which narrative discourse can influence knowledge organization by experimentally manipulating aspects of the narrative structure and assessing the cognitive implications. Her research has implications for theories of concept formation and culture acquisition, as well as for science and environmental education. She will be defending her dissertation in July of 2008 and will begin an assistant professor position at San Diego State University in August of 2008. For more information, please visit the Department of Psychology. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Maria Kisel In her dissertation entitled “Mass Culture to Master: Literary Metamorphoses of Early Soviet Satire” Maria Kisel explores the influence of Russia’s changing reading culture on the major works of several Soviet writers. By establishing continuities between the authors’ early satirical feuilletons written for a mass audience and their acclaimed masterpieces, Kisel investigates the disappearing boundary between “low” and “high” literature as part of the uniquely Soviet process of cultural homogenization. Under the guidance of her advisor, Dean Andrew Wachtel, Maria Kisel combines literary analysis with a study of cultural history to discuss the complexities of authorship and readership in the early Soviet period. For additional information, please visit the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Sociology Terence McDonnell Pamphlet to pamphlet, billboard to billboard, the technical content of HIV/AIDS prevention materials varies very little: Use a Condom, Don’t Share Needles, Abstain from Premarital Sex. While these health messages are stable, the images associated with the messages are not. For instance, billboards in Accra depict Use a Condom through fornicating stick figures, police riot officers carrying shields, and a foot in need of a sock. Terence McDonnell, a student in Northwestern’s Department of Sociology studies the representational and metaphorical work of these visual HIV/AIDS materials. In his dissertation AIDS Streetscapes: a Social Iconography of HIV/AIDS Campaigns in Chicago and Accra, McDonnell explains how cultural practices around the production, diffusion, and interpretation of AIDS visual culture determine patterns of HIV/AIDS knowledge in urban space. For additional information, please visit the Department of Sociology. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences French and Italian Annica Schjött Vonèche Annica Schjött Vonèche is a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of French and Italian. She is working on a dissertation entitled “Reinventing the Past: Memory and Narration in 20^th Century Literature on the Maghreb”, under the mentorship of Professors Doris Garraway and Scott Durham. She focuses on representations of memory in four novels set in northern Africa written by Nadia Chafik, Assia Djebar, Albert Memmi and Claire Messud. Annica examines the relationship between expressions of collective and individual memory and the way in which narration serves both as the catalyst and the medium for this interaction. She argues that the novels are examples of ways of countering homogenizing narratives of the past. By exploring how these novels stage the very dynamics of memory creation in postcolonial societies, she shows how the use of various narrative techniques allows for the ambiguities, contradictions and inconsistencies of different representations of the past to clash and interact. In this manner, she contends, the novels illustrate how memory can be created beyond the lines of demarcation between the individual and the collective. For more information, please visit the Department of French and Italian. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Program David Giljohann David Giljohann is a fourth-year doctoral student studying under Professor Chad Mirkin in the Department of Chemistry. David's work uses gold nanoparticles with DNA modifications for the control of protein expression in cells. The ability to systematically control DNA attachment on the nanoparticle surface has lead to several observations that make these "antisense particles" tremendous candidates for both basic scientific study as well as potential therapeutics. David's work has shown that the attachment of oligonucleotides to the gold nanoparticle surface creates cooperative properties that lead to enhanced target binding, less susceptibility to degradation by nuclease activity, and high efficiency of cellular entry of the antisense particles. These particles have been further proven to be an effective method for detecting mRNA in living cells. David is currently investigating the properties which contribute to the unexpected cellular uptake of these nanostructures. For more information, please visit the Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Program. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Program Sarah Ledoux Sarah Ledoux is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Program in the Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology Department. Working under the mentorship of Professor Olke Uhlenbeck she studies the mechanism of protein synthesis. Her research has shown that while different aminoacyl-tRNAs function very similarly on the ribosome, small mutations in the tRNA sequence or esterified amino acid can lead to large increases in misincorporation at mismatched codons. This shows that the conserved sequences of aminoacyl-tRNAs are crucial not only for cognate codon reading, but more importantly also to prevent misincorporation in order to maintain the fidelity of protein synthesis. For more information, please visit the Interdepartmental Biological Sciences Program. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Program in Religion and History Tobin Miller Shearer Tobin Miller Shearer, a fifth-year graduate student in the Departments of Religion and History, studies the interactions of white and African-American Mennonites in the middle three decades of the twentieth century. He finds that the Mennonite community's religious value of purity coupled with acceptance of the prevalent racial discourse in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s proved both dangerous and necessary for Mennonites to negotiate the U.S. racial divide. Under the guidance of his advisors Professor Josef Barton (History) and Cristie Traina (Religion), Shearer demonstrates how multiple notions about purity interacted during this period and, despite diverse expressions of racism, worked to undermine the best intentions of the religious community as a whole. For additional information, please visit the Department of History and the Department of Religion. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Slavic Languages & Literatures Program Nina Wieda In her dissertation entitled “The Aesthetic Wastefulness in Russian Literature: How the Russian Soul is Made” Nina Wieda investigates the role that wastefulness plays in fictional and non-fictional writings by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Limonov. Wieda defines “wastefulness” as spending resources, including time, money, opportunity, and human life itself, in a way that the spender and others deem useless and harmful for the spender, and that derives satisfaction from feeling wasteful towards a resource, rather than from reciprocity. Under the mentorship of her advisor, Dean Andrew Wachtel, Nina Wieda explores how the Russian culture considers wastefulness ethically and aesthetically valuable, and claims it as a feature of the Russian national character. For more information about Nina's research and the research conducted by other graduate students in Slavic, please visit Slavic Languages & Literatures Program. Last updated: