My research focuses on application of machine learning to digital privacy and security. My dissertation was on applying stylometry - the study of style - to identifying the authors of collaborative documents and programs. I am interested in continuing research in applications of stylometry, but also in expanding to other applications of machine learning.
My research interests include online and hybrid education, developmental mathematics, and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.
Soft materials, such as granular media, colloids, emulsions, and foams, are the materials with both solid-like and liquid-like properties. They are very common in medical and industrial applications. For example, sand, blood flow, collective cells, cosmetics, petroleum, and soft robotics like an artery stent are made of soft materials.
In these systems, understanding and controlling their dynamic and structural properties, as well as their long-term evolution and stability, are of fundamental importance. My research interest is studying the properties of soft materials utilizing microfluidic techniques, microscopy and image analysis.
My research primarily focuses on organized labor in America. This work has explored the history and function of AFL-CIO central labor councils. This historical work ultimately led to research on contemporary labor councils and a co-edited book that has become the authoritative text on the subject. It also resulted in a Political Power and Social Theory article on the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the American Labor Party, and Third Party Politics in the United States.
It also resulted in an article on the Milwaukee County Labor Council, which is one of the 50 most-cited articles in the Labor Studies Journal. My most recent work explores innovative organizing strategies being employed by the Service Employees International Unions (SEIU).
My research interests include implicit memory and memory improvement strategies.
I am involved in pedagogical research related to advanced-level undergraduate computer science courses, focusing on simulations and active learning strategies. I routinely attend conferences on computer science education and their affiliated workshops.
My earlier research was in the area of programming language theory. It involved crafting formal specifications of program transformations and optimizations as well as the mathematical proofs verifying the safety and correctness of those specifications.
My research focus is analytical chemistry. Analytical chemistry is critical to all areas of science. As a result, my research group has worked on many diverse projects. Examples include analysis of chocolates for metals, fish for mercury content, teas for gallic acid, an antioxidant that has beneficial health effects the efficacy of prolonging the shelf life of perishables by various means of scavenging ethylene via photooxidation, insecticides used in pet flea and tick medicines, heavy metals in stratified soils, sulfite in wines, and the physico-chemical analysis of the life cycle of fluoropolymer precursors.
A variety of instruments are used to make these determinations. Quantitation is accomplished by analysis of standards. Students have the opportunity to give presentations at conferences and present posters at adjudicated local professional meetings or within Widener on Student Project Day.
My research focuses on the phylogenetic and functional diversity of microbial communities across gradient-driven ecosystems, from soils to estuaries to the deep sea. In these environments, microbes drive major biogeochemical cycles. Yet our understanding of how microbes transform carbon and nutrient compounds, the taxa involved in these reactions, and the impact microbes have on ecosystem function remains poorly constrained. Using both field and laboratory experiments coupled with next-generation sequencing, my research examines the functional adaptations and shifts in population structure of microbial communities across physical, chemical, and biological gradients. By determining how and why microbial community structure, genomic potential, and gene expression change across environmental gradients, we can better predict how ecosystems and their resident communities will respond to environmental change.
My current projects include assessment of microbial diversity in grassland soils of Northeastern PA as well as studying the microbial populations associated with Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in Lake Erie.
I research the intersections between children, parents, and the media. This research varies from studying children's television content to helping parents use media as teachable moments with their children.
My research interests center around the visualization of geographic space for any purpose. This area of research is called "geovisualization." I specialize in the geovisualization of natural habitats, engineered projects, subsurface geology, surface and ground water hydrology, geophysical data, and urban attributes. For example, I have recently been involved in modeling rainfall runoff streamflow characteristics for a local watershed while assisting a local community analyze the spatial distribution of crime. My research includes geovisualization for local projects, as well as international projects in Costa Rica, the Amazon jungle in Peru, and the Tibetan Plateau of China.
My research interests include 19th- and 20th-century narrative works. I have published articles on works of literature from the Andean region and Mexico as well as on Latin American Jewish writers, Latin American globalization, and so-called narco-literature.
My research focuses on the diverse interface between plants and insects. Plant-insect interactions are incredibly diverse and can largely be divided into interactions where plants co-opt insects as pollen vectors (for plant reproduction) and interactions where insects utilize plants as food sources and brood sites. Frequently these two sets of interactions are interrelated. I find it important to consider (1) insect perception of plant cues such as scent, color, shape, and texture, and (2) the multiple contexts in which plant cues, especially scent, may be used by the insect community.
Specifically, I am interested in ecological (multi-trophic) interactions related to floral and vegetative scents and how plant-to-insect olfactory signals function in concert with visual and/or tactile plant cues.
My research interests include (1) urban ecology in southeastern PA, spanning urban herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians), urban invertebrates (principally nocturnal Lepidoptera and aquatic macroinvertebrates), and urban invasive plants; (2) biodiversity of Honduran Lepidoptera (new project involving field and archival work in collaboration with Zamorano University at the Uyuca cloud forest preserve in Honduras); (3a) pedagogy of academic service learning (locally in Chester, PA, and internationally in Honduras) to enhance student learning, civic engagement, and engagement in global human sustainability; (3b) pedagogy of undergraduate ecological education using practitioner research.
My scholarly projects have tended to explore three occasionally overlapping areas: 1) southern fiction and postmodernism, which extends work done for my dissertation, but with a sharper focus on humor (and a less dogmatic application of postmodern theory); 2) the intersection of rock music and literature/literary theory; and perhaps most significantly, 3) the art (and aesthetic philosophies) of Flannery O'Connor, which I have striven to approach from what might be called 'undoctrinaire' perspectives.
I have published several articles on O'Connor, as well as other authors, including Don DeLillo, James Dickey, William Faulkner, Barry Hannah, and Walker Percy. I've also published on Bruce Springsteen, and I am co-editing a collection of essays on explorations of evil in rock music.
My research focuses primarily on all things poetry and poetics. My book, Adelante, is a collection of poetry that examines the relationships between place and loss, juxtaposing the death of my Cuban father with the suffering and resilience of the natural world. I am also interested in global poetic forms and ekphrastic modes. Other creative pursuits include creative nonfiction and place-based writing. My critical interests include immigrant, Latinx, and Caribbean literatures, and I have presented scholarship on writers such as Eduardo C. Corral and Derek Walcott. Whether crafting original poetry or critically engaging literature by others, I am interested in how images conceal and reveal ideas.
My research interests include urban space and urban populations with a particular focus on the human/environment relationship, urban planning and social geography, and transnational exchange and adaption of ideas about nature and cities.
I am working on two research projects: One examines the assignation of meaning to and responsibility for public space through an examination of a particular park location that became a suicide destination in fin de sicle Paris. The other work considers Franco-British greenspace design and exchange from 1660–1880.
My research interests include the history of social and political movements, women's activism, anti-fascism, and pacifism. My current book project analyzes the political work of over twenty different British women’s organizations that opposed the rise of fascist regimes in Europe beginning in the early 1930s. While some former militant suffragists joined fascist organizations in Britain, British women’s organizations overwhelmingly understood fascism as the single largest menace to women’s rights. In the years before and during the Second World War, British women’s organizations used the threat posed by fascism to legitimize their engagement in political discourses and to emphasize the importance of protecting the democratic rights that women had fought for decades to obtain.
My research interests are focused on obtaining a structure through x-ray crystallography of the Neutral Cholesterol Ester Hydrolase 1 (NCEH1) protein to better understand its role in cancer and atherosclerosis. I'm also very interested in the pursuit of research in the progression of science education with the application of technology. I'd like to work with new methods to provide quality feedback and interactive learning outside of the classroom to further the conceptual understanding of material learned in the classroom.
My research includes studies on the integration of mathematical reasoning into computer science curricula, development and integration of innovative teaching approaches that aim to improve the learning process and enhance the comprehension of the study materials, evaluation and assessment of the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, curricular development issues related to core introductory programming courses, interdisciplinary courses, courses for non-majors, and elective courses for computer science and information systems majors.