My research interest is the formation of structure in the early universe.
Faculty Research Interests
I have two general, but complementary, lines of research interest. My primary interest falls within mental health disparities, while my secondary interest lies in subjective well-being research. Within mental health disparities, I examine the measurement equivalence of commonly used psychological measures. I am also passionate about examining variations in prevalence rates of mental health conditions and social determinants of health among different racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, I am interested in how socioeconomic status, gender, geographic location, language, immigrant status, and culture impact behaviors and well-being across racial/ethnic groups. Within subjective well-being research, I am curious about what factors influence people’s happiness, resilience, meaning of life, and quality of life.
My main research interest is in C*-algebras and their use in mathematical physics and non-commutative (differential) geometry. More specifically, my interest is automorphic group actions on C*-algebras and their associated fixed point sub-algebras and crossed-product algebras, with particular interest in rotation algebras and their generalizations. Recently, however, I have been looking at some ideas in the intersection of probability, linear algebra, and elementary number theory involving the notions of independence and roundness.
My research interests focus on molecular mechanisms, that is the activities at the DNA, RNA, or protein level that influence cellular and thereby organismal properties. I also have long standing interests in embryonic and post-embryonic development. In my research here at Widener, I have applied molecular biological techniques to the study of the embryology of horseshoe crabs, the muscle physiology of fish, and the immune responses of frogs.
My research projects have been undertaken with the twin goals of increasing biological knowledge in these areas and supporting participation by undergraduate students. My students and I have an enormous amount of fun learning together, and I take great pride in the accomplishments of each and every one of them.
My current project is on gene expression in horseshoe crab embryos (Limulus polyphemus). My students work to identify previously unknown genes and determine their expression patterns during embryonic development in these organisms.
My primary research focuses on moral language and its practical significance. What do we use it to do? Why would we have a discursive practice with this function? And how does its function shed light on the norms that structure the practice? This was the topic of my dissertation, which I'm now working to turn into my first book.
I also work on our practices of holding one another accountable to shared moral norms. I'm interested in what kind of standing one has to have in order to successfully hold someone to the oughts that bind them and the social practices that either support or undermine this standing. My present project aims to understand how the fragmentation of thick community relations instigated by the rise of social media, the decline in civic organizations and organized religion, and changing economic realities has made it more difficult for us to hold one another accountable.
I'm also interested in jokes, and, in particular, how jokes can be used to ease communication about difficult subjects.
- Pharmacology
- Neuropsychology
- Cannabis Medicine
- Pharmacy Technician CE
My research focuses on the Romantic period, examining how what we think we know about authorship at this time is challenged and rewritten by the wealth of periodicals--magazines, book reviews, and newspapers--that dominated the market at this historical moment. In my book project, "Publishing Personality: Romantic Periodicals and the Paradox of Living Authorship," I argue that periodicals understand authors not simply as legal constructs supported by copyright, but as personalities publishing in real time. The periodical therefore emerges as a site of both dangerous and utopian possibilities, as its writers explore what it might mean to practice authorship in an iterative, conditional space. Underlying this exploration is a shift in what the author represents, from being an exception to the everyday person to a model for them. Recent new work examines in more detail the dynamics of periodical production. Focusing on William Gifford's editorship of the Quarterly Review, I explore the workflows necessary to produce a quarterly periodical, as well as how the circumstances of Gifford's chronic illness and disability lead to innovations in periodical style.
My primary research interests lie in commutative algebra and its interactions with algebraic geometry. I have worked on plucker formulas, generalized Hilbert functions, and multipolicies as well as Chunovsky's conjecture. My secondary research interest focuses on the active control of beam and string systems.
Green chemistry, also known as sustainable chemistry, is the design, development and implementation of chemical products and processes to reduce or eliminate the use and generation of substances hazardous to human health and the environment. Under the principles of green chemistry, my research focuses on the design, synthesis, characterization and modification of solid-state inorganic or inorganic-organic hybrid materials for sustainable energy application, particularly in the area of gas storage, rechargeable batteries and thermal energy storage.
I'm interested in Web technologies, large scale computing, data mining, and bioinformatics.