We Are Pleased to Welcome and Introduce the School of Natural Sciences’ Newest Faculty Members
Petra Kranzfelder
LPSOE
Molecular Cell Biology
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Dr. Kranzfelder is a discipline-based education researcher and her research program focuses on how we can improve STEM education at the undergraduate level. Particularly, she works on developing evidence-based teaching practices and curricular materials to improve teaching and student learning in the sciences. She will also teach undergraduate and graduate biology classes and facilitate faculty and student teaching professional development programs.
Chrysoula Tsogka
Professor
Applied Mathematics
Ph.D., University Paris IX, France
Chrysoula Tsogka joined the department of Applied Mathematics at UC Merced in July 2019. Between 2007 and 2019 she was a faculty member of the Applied Mathematics Department at the University of Crete, Greece. Initially an Associate Professor (2006-2014) and then a Professor (2014-2019). Between 2017 and 2019, she was a Visiting Professor at the Mathematics Department at Stanford University and a Project Scientist at UC Merced. In the past she has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, a Tenured CNRS Researcher at LMA in Marseilles, France, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD degree in Applied Mathematics from University Paris IX (Dauphine), France.
Her research interests are in numerical methods for direct and inverse wave propagation problems and imaging in complex media. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences (SIIMS), the Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision (JMIV) and the Bulletin of the Greek Mathematical Society. As of 2017, she is a member of the Scientific Research Board of the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). Among others, she has been the recipient of an ERC Starting Independent Research Grant in Mathematics, and of a SIGEST paper award.
Erica Rutter
Assistant Professor
Applied Mathematics
Ph.D., Arizona State University
Erica Rutter is a new assistant professor in the Applied Mathematics Department at UC Merced. She received a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Japanese from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Arizona State University. She was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mathematics at the Center for Research in Scientific Computation at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on using mathematical, computational, and statistical techniques to better understand complex biological systems such as cancer.
