DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Applied Mathematics
Sinha, Anirban. Temporal variability in ocean mesoscale and submesoscale turbulence. Sponsor: Ryan Abernathey.

Art History and Archaeology
Shah, Siddhartha. Ornamenting the Raj: Opulence and spectacle in British India, 1851-1903. Sponsor: Vidya Dehejia.

Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
O'Brien, Paul. Biomolecular NMR spectroscopy studies of piRNA-pathway proteins. Sponsor: Arthur Palmer.

Biological Sciences
Jo, Jeanyoung. Metabolic strategies to cope with overcrowding in a pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm. Sponsor: Lars Dietrich.

Tahirova, Narmin. Applying medicinal chemistry to olfaction. Sponsor: Stuart Firestein.

Biomedical Engineering
Amar, Levy. Analyzing, quantifying and optimizing crossflow microfiltration of fine suspensions. Sponsor: Edward Leonard.

Armstrong, Megan. Single molecule imaging to characterize interfacial protein interactions. Sponsor: Henry Hess.

Estell, Eben. Modulation of synovium mechanobiology and tribology in the osteoarthritic environment. Sponsor: Clark Hung.

Yang, Jie. Unsupervised and weakly-supervised learning of localized texture patterns of lung diseases on computed tomography. Sponsor: Andrew Laine.

Biomedical Informatics
Nakikj, Drashko. Investigating and supporting sensemaking within online health communities. Sponsor: Olena Mamykina.

Business
Dew, Ryan. Essays on machine learning methods for data-driven marketing decisions. Sponsor: Asim Ansari.

Cellular Physiology and Biophysics
Smerdon, John. Axon initial segment plasticity in mouse models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Sponsor: Hynek Wichterle.

Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies
Chen, Sway. Novel genetic engineering tools for functional studies of the gut microbiome. Sponsor: Harris Wang.

Dieck, Chelsea. Mechanisms and therapeutic targeting of NT5C2 mutations in relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Sponsor: Adolfo A. Ferrando.

Eckels, Edward. Magnetic Tweezers for probing single protein physiology. Sponsor: Julio Fernandez.

Garcia, Enrique. ER stress and lipid droplet-dependent proteostasis in response to lipid stress in yeast and a novel congenital muscular dystrophy. Sponsor: Liza Pon.

Singer, Ruth. The role of long noncoding RNAs in pancreas development and function. Sponsor: Lori Sussel.

Tenen, Claudia. Function and tissue focus of daf-18/PTEN in maintaining blast cell multipotency and quiescence in Caenorhabditis elegans dauer larvae. Sponsor: Iva Greenwald.

Thomas, David. Liver X receptor cis-repression and cholesterol efflux restrain innate immunity and coronary artery disease. Sponsor: Alan Tall.

Yang, Jamie. Yeast survival under acute exposure to lethal stress. Sponsor: Saeed Tavazoie.

Chemistry
Zhong, Xinjue. Exploring two-dimensional superatomic semiconductors. Sponsor: Xiaoyang Zhu.

Classics
Kaczor, Sarah. The Ovidian soundscape: The poetics of noise in the Metamorphoses. Sponsor: Gareth Williams.

Communications
Glaisyer, Thomas. A witches' brew of instability: Data, platforms, and networks--understanding America's digital public square. Sponsor: Richard John.

Computer Science
Cooper, Erica. Text-to-speech synthesis using found data for low-resource languages. Sponsor: Julia Hirschberg.

Levitan, Sarah. Automatic deception detection from spoken dialogue: Classification and individual differences. Sponsor: Julia Hirschberg.

Lottarini, Andrea. Design space exploration of accelerators for warehouse scale computing. Sponsor: Martha Kim.

Earth and Environmental Sciences
Borunda, Alejandra. Tracing dust in the Southern Hemisphere over the last glacial cycle. Sponsor: Gisela Winckler.

Gao, Yuchao. The impact of organic aerosol volatility on particle microphysics and global climate. Sponsors: Susanne Bauer and Konstantinos Tsigaridis.

Mozumder, M. Rajib Hassan. Impacts of pumping on the distribution of arsenic in Bangladesh groundwater. Sponsor: Lex van Geen.

Oliver, Ruth. Spatiotemporal dynamics of songbird breeding in arctic-boreal North America. Sponsor: Natalie Boelman.

English and Comparative Literature
Barasch, Benjamin. The ontological imagination: Living form in American literature. Sponsors: Branka Arsi and Ross Posnock.

Genetics and Development
Galindo, Samantha. Axon-axon and axon-target interactions underlying somatosensory circuit assembly in Drosophila. Sponsor: Wesley Grueber.

Ketcham, Alexandra. ROS-mediated and independent paths to thymineless death in Escherichia coli. Sponsor: Saeed Tavazoie.

Industrial Engineering
Ma, Ni. Efficient simulation and performance stabilization for time-varying single-server queues. Sponsor: Ward Whitt.

Mechanical Engineering
Czapla, Braden. Near-field radiative heat transfer in linear chains of multilayered spheres. Sponsor: Arvind Narayanaswamy.

Yuan, Shengxi. Methods and pathways for electricity sector transitions. Sponsor: Vijay Modi.

Microbiology, Immunology, and Infection
Miron, Michelle. Mechanisms of T cell compartmentalization in human tissues. Sponsor: Donna Farber.

Music
Mason, William. Feeling machines: Immersion, expression, and technological embodiment in electroacoustic music of the French Spectral School. Sponsor: Ellie Hisama.

Neurobiology and Behavior
Chalif, Joshua. Ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons are essential for mammalian locomotion. Sponsor: George Mentis.

Fageiry, Samaher. Mapping cortical connections with spinal circuits. Sponsors: Thomas Jessell and Darcy Kelley.

Horta, Adan. Cell type-specific interchromosomal interactions as a mechanism for transcriptional diversity. Sponsor: Stavros Lomvardas.

Howard, Clare. Serotonergic modulation of walking behavior in Drosophila melanogaster. Sponsor: Richard Mann.

So, Lam Tsz Nina. Behavioral significance and neural processing of communication vocalizations. Sponsor: Sarah Woolley.

Nursing
Handschuh, Caroline. Peer and parental relationships and their association with adolscent sexual behaviors. Sponsor: Arlene Smaldone.

Nutritional and Metabolic Biology
Shikhel, Steven. Energy regulation by the skeleton: Exploring the role of bone-delivered Lipocalin 2. Sponsor: Stavroula Kousteni.

Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine
Du, Jing. Genome-wide screening approaches identify novel Notch signaling targets as regulators of angiogenesis. Sponsor: Jan Kitajewski.

Philosophy
Gasiunas, Nemira. Patterns of perception. Sponsor: Lydia Goehr.

Kaeslin, Isabel. Emotion, cognition, and the virtue of flexibility. Sponsor: Katja Vogt.

Physics
Edelberg, Drew. Systems of transition metal dichalcogenides: Controlling applied strain and defect density with direct impact on material properties. Sponsor: Abhay Pasupathy.

He, Zhuoran. Computational studies and algorithmic research of strongly correlated materials. Sponsor: Andrew Millis.

TC / Anthropology and Education
Dvorak, Alexander. Becoming an international student: What do adolescent immigrants do with a high school designed for them? Sponsor: Herve Varenne.

Lassila Smith, Astrid. Community college failing forced migrant students. Sponsor: Herve Varenne.

TC / Clinical Psychology
Rossi, Adam. Demographic and psychiatric correlates of suicide attempt in a nationally representative sample. Sponsor: Barry Farber.

TC / Cognitive Science in Education
Hawn, Michael. Exploratory analysis of teacher online data use and attitudes. Sponsor: Ryan Baker.

Liu, Yang. Gesture for thinking on diagrams. Sponsor: Barbara Tversky.

TC / Comparative and International Education
Ahmed, Abdul. The rise of #Fallism: #RhodesMustFall and the movement to decolonize the university. Sponsor: Susan Garnett Russell.

Liu, Ji. The economics of teacher occupational choice in China. Sponsor: Gita Steiner-Khamsi.

TC / Counseling Psychology
Torres-Mackie, Naomi. Growing up in a single-mother household: Managing stigma and cultivating capacities. Sponsor: Marie Miville.

TC / Educational Leadership
Graves, Kenneth. Disrupting the digital norm in the new digital divide: Toward a conceptual and empirical framework of technology leadership for social justice through multilevel latent class analysis. Sponsor: Alex J. Bowers.

TC / Mathematics Education
Galarza, Patrick. The effects of mathematical game play on the cognitive and affective development of pre-secondary students. Sponsor: Nicholas Wasserman.

TC / Politics and Education
Smikle, Basil. Regimes, race, and reform: The politics of charter school growth and sustainability in Harlem. Sponsor: Jeffrey Henig.

TC / School Psychology
Durham, Katherine. Domains of intellectual functioning and posttraumatic stress symptoms among traumatized youth. Sponsor: Philip Saigh.

TC / Speech and Language Pathology
Rajappa, Akila. Psychometric evaluation of magnitude estimation scales to evaluate urge-to-cough sensation in healthy young adults. Sponsor: Michelle Troche.

Urban Planning
Fischer, Lauren. The transport planning process: A political and institutional analysis. Sponsor: David King.

Li, Yunjing. Chinese low-carbon cities: A state discursive project in Shenzhen. Sponsor: Elliott Sclar.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Applied Physics
Brooks, John. Mode suppression in HBT-EP with a directional bias probe array and active feedback control.

Ginsberg, Jared. High harmonic generation from metasurfaces and nanomaterials.

Art History and Archaeology
Clemens, Olivia. Arts of the lands of Islam.

Ekserdjian, Alexander. Shared visual space: The sculptural representation of the bodies of mortals and gods in the sanctuaries of Hellenistic central Italy.

Kuruvilla, Tara. Disjecta membra: The fragmentation of the India Museum and the colonial construction of knowledge over the long nineteenth century.

Superfine, Mary. Radical touch: Performative sculpture and assemblage in the 1970s.

Biomedical Engineering
Feng, Xinyang. Large-scale neuroimaging in Alzheimer's disease and normal aging.

Kim, Sharon. Interrogating spatiotemporal patterns of resting state neuronal activity in awake mice and resulting implications for resting state fMRI interpretation.

Sundaresh, Sowmya. Biomechanics of brain tissue and pathbiology of blast induced traumatic brain injury.

Business
Choi, Woohyun. Essays on advertising.

Padilla, Nicolas. Estimating customer preferences with limited information.

Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

Wang, Siyan. Evaluation of green infrastructure for field measurements, modeling, and enhancements.

Classical Studies
Ish Shalom, Tal Ardon. State formation and ethnic identity in the late-seleucid levant (164-63 BCE).

Classics
Heintges, Elizabeth. Between myth and memory: Sicily in Roman literature (1st c. BCE - 1st c. CE).

James, Jesse. Greek international law: Networks, socialization, and compliance.

Computer Science
Fei, Yun. Multi-scale models to simulate interactions between liquid and thin structures.

Kedzie, Christopher. Salience estimation and faithful generation: Modeling methods for text summarization and generation.

Razaghi, Hooshmand. Statistical machine learning methods for extracting large multineuronal activity and inference of neural population dynamics.

Earth and Environmental Sciences
Tejada Lara, Julia. Isotopic, ecological, and phylogenetic approaches to understanding Cenozoic South American mammalian communities through time.

East Asian Languages and Cultures
Moody, Peter. Mobilizing music and the making of North Korea.

Sakai, Komei. Forging the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas: The study of religious iconography of Japanese arms and armor.

Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Kou-Giesbrecht, Sian. How do nitrogen-fixing trees influence the extent to which global forests mitigate or exacerbate climate change?

Shah, Shailee. Direct benefits driving grouping behavior in a cooperatively breeding species.

English and Comparative Literature
Banful, Akua. The hostile tropics: Towards a postcolonial discourse of climate.

Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies

Najib, Aseel. The Sharia, the executive and land taxation in the early Abbasaid Period.

Nursing
Murray, Meghan. Risk factors for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases in vulnerable populations.

Parsons Beauchemin, Melissa. Cancer care delivery and clinical informatics.

Philosophy
Booth, Richard. Philosophy of mind, logic, early modern philosophy.

Political Science

Sutherland, Joseph. What can text data teach us about representation? Methods for the study of institutions and public opinion.

Religion
Liu, Yanchen. Investigating the margins: Bernard of Pama's Glossa Ordinaria on religious marginality in the high middle ages.

Sociology
Elbers, Benjamin. The reproduction of racial segregation in U.S. schools.

Where did you grow up? 
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.

What drew you to your field? 
Coming from a place like Puerto Rico, an island-nation that has been an American territory for over a century, it’s hard not to be interested in politics. The intricacies of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the US was a topic that my family discussed at length at the dinner table when I was growing up. In college, my general curiosity about this topic grew into research questions of representation, political preferences, identity, participation, and citizenship.

How would you explain your current research to someone outside of your field? 
I study the political preferences of individuals of racial/ethnic minority groups in the US, and the ways in which elected officials represent the interests of those constituents.

What is your favorite thing about being a student at Columbia GSAS?
Working with the Students of Color Alliance and the GSAS-Leadership Alliance Summer Research Program. Getting to design and implement programs for the community of underrepresented minorities on campus, as well as mentoring talented undergraduate students and helping them to prepare for graduate school, has been one of the highlights of my time at Columbia. Living in New York has been pretty amazing, too!

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Spending my formative academic years at the University of Puerto Rico is something I’m still extremely proud of. Attending a public university that has such a powerful voice in local politics enriched my education and made me a more engaged scholar and citizen.

Who are your favorite writers?
Two of my all-time favorite writers are Esmeralda Santiago and Isabel Allende. I first read Santiago’s memoir of her family’s migration from rural Puerto Rico to New York City (When I Was Puerto Rican) as a young teenager and loved it. I re-read it recently and found it to be all the more relatable and beautiful. My mother introduced me to Allende at a young age as well, and I love how she combines tales of womanhood, politics, love, and family in her novels.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My parents. They gave me and my sister the most wonderful childhood full of love, food, and laughter. My mom instilled in me a love for reading and is the strongest, most loving woman I know. My dad helped me get through the first year of grad school, which was rough for me, and he’s great at bringing our big family together. Together they are my moral compass and my biggest supporters.

What music have you been listening to lately?
I’ve been listening to a lot of Héctor Lavoe, Willie Colón, and Ismael Rivera lately. My husband, a native New Yorker, has been learning about the history of salsa in New York and Puerto Rico, so it’s all we’ve been listening to for the past month or so.

Where is your favorite place to eat on/around campus?
We live on the northern part of Morningside Drive, so we love to patronize El Nuevo Tina, El Portón, and Pisticci.

What is your current role?
Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

What are you working on now?
I study how the immune system affects the evolution of tumors and viruses. In particular, I am trying to model responses to cancer immunotherapies.

What drew you to your field?
Several physicists had contributed to HIV research in a way that advanced treatment. I saw that my background could be applied to a field in which basic research could inform both our fundamental understanding of the world and patient care.

What lessons from graduate school have you found useful in your professional life?
The value of conducting basic research. The PhD experience teaches you to research a field and apply that knowledge to an original problem. The current research climate makes this hard, and this skill has become much more valuable.

What skill has unexpectedly helped you in your career?
Communication skills are always unappreciated. I work with clinicians, computer scientists, physicists, oncologists, and immunologists, to name a few. It is important to communicate effectively and always to listen to and respect what your colleagues have to say.

What is your favorite memory from your graduate years?
If I had to pick one, it would be meeting my wife, Lindsay!

What are your passions outside of your work?
I enjoy cooking, listening to music, and spending time with my family (particularly my daughter Eleanor).

What is your advice for current GSAS students?
The best projects are the ones that people are passionate about. I think students worry now that if they do not have everything perfect quickly, then they won't be successful—but the best results are still curiosity driven, so it’s important to not lose your excitement and joy for the field you are in.

What motivates you to give to Columbia?
I was an undergraduate and graduate student at Columbia. The University has a great environment that balances the latest knowledge with a healthy respect for research in a dynamic urban environment. It is a uniquely wonderful place to learn.

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Biological Sciences
FitzPatrick, Vincent. Predicting autonomous promoter activity based on genome-wide modeling of SuRE, a massively parallel reporter assay. Sponsor: Harmen Bussemaker.

Biomedical Informatics
McKillop, Mollie. Phenotyping endometriosis from observational health data. Sponsor: Noemie Elhadad.

Chemical Engineering
Bilchak, Connor. Polymer-grafted nanoparticle membranes: A platform for advanced, tunable mixed-matrix materials. Sponsor: Sanat Kumar.

Classics
Oppen, Simone. Comparative perspectives on Persian interactions with Greek sanctuaries during the Greco-Persian wars. Sponsors: Elizabeth Irwin and John Ma.

Electrical Engineering
Li, Wenze. High speed volumetric SCAPE imaging for different model animals. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Epidemiology
Dearing, Bianca. The consequences of severe early childhood carries on early childhood weight. Sponsor: Sharon Schwartz.

Industrial Engineering
Liu, Zhipeng. Exact simulation algorithms with applications in queueing theory and extreme value analysis. Sponsor: Jose Blanchet.

Mechanical Engineering
Shang, Junyi. Experimentation and multiphysical modeling of bioanalytical microdevices. Sponsor: Qiao Lin.

Neurobiology and Behavior
Fishman, Zvi. Taste processing in the brainstem. Sponsor: Charles S. Zuker.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED 

Applied Physics
Tsai, Cheng-Chia. Radiative cooling: From living systems to bio-inspired materials.

Computer Science
Moretti, Antonio. Variational methods for inferring spatial statistics and nonlinear dynamics.

Spahn, Riley. New data protection abstractions for emerging mobile and big data workloads.

Van't Hof, Alexander. Leveraging higher level device abstractions for mobile, drone, and desktop computing.

Earth and Environmental Sciences
Marzen, Rachel. Seismic constraints on the evolution of the southeastern United States from the Appalachian orogeny to present day.

English and Comparative Literature
Reeve, Jonathan. Visual imaginations of British literature, 1880-1930.

History
Robertson, Ellen. Importing politics: The Broadway play in the age of the mega-musical.

Materials Science and Engineering
Wright, Christopher. Atomic pair distribution function computed tomography and phase mapping: A streaming data processing approach.

Mechanical Engineering
Park, Sangwoo. Towards an active functional hand orthosis for stroke patients.

What is your current role?
Vice President of Major Gifts, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).

What are you working on now?
PAFA is the oldest art museum and art school in the country. My team and I secure funding for exhibitions, scholarship support, and program sponsorship.

What drew you to your field?
My favorite stories come from art history, and my favorite works of art compel and inspire my career, as they did my graduate study.

What lessons from graduate school have you found useful in your professional life?
Graduate school was very challenging for me. I felt perpetually out of my comfort zone! This helped my professional life tremendously. After finishing my PhD, I’m confident taking on even the most daunting of tasks.

What skill has unexpectedly helped you in your career?
Fellowship applications! Never anyone’s favorite, but I enjoyed making the case to grant-funding institutions as to why my project was relevant to their mission. And now I’m a fundraiser.

What is your favorite memory from your graduate years?
My research trips to Germany, hands down.

What are your passions outside of your work?
I recently moved to Philadelphia after eighteen years in New York, so I'm spending a lot of time exploring the city with my fiancé, Ted. Or I’m in yoga class or running along the Schuylkill River.

What is your advice for current GSAS students?
A good dissertation is a done dissertation.

What is next for you, professionally or otherwise?
I recently joined the GSAS Alumni Board, and will celebrate my fifteenth Columbia College reunion this spring. I’m looking forward to staying connected to campus as I settle in to life in Philly.

Where did you grow up? 
Baldwin Park, California. We are home to the first ever In-N-Out Burger, and it is a real source of pride for us.

What drew you to your field? 
I actually began college as a mathematics major but, ultimately, the challenges of trying to understand the complexities of the social world were far more fulfilling.

How would you explain your current research to someone outside of your field?
In the past, it was clear that a family’s socioeconomic status was largely inherited from parent to child and, most often, from father to son. Things have changed recently: income inequality has been rising, and someone’s educational status, rather than parental socioeconomic status, is a growing predictor of his or her income. I investigate the pressure that parents feel to ensure that their child is getting the best education available, beginning as early as preschool.

What resources or opportunities that Columbia provides have been most valuable to you?
Recently I have really enjoyed taking advantage of Columbia’s new institutional membership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. NCFDD’s weekly emails address anything from imposter syndrome to learning when to say no to opportunities that arise.

Is there a common misconception about a topic in your field that you wish you could correct?
When a sociologist says something like gender is “socially constructed,” it does not mean that gender is “not real.” Instead, we want to point out how something that may seem completely natural to you is actually a product of cultural, legal, and political circumstances.

Who are your favorite writers?
bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, and Chang-rae Lee.

Who are your heroes in real life?
As teenagers, my parents left their lives and families in Mexico because they dared to imagine something better for themselves and their future children. They really embody Juan Gabriel’s song “No Tengo Dinero.” We were a working-class family, but they were always unabashedly loving, and that was their greatest gift.

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
A sloth. Its smile is delightful, and I think it would be fitting to come back onto this earth as something that really appreciates taking one’s time.

What music have you been listening to lately?
Bad Bunny. Everyone in the Latin trap music scene has been fire recently. Juan Gabriel is my North Star.

Where is your favorite place to eat on/around campus?
I get soup dumplings at La Salle Dumpling Room far more often than I care to admit. The staff there is always lovely, too.

Established in 2016, the annual GSAS Master’s SynThesis Competition is an opportunity for MA students in the Arts and Sciences to showcase their research and presentation skills in a relaxed and collegial environment.

Finalists present their thesis research in four slides and five minutes—without the use of notes—to a general audience and an interdisciplinary panel of judges. First-, second-, and third-place awardees receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively, and a reception for the competitors and attendees follows the presentations.

The 2019 competition will be held on Thursday, May 9, 2019, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Jed D. Satow Conference Room in Lerner Hall.

Master’s students who wish to participate should apply here by Friday,March 29, 2019. All applications will be reviewed by a committee; applicants selected as semi-finalists will be interviewed in person before finalists are announced in mid-April. Those selected must be available to attend the competition on Thursday, May 9 and to participate in a preparatory workshop with GSAS staff prior to the competition.

Please write to gsas-studentaffairs [at] columbia.edu with any questions.

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Applied Mathematics
Li, Jiao. H-box methods for shallow water equations. Sponsor: Kyle Mandli.

Biomedical Engineering
Kim, Sharon. Interrogating spatiotemporal patterns of resting state neuronal and hemodynamic activity in the awake mouse model. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Voleti, Venkatakaushik. High-speed, volumetric imaging of biological tissue with swept, confocally-aligned planar excitation (SCAPE) microscopy. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Biomedical Informatics
Romano, Joseph. Computational toxinology. Sponsor: Nicholas Tatonetti.

Classical Studies
Sheppard, Joe. Mass spectacles in Roman Pompeii as a system of communication. Sponsor: Francesco de Angelis.

East Asian Languages and Cultures
Deckrow, Andre. "Friendship between antipodes": Pre-World War II Japanese colonial migration to Brazil. Sponsor: Carol Gluck.

Electrical Engineering
Li, Wenze. High speed volumetric SCAPE imaging for different model animals. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Epidemiology
Dearing, Bianca. The consequences of severe early childhood carries on early childhood weight. Sponsor: Sharon Schwartz.

Mathematics
Li, Shizhang. On the Picard functor in formal-rigid geometry. Sponsor: Aise Johan de Jong.

Mechanical Engineering
Shang, Junyi. Experimentation and multiphysical modeling of bioanalytical microdevices. Sponsor: Qiao Lin.

Operations Research
Ruiz Lacedelli, Octavio. Essays in information relaxations and scenario analysis for partially observable settings. Sponsor: Martin Haugh.

Sociomedical Sciences
Johns, David. Good evidence, bad evidence: Science, ethics, and the politics of making and unmaking public health policies. Sponsor: Ronald Bayer.

TC / Behavioral Disorders
Lau, Airey. Parental reflective functioning and children's emergent reading skills: ERP and longitudinal behavioral measures. Sponsor: Karen Froud.

TC / Intellectual Disabilities and Autism
Brady, Loretta. Augmented input and the classroom communication environment for learners with deafblindness. Sponsor: Laudan Jahromi.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Biomedical Informatics
Averitt, Amelia. Machine learning methods for causal inference with observational biomedical data.

Classical Studies
Sokolowski, Deborah. Culture and countryside in Roman Bithynia.

Computer Science
Hidey, Christopher. Content selection for effective counter-arguments to social media posts.

Nursing
Dorritie, Richard. Health policy and quality in nursing homes.

Slavic Languages
Pekov, Alexey. Toward a transmediterranean genealogy: Matrilineal legacies in Sephardi women writers from the former Yugoslavia and the Maghreb.

Click here to view the presentation slides from Shahar Ziv's 2019 financial workshop series for GSAS students.

Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the United Nation are excited to host the inaugural Ivy 3MT* competition on April 25, 2019. Winners of 3MT competitions from Columbia University, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Cornell University and Dartmouth College will compete to present their PhD research in 3 minutes using only one slide. We look forward to celebrating diverse and impactful scholarly achievements of PhD students across the Ivy League community. *This event was modeled after the University of Queensland 3MT^®.

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Applied Mathematics
Sharma, Roshan. Biological insights from geometry and structure of single-cell data. Sponsors: Dana Pe'er and Marc Spiegelman.

Computer Science
Garcia, Emilio. Enabling the accelerator era: Integration and simulation techniques for heterogeneous many-core systems. Sponsor: Luca Carloni.

Music (DMA)
Klartag, Yair. Post-ironic sounds: Wallacian new sincerity in “Unavoidably Sentimental” for large ensemble. Sponsor: George Lewis.

Neurobiology and Behavior
Hoffman, Benjamin. Somatosensation: From molecular mechanisms to non-invasive therapeutics. Sponsor: Ellen Lumpkin.

Physics
Clark, Michael. Femtoscopic signatures of small QGP droplets in proton-lead collisions at the large hadron collider. Sponsor: Brian Cole.

TC / Counseling Psychology
Geiger, Elizabeth. Don’t DIS my ABILITY: Expansion of minority stress theory for adults with learning disabilities. Sponsor: Melanie Brewster.

Urban Planning
He, Linying. Microfinance assemblages: The production, maintenance, and deterioration of microfinance in China. Sponsor: Robert Beauregard.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Art History and Archaeology
Miller, Hasbrouck. State architecture of the Argentine interior under Juan Domingo Perón, 1946-1955.

Biomedical Engineering
Rodenkirch, Charles. Locus coeruleus modulation of thalamic feature selectivity.

Schriver, Brian. The role of the locus coeruleus in mediating pupil-linked arousal in behavior.

Tu, Tao. Machine learning methods for fusion and inference of simultaneous EEG and fMRI.

Biomedical Informatics
Chau, Michelle. Leveraging social media in nutrition interventions for young populations.

Economics
Pessina, Lorenzo. Essays in public finance.

Zhang, Ye. Which start-up characteristics help? Evidence from a randomized field experiment in the US VC industry.

Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Sumah, Awo. A healing movement in a history of violence: Kimbanguism in Belgian Congo.

When making your financial plans, it is necessary to consider tuition and fees as well as living expenses in estimating the overall cost of attendance (COA). The following is the estimated cost of attendance for the 2019-2020 academic year.

For definitions of the enrollment categories listed below, please click here. 

Established in 2016, the annual GSAS Master’s SynThesis Competition is an opportunity for MA students in the Arts and Sciences to showcase their research and presentation skills in a relaxed and collegial environment.

Finalists present their thesis research in four slides and five minutes—without the use of notes—to a general audience and an interdisciplinary panel of judges. First-, second-, and third-place awardees receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively, and a reception for the competitors and attendees follows the presentations.

The 2019 competition will be held on Thursday, May 9, 2019, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Jed D. Satow Conference Room in Lerner Hall.

Master’s students who wish to participate should apply here by Friday,March 29, 2019. All applications will be reviewed by a committee; applicants selected as semi-finalists will be interviewed in person before finalists are announced in mid-April. Those selected must be available to attend the competition on Thursday, May 9 and to participate in a preparatory workshop with GSAS staff prior to the competition.

Please write to gsas-studentaffairs [at] columbia.edu with any questions.

Where did you grow up? 
Everson, Washington: a small town with good people and lots of cows.

What drew you to your field? 
Within my tribe, the Apsáalooke, we always give a part of our fortunes back to the community. We do this to make sure that when one of us prospers, we’re all able to prosper. My fortune is pursuing a PhD in a field I love, so it’s important to me that whatever knowledge I gain will benefit my community and those who need it most. Biomedical informatics allows me to apply my passion for problem-solving and mathematics to healthcare. I enjoy being able to work on the cutting edge of data science while driving the applications of new technologies to benefit underserved and at-risk populations.

How would you explain your current research to someone outside of your field? 
Text is an important way to convey information. As you read this right now, you’re able to piece together the knowledge you have about the world, and a string of symbols across the screen, in order to fully comprehend what I’m saying. Teaching computers to do this is incredibly difficult, and teaching computers to do this in healthcare raises further challenges. This is the general area of my research. I work on teaching computers to understand the information contained in the notes that clinicians write about their patients. I do this using machine learning, where, for example, I show a computer program examples of clinical text, and it learns to predict when a patient will come back to the hospital and for what reasons.

What is your favorite thing about being a student at Columbia GSAS?
No matter where I go on campus, I always seem to find people who are passionate and willing to talk about their work. Sometimes it’s in a formal setting, like a talk or seminar, and other times it’s an informal meeting over coffee or a walk to class. A lot of the time, this passion for their work stems from personal experiences, and learning how people how infuse their experiences, passions, and education is something I love about this place.

What resources or opportunities that Columbia provides have been most valuable to you?
The Native American Council (NAC) has helped me feel grounded in a community of students who understand where I’m coming from. There’s nothing like being surrounded by urban Natives and hearing someone switch back into rez (reservation) talk.

Who is your hero of fiction?
Ender, from Ender’s Game. I read that book in middle school and admired Ender for his ability to study his surroundings and find the deeper meanings in what was happening.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My great grandmother, Mildred. She was the matriarch of my family and always kept us together. Even though I come from a split household, she never made me feel like I had to choose between my two cultures. In her eyes, I wasn’t just the sum of two separate halves; I was the product of my mother and father and all those who came before, and that made me capable of so much more.

What music have you been listening to lately?
When I'm coding or reading, I listen to a lot of lo-fi jazz and hip-hop like saib., Biosphere, and Tomppabeats. When I'm not studying, I like listening to Gus Dapperton, Diet Cig, and Joji.

What is your favorite blog or website?
Native Appropriations helps me navigate being an Indian in the twenty-first century.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2019 Alumni Awards, which celebrate the superior achievements of GSAS master’s and doctoral graduates.

George D. Yancopoulos (’86PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics) and John A. Glusman (’80MA, English and Comparative Literature) will receive the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement. Matthew Salganik (’07PhD, Sociology) and Amanda Seales (’05MA, American Studies) will be honored with the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award.

“The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences holds in highest regard intellectual inquiry that exerts a profound impact not only in academia, but in the larger world as well,” said Carlos J. Alonso, Dean of GSAS. “These four graduates represent the very best in our alumni body, and serve as an example to all who aspire to have a lasting impact on the world.”

The honorees will receive their awards at a ceremony to be held on June 19, 2019.

About the Honorees

George D. Yancopoulos (’86PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics)
Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement
George D. Yancopoulos is cofounder, President, and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron. Over the last thirty years, Dr. Yancopoulos has worked with his longtime partner, Dr. Leonard S. Schleifer, to build Regeneron into a leading science-driven biotech company, which has invented and developed seven FDA-approved medicines for serious diseases including cancer, vision-threatening eye diseases, heart disease, atopic dermatitis, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis. His team continues to lead biotech innovation, including through the Regeneron Genetics Center, a world-leading effort that has already sequenced the DNA of over 500,000 people. Dr. Yancopoulos has authored more than 300 papers, holds over 100 patents, and was among the world’s ten most highly cited scientific authors during the 1990s (and the only one in industry). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, was inducted into the Biotech Hall of Fame in 2014, and was named (along with Dr. Schleifer) Ernst & Young’s 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year. He is also passionate about inspiring young talent through STEM and internship programs, and under his leadership Regeneron has assumed sponsorship of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious high school science competition, formerly sponsored by Westinghouse and Intel, and now known as the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

John A. Glusman (’80MA, English and Comparative Literature)
Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement
John A. Glusman is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of W.W. Norton’s trade department. A publishing veteran of nearly forty years, he has worked with Nobel Prize winners Czesław Miłosz and Orhan Pamuk; National Book Award winner Richard Powers; National Book Critics Circle Award winners John Lahr and Jim Crace; Pulitzer Prize winners Ronan Farrow, David Rohde, and Laurie Garrett; New York Times bestselling authors Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frans de Waal, Erik Larson, Ben Macintyre, David E. Sanger, Alice Hoffman, Rosellen Brown; and edited E. Annie Proulx’s fiction debut, Heart Songs and Other Stories. He has taught at Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, and the Squaw Valley writers conference. His book, Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941–1945 (Viking/Penguin, 2006), based on his father’s experiences as a Navy doctor and prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan, won the Colby Award for the best work of military nonfiction by a first-time author. Mr. Glusman is also the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in nonfiction.

Matthew Salganik (’07PhD, Sociology)
Outstanding Recent Alumni Award
Matthew Salganik is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is affiliated with several interdisciplinary research centers, including the Center for Information Technology Policy and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning. His research interests include social networks and computational social science. He is the author of Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age (Princeton University Press, 2018). Dr. Salganik’s papers have won the Outstanding Article Award from the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, and the Outstanding Statistical Application Award from the American Statistical Association. Popular accounts of his work have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The New Yorker. Dr. Salganik’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Joint United Nations Program for HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Russell Sage Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Facebook, and Google. During sabbaticals from Princeton, Dr. Salganik has served as a Visiting Professor at Cornell Tech and as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research. During the 2018-19 academic year, he is a Professor-in-Residence at The New York Times.

Amanda Seales (’05MA, American Studies)
Outstanding Recent Alumni Award
A comedian, actress, writer, recording artist, producer, and activist, Amanda Seales takes on serious topics—including racism, rape culture, sexism, and police brutality—using humor as an engine for vital social change. In addition to performing stand-up comedy across the world, and touring colleges to deliver comedic lectures, Ms. Seales has an active career on television as a series regular on HBO’s Insecure; guest-starred on ABC’s Black-ish; released her debut stand-up special, I Be Knowin’, on HBO in January 2019; and created and hosts the hit live comedy game show Smart Funny & Black. She was an MTV video jockey, a member of the R&B group Floetry, and hosted Hip-Hop Nation on Sirius Radio. Ms. Seales also has published a book of poetry (young skin/Wise Mind/Old Soul), and speaks truth to change through her popular Instagram channel and weekly podcast Small Doses, an accompanying book for which will be released in fall 2019 (Abrams Books).

DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED

Applied Mathematics
Li, Jiao. An h-box method for shallow water equations. Sponsor: Kyle Mandli.

Sharma, Roshan. Biological insights from geometry and structure of single-cell data. Sponsors: Dana Pe'er and Marc Spiegelman.

Biological Sciences
Han, Shuting. Computational and imaging methods for studying neural population function during behavior. Sponsor: Rafael Yuste.

Biomedical Engineering
Kim, Sharon. Interrogating spatiotemporal patterns of resting state neuronal and hemodynamic activity in the awake mouse model. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Voleti, Venkatakaushik. High-speed, volumetric imaging of biological tissue with swept, confocally-aligned planar excitation (SCAPE) microscopy. Sponsor: Elizabeth Hillman.

Biomedical Informatics
Romano, Joseph. Computational toxinology. Sponsor: Nicholas Tatonetti.

Business
Jachimowicz, Jon. The pursuit, perception, and variation of passion. Sponsor: Adam Galinsky.

Meng, Ruoqu. Self-rewards and cash (dis)incentives: Consequences for effort, integrity, and habit formation. Sponsor: Ran Kivetz.

Classical Studies
Sheppard, Joe. Mass spectacles in Roman Pompeii as a system of communication. Sponsor: Francesco de Angelis.

Communications
Citra, Diani. Engineering inevitability: How digital television is colonizing Indonesia. Sponsor: Richard John.

Computer Science
Garcia, Emilio. Enabling the accelerator era: Integration and simulation techniques for heterogeneous many-core systems. Sponsor: Luca Carloni.

Psallidas, Fotis. Physical plan instrumentation in databases: Design principles and applications. Sponsor: Eugene Wu.

Earth and Environmental Engineering
Liao, Xiangbiao. Engineered morphologic material structures: Physical/chemical properties and applications. Sponsor: Xi Chen.

East Asian Languages and Cultures
Deckrow, Andre. "Friendship between antipodes": Pre-World War II Japanese colonial migration to Brazil. Sponsor: Carol Gluck.

Economics
Matsumura, Misaki. Essays on price and welfare. Sponsors: David Weinstein and Michael Woodford.

Electrical Engineering
Gazman, Alexander. Silicon photonic subsystems for optically connected memory interconnects. Sponsor: Keren Bergman.

Epidemiology
Dawson, Patrick. Zoonotic transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus from camels to humans and barriers to biosecurity interventions in Jordan. Sponsor: Stephen Morse.

Rubenstein, Beth. Microcredit, temptation spending and health outcomes in Indonesia: A longitudinal evaluation. Sponsor: Lisa Bates.

Mathematics
Faulk, Mitchell. Some canonical Kahler metrics on orbifolds. Sponsor: Chiu-Chu Liu.

Li, Shizhang. On the Picard functor in formal-rigid geometry. Sponsor: Aise Johan de Jong.

Yu, Wenhua. Blowup rate control for solution of Jang's equation and its application on Penrose inequality. Sponsor: Mu-Tao Wang.

Music (DMA)
Klartag, Yair. Post-ironic sounds: Wallacian new sincerity in "Unavoidably Sentimental" for large ensemble. Sponsor: George Lewis.

Neurobiology and Behavior
Hoffman, Benjamin. The peripheral nervous system: From molecular mechanisms to non-invasive therapeutics. Sponsor: Ellen Lumpkin.

Nutritional and Metabolic Biology
Zhu, Changyu. Hepatocyte notch in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) - Associated liver fibrosis and cancer. Sponsor: Utpal Pajvani.

Operations Research
Ruiz Lacedelli, Octavio. Essays in information relaxations and scenario analysis for partially observable settings. Sponsor: Martin Haugh.

Physics
Clark, Michael. Femtoscopic signatures of small QGP droplets in proton-lead collisions at the large hadron collider. Sponsor: Brian Cole.

Sociomedical Sciences
Johns, David. Good evidence, bad evidence: Science, ethics, and the politics of making and unmaking public health policies. Sponsor: Ronald Bayer.

TC / Behavioral Disorders
Lau, Airey. Parental reflective functioning and children's emergent reading skills: ERP and longitudinal behavioral measures. Sponsor: Karen Froud.

TC / Counseling Psychology
Geiger, Elizabeth. Don't DIS my ABILITY: Expansion of minority stress theory for adults with learning disabilities. Sponsor: Melanie Brewster.

Srinivasan, Ranjana. Experiences of name-based microaggressions within the South Asian American population. Sponsor: Laura Smith.

TC / Intellectual Disabilities and Autism
Brady, Loretta. Augmented input and the classroom communication environment for learners with deafblindness. Sponsor: Laudan Jahromi.

TC / Measurement and Evaluation
Han, Zhuangzhuang. Three new studies on model-data fit analysis for latent variable models in educational measurement. Sponsor: Matthew Johnson.

TC / Science Education
Connolly, Rachel. Teachers' understanding and usage of scientific data visualizations for teaching topics in earth and space science. Sponsor: O. Roger Anderson.

Lyu, Xiaoxin. Assessing in-service secondary science teachers' views of nature of science and competence in understanding scientific argumentation about socio-scientific issues. Sponsor: O. Roger Anderson.

TC / Social-Organizational Psychology
Kim, Jennifer. The role of self-affirmation and self-construal levels in attenuating the gender performance gap. Sponsor: Caryn Block.

Urban Planning
He, Linying. Microfinance assemblages: The production, maintenance and deterioration of microfinance in China. Sponsor: Robert Beauregard.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS FILED

Biomedical Engineering
Mosher, Christopher. Interface scaffold design principles for integrative cartilage regeneration.

Earth and Environmental Sciences
Deluca, Michael. Geochronologic tests of Scottish caledonide tectonics.

Psychology
Flores, Abdiel. Effects of self-affirmation on physiological, affective, and behavioral responses to attributional ambiguity.