Bios Purdue Insights Fellows 2023-2024
Shawn Bauldry
Shawn Bauldry is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology in Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts. He obtained a PhD in Sociology and an MS in Statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on applied statistics for social and behavioral sciences and the interrelationships between socioeconomic resources and health across the life course and over generations. He has published one book and over 45 peer-reviewed articles in these areas. Since joining Purdue in 2016, he has been involved with several interdisciplinary communities including the Center on Aging and the Life Course, Advanced Methodologies at Purdue, and the Purdue Policy Research Institute, and he was named a University Faculty Scholar in 2018.
Kelly Blanchard
Kelly Blanchard is Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and a Clinical Associate Professor of Economics at the Daniels School of Business. As associate dean, she oversees the undergraduate curriculum, academic advising, and study abroad as well as the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Business and the Larsen Leaders Academy. Prior to her appointment to associate dean in the summer of 2022, Kelly spent the previous 20+ years teaching undergraduate and graduate classes in the economics department, earning school, university, and national awards for teaching excellence along the way. In 2018, she was named a “Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor” in the U.S. by Poets and Quants; and, in 2022, graduating seniors in the business school selected her to receive the school’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. From 2020-2022, she also served as the Director of the Purdue Center for Economic Education. She is a member of Purdue’s Teaching Academy, is a faculty fellow for Windsor Hall, and serves as an advisor to Purdue’s Disney Appreciation Club and Sigma Kappa Sorority. Before beginning her career at Purdue, she worked as an antitrust litigation consultant and taught at DePauw University.
Ph.D., Economics, Purdue, 1996, M.S., Economics, Purdue, 1994,
B.S., Economics, Wittenberg University, 1991
Laura Bowling
Laura Bowling is a Professor of hydrology and water resources in the Department of Agronomy and the Director of the interdisciplinary, undergraduate, Natural Resources and Environmental Science program. In her NRES role, she directs the undergraduate curriculum and academic progress of the approximately 180 undergraduate students in the program.
Dr. Bowling’s research program combines first principal understanding of the physical controls on water storage and movement through the environment with field data collection using in-situ and remote sensing, simulation modeling and data informatics. Ongoing research projects address the sustainability of water resources regionally, nationally and globally and evaluation of the effectiveness of agricultural conservation practices. Laura was awarded the 2023 Charles B. Murphy Award of Outstanding Undergraduate teaching, is a member of the Teaching Academy and a University Faculty Scholar (2017). She has a B.S.C.E. from Princeton University, and a M.S.C.E. and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington.
Liz Brite
Liz Brite is an anthropological archaeologist and honors educator. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles and held a postdoctoral teaching fellowship at the Honors College, Auburn University before joining the John Martinson Honors College in 2014. She is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Anthropology.
Brite’s research examines water, agriculture, and the human ecologies of Central Asia, with particular focus on the Aral Sea Basin. She was a 2018 National Geographic Explorer and maintains collaborations with the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan and partners in the U.S. and abroad for archaeological research. In the John Martinson Honors College, Brite teaches interdisciplinary honors courses that examine human-environment relations across time and space. She is also a practitioner of critical, international service-learning and the editor of the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement.
Christopher M. Fulkerson
Christopher M. Fulkerson is a Clinical Associate Professor of Veterinary Medical Oncology in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine. He received his BA and DVM from Purdue, then completed a Small Animal Internship at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, and then returned to Purdue for a Veterinary Medical Oncology Residency and MS. He joined the faculty in 2014. Dr. Fulkerson is a Board-Certified Veterinary Oncologist and Medical Oncology Section Head at the Purdue University Veterinary Hospital (PUVH). He is currently the Oncology Specialty Representative for the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine’s inaugural Certification Council and has chaired the Oncology Credentials Committee. Dr. Fulkerson is involved in the didactic and clinical education of veterinary nursing students, veterinary students, and post-DVM interns and residents. He currently chairs the PUVH’s Intern Committee and the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Curriculum Committee, and has led task forces charged with addressing student and trainee well-being. His teaching efforts have been recognized with a national and local teaching awards. He is an active member of the Evan and Sue Ann Werling Comparative Oncology Research Center and Purdue Institute for Cancer Research. His research interests include spontaneous cancer in pets as comparative and translational models (with a particular focus on lymphoma, osteosarcoma, and urothelial carcinoma), caregiver burden in pet owners, and developing solutions to address well-being concerns in the veterinary profession. He also serves as an Oncology Section Editor for the Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association.
Dr. Jose M. Garcia-Bravo
Dr. Jose M. Garcia-Bravo is currently an Associate Professor for the Mechanical Engineering Technology program where he has a special focus on fluid power (hydraulic systems) research and instruction, additive manufacturing and smart manufacturing using Industrial Internet of Things technologies. Garcia-Bravo received his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota in 2002, His M.Sc. in 2006 and Ph.D. in 2011 from Purdue University.
Dr. Garcia-Bravo has gained national recognition for his work in applied fluid power research and additive manufacturing. Dr. Garcia-Bravo is an expert designer of 3D printed small components for miniaturized fluid power systems. In 2019, Dr. Garcia-Bravo was awarded the Purdue Polytechnic Outstanding Faculty in Learning Award, a distinction given to the faculty in the college for their performance and contributions to teaching and learning at the Purdue Polytechnic Institute.
Margaret Gitau
Margaret Gitau is Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. Her research focuses on water resources with emphasis on: water quality; integrated hydrologic and water quality modeling; and, data-driven decision-making and management. She has developed over 160 products from her work including peer reviewed journal articles, presentations, and datasets. Prof. Gitau has given over 20 invited talks and seminars, both in the U.S. and internationally. She has served on the Advisory Board of University of Florida’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (2012-2015, 2017) and on the editorial boards of three internationally renowned journals: Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, ASABE (2007-2019); Applied Engineering in Agriculture (2007-2019); and, the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (2013-present). Gitau Co-founded and Co-led the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Alliance for Modernizing African Agrifood Systems initiative (2019-2021), and currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Executive (2021-present). She is also the Founding President/President of the Mentoring Network for African Women in Academia (MTAWA) (2016-present). She is a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow (2020) and has recently been appointed to an Expert Committee with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Heather A. Howard
Heather A. Howard is an Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies. She received her B.S. in Organizational Leadership and Supervision from Purdue University and her Masters in Library Science from Indiana University, Indianapolis. She is a member of Purdue Library’s Information Resources Council and head of collections for the Parrish Library of Management and Economics. As a member of the Teaching Academy Executive Board and the Teaching Excellence Advisory Committee, she helps create university-level teaching initiatives and implement them university-level teaching initiatives within the Libraries and School of Information Studies. She is a passionate teacher who has won many awards, including the Purdue University Exceptional Early Career Award in 2019. She has served in leadership positions in national professional associations and as an advisor for Gale Cengage, a major publisher. She is also the founder of the Midwest Business Librarian Summit, an annual one-day conference for business librarians. Her research focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, and she investigates how students and recent graduates use information both in the classroom and workplace. She was co-PI on a grant from the Purdue Innovation Hub, “Preparing students for today’s informed workplace: a transdisciplinary information literacy badging approach,” to create scalable information literacy
Dr. Randolph Hubach
Dr. Randolph Hubach is Associate Head and an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health. He holds a Ph.D. in Health Behavior from Indiana University’s School of Public Health and MPH from California State University, Fullerton. Early in his career, Dr. Hubach’s research and practice experiences included serving as PI on a federally funded community-based sexual health intervention project, developing managed care programs for local public health and mental health jurisdictions, and serving in leadership positions in multiple community health coalitions and planning processes. As a behavioral scientist and public health researcher, he has gained a practical understanding of the challenges associated with the delivery of public health programs that are scientifically sound and responsive to the needs of diverse communities. As Director of the Sexual Health Research Lab at Purdue University, his research interests include using community engaged principles to address sexuality-related health disparities, sexual behavior, LGBT population health, and HIV/AIDS within urban and rural communities.
Dr. Andrea Kasinski
Dr. Andrea Kasinski is the William and Patty Miller Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. After finishing her PhD with Dr. Haian Fu in Molecular Genetics at Emory University, Dr. Kasinski worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Frank J. Slack at Yale University studying microRNAs. In 2013 she began her tenure track position at Purdue University where she is currently an Associate Professor, Chair of the Graduate Program in Biological Sciences, and a Program Leader for the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research. In recognition of her commitment to the Graduate Program, she was awarded the College of Science Graduate Student Mentoring Award in 2023.
Scientifically, Dr. Kasinski has been funded by the Depart of Defense and the American Cancer Society, with continuous funding from the NIH for over ten years through an F31, K99, and currently two R01s. Dr. Kasinski’s laboratory focuses on elucidating RNA-based mechanisms involved in cancer and harnessing this information to develop RNA-based therapeutics. In addition to her interest in understanding how cancer cells hijack extracellular vesicles for delivery of endogenous small RNAs, Dr. Kasinski’s major contribution has been on exogenous delivery of microRNAs.
Dr. Katy Martin Rainey
Dr. Katy Martin Rainey is a Professor of Agronomy in the College of Agriculture at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She earned her B.S. from the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She has been a soybean breeder since 2006, starting as faculty at Virginia Tech before moving to Purdue.
She is the recipient of the Purdue University Faculty Scholar Award, she is the Director of the Purdue Soybean Center, and she is the co-founder of Progeny Drone, Inc. She serves on the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Crops of the Future Advisory Council, and she is involved with the leadership of the National Association of Plant Breeders. She has received millions of dollars in funding from soybean farmers and she has taught plant breeding and genetics to over 850 students.
Dr. Libby Richards
Dr. Libby Richards’ is an associate professor and director of the PhD in Nursing program at Purdue University’s School of Nursing. She is also a faculty associate for the Center on Aging and the Life Course and a faculty partner for the Center for Families. Dr. Richards received her PhD in public health promotion from Purdue University (Health & Kinesiology), her MSN in community health nursing from Indiana University, and her BSN from University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, IN. Before joining the School of Nursing in 2006, Dr. Richards worked in healthcare administration both in long-term care and in third-party administration.
Dr. Richards’ research examines the importance of social support for increasing and maintaining physical activity. Her research has been funded through Purdue’s Centers for Families, Cooperative Extension, the National Institutes of Health, Indiana CTSI, and the American Nurses Foundation.
As a public health nurse, Dr. Richards widely disseminates health education about the importance of vaccinations, flu prevention, and physical activity promotion. In addition, she has served in several leadership positions in the field of public health, including as a past Board Member for the Indiana Public Health Association and past chair of the Physical Activity Section of the American Public Health Association. She is the current chair for the aging research interest group of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
Toni Kempler Rogat
Toni Kempler Rogat is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology & Research Methodology in the College of Education. She currently serves as Associate Department Head of the Department of Educational Studies. Her research focuses on examining and measuring the quality of student motivation and engagement contextualized in collaborative group and rich STEM classroom environments. Her research has described productive collaborative group interactions using theories of motivation, engagement, and socially shared regulation. She has also examined students’ motivational experiences within inquiry-based science classrooms, with the aim of identifying curricular features and teacher practices which promote these high-quality outcomes. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Spencer Foundation. She earned her undergraduate degree in Elementary Education with Psychology from Goucher College and was an elementary school teacher in Baltimore. She received her M.S. in Developmental Psychology and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Shreyas Sundaram
Shreyas Sundaram is the Marie Gordon Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, and the Co-Director of the Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo from 2010 to 2014. His research expertise is in the control of autonomous multi-agent systems, fault-tolerant and secure control, game theory, and network science. Dr. Sundaram is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award and an Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship. At Purdue, he received the HKN Outstanding Professor Award, the Outstanding Mentor of Engineering Graduate Students Award, the Hesselberth Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award.
Dr. Xiao Wang
Dr. Xiao Wang is a professor of statistics at Purdue University, where he has been a faculty member since 2009. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and his research centers on nonparametric statistics, functional data analysis, and machine learning, with particular emphasis on developing methods for high-dimensional and complex data. Dr. Wang's work has been featured in leading statistical journals and machine learning conferences, and he is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and the American Statistical Association (ASA). Dr. Wang is currently an associate editor for JASA, Technometrics, and Lifetime Data Analysis.
Wenzhuo Wu
Wenzhuo Wu is the Ravi and Eleanor Talwar Rising Star Associate Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering. His research focuses on designing, manufacturing, and integrating nanomaterials for wearable sensors, clean energy, and nanoelectronics. He was a recipient of multiple awards and has been invited to participate many symposiums.
Dr. Wu serves on the Purdue College of Engineering Semiconductor Degrees Program Committee. In addition, Dr. Wu serves as the chair of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council Technical Committee on Nanomaterials, an advisor for the TMS flagship journal JOM, a member of the TMS Emerging Professional Committee, Education Committee, and TMS Functional Materials Division Council, an associate editor for Materials Today Chemistry, and a member of the editorial advisory boards for many academic journals.