OHSU OGI School Of Science & Engineering Adds New Faculty To Work On Human, Ecosystem Health
October 27, 2004
Portland, Ore.
Oregon Health & Science University’s OGI School of Science & Engineering (www.ogi.edu) has added two new faculty to boost its focus on interdisciplinary research in human and ecosystem health. The school also promoted one employee.
Miguel Á. Carreira-Perpiñán, Ph.D., joins the School of Science & Engineering as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering
www.cse.ogi.edu. Carreira-Perpiñán is an expert in several areas of machine learning and computational neuroscience. His research is inspired by pattern recognition problems such as speech processing and computer vision. His goal is to design algorithms for complex information processing problems and to understand how neural systems solve such problems. Prior to joining the School of Science & Engineering, Carreira-Perpiñán was a postdoctoral fellow in the computer science department at the University of Toronto and in the neuroscience department at Georgetown University. He received a bachelor’s and a master’s in computer science at the Technical University of Madrid, Spain; a bachelor’s in physics from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Spain; and a doctorate in computer science at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. He is a reviewer for the Journal of Machine Learning Research, Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, and Speech Communication, among other journals and conferences. Carreira-Perpiñán has published a number of scientific papers and written several book chapters.
Holly M. Simon, Ph.D., joins the School of Science & Engineering as an assistant professor of environmental and biomolecular systems (www.ebs.ogi.edu/). A microbiologist, Simon is an expert on the single-celled microorganisms inhabiting the soil on and around the roots of plants. Most recently, she helped to unearth the existence of a microorganism called Crenarchaeota in common agricultural soils — a surprising finding because scientists had previously believed that Crenarchaeota could exist only in extremely hot, often sulfurous or acidic environments. Her team’s discovery has opened a new avenue of study for scientists interested in the functions and ecological implications of these microorganisms. Prior to joining the School of Science & Engineering, Simon was an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Plant Pathology, working with well-known microbiologist Robert Goodman. She received a doctorate in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin.
Dana Director, M.S., has been named assistant dean of administrative services at the OHSU OGI School of Science & Engineering. Director, who also serves in a half-time capacity as the administrator of OGI’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will be charged with streamlining OGI’s administrative and human resources processes, working under the direction of interim associate dean for finance, Michael Mallery. Director’s promotion is part of the school’s recently announced overhaul of its organizational structure to centralize functions such as financial services, administrative services, research support and graduate education, among others. Director has worked for the OGI School of Science and Engineering for five years.
ABOUT THE OGI SCHOOL OF SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
The OGI School of Science & Engineering (formerly the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science & Technology) became one of four specialty schools of Oregon Health & Science University in 2001.