Dean Carmala Garzione announces appointments of five College of Science department heads

Dear College of Science community,

I am pleased to announce the appointments of five new department heads and directors this 2023-24 academic year. Please read below to learn about new heads and directors and the accomplishments of our outgoing heads and directors. The College of Science is stronger for the outstanding service of our department heads and directors. I am very grateful for their efforts.

Cognitive Science – Robert Wilson

Bob Wilson is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science and Psychology and Interim Director of the Cognitive Science Program. Wilson’s research focusses on the computational neuroscience of decision making - from simple, perceptual decisions about controlled auditory stimuli, to complex, real-world judgments about phishing emails.

Coming from the UK, he earned his undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge before moving to the US to complete a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Penn. Outside of the lab, Bob enjoys raising chickens, learning the piano, and playing Dungeons and Dragons with his three kids.

Computer Science – Ellen Riloff

Ellen Riloff will become Department Head of Computer Science in January 2024. Riloff most recently served as a professor in the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Her primary research area is natural language processing, with an emphasis on information extraction, affective text analysis, semantics, and commonsense knowledge acquisition. A major emphasis of her research has been automatically acquiring the knowledge needed for natural language processing using bootstrapping methods that can learn from unannotated texts with minimal human supervision. Riloff has served as the General Chair for the EMNLP Conference in 2018 and the Program Co-Chair for the NAACL HLT Conference in 2012 and the CoNLL Conference in 2004. She has served on the NAACL Executive Board, the Computational Linguistics Editorial Board, and the Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics Editorial Board. In 2018, she was named a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Outside of computer science, Riloff especially enjoys music and animals. She has a special fondness for lizards and hopes to see many scurrying about in Arizona!

Geosciences – Joellen Russell

Joellen Russell is an oceanographer and climate scientist, a University Distinguished Professor, and the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative Science at the University of Arizona. Dr. Russell’s research uses robot floats, supercomputers, and satellites to observe and predict the ocean’s role in climate and the carbon cycle. She is the modeling lead for the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM), and she currently serves as Chair of the NOAA Science Advisory Board’s Climate Working Group.

Russell has joint appointments in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and Mathematics/Program in Applied Mathematics. She has been serving on the UA Faculty Senate since 2015, serves on the Honors Faculty Advisory Council for the Honors College, and is a cofounder of the College of Science’s Women in STEM Leadership. Russell is also an executive committee member of the University of Arizona Space Institute, an executive committee member of the Applied Math Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, and a faculty member of the Global Change Graduate Interdisciplinary Program. You can follow her on Twitter at @deepblueseanext.

Molecular & Cellular Biology – Ryan Gutenkunst (interim)

Ryan Gutenkunst’s research in Molecular & Cellular Biology is focused on computational population genomics, with strong support from both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Recent highlights include developing a new perspective on differences in natural selection between populations and developing modeling resources and competitions for the scientific community. His undergraduate teaching has focused on quantitative and computational biology, while his graduate teaching has included a writing course that has yielded three NSF graduate research fellowships. Gutenkunst joined the University of Arizona faculty in 2010, became Associate Head of the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology in 2017, and he maintains joint membership in two other departments and five GIDPs.

Gutenkunst received his Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University, where he worked with Jim Sethna on unveiling universal “sloppy” parameter sensitivities in systems biology models and on modeling their evolutionary implications. He then did a postdoc with Carlos Bustamante, where he developed dadi, a powerful method for inferring population histories from genomic data. His second postdoc was with Byron Goldstein at Los Alamos National Lab, where Ryan modeled aspects of immune signaling in mast cells.

Outside of academic life, Ryan’s interests include his family, triathlon (he finished Ironman Arizona in 2021), and alpine skiing.

Physics – Shufang Su

Shufang Su is a professor of Physics, whose primary research interests are in theoretical particle physics, focusing on important connections between theory and experiments as well as links between particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. She was elected as American Physics Society (APS) Fellow in 2014 for her fundamental contributions to the phenomenology of Higgs bosons, dark matter, supersymmetry, and other physics beyond the Standard Model, which have stimulated and guided experimental search programs. She served leadership roles in the APS, including chair of the APS Four Corners Section and chair of APS Committee on Scientific Publications. She also served on several advisory committees in the US and abroad.

Su is the faculty advisor for the Women in Physics Club, mentor for the Steps in the Scholar Journey Program, and a mentor for the UA Mentor Institute of the Faculty Development Communities for Promotion Program. She is a UA faculty senator and serves on the Committee of Eleven. She is also one of the founders of the Faculty of Chinese Heritage Association at UA and serves as the first president of the association. She was named a College of Science Galileo Circle Fellow in 2023. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in 2000, was the John A. McCone Postdoc Fellow at Caltech from 2000 to 2003 and joined the UArizona faculty in 2003.

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Outgoing Department Heads

In recognition of their outstanding work, Dean Garzione would like to share some of the efforts and accomplishments of our outgoing department heads.

Cognitive Science – Mary Peterson

Tenure as Program Director: 2011 – 2023

In her 12 year tenure as Cognitive Science Program Director, Mary Peterson hired four tenure track faculty members and a Career Track Faculty member. Through the success of these faculty, the research expenditures for Cognitive Science increased more than fourfold. Mary successfully managed the transition of the Cognitive Science Program from a research unit to a teaching unit, and in so doing helped to design and implement of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NSCS) major. Mary recently started two new programs, including the Arizona Online NSCS major and a graduate certificate in Neuroimaging Methods.

Computer Science – Christian Collberg

Tenure as Interim Dept. Head: August 2022 – December 2023

Christian Collberg has served as the interim department head of Computer Science during a critical time of renewed growth and transformation. Since joining the UArizona faculty in 2013, Christian has been a valued member of the Computer Science community, where his main research interest is computer security, in particular the so-called Man-At-The-End Attack which occurs in settings where an adversary has physical access to a device and compromises it by tampering with its hardware or software. His software protection tool, Tigress, is used extensively in academia and has been licensed to industry by the university. During Christian’s tenure as interim head, the Computer Science has successfully recruited a new department head and is focused on enhancing student support in introductory classes as well as developing a new undergraduate academic program to support both enrollment growth and faculty growth.

Geosciences – Barbara Carrapa

Tenure as Dept. Head: 2017 – 2023

During Barbara Carrapa’s time as department head, she has worked collaboratively with other department heads in the CoS on initiatives that have benefited the units collectively and have maximized excellence. She worked with colleagues, alumni, and graduate students in the Department of Geosciences on new diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Collaborative efforts enabled the development of new degree programs that connect the geosciences with societal impact and other disciplines, including a Planetary Geosciences B.S. and a new Geoscience and Society B.A. Barbara’s fundraising efforts have provided student scholarships and support for research infrastructure. She also hired seven new faculty members in Geosciences.

Molecular & Cellular Biology – Joyce Schroeder

Tenure as Dept. Head: 2017 – 2023

Under Joyce Schroeder’s leadership, the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology was an early innovator of methods to support student success, including the creation of MCB colloquia, increased opportunities for undergraduate research, establishment of events/clubs/faculty interactions to enhance the welcoming environment, and utilizing best pedagogical practices in courses. These efforts greatly increased undergraduate student retention. In support of graduate students, Joyce identified creative ways to fund more graduate students and increase student aid through paying fees, and other expenses such as attendance at conferences, and costs for a grad student council and receptions. Joyce’s efforts to support faculty research and teaching success included providing administrative grant support, seed grants for research innovation, and outstanding teaching awards (as voted by their students). Faculty also benefited from increased access to grad students and reduction in service burdens to be able to focus on research and teaching.

Physics - Sumitendra Mazumdar

Tenure as Dept. Head: 2009 – 2023

In his 14 year tenure as department head, Sumit Mazumdar worked to increase fiscal stability, enhance research productivity by hiring new faculty in the right areas, revamp the department’s educational mission, and enhance and promote diversity. Sumit’s efforts working with faculty and staff fostered unity and promoted a sense of ownership. During this time, collaborative interactions between the departments of physics, astronomy, and planetary sciences increased significantly. Sumit also contributed to the establishment of the Arizona College of Technology at the Hebei Institute of Technology (HEBUT) in Hebei, China - a joint venture between physics, material science and engineering, mechanical engineering, UArizona International and HEBUT. Notable efforts in enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the department of physics include the creation of the Women in Physics group,  graduate students advice/consultation to the graduate admissions committee, a privacy room for department members who seek a safe and quiet space for nursing, prayer, meditation or reflection, and support for student travel to meetings.

Best regards,

Carmala Garzione, PhD
Dean, College of Science
University of Arizona