Meet The Graduate Chairs
Greetings ,

We would like to welcome you once again and provide a brief introduction of our Graduate Chairs for the School of Natural Sciences. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with your Graduate Chair and feel free to reach out to them!

The Graduate Group Chair is responsible for supervising graduate study in his/her Graduate Group, including planning and carrying out graduate student recruitment, ensuring that each graduate student is assigned an individual Faculty Advisor and mentor, ensuring the progress of graduate students through the program, determining resource needs and administration of the group’s budget, determining both graduate course offerings each semester and curriculum changes.

You will find their education, awards, and research interests. Additionally, you will also find a link to their website for in-depth information on their research. 
Applied Mathematics Graduate Chair
Education: 
  • Ph.D., 2002 — University of California, San Diego
  • B.S., 1995 — Columbia University

Awards: 
  • 2010 — Best Paper Award, International Association of Engineers

Research Interests: 
  • Large-scale optimization
  • Scientific computation and numerical analysis
  • Compressed sensing and signal processing
  • Computational biology
  • Global optimization
Professor
Roummel Marcia

Chemistry and Biochemistry Graduate Chair
Associate Professor
Christine Isborn
Education: 
  • Postdoctoral fellowship, 2009-2012 — Stanford University
  • Ph.D., 2009 — University of Washington
  • M.S., 2005 — University of Washington
  • B.S., 2001 — University of San Francisco

Research Interests: 
Developing and applying electronic structure theory, molecular dynamics and QM/MM methods to the modeling of:
  • electronic excited states,
  • photochemistry,
  • energy and electron transfer and
  • solvation.
Physics Graduate Chair
Education:
  • Ph.D., 2009 — Department of Physics, The University of Chicago
  • M.S., 2003 — Department of Physics, National Taiwan University
  • B.S., 2001 — National Taiwan University

Research Interests: 
  • Theoretical Atomic
  • Molecular Physics

Curriculum Vita: 
Assistant Professor
Chih-Chun Chien

Email: cchien5@ucmerced.edu
Quantitative and Systems Biology Graduate Chair 
Professor
Chris Amemiya

Email: camemiya@ucmerced.edu
Education: 
  • Ph.D. in Genetics, 1987 — Texas A&M University
  • B.S. in Genetics, 1981 — Purdue University

Research Interests: 
We are interested in fundamental questions in genome evolution and development, especially how they pertain to the emergence and divergence of biological novelty. Specific areas of interest include:
  • Origins of Adaptive Immunity
  • Programmed Genome Rearrangement in Development and in the Immune System
  • The Aquatic to Terrestrial Transition and the Role of Acquisition and Loss of Genes During This Major Transition

Discipline: 
Molecular Cell Biology
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