Oklahoma, February 2^nd, 2015

Four faculty members recently joined the Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases as a Center Investigator: Dr. Mark E. Payton (Dept of Statistics, CAS, OSU), Dr. Sadagopan Krishnan (Dept of Chemistry, CAS, OSU), Dr. Ashlee N. Ford Versypt (School of Chemical Engineering, CEAT, OSU) and Dr. Jun Wang (Dept of Occupational and Environmental Health, CPH, OUHSC). These new members have a variety of expertise that complement existing strengths. They should make significant contributions to the OCRID and facilitate collaborations among OCRID investigators. They already collaborate with other Center investigators on projects and grant applications.

 

Dr. Payton is a Regents Service Professor and Head of Department of Statistics at OSU. He has published over 360 papers. He has collaborated with and provided statistics support to many faculty members across the campus. He also teaches Biomedical Statistical Methods and Statistics for Experimenters. He will be a great asset to our center investigators who need statistical support.

 

Dr. Krishan received his Ph.D. in Bioanalytical Chemistry from University of Connecticut in 2010 and did his postdoctoral training at Oxford University, England. He joined OSU Chemistry Department as an Assistant Professor in 2012. His expertise is the detection of biomarkers (protein, DNA, RNA, or other small molecules) for clinical diagnosis using optical and electrochemical sensors/arrays. He recently received an NIH R15 grant (2014-2017) for his research program and has published 12 papers since joining OSU. He has also submitted a DoD grant on lung cancers and initiated a collaborative project on microRNA detection in patients’ serum, both in collaboration with OCRID investigators.

 

Dr. Ford Versypt received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012 and did her postdoctoral training at MIT. She joined School of Chemical Engineering, OSU as an Assistant Professor in 2014. Her expertise is Systems Biomedicine & Pharmaceutics. She is interested in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of computational science and engineering, biomedical science, and pharmaceutical science.

 

Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from University of Florida in 2013 and immediately joined Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health, OUHSC as an Assistant Professor. His research interests are pulmonary toxicity of aerosols and risk assessment of hazardous air pollutants. His recent submission of NIOSH K01 received a good score, but missed the payline. He will resubmit his K01 with an OCRID investigator as part of his mentor team.