Spring 2011 Instructor Bios

Mitch Bradt MS’96 spent two years as a special research associate at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan from 1994-1996. He was the Air Force Association’s Von Karmen fellow in 1994 and a Nakajima Foundation Peace fellow in 1995 and 1996.

In 1996, Mitch joined the Air Force Research Laboratory as a Survivability Research Engineer. He was totally amazed that he actually got paid to blow-up aircraft, and generally try to destroy stuff—simply put, this was the coolest job in the world. In 1998 he transferred to the C-17 System Program Office where he was responsible for the electrical system, and navigational databases for that aircraft.

In 2001, Mitch separated from the U.S. Air Force and joined American Superconductor. As a Commissioning Engineer, he commissioned Static Compensators and Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage systems installed in Electric Utility transmission substations. He was also responsible for project management and specifying all ancillary substation equipment.

In 2003 Mitch joined Realtime Utility Engineers as a Substation Engineer and later as a Protection and Control Engineer. He designed substation upgrades for transmission and distribution systems, focusing on the design of protective relaying and communication systems. He also worked with transmission interconnection of windfarms.

Mitch has been on the staff of the Department of Engineering Professional Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2006. His areas of interests are Electric Power Systems, Transmission & Distribution, Protective Relaying, Substation Design, Power Electronics, Windfarms, and Alternative Energy.

Mitch is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Illinois and Wisconsin. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is the Chair of the IEEE’s Wind Plant Collector System Working Group, and is Past-Chair of the Madison, Wisconsin section. He consults through Modern Power Engineering LLC.

Steven Loheide is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He received his BS in Environmental Chemistry and Geology from the University of Northern Iowa (1999), his MS in Geology from Indiana University (2001), and his PhD in Hydrogeology from Stanford University (2006). Loheide’s research focuses on the interactions between ecological and hydrological processes in natural and built systems. His approaches use a combination of field data, remote sensing, and numerical modeling to understand the feedbacks between vegetation patterning, vegetative water use, soil moisture availability, groundwater regimes, and stream-aquifer interactions. This work is focused on improving the scientific basis for stream, floodplain, meadow, and wetland restoration efforts under current and future climatic conditions.

Dr. Richard Hartel's primary research area encompasses food engineering with particular emphasis on crystalline structure of foods. Crystallization in foods plays an important role in determining textural and physical properties of many food products. Understanding these phase transitions is critical to proper design, development and control of many food processes. In particular, Dr. Hartel's research group studies crystallization of ice (freeze concentration, recrystallization in frozen desserts), sugars (refining, confectionery applications) and lipids (milk fat fractionation, mixed lipid crystallization in chocolates and confections). This work involves fundamental understanding of the physical chemistry of these phase transitions, kinetics and applications of this understanding to real products.

Barbara E. K. Klein, MD, MPH is a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and is affiliated with the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Dr. Klein is co-director of the Beaver Dam Eye Study, which collects information on the prevalence and incidence of age-related cataract, macular degeneration,and diabetic retinopathy, which are all common eye diseases in an aging population. The study also has examined other aging issues, such as overall health, quality-of-life and environmental and medicinal exposures.

As associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Engineering, Cramer leads undergraduate and graduate programs and related activities in the College of Engineering. As a researcher, Cramer studies structural engineering with primary expertise in the mechanical behavior of wood and wood-based materials, the design and analysis of wood structures, and the performance of concrete construction materials. He is a member of the UW-Madison Teaching Academy. In 2002, he earned the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. Cramer received his BS in civil and environmental engineering from UW-Madison in 1979, before heading to Colorado State for his MS and PhD. He joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1984.

Hilary Gerstein is currently in the Neuroscience Training Program at UW. Her research interests focus on using rodent models to explore how cellular and molecular changes in the brain relate to behavior. Hilary has done past work with transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease and also studied the effect of pharmacological manipulations on maternal behaviors and histology in mice. Currently, as a graduate student, she is studying the function of certain genes expressed in the hippocampus that have previously been implicated in learning and memory. In the Burger Lab, they use recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) as a gene delivery system to over-express or knockdown function of these candidate genes in specific regions of the brain. Hilary will then examine the resulting phenotypes with a variety of behavioral tests and anatomical techniques.

David Blehert earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and a doctorate in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1999. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD before joining the US Geological Survey – National Wildlife Health Center (Madison, WI) as the head of diagnostic microbiology in 2003. Current research projects underway in his laboratory include characterization of the emergence and pathogenesis of bat white-nose syndrome, the use of molecular markers to understand the epidemiology of avian cholera among wild waterfowl, and the identification of environmental factors that precipitate outbreaks of avian botulism. His laboratory’s collaborative efforts to identify the fungus that causes the skin infection hallmark of white-nose syndrome were published in Science magazine in 2009, and he has since co-authored six additional peer-reviewed papers relevant to white-nose syndrome mycology, pathology, epidemiology, and diagnostics.

White-Nose Syndrome (WNS)
White-Nose Syndrome Threatens the Survival of Hibernating Bats in North America
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website
WNS in Bats Blog

David Gamm, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds the Retina Research Foundation/Kathryn and Latimer Murfee Chair through the UW Eye Research Institute, and is also a member of the Waisman Center Stem Cell Research Program and the UW Regenerative Medicine Center. Dr. Gamm earned his medical and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and completed his residency and pediatric ophthalmology fellowship at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Gamm diagnoses and manages a wide range of pediatric eye and vision disorders, including inherited retinal degenerations. However, most of his effort is directed toward stem cell research, where his primary interests lie in 1) the study of mechanisms controlling the specification and maturation of specific retinal cell types, and 2) the generation of retinal cell populations for use in the treatment of retinal degenerative diseases. In his laboratory at the Waisman Center, he employs human neural and retinal progenitor cells, embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate the genetic and environmental factors that lead these versatile cells to adopt a particular identity in a culture dish. He is also testing the ability of different stem and progenitor cells to rescue and replace photoreceptors.

In addition to NIH support, Dr. Gamm receivs research support from Foundation Fighting Blindness (Wynn-Gund Research Acceleration Award), Research to Prevent Blindness, Lincy Foundation, Ziegler Foundation, Macula Vision research Foundation, Walsh Family Foundation, Heckrodt Foundation and Retina Research Foundation. Among his awards and honors, Dr. Gamm has been named a Research to Prevent Blindness McCormick Scholar, a Heed Ophthalmic Fellow and received the Foundation Fighting Blindness Board of Directors Award.

Melissa Breunig is currently a fourth year genetics major, also working towards a global health certificate. She completed a study abroad experience through the College of Agriculture and Life Science to Uganda in December 2010 - January 2011 focusing on health and nutrition. Breunig also works as an outreach assistant in the BioTrek program at the Biotechnology Center and is the co-founder/president of the UW-Madison Chapter of the Student Society for Stem Cell Research. Her research focuses on pancreatic islet derived mesenchymal stem cells in the Hematti Laboratory.

Beatrice Wright is one of the 20th century pioneers in the field of rehabilitation psychology. Her 1960 book, Physical Disability: a psychological approach, is widely considered the foundational book in the field, and was named (along with the revised edition of the book published in 1983) by the American Psychological Association one of the “Essential Historical Books in Psychology”. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Iowa in 1942 where she studied under the influential German refugee, Kurt Lewin. In 1951 she moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where her husband, M. Erik Wright, took a position as director of the clinical psychology program at the University of Kansas. Because of anti-nepotism rules at the time, she was unable to get an appointment at the University until 1964 when those rules were dropped. She was a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas until her retirement in 1988 and continued teaching there until she moved to Madison in1995. She has three children: Woody, who is a professor of cell biology at the University of Texas medical school; Erik, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin; and Colleen, who is a retired psychology researcher at the University of Florida and an artist.

Sharon Jaffe is a Ph.D. candidate in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department and is currently completing an internship project through the Delta program on research, teaching, and learning. She is working with Dolly Ledin, the coordinator of the Adult Role Models in Science (ARMS) program.

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 250 articles, many chapters and reviews and edited 13 books. He has been a member of the Mind and Life Institute’s Board of Directors since 1991. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research including a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award, a MERIT Award from NIMH, an Established Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (NARSAD), a Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD, the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society, and the Hilldale Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was the Founding Co-Editor of the new American Psychological Association journal EMOTION and is Past-President of the Society for Research in Psychopathology and of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He was the year 2000 recipient of the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association –the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004 he was elected to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. In 2006 he was also awarded the first Mani Bhaumik Award by UCLA for advancing the understanding of the brain and conscious mind in healing. Madison Magazine named him Person of the Year in 2007. In 2011, he was given the Paul D. MacLean Award for Outstanding Neuroscience Research in Psychosomatic Medicine.

Todd A. LaMaskin is an Assistant Professor and Geologist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension. He also has appointments in Department of Environmental Science, and Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. He received a B.S. in 1992 from Radford University, a M.S. from the University of New Mexico and his Ph.D. in 2009 from the University of Oregon.

Harold is interested in the internal properties of active faults at the Earth's plate boundaries - for example, subduction zones in the Pacific Ocean and the San Andreas fault in California. In his research, he combines direct sampling of faults deep beneath the surface of the Earth - through drilling at sea and on land - with detailed 3D seismic reflection imaging of the fault architecture and properties. Laboratory experiments on the mechanics and physics of the fault rocks completes the link among these different ways of "seeing" into active fault zones.

His major effort is as co-Chief Project Scientist of the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE), a years-long project to drill into and place instruments in the subduction zone plate boundary faults off the coast of Japan. NanTroSEIZE is part of IODP, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and is the most ambitious and complex scientific drilling program ever undertaken.

Stefan Westerhoff joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison physics faculty in August 2007. His area of research is astroparticle physics, a new area of science at the intersection between high energy particle and astrophysics.

After graduating from the University of Dortmund (diploma, 1993) and the University of Wuppertal (PhD, 1996), Professor Westerhoff worked as a postgraduate researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1996 to 2000, and on the faculty of Columbia University in New York City from 2000 to 2007.

Professor Westerhoff is currently a member of the IceCube collaboration. IceCube is a km3 size detector at the South Pole, consisting of several thousand small detectors frozen into the Antarctic ice at depths between 1500 and 2500 meters. IceCube is designed to study the origin of high-energy neutrinos and thus open an entirely new window in astronomy.

Dr. Farrell served as Dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School from 1984 through July 2006. One of his many accomplishments included working toward the transformation of the school to an integrated School of Medicine and Public Health. He continues to serve the SMPH through numerous leadership, fund-raising and educational activities.

An expert on cystic fibrosis newborn screening, Dr. Farrell's current activities include:

• Leading the Wisconsin Cystic Fibrosis Neonatal Screening Project as principal investigator on an NIH-funded research study
• Leading national research effortss devoted to quality improvement in the operation of cystic fibrosis newborn screening programs
• Working with the Centers for Disease Control on process improvement for cystic fibrosis newborn screening
• Serving as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's facilitator for nationwide implementation of cystic fibrosis newborn screening
• Leading an innovative public heath initiative in Wisconsin to lower infant mortality rates among African-Americans
• Leading an international interdisciplinary team investigating “The Ancient Origin of Cystic Fibrosis”
• Developing/presenting continuing medical education programs on the early diagnosis of cystic fibrosis and preventive care


• and Advising academic medical centers on strategic planning, academic facilities, group practice organization, and education

Scott Woody is Program Director of the B. rapa Genetics Resource Program of Rick Amasino’s lab, UW-Madison Department of Biochemistry. With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation, Rick and Scott have been working for a number of years to develop a new plant variety analogous to the Wisconsin Fast Plants (WFP) model of rapid-cycling Brassica rapa. This new variety (as well as and mutant derivatives and complementary molecular tools) is specifically intended to expand the range of resources available to enhance K-12 and undergraduate education in areas of genetics, evolution, and genomic sciences.

Scott earned his B.S. (biology) and Ph.D (genetics) from the University of Iowa. Following graduate school he did post-doctoral stints at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and UW-Madison. He presently works as Assistant Scientist in the lab of Professor Rick Amasino, UW Department of Biochemistry, where he does research and directs the activities of UW undergraduate and summer HS students. He also teaches a non-majors course “Evolution and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry”. Scott and his family live in Windsor, WI and his children attend(ed) schools in the DeForest Area School District.

Aparna Lakkaraju, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Lakkaraju earned her Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical sciences Kakatiya University, India and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She completed her post-doctoral training in Cell Biology and Ophthalmology at Cornell University's Weill Medical College in New York City. She moved to UW-Madison from New York just a year ago to set up her independent laboratory.

Her research is geared towards understanding the pathogenesis of retinal degenerations, specifically age-related macular degeneration. In her laboratory, Dr. Lakkaraju uses high-resolution and high-speed microscopy of living cells to "see" how they respond to aging and stress. Using cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics, Dr. Lakkaraju's lab has shown that aging in the RPE is accompanied by abnormalities in how these cells handle cholesterol. Dr. Lakkaraju’s research has two main objectives: first, to understand how cholesterol is handled in the RPE and retina – this will help assess whether drugs like statins, which are widely used in atherosclerosis, will be beneficial in AMD. Second, to understand how lysosomes, compartments which function as the cell’s garbage disposal system, are altered with age and cellular stress. It is anticipated that these studies will improve our insight into basic RPE biology and help identify promising new therapeutic targets for AMD. Dr. Lakkaraju receives research support from the American Health Assistance Foundation, the Research to Prevent Blindness Foundation and the Karl Kirchgessner Foundation.

Tanya Buckingham, Assistant Director of the UW-Madison Cartography Lab, in the Geography Department. Before leading the team of students at the Cartography Lab, Tanya worked at a private company in Madison, XNR Productions, where she spent many years with a team of talented cartographers creating maps for people of all ages and reaches of the globe. Her professional work extends to cartographic professional societies. She is currently the President and Executive Director of the North American Cartographic Information Society, an organization that will be brining its annual conference to Madison in the fall.

Tom Zinnen leads the BioTrek Outreach Program of the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center and of UW-Extension Cooperative Extension. He grew up in Dixon, Illinois, graduated in biology from UW-Platteville in 1979, received a master's degree in plant pathology from the University of Illinois in 1981, and earned a PhD in plant pathology from UW-Madison in 1985. In June 1991 he returned to UW-Madison to the Extension position he still holds. In 2000-2001 he was as a Congressional Science Fellow and served on the staff of the House Committee on Agriculture. Soon after his return to Wisconsin, he helped launch "Science Expeditions," the annual campus science open house. In 2003 he helped organize the UW-Madison Science Alliance to strengthen collaborations among science outreachers. From November 2008 to mid-August 2010, he was on loan from UW-Madison to the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA, where he worked as a speechwriter for the Director and Deputy Director. Now back home in Wisconsin, he continues to provide hands-on science workshops for learners of all ages to provide people a chance to develop their science savvy. He organizes Wednesday Nite @ The Lab, and his current work includes advancing the entire UW-Madison campus as a "Science Constellation" that welcomes learners of all ages to view the campus as a "Destination for Exploration" where visitors can experience science as exploring the unknown and share in the discovery.

Ella Braden is a physicist who runs the Wonders of Physics outreach program, but for WN@TL she'll be a fizzicist exploring the biochemysteries of water, barley and hops. As the Wonders of Physics outreach coordinator, she has the opportunity to take physics to schools and community organizations where she can show just how fun and relevant physics can be. Ella obtained her BS in Physics and Astronomy from Whitman College and her MS in Astronomy from UW-Madison and has been a science communicator for many years. She is passionate about hands-on science and having fun with learning.

Ella doesn't claim to be a beer expert, but she grew up in the Pacific Northwest, the birthplace of many of the best strains of hops (in her humble opinion). She remembers thinking that hops stunk when she was young and her parents brewed, but they gave up the hobby before she began to appreciate the art. She began brewing after moving to Wisconsin, and has since found much pleasure from the process, as well as the result. Her love for science and curiosity about how things work has led her to approach brewing with an inquiring mind, which has led to a deeper appreciation of the ingredients, science and vast array of possibilities that can be bottled.

Marty holds an ScB in Mechanical Engineering from Brown University, an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University, and is currently a 2nd year physics PhD student at UW-Madison. His previous adventures include growing up in Manhattan, co-founding a surgical robotics company, and working in the aerospace industry on "hybrid" rockets. Marty is also a short track speed skater, and is the current Wisconsin state champion in his age division.