Faculty Experts

College of Nursing and Health Professions

With more than 20 years of experience as a therapist, teacher, advocate and public speaker, Allen is committed to raising the bar in the community with a message of hope, faith, inspiration and empowerment while teaching the "how to" skills necessary for families to be strengthened.

Allen appears regularly on NBC's "Today" show as their relationship expert discussing many issues related to how to have and maintain healthy relationships in families and within communities. Allen brings a unique presence to the table by integrating both the systemic clinical skills needed to teach families, while incorporating the spiritual principles necessary to strengthen them.

LeBow College of Business

Becher's area of expertise includes banking and bank regulation, corporate control and mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, executive compensation, and regulation of financial service firms. His publications on corporate governance include, "Board Classification and Managerial Entrenchment: Evidence from the Market for Corporate Control," and "Why Do Good Takeover Bids Fail: Managerial Bargaining or Bad Faith?"

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School of Public Health

Chilton's area of expertise includes human rights and health, race, ethnicity and poverty, nutrition and chronic disease, hunger, women and children, complementary and alternative medicine and religion and medicine.

Chilton investigates the health impacts of hunger and food insecurity among young children aged zero to three. Her work spans across a variety of issues that affect low-income families to address nutritional wellbeing, public assistance participation, housing instability and employment. She has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committees to inform policy decisions regarding child nutrition.

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College of Arts and Sciences

D'Ovidio researches the intersection of computer technology, crime and the criminal justice system. He directs Drexel's research program in computer crime and digital forensics. In the past, he has worked with the New York City Police Department and Philadelphia Police Department on research projects involving computer crime. His work with the law enforcement community also includes training investigators on techniques to trace Internet communication and seize electronic evidence and cell phones.

He is a member of the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists, the American Society of Criminology, and the United States Secret Service Philadelphia- Area Electronic Crimes Task Force. D'Ovidio sits on the National Governors Association's Strategic Policy Council on Cyber and Electronic Crime. He serves as an advisor to the Pennsylvania State Treasurer on identity theft and is a consultant to BK Forensics, assisting with law enforcement outreach and the development of training curriculum. He provides regular commentary for media outlets on news stories pertaining to computer crime, Internet safety, identity theft and surveillance.

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College of Engineering

Eisenstein is an expert in pattern recognition and digital signal processing. He has published nearly 50 papers in the areas of digital signal processing, pattern recognition, deconvolution and biomedical engineering.

He was the 2000 President of the IEEE, the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. His other IEEE positions have included Chairman of the Philadelphia Section, IEEE treasurer, vice president for Technical Activities, member of the Board of Directors, and president of the Education Society. He is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Pennsylvania.

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School of Public Health
Earle Mack School of Law

Field is a nationally known expert on health law and public health whose research focuses on ethical issues in managed care, public policy and legal facets of healthcare reform and genetic screening. In addition to being a professor in the School of Public Health, he also holds an appointment as professor of law at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel. He is the author of "Health Care Regulation in America: Complexity, Confrontation and Compromise," a comprehensive guide to the government's role in regulating health care, published by Oxford University Press.

He previously taught at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, where he founded and chaired the Department of Health Policy and Public Health and directed the Graduate Program in Health Policy. Field led business planning and development for the primary care network of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, where he was in charge of acquisitions of physician practices that created the network and directed other business development activities. He has also conducted health policy research at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Law and Health Sciences at Boston University and practiced health law with Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll in Philadelphia.

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Earle Mack School of Law

Filler studies the effects of social anxiety on the development of criminal law. He is an expert on sex offender community notification, the death penalty and juvenile justice law. Before joining Drexel, Filler was a professor of law at the University of Alabama School of Law, where he created the school's Capital Defense Clinic.

He has served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law and Humanities and chaired an American Bar Association team that assessed the fairness and accuracy of Alabama's death-penalty system. His scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Iowa Law Review, among other places.

In 2008, Filler established The Faculty Lounge blog to which he continues to contribute regularly.

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The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology

Forte has a doctorate in human-centered computing from the College of Computing at Georgia institute of Technology, and focused her studies there on social computing and learning sciences. She holds a master's in library and information science from University of Texas, Austin, and holds undergraduate degrees in foreign language and literature and philosophy.

Her professional experience includes human-computer interaction design and managing special library collections. Her research focus is in understanding new forms of information production and sharing that are made possible by participatory media.

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School of Public Health

Frank's areas of research include agricultural safety and health, pneumoconiosis, occupational toxicology, occupational cancers, occupational lung disease and environmental pollution.

Frank received a medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a doctoral degree in biomedical sciences from the City University of New York. He was trained in both internal medicine and occupational medicine and holds board certification in both fields. As a commissioned officer in the Public Health Service, he conducted research at the National Cancer Institute. His major research activities have included the study of occupational lung diseases such as asbestosis and silicosis, and occupational cancers, especially those related to asbestos exposure. He has worked in the area of agricultural safety and health.

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Steinbright Career Development Center

Franks can comment on job market trends and the job market outlook. As the head of Drexel's career services center, he oversees the University's cooperative education program putting students in touch with employers and more than 1,500 companies in 42 states and 20 international locations. Prior to his appointment at Drexel, he served as CEO of the World Association for Cooperative Education, Inc. (WACE).

Prior to joining WACE, Franks was vice president of administration and corporate relations (chief operating officer) of the National Commission for Cooperative Education and executive officer of the Northeastern University Division of Cooperative Education.

School of Public Health

Gold is an expert in infectious disease. She previously served as Philadelphia's Assistant Health Commissioner for Infectious Disease Control in the Public Health Department, where she was responsible for all reportable and communicable diseases and conditions. Among her responsibilities, Gold designed and established the largest comprehensive HIV/AIDS care program in the Greater Philadelphia Region known as The Partnership.

Gold has extensive national experience working with community-based organizations, community leaders and coalitions on a wide range of public health issues. Gold's research interests include: HIV/AIDS: design of care systems; treatment protocols; resource utilization; epidemiology; CQI; managed care & systems of health care; health administration; behavioral health care and substance abuse treatment systems.

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Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Gruber is an expert in fashion design and the business of the fashion industry. She began her teaching career after spending several years in industry as president of her own dress company and as a designer for other nationally recognized firms. She also creates wearable art and has been hired to develop fashion illustrations and graphic images for marketing and advertising purposes for a variety of companies.

Gruber is the author of several articles within The St. James Press, "Fashion Encyclopedia" and is also the author and illustrator of "Fashion Images," Prentice Hall, 1999, a text on fashion illustration. She has taught at Drexel for 19 years and curated several art and design related exhibitions for the Drexel University Design Arts Gallery. Most recently, she spent five weeks teaching at the Foundation for International Education in London as part of the Design & Merchandising department's study abroad program and continues to do freelance design work.

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College of Engineering

Haas's research interests include water treatment, risk assessment, bioterrorism, environmental modeling and statistics, microbiology, environmental health.

Haas's research includes the treatments of drinking water. Specifically, Haas has studied the chemical disinfection processes, inactivation of emerging pathogens by disinfectants and the use of computational fluid dynamics for process modeling. Haas is also an expert in risk management and industrial waste treatment. A recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the International Ozone Association, Haas was listed among "Who's Who in the World" (2001) and was elected as fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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LeBow College of Business

Hammoudeh is an expert in gas and oil pricing, and its effects on the economy. He has served as the senior economist to the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries and as a researcher for the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research. He has earned grants to study world oil prices and is the co-author of journal articles on the price of gas and oil and its connection to the U.S. markets.

Hammoudeh earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Baghdad and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Kansas.

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Goodwin College

Harrington has authored or co-authored more than 14 books. He has studied workforce development and human resource policy for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor, the Rhode Island Board of Education, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

Harrington received the "Award in Recognition of Outstanding Contributions to Our Workforce" from the Massachusetts Workforce Board Association in 2004 and the "Building a World Class Workforce Award" from the U.S. Department of Labor, National Association of State Workforce Agencies in 2003.

College of Engineering

Kim's research focuses on digital media technologies that will shape the future of entertainment, especially in the areas of sound and music. He is director of the Music and Entertainment Technology Laboratory (MET-lab), which focuses on research in machine listening and music information retrieval, music production technology and new music interfaces.

Kim was recently granted an NSF CAREER Award for a project titled "Exploring Creative Expression through Music and Audio Technology." Kim's project integrates research in digital audio technology with educational activities under a common vision of transforming the passive act of listening to recorded music into an interactive experience in which the performance responds to the creative input of the listener. The grant is for a five-year project.

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College of Arts and Sciences

Lacovara's research is focused on the paleontological reconstruction of Mesozoic Era environments containing the remains of dinosaurs and other vertebrate animals.

Lacovara and students recently excavated large sauropod dinosaurs from Late Cretaceous terrestrial deposits in southern Patagonia, Argentina. He is also a member of the Bahariya Dinosaur project, working in the Egyptian Sahara, and a collaborative project with Dr. Hai Lu You (Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences) and Dr. Matthew Lamanna (Carnegie Museum of Natural History), in which they are studying the evolution of Cretaceous ornithurine birds from the middle Cretaceous of China. Locally, Lacovara and students collaborate with Dr. William Gallagher (New Jersey State Museum) on a study of the Cretaceous fauna of southern New Jersey. They recently excavated 65-million-year-old New Jersey crocodilian, Thoracosaurus neocesariensis, currently on display at Drexel.

The study of Mesozoic ecosystems, particularly those of the Cretaceous Period, has taken on added importance in recent years because of global warming. Because researchers cannot study the future, fossil ecosystems offer the only tangible evidence of what continued global warming may produce.

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College of Engineering

Lee is an expert in video game design. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, with joint appointments in the Department of Media Art and Design in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

He is co-director of the RePlay Lab, a collaborative research and education laboratory in video game design and development at Drexel. He is also co-director of the Vision and Cognition Lab in the Department of Computer Science at Drexel.

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College of Engineering

Martin's research specialties are geosynthetics, wastewater and runoff treatment, transportation project management and infrastructure facility condition evaluation. He is also an industry consultant on foundations and earthwork.

Martin's career at Drexel spans more than 27 years, with eight spent as the head of the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department. Martin received a B.S. in civil engineering from Tufts University, an M.S. in civil engineering (water resources-environmental) from Northeastern University, and a Ph.D. in civil engineering (geotechnical) from Colorado State University. His experience includes two years with the New York D.O.T., four years in consulting on municipal engineering, and two years in the U.S. Army. As a licensed professional engineer, is a member of the Drexel Faculty Senate and advisor to the Drexel Chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers.

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College of Engineering

Mutharasen is an expert in biosensors, bioreactors and process metallurgy. He recently developed a millimeter-size cantilever biosensor that, in only minutes, can detect cells and proteins in trace samples. The sensor could have wide applications in medical diagnostic testing (prostate cancer), detecting contamination in food products (E. coli bacteria) and monitoring for biothreat agents (anthrax).

The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, Mutharasan has served on the advisory board of several organizations including the United Nations, United Engineers, Aluminum Company of America and Smith Kline Beecham.

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School of Public Health

Newschaffer is an expert in epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders, gene-environment interaction, epidemiology and risk communication. He came to Drexel after seven years on the faculty of the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he founded and directed the Hopkins Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Epidemiology.

At Drexel, Newschaffer now leads an NIH Autism Center of Excellence project studying a large cohort of mothers of children with autism at the start of subsequent pregnancies. This project, known as the EARLI Study, is designed specifically to study pre-, peri- and neonatal autism risk factors and biomarkers. He is also a principal investigator on other major autism epidemiology initiatives, including a national network established to monitor secular trends in autism prevalence and a CDC-funded multisite study that will be the largest case-control study of autism fielded to date.

He is a member of the Science Advisory Board for the national research and advocacy organization, Autism Speaks, and serves on advisory boards for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Autism Services and the Delaware Birth Defects and Autism Registry.

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The Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University

Okamoto is an expert in corporate, venture capital, private equity and securities law and corporate finance. He has extensive experience as both an attorney and an investor.

Okamoto earned his J.D. at Columbia University School of Law, where he was the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, managing editor of the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems and served on the Jessup International Moot Court Team.His research focuses on securities and corporate law. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Minority Groups and co-organized the First Annual Asian Pacific American Law Professors' Conference.

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School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems

Onaral is an expert in translational research and biomedical signal processing in ultrasound and optics. She has led major research and development projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Naval Research (ONR), DARPA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Onaral's translational research efforts for rapid commercialization of biomedical technologies developed at Drexel and its partner institutions have resulted in the creation of the Translational Research in Biomedical Technologies program. This initiative brings together academic technology developers with entrepreneurs, regional economic development agencies, as well as local legal, business, and investment communities.

Onaral's professional services include chair and membership on advisory boards and strategic planning bodies of several universities and funding agencies, including service on the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Board and on its proposal review panels and study sections. Her professional responsibilities have included service on the editorial board of journals and the CRC Biomedical Engineering Handbook as Section Editor for Biomedical Signal Analysis. She served as President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the largest member-based biomedical engineering society in the world.

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College of Arts and Sciences

Rosenberg specializes in local, regional and national politics and presidential elections and is a recognized expert on the American presidency and presidential campaigns. He has authored more than 60 articles, papers and technical reports and co-authored two books on presidential elections: The Politics of Disenchantment: Bush, Clinton, Perot and the Press (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1991) and New Verdicts (Paragon House, New York, 1995).

Rosenberg also studies U.S. and public opinion, political polling and research methods used in polling. He is an expert in public opinion, applied research and evaluation, all of which he teaches at Drexel.

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Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

As senior vice president of programming at the A&E Network prior to arriving at Drexel, Sabinson introduced the network to the production of original movies and series. Under his leadership, A&E received more Emmy nominations than any basic cable network for two consecutive years, and won Emmy awards in the categories of best mini-series for "Horatio Hornblower," best non-fiction series for "Biography" and best performing arts specials.

Sabinson was president of production at Miramax Film, and has held senior positions at TNT, ABC, ICM, NBC and Showtime.

A veteran in the entertainment industry, Sabinson has brought many film stars to television, including Tommy Lee Jones, Hugh Grant, Robert Duvall, Matt Damon, John Malkovich, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Diane Keaton, Catherine Zeta Jones and Mira Sorvino. He has presented music specials with Elton John, Michael Jackson, Sting, Billy Joel, Neil Diamond and others.

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Drexel College of Arts and Sciences

Sheller's research interests include sustainable mobility and mobility justice, caribbean studies and mobilities, and tracing the histories and forecasting the futures of cultures of mobility.

Sheller holds a continuing appointment as senior research fellow in the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University (UK) and is founding co-editor of the international journal Mobilities. She is on the international editorial boards of the journals Cultural Sociology, and African and Black Diaspora.

She is the author of the books Consuming the Caribbean (2003), which explores the relations of production and consumption in the transatlantic world from the colonial era until today; Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (2000); and recently completed Citizenship from Below: Caribbean Agency and Modern Freedom (forthcoming, Duke University Press). She is also co-editor with John Urry of Mobile Technologies of the City (2006), Tourism Mobilities(2004), and a special issue of Environment and Planning A on "Materialities and Mobilities."

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College of Arts and Sciences

Spotila's research interests are centered in the areas of environmental science, physiological and biophysical ecology, fisheries biology and ichthyology and conservation biology. He is an expert in the physiological and population ecology of sea turtles.

A pioneer in the field of sea turtle research, Spotila has made key contributions to the understanding of their physiology and behavior, and brought awareness to the threats they face. He was part of the team that attached a transmitter to a sea turtle for the first time, was first to recognize the impending disappearance of the leatherbacks from the Pacific Ocean and the first to document the connection between sex determination and nest temperature.

In 2005, Spotila published the award-winning illustrated book Sea Turtles: A complete guide to their biology, behavior and conservation and donated all proceeds from sales to The Leatherback Trust. He is a professor of environmental science at Drexel and director of its Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. He worked in the Clinton Administration as Chief Environmental Scientist for the Department of the Army.

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Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Staurowsky is an expert in the areas of social justice issues in sport, gender equity in sport, Title IX pay equity and equal employment opportunity, athlete exploitation, college sport reform, and misappropriation of American Indian imagery in sport.

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Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Tompkins is an expert in areas of the music industry and record labels. He founded Big Fish Management in 1995 and developed the career of various artists signed to Arista, Blackbird/Atlantic and Sanctuary/BMG Records. Tompkins served as showcase director of the Philadelphia Music Conference from 1997-2001.

Tompkins began his career in A&R working as a scout for Extasy Records (Warner) in 2000. In 2001, he was hired to work as an A&R rep at Columbia Records, where he continued until 2005. While at Columbia, Tompkins is credited with discovering the multi-platinum and three-time-Grammy Award winning artist, John Legend.

While at Drexel, he founded and established Drako Booking, Drexel's student-run booking agency, in 2005. Tompkins has also been involved with the development of the University's MAD Dragon Records, where he is currently serving as the president of the student-run/faculty administered record label.

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Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Tsetsekos's area of expertise includes valuation and corporate restructuring, treasury and risk/hedging operations, investment banking, securitization, emerging capital markets, multinational finance and bank asset-liability management. Tsetsekos is the author of numerous publications and papers including "Lesson in Structuring Derivatives Exchanges" (with P.Varangis) for The World Bank Research Observer (2000).

Currently, Tsetsekos serves on boards of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (Economic Advisory Board), The PENJERDEL Council, the Pennsylvania Economy League, the Conference Board, the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia, the Global Interdependence Center, and the Journal of Investing. He holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Tennessee, and an M.B.A in finance and a B.S. in electrical and mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

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The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology

Unsworth is an expert in social media and government/police's use to detect, classify, measure, and track the formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts, as well as community policing, civil courage, security and surveillance, and social control.

Unsworth's research interests are in the areas of information policy, ethics, government information and surveillance studies. Unsworth has conducted research on the use of social categorization in national security policy in historical, international and contemporary contexts. Her work examines the ethical issues behind social categorization, information use and retrieval in government contexts. Current projects include examining the role of citizen participation in government "See something, Say something" campaigns and the ethical implications of and such participation. Her teaching interests focus on issues of access to and critique of government information, information policy and ethics. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Washington.

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LeBow College of Business

Walkling is internationally known for his research involving corporate governance and corporate acquisitions. He has been listed in the top one percent of more than 12,000 finance authors in terms of academic citations to their work. He is a regular consultant to industry and a leading contributor to the top refereed journals in his field including The Journal of Financial Economics, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysisand The Rand Journal of Economics.

Walkling has received numerous awards for best papers in corporate finance and excellence in graduate teaching. In 2008 the Eastern Finance Association awarded him its scholar of the year award.

Richard C. Goodwin School of Education

Williams is the former co-host of "The Grimaldi & Williams" show on CBS Radio's "Big Talker" 1210-AM. He has written editorials for both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News on issues such as crime, race, and politics. Williams moderated a national forum commemorating President Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech. The national forum was held at the National Constitution Center on the very stage where a then-presidential candidate Obama delivered his historic speech on race in America.

Working with Drexel's Goodwin College, Williams teamed up with Mind TV to produce a number of short documentaries highlighting issues related to violence in America. The series aired July 2010 on Mind TV and will be featured periodically until 2012.

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Richard C. Goodwin School of Technology and Professional Studies

Chef Ziccardi specializes in classical and regional Italian cuisine and culture. He has been a full-time chef instructor in the Hospitality Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia since August 2000.

He holds an associate's degree in Occupational Studies in Culinary Arts from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York; a Bachelor of Science in Hotel/Restaurant Management from Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania; and a Certificate of Achievement in Classical Italian Cuisine from The Italian Culinary Institute per Stranieri in Torino, Italy. Ziccardi has held a number of chef positions in the Philadelphia area, Colorado, and Italy. He has worked under some world-renowned chefs, including Jean-Marie Lacroix at The Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia and Jean-FranÁois Taquet of Restaurant Taquet.

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College_Dept

During his tenure as director of athletics, Zillmer assisted in the completion of the Walter Spiro Varsity Weight Room, the creation of the Drexel Athletics logo, the Blue Cross Wellness Center, the remodeling of the department's Sport Medicine facility, extensive renovations at the Vidas Athletic Complex, the creation of a new 84,000 square feet Recreation Center, transfer of the Philadelphia Armory to Drexel Athletics, and securing the winning bid for the 2008 Olympic Trials in Table Tennis.

A licensed clinical psychologist, Zillmer is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Personality Assessment, and the National Academy of Neuropsychology for which he also served as president. He has written extensively in the areas of sports psychology, neuropsychology and psychological assessment, having published more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and books.

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