Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Dr. Michael Bennett joins us from the University of Texas, in the School of Social Work as an Assistant Professor. His research investigates inequities and marginalization in palliative care using interpretative methods. He also examines end-of-life dreams or bucket-list fulfillment.
Dr. Siham Elkassem is a recent PhD graduate from Memorial University of Newfoundland and joins us in the School of Social Work as an Assistant Professor. Her research includes critical ethnography, community-based activist approaches rooted in critical race and anti-colonial frameworks. She also focuses on racism, Islamophobia, racial trauma, intersectional oppression, and racial inequalities, particularly in access and outcomes across social systems.
Dr. Esentsei Staats-Pangowish joins us in the Department of Political Science as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Faculty of Education
Dr. Alleson Mason joins us from the University of Winnipeg as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education. Dr. Mason focuses her research on the challenges Black students face in the Canadian school system and the ways in which communities are stepping up to address these issues. By emphasizing the importance of family engagement, she hopes to demonstrate how working closely with Black families can bring about meaningful change in education.
Faculty of Engineering
Dr. Ram Adhikari joins us from the University of Calgary as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering. His research focuses on computational fluid dynamics and finite element methods, with applications in renewable energy technologies, electronics cooling, energy storage, and climate-controlled indoor farming.
Dr. Lucas Bruck joins us from McMaster University as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering. For the past decade, he has collaborated with the automotive industry to develop simulation tools that accelerate adoption and improve the quality of critical technologies, including electric-hybrid powertrains and active control systems. His research is centered on bridging the gap between simulation and real-world testing, incorporating human feedback throughout vehicle design stages.
Dr. Wafa Polis joins us as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Engineering. With over 15 years of teaching experience in the USA and Canada, she brings expertise in a range of engineering courses at various levels. Her extensive teaching and industrial background underpin her commitment to high-quality instruction and a supportive learning environment. She is adept at connecting engineering concepts to practical applications. Wafa’s research focuses on Infrastructure Health Monitoring using digital image correlation and inverse analysis.
Faculty of Law
Dr. Ali Hammoudi joins us as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law. His research interests include the history of international law, particularly in relation to the Middle East and Iraq, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), law and empire, labor law and social movements, oil decolonization, Marxist legal theory, and comparative constitutional law.
Dr. Janice Makokis joins us as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law.
Dr. Dan Rohde is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law. His research focuses on the legal history of Canadian money, banking and central banking, with an emphasis on the history and constitution of the Bank of Canada. He also studies and has written on banking in the colonial period, central bank independence, corporate theory and legal historiography. Dan is currently completing his SJD at Harvard Law School, which is a legal history of the Bank of Canada. Prior to entering academia, Dan clerked at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and practiced litigation at a union-side labour-law firm as well as a legal clinic that specializes in cases with a systemic impact on those living in poverty.
Dr. Joshua Sealy-Harrington joins us from Toronto Metropolitan University as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law. His research and advocacy focus on critical legal theory, particularly concerning racial, gender, sexual, disability, and international justice. He examines socio-legal hierarchies with a particular interest in Black and Palestinian solidarity, activism, and resistance.
Dr. Kristen Thomasen rejoins us from the University of British Columbia as an Associate Professor and Chair in Faculty of Law. Her research evaluates the legal regulation of automated systems through a feminist lens, focusing on the impact of these systems on shared spaces and the role of law and automation in deputized and interpersonal surveillance..
Leddy Library
Anne Kavanagh a recent graduate of Western University, joins us as a Librarian in the Acquisitions & Bibliographic Services department, where she was previously a co-op librarian. Anne previously completed a Master of Arts in photographic preservation and collections management at Toronto Metropolitan University. During her MLIS degree at Western, Anne delved into art librarianship, exploring the information behavior needs of artists and focused on collections management and development.
Amelia Ritchie joins us from University of Victoria as a Librarian. As an early-career academic librarian, she is passionate about innovative initiatives in scholarly communications, best practices for supporting creative approaches to scholarship, and institutional repository management.
Antoinette Seymour a former University of Glasgow Affiliate Staff and University of The Bahamas University Archivist and Adjunct Faculty, joins us in the Leddy Library from The Bahamas. Her research interests include Caribbean Diaspora Studies, records and archives management, and chess as a learning and intervention tool.
Faculty of Nursing
Brooke Wuerch joins us from the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre as an Ancillary Academic Staff II in the Faculty of Nursing. Her research interests include Nurse Practitioner retention and the development of mentorship pathways for RN students and working RNs considering becoming Nurse Practitioners.
Faculty of Science
Dr. Brian DeVeale joins us from the University of California, San Francisco as an Assistant Professor specializing in Molecular Genetics within the Faculty of Science. His area of research includes developing and applying molecular, genomic and computational approaches to understand the gene regulation that defines cell fates and function.
Dr. Scott Harroun joins us from Polytechnique Montréal as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Science. His research involves creating biosensors made from components such as DNA, proteins, gold/silver nanoparticles and fluorescent molecules to detect biomarkers of disease, such as cancer, and to explore the biochemical functions of proteins. He is also interested in characterizing the interactions of (bio) molecules with surfaces.
Dr. Olena Syrotkina joins us from Dnipro University of Technology in Dnipro, Ukraine as an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science. Her research focuses on SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) diagnostics, big data analytics, and data mining techniques. She also specializes in methods for working with m-tuples based on ordered sets of arbitrary cardinalities, as well as the development and application of machine learning algorithms.
Dr. Claudio Verani joins us as the new Dean of the Faculty of Science and as a Professor of Chemistry. He has 22 years of experience at Wayne State University, seven of which serving as Associate Dean for Research, Space & Special Projects in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. His research includes comprehensive externally funded programs relevant to molecular electronics and fuel production from water.