Faculty Mentor Bios

Dr. Angela Cole is an Associate Professor at Howard University in the Department of Psychology. She earned her B.S. (1994) in psychology, with a minor in mathematics, at Howard and her Ph.D. (1999) in cognitive psychology at Stanford University. She was a post-doctoral fellow from 1999-2001 in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Research Methods, Statistics, Experimental Psychology, Decision Making, and Social Psychology. Her research focuses on information-processing models of decision making, social justice, and terror management theory; and members of her research laboratory are actively engaged in projects investigating the impact of values, social justice considerations, and group identity on decision making in areas varying from manmade and natural disasters to intimate relationships to criminal trials. She has been awarded research support in the form of grants and/ or fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the American Psychological Association, the Department of Homeland Security, and Howard University; and currently serves as Co-PI for the NSF-funded Atlantic Coast Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Alliance (AC-SBE) and director of the AC-SBE Alliance’s Summer Writing Institute.

Dr. Joseph Fortunak is an Associate Professor of Chemistry with a joint appointment in Pharmaceutical Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and followed with a postdoc at Cambridge University, United Kingdom NSERC CAREER SUMMARY 1983-1993. He has worked at research and pharmaceutical companies such as SmithKlineBeecham (GlaxoSmithKline), DuPont Pharmaceutical Company, and Abbott Labs.

Dr. Fortunak focuses his research on synthetic and physical organic chemistry, namely new chemical syntheses of drugs for the treatment of malaria, diabetes and HIV/AIDS; new synthetic reagents and reactions for Green Chemistry, safety and waste reduction; use of ionic liquids to optimize reactions for multi-step organic reactions without workup, isolation of natural products; engineering controlled crystallizations to provide APIs with physical properties that are optimized for formulation, bioequivalence; and bioavailability.

Dr. Georges Haddad is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the College of Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada. His research interests include neurophysiology.

Dr. Karen Hill-Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology in the College of Medicine. She earned her medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her research interests are Cancer Pharmacology, Prostate Cancer and Signal Transduction.

Dr. Thomas Mellman is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine and the Associate Director of the General Clinical Research Center at Howard University. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University. His research interests are PTSD , Sleep, Anxiety disorders, and Clinical Translational Research.

Dr. Dharmaraj Raghavan is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry. He earned a Ph.D. of Material Science and Engineering from New Mexico Tech. His research focuses on Surface Modification, Thin Film and Coating Stability and Biomaterials.

The highlight of his research has focused on the grand challenge the Design of Materials through Nanotechnology. The design protocol for material formulation has heavily relied on establishing fundamental structure-property relationship of nanomaterials. The work in the field of nanocomposites builds the connection between surface chemistry of high aspect ratio nanoclay platelets and bulk properties such as mechanical strength, adhesion, and morphology of nanoparticulate dispersed polymer. One of the exciting possibilities of nanotechnology lies in the ability of nanoparticles under specific conditions to organize around the dispersed phase to form materials with highly desirable properties. The extent of interaction at the interface and the arrangement of platelets in polymer matrix can impact the performance of nanocomposite. Using the self assembled monolayer approach, he has been able to probe the effect of covalent bonding, mechanical interlocking, and physicochemical interactions on the behavior of inorganic/organic polymeric system. The performance of advanced composites, coatings, and biomaterial depend strongly on chemical (surface energy, chemical functionality, patterning of inorganic and organic materials) and physical (film thickness, processing temperature) variables. Combinatorial library preparation allows to rapidly screen the impact of diverse physical and chemical variables on the nanostructure of ultrathin coatings. The lab has able to obtain a near universal scaling curve describing film stability for different molecular weights in the surface energy of the substrate and temperature variables, by introducing reduced variables. The combinatorial approach has been extended to design biomaterial surfaces. Initial results show that interfaces of cell/biomaterial play a critical role in the cell behavior and in particular the interaction of synthetically designed materials with biological system. The efforts have demonstrated that high throughput approach that encompasses diverse surface and interface properties can be highly valuable in the design of biomaterials through nanotechnology.

Dr. Yousef Tizabi is Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Pharmacology in the College of Medicine. He earned his Ph.D., at Georgetown University. Dr. Tizabi’s research interests involve elucidation of biological substrates of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders using animal and cell models.

Dr. Hemayet Ullah is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His current research interests include elucidating the cellular signal transduction pathways mediated by Receptor for Activated Kinase C (RACK1)- a structural homolog of G-protein beta subunit.

Dr. Eric Walters is an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics and Human Genetics and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. from Missouri. Dr. Walters "knows the nose". He is interested in the biochemistry of olfaction, and also has projects on the sociology and psychology of smell, and he always has a lab that bustles with students. His laboratory works on the Cell and Molecular Biology of Olfaction.