July 2025
Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, gave research talks at the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Research Symposium at San Diego State University (July 17-19) and the Organic Reactions and Processes Gordon Conference at Bryant University (July 20-25).
Ball published a paper titled “Flash Communication: Sulfonyl Fluoride Activation via S–F and C–S Bond Cleavage by a Ni(0) Bis-Bidentate N-Heterocyclic Carbene Complex” with S. Chantal Stieber (Cal Poly Pomona). This work, focused on Ni-activation of sulfonyl fluorides to form novel Ni-sulfur dioxide complexes, gives evidence of how sulfonyl fluorides can be activated for Ni-catalyzed reactions and was funded by the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award.
Ball was awarded an NIH R15 area grant for $428,004. This three-year grant enables the Ball group to continue training students in new avenues for sulfur fluoride exchange (SuFEx). The grant also involves a subaward for O. Maduka Ogba (Harvey Mudd College), who will lead efforts in the mechanistic computational experiments. Additionally, Christopher am Ende (Pfizer) is a collaborator serving as a mentor for students to conduct related work at Pfizer for the summer. This grant will support undergraduate researcher stipends, student attendance at conferences, and two postbaccalaureate scholars.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, performed as a viola da gamba soloist in the Oregon Bach Festival’s production of J. S. Bach’s Markus Passion, a new musical reconstruction co-produced by Concert Theatre Works and starring actor Joseph Marcell. Performances took place July 11–13 in Eugene, Oregon, Portland and Seattle.
On July 16 in Downtown Los Angeles, Bandy served as musical director for Tesserae Baroque’s viola da gamba sextet in Secret Byrd, an internationally acclaimed touring production of a secret Catholic mass from 1590s Britain, conceived and directed by Bill Barclay and featuring The Gesualdo Six from the U.K.
On July 19 and 20 at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Birmingham, U.K.), Bandy chaired a session on German instrumental music and presented the paper “Instruments of ‘Torture’: Viols, Mutilation, and Transfiguration in the German Baroque Passion” at the 21st Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music. On July 22–25 at the University of Copenhagen, Bandy organized and chaired two panels at the 25th Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. Bandy presented the paper “Quid sunt plagae istae? Harmonizing Pathos and Pleasure in Membra Jesu nostri (1680).” The coordinated Musica Poetica panels cumulatively spanned 750 years of rhetoric in musical composition and performance and were formed and presented in collaboration with colleagues from the USC Thornton School of Music and Donna Di Grazia and Alfred Cramer from the Pomona College Department of Music.
Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, published a review of Gender and Friendship in Chinese Literature, edited by Wai-yee Li, in Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China.
Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, presented the paper “‘Odes & Songs on St Cecilia's Day and Other Occasions’: The Secular Vocal Music of William Croft Reconsidered” at the 21st Biennial International Conference of Baroque Music hosted by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in Birmingham, England, from July 16-20.
Eleanor Birrell, associate professor of computer science, published a paper titled “Evaluating a Data Fiduciary Standard for Privacy: Developer and End-user Perspectives” in the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. This work, coauthored with Michele Tang ’24, Liam Bayer ’27 and Leo Torres ’26, was presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July.
Ralph Bolton ’61, emeritus professor of anthropology, had the address he gave upon receiving The Bronislaw Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology published by the journal Human Organization. A digital Open Access version of the article is available online; the print version is scheduled for later in 2025. The title of the article is “Applied Anthropology: A Way of Life, a Call to Action.”
Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, co-authored a paper developing open-source machine learning pipelines to monitor human-biodiversity interactions globally. The manuscript was just accepted at Conservation Biology and was the product of a collaboration between Chang, Conservation Science Partners, On the Edge Conservation and Oxford University.
Toni Cook, visiting assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, published a paper, “The canar-yi in the coal mine: The loss of yi in Zulu reduplication,” in the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics.
Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, spoke on “Woody’s ‘Land,’ Pete’s ‘Land’: Rhetorical Reframings of an Emblematic American Song” at the Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric in Copenhagen, Denmark, on July 24. This presentation was part of a pair of panels organized by Malachai Bandy which also featured a presentation by Donna M. Di Grazia. Cramer gave a presentation on a related topic at Pilgrim Place in Claremont: “Signs, Formulas, and Meanings in ‘This Land Is Your Land’ by Woody Guthrie and Others.”
Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music, presented her paper “The Power of Silence in Nineteenth-Century Music” on July 24 at the Twenty-Fifth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric held in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Di Grazia and the 30-member Pomona College Glee Club traveled to Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and New York City, giving four full-length concerts. They also took part in two choral exchanges with high school students at Oak Park/River Forest High School in Oak Park and at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art & Performing Arts in Manhattan. Earlier in the month, they gave a 20-minute performance at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romance languages and literatures, published the article “Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu, ou la disparition de l’herbe verte” in The Balzac Review / Revue Balzac, focusing on ecology (Écologies/Ecologie).
Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and professor of mathematics, had a book chapter “Upper level mathematics and statistics courses shared across campuses,” (with J. Hu and S.J. Miller) reprinted in the second edition of Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online (edited by J.P. Howard II and J.F. Beyers and published by Chapman and Hall).
Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, visited the Undergraduate Program (MSRI-UP) at the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California. The 2025 program was a six-week summer research experience led by Omayra Ortega ’21, where 18 students focused on “Quantitative Justice.” Goins gave a talk July 3 titled “A Survey of Diophantine Equations.”
Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, presented the paper “Los Grupos Antiderechos: The Expansion of the Far Right in the Dominican Republic” at the V International Sociological Forum convened by the International Sociological Association in Rabat, Morocco, on July 9. Hernández-Medina also organized and chaired the panel “What Can We Learn from Latin American Feminist Movements” on July 11 and chaired the panel “Authoritarian Politics, Feminist Struggles and Democratic Futures in the MENA Region” on July 9.
Malkiat Johal, professor of chemistry, published the paper “A Hydrophobic Goldilocks Zone for Cyclodextrin-Lipid-Membrane Interactions: Implications of Drug Hydrophobicity on Kinetics of Cholesterol Removal from Lipid Membranes” in Langmuir. The article was co-authored by Ethan M. Fong ’25, J. Sebastian D. Kinzie ’26, Aaron Christopherson ’26, Jacob K. Al-Hussieni ’22, Kevin Ye ’27, Ananya Vinay ’27 and Ryan Mooney ’27.
Johal was recently featured in a blog post by Nicoya Lifesciences Inc. titled “Exploring Molecular Interactions with OpenSPR: A Perspective from the Johal Lab.” The article highlights Johal’s research on protein-ligand binding and his lab’s innovative use of OpenSPR technology to study molecular interactions relevant to disease.
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, co-authored and published the article “Beyond smell: rethinking the figurative force of olfactory language” in Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory on July 15. Drawing on corpus linguistic techniques, this article shows that English olfactory metaphorical constructions are more productive than previously assumed, mapping smell perception onto abstract domains, particularly those related to socioemotions and morality. Lang also published an invited book review of Chinese Sociolinguistics: Language and Identity in Greater China by Chunsheng Yang in Chinese Language and Discourse on July 28.
Tom Le, associate professor of politics, gave a talk for his book launch event of 日本老いと成熟の平和 at the University of Tokyo on July 1. On July 8, he gave a talk on Japanese security policy at Meiji Gakuin University. On July 15, he gave a book talk for the Asia Pacific Initiative roundtable at the International House of Japan. On July 17, he gave a book talk at Temple University (Zoom). On July 23, he gave a book talk at Hiroshima City University. On July 24, he gave a talk on demographics and Japanese security at the Machinaka Community Center in Sasebo as part of the YCAPS Community Conversations Series. On July 30, he gave a book talk at the National Institute of Defense Studies in Tokyo.
On July 25, Le joined the Nobel Peace Prize Selection Committee for a dinner honoring Hidankyo, the 2024 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
On July 29, Le and Olivia Lee ’28 (Summer Undergraduate Research Program participant) published a peer-reviewed article with East Asia Forum titled “Japan-South Korea relations under Lee’s pragmatic leadership.”
Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, performed as a faculty member at the Redfish Music Festival in late July. Lee and her colleagues presented piano quartets of Beethoven and Fauré in Crescent City, California, and two venues in Oregon (Port Orford and North Bend). She also coached chamber music groups (of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students) at the Redfish Music Festival.
Stephen Marks, Elden Smith Professor of Economics and associate dean of the College, was interviewed by the BBC World Service radio network and later in the day by BBC News television network July 15 on the topic of President Trump’s announced trade deal with Indonesia.
Richard Mawhorter, professor of physics, had an active research summer with two Summer Undergraduate Research Program students. They visited related labs at Caltech and JPL in preparation for a three-week visit to The University of the Basque Country near Bilbao in Spain. Being in Europe also provided opportunities to visit labs in Valladolid, Paris, and Groningen, Netherlands. Research talks on the ytterbium oxide molecule YbO were given in Bilbao and earlier at the annual APS DAMOP meeting in Portland, Oregon.
Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, won the award for writing the best paper presented in American Political Thought at The American Political Science Association’s 2024 Annual Meeting. The award committee called McWilliams’s paper, titled “A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought,” “not just clever and compelling but important and interesting to a wide group of scholars,” adding to disciplinary conversations in “founding scholarship, religion and politics, and especially black political thought.” McWilliams will formally receive the award at a ceremony at this year’s APSA meeting in September.
Hans J. Rindisbacher, professor of German, published a review essay on two volumes of critical essays on the Swiss 19th-century writer Gottfried Keller, “Kellers Welten; Kellers Wissen,” in Monatshefte.
Joti Rockwell, associate professor of music, published the article “Theorizing Musical Motion, Moving with the Steel Guitar” in Journal of Music Theory.
Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and professor of Russian, presented a paper titled “When I Was a Girl, I Was a Boy: Queer Adolescence in Mikita Franko’s Fiction” at the 27th Biennial International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Congress: “Borders, Migration, and Liminality in Children’s Literature,” held in Salamanca, Spain.
Penny Sinanoglou, associate professor of history, was selected as a reviews editor for the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the American Historical Association.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, published a paper, “Relational roots of retributive vs. restorative justice: Attachment insecurity predicts harsher responses to crime,” in Attachment & Human Development.
Stern gave a talk on “Resilience in African American children and families” for the Applied Mind and Health Lab at Claremont McKenna College.
Stern spoke about her new book, Beyond Difficult, in an interview with Theravive and on recent episodes of The Power of Women Podcast and Speak Honest.
Ania Vu, assistant professor of music, completed a month-long residency at Yaddo this past June and July in Saratoga Springs, New York. She also attended a premiere of her new piece written for the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
Heather Williams, professor of politics, and Joanna L. Dyl, visiting assistant professor of environmental analysis, published a co-authored chapter, “SONGS of the Southland: The Nuclear-Water Nexus in Southern California” in the edited collection The Nuclear-Water Nexus, edited by Per Högselius and Siegried Evens and published by The MIT Press.
Keri Wilson, assistant professor of biology, co-authored the research article “Early-life vocalizations and adult auditory brainstem responses in California mice (Peromyscus californicus)” in the journal Physiology and Behavior. The study details the dynamic interplay between offspring vocalizations and parental hearing in a mammal in which both parents care for young. This research was part of a larger project funded by NSF.