Lunar New Year Reception
Date: Friday, February 23, 2007 Time: 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Place: 25 West 43rd Street, 19th Floor
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan
Recently published a book, or made a presentation on your area of expertise, but no one else in CUNY knows about it? Here’s your chance to meet other members of CUNY who share in the same dilemma. Come to the reception that is for you, the new CUNY Asian faculty and staff, and let yourself be known beyond your corner office cubicle.
Besides the delicious food, and performances, this reception will introduce the new CUNY Asian faculty and staff to the Asian American / Asian Research Institute; our mission as a university-wide scholarly research and resource center that focuses on policies and issues that affect Asians and Asian Americans; and the programs that are available for them. Attendees will have the prime opportunity to create new relationships and network with colleagues like themselves, from different fields across the twenty-three CUNY colleges.
Vice Chancellor Brenda Malone from the CUNY Office of Faculty & Staff Relations, and Trustee Wellington Z. Chen, will be on hand to bring greetings at the reception. It is vital that new members of each college become involved with and integrate into the CUNY family, as it continues to become the leading urban public university.
CUNY Asian Faculty & Staff Biographies
Clarence Chan PT, DPT is a licensed physical therapist, certified personal trainer, and a martial arts instructor. He is an assistant professor in the Natural and Applied Sciences Department at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. He has been in clinical practice since 1989 in hospital, pediatric, long term care, home health care, and private practice settings. He received his Doctor of Physical Therapy from Creighton University in Omaha, NE. Having been in practice for over 16 years, he has extensive experience in acutherapy, electrotherapy, pain management, functional/performance retraining, and movement science. Dr. Chan is an active member of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and a committee member of the Minority Affairs Committee of NYPTA. He also held a current position as the District Treasurer for the New York Chapter. This position enables him to serve as the delegate to the New York Chapter and the National House of Delegate. Dr. Chan is also actively teaching the various concepts of martial arts training in the YMCA-Beacon Center in NYC Chinatown.
Chen-Ho Chao, is a faculty member in the Marketing and International Business department at Baruch College, CUNY. Originally from Taiwan. Dr. Chao received his MBA and Ph.D. education in Missouri. His research interest focuses on international marketing issues. The location of Baruch College provides Dr. Chao with tremendous opportunities to do his research.
Vincent (Tzu-Wen) Cheng, is a full-time instructor in the Department of Speech, Communications and Theatre Arts at BMCC, which he joined in spring 2005. He also teaches in the Department of Culture and Communication at NYU, first as a teaching fellow since 1999 and as an adjunct instructor since 2002. Among the courses Mr. Cheng has taught are Speech Communication, Cross-Cultural Communication, Conflict Management, Fundamentals of Speech, and Introduction to Human Communication and Culture. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in International Education program at NYU, Mr. Cheng received two masters degrees from New York University – one from the School of Law in 1997 and the other from Steinhardt School of Education’s Speech and Interpersonal Communication program in 1999.
Gautam Chinta holds a PhD in Mathematics from Columbia University. He
comes to City College after postdoctoral positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and Brown University. He was on leave during the 2005-6 academic year as a Humboldt Fellow at Goettingen University.
Prof Chinta’s research is in the field of number theory. More specifically his research is focused on the theory of automorphic forms and L-functions, with applications to problems in the distribution of prime numbers and representations of integers as sums of squares.
Jin Ma is a Catalog/Metadata Librarian at the Newman Library, Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is responsible for metadata creation and management for the Digital Media Library and any digital initiatives at Baruch. He has worked as a Metadata Librarian at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries from January 2003 to May 2006.
Isabelita Perez has over 25 years of diversified experience in industries and functional areas of financial management and investment, banking, accounting, e-commerce, international business development, business consultancy, and marketing. Prior to joining The City University of New York as Special Project Coordinator, she was President of her consulting company Perez Business Development Corporation and consulted with Citibank and other major listed corporations in the United States and Europe. She is also co-chairman of Vizcaya Savings and Loan Association, a family owned Thrift bank in the Philippines. Formerly, Ms. Perez was a Principal and Senior Vice President of Geneva Capital and in 1997 she was invited by the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census in Washington, D.C. to serve as one of their financial advisors. In her earlier career, Ms. Perez was a Business Manager at National Broadcasting Co. responsible for structuring and implementing budgetary projections for NBC multimillion dollar Staff Division. She also had developed financial studies that included financial planning, strategic analysis, costing, budgeting and performance report appraisals. Ms. Perez has a MBA in finance and completed advanced studies in Financial Management from Wharton School and St. John’s University. She is a NASD Registered Securities Principal and Broker with series 24, 7 and 63 licenses. She is a member of the Omicron Delta Epsilon, Honor Society in Economics.
Andrew VanNguyen graduated with a bachelor degree double majoring in microbiology and immunology and biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley in 1989. After working at a biotechnology company, Professor VanNguyen went to the University of Connecticut at Storrs and completed his master degree in Department of Pathobiology. Professor VanNguyen received his doctoral degree in the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert in 2000. His thesis was on two cytokines, colony-stimulating factor and transforming growth factor-beta, and their regulation on mammary gland development and tumor metastasis. In the past few years, Professor VanNguyen was a Kirschstein post doctoral fellow from the National Heart and Lung Institute working on the conditional knock out mice and applying them to study the pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. His interests are to generate and apply transgenic mice with regulated gene expression including conditionally gene deletion to study mammary gland cancer and infectious diseases. Professor VanNguyen published several articles on the diagnosis and pathogenicity of Salmonella spp. infection and recently published a number of articles in mammary gland tumor biology. Starting in the fall of 2006, Professor VanNguyen have been an assistant professor at Kingsborough Community College, where he teaches anatomy and physiology.
Sihong Wang, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The City College of New York. Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin Biomedical Engineering department. After that, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Engineering in Medicine (CEM) in Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, working on the development of microfluidic cell chips for real-time gene expression profiling using current technologies in cell/molecular engineering and BioMEMS. At the same time, Dr. Wang investigated the dynamic effects of heat shock preconditioning on apoptosis in liver cells, and extending my research areas to include tissue engineering focusing on bioartificial liver (BAL).
Dr. Wang’s research interests are applications of Cell and Molecular Engineering combined with BioMEMS and 3D Tissue Engineering for studies in cancer therapy, bioartificial organs and drug toxicity.
Victoria Ying received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She also earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Cornell Veterinary School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Medicine. She specializes in using polymers as a delivery vehicle for controlled release of drug in cells, tissues, and animals to treat cancer. During her Ph.D. program she visited Johns Hopkins for neurosurgery training to enhance her Ph.D. studies in brain cancer research.
Victoria also did an exchange program at Yale University Biomedical Engineering Department to continue her work with chemists in using biodegradable polymers for interstitial chemotherapy. While at Yale University, she was the Speaker Series Coordinator of the Biotechnology Interest Group. Victoria organized many seminars and conferences. She invited guest speakers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb Vice President, Pfizer Clinical Medical Director, Boehringer Ingelheim President and CEO, CuraGen Medical Director, Bayer Senior Vice President, and Merck President Emeritus to speak at Yale University.
In addition, Victoria worked as a Deal Flow Analysis Member and visited Emisphere Technologies where as a team, they developed strategies to improve the marketing, distribution, and sales of the insulin oral vaccine. After receiving her Ph.D. from Cornell, she presented her research to various pharmaceutical companies and research centers such as Sanofi-Aventis, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Cornell Medical School/Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Later she worked as a Senior Scientist in Optical Bioscience and did research in the field of photodynamic therapy (PDT) while working part time teaching Molecular and Cellular Biology at Pace University and General Chemistry at Queensborough Community College.
In 2006, she worked as a full time tenure track Assistant Professor at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently teaching Anatomy and Physiology to students pursuing degrees in nursing, dentistry, optometry, radiology, medicine, and graduate school.
Victoria collaborates with other research faculty at College of Staten Island with the focus of delivering cancer drugs via new polymers as a way to enhance chemotherapy and the treatment of cancer.
Hongbing Zhang, Ph.D. (University of Chicago), is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies teaching Chinese language and literature in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Asian Studies Program at the City College, CUNY. Before coming to the City College, he taught at Northwestern University. His scholarly interests include modern Chinese literature and culture, travel writing, modernity and the nation, globalization and cultural production. His publications have appeared in “Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese” and “Language and Literature.” He is currently working on a project studying travel, space and cultural transformations in the late 19th and early 20th century China.
Xiaodang Zhang has been an Assistant Professor in the department of Social Sciences at York College since Fall 2006. Hailing from Beijing, China, Dr. Zhang has been a resident of New York for almost twenty years – and refers to herself as a New Yorker. She received a Masters degree in Women’s Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University.
Dr.. Zhang’s teaching and research interests include labor relations, organization, and gender. She is currently exploring the possibilities of studying immigrant entrepreneurship in New York City.
