Research Faculty Profiles

Ethan Flurry, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Mississippi University for Women

Dr. Flurry is an assistant professor in the MUW Psychology & Family Sciences department. His research focuses on examining theoretical and applied questions about cognitive systems such as memory and metacognition, which is what you know about your own thinking. Dr. Flurry is primarily interested in how these cognitive systems are affected by processes such as aging and emotion, and how these systems work in everyday situations.

Discipline: Psychology

Jarrod Mau

Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Belhaven University

We modify neural network structures to improve accuracy and to address problems not yet solved by existing architectures. In our work, neural networks have been used to extract features for diagnosing audiological pathologies based on the brain’s response to auditory stimuli. We further employed modified network structures to enhance classification accuracy through independent ensembling, which does not substantially increase computational or training time.

Discipline: Computer Science

John Estes, Ph.D

Professor of Mathematics, Dean of Science and Mathematics

Belhaven University

Estes is a graph theorist with a background in independence, including independence polynomials, backbone colorings, maximal outerplanar graphs, and a generalization of trees known as k-trees. In particular, he has investigated extremal cases of k-trees with regard to many metrics, including Zagreb indices. More recently, he and his students have investigated random walks through Markov chains on graphs, in particular, random walks with absorbing states. He is also interested in investigating machine learning and artificial intelligence, looking at algorithmic graph searches and supervised learning techniques.

Discipline: Mathematics

John Neiswinger, Ph.D.

Professor of Biology

Belhaven University

As DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and more prevalent, databases like ClinVar are a valuable resource for elucidating how genomic variability relates to disease progression. This research will use this database to generate clinically curated kinase mutants in order to determine if a change in kinase activity has occurred. Further analysis will be performed to assess the effect of altered kinase activity on cellular function, especially with respect to disease pathogenicity. Additionally, mutagenesis studies will be performed on kinases to probe the sensitivity of their activity to a variety of types of mutations.

Discipline: Biology

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