José Alaniz, associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct) at the University of Washington–Seattle, published his first book, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi) in 2010. His research interests include Death and Dying, Disability Studies, Film Studies, Eco-criticism and Comics Studies. His current projects include Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond and a history of Czech comics.

I am an Associate Professor at the Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS). Originally from the UK, I am also a practicing artist who works predominantly with installation, video and data-driven art forms. My work has been exhibited around the world, notably at ZKM, the Prix Ars Electronica and the Toronto International Film Festival/MOCCA.

Brinda Jegatheesan is Associate Professor in Educational Psychology. She specializes in the Psychology of Child- Animal Interactions with a Cross-Cultural focus. Her research is comparative international. 

My career has been inspired by a drive to understand how the brain works. This has involved a wide range of studies with non-human primates and neural network modeling, which are described on our website: https://depts.washington.edu/fetzweb/

Professor Marc D. Binder joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology & Biophysics in the UW School of Medicine in 1978. His research laboratory is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and currently focuses on studying the biophysical properties of motoneurons and their alterations in mouse models of human neurological disorders, as well as elucidating how the functional coupling and cooperative gating of voltage-gated membrane channels affect the excitability of nerve and muscle cells. Although Professor Binder’s primary teaching responsibilities lie within the medical school, he has enjoyed participating in the Collegium Program over the last several years, offering a diverse series of courses including neuroscience, film history, the origins of money and finance, ideas that changed the world, the nature of consciousness, the comedic tradition and this year’s class on the student activist movement of the 1960’s.

Beth Traxler received her Ph.D. in biology from Carnegie Mellon University where she studied the mechanism of DNA processing during bacterial conjugation. Her postdoctoral research on the assembly and structure of membrane proteins was done at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Dr. Jon Beckwith.

The research in Dr. Traxler's laboratory focuses on the genetic and biochemical analysis of protein folding and function. The lab uses two different models found in Gram negative bacteria. One interest is the characterization of ATP binding cassette (ABC) proteins in the Escherichia coli cytoplasmic membrane. This work focuses on the maltose (MalFGK) transporter as a model of the in vivo folding process for heteromeric membrane proteins complexes in general and for proteins of the ABC superfamily in particular. This analysis has led the lab to propose a novel model for the mechanism of membrane protein folding, in which a final complex can assemble in non-ordered process from a variety of intermediate complexes. In addition, the lab is characterizing the specificity of protein-protein interactions among the many ABC transporter subunits expressed in a bacterial cell. A second interest of the lab focuses on the processing of DNA and on membrane-based events during late stages of bacterial conjugation. Bacterial conjugation is an efficient way to transfer genetic information among prokaryotes and accounts for the dissemination of many antibiotic resistance determinants among pathogens. The analysis exploits the well-characterized F plasmid of E. coli as a model and aims to characterize the mechanism of DNA processing and DNA transfer through the cell envelope during conjugation.

Recently, the lab has been involved in the development of materials for nanotechnology. Different proteins characterized in the lab’s genetic analyses are being engineered by the addition of polypeptide sequences that bind to various inorganic compounds. Those inorganic compounds can be arranged in predictable structures, based on the self-assembly properties of the substrate proteins. Examples include using different DNA binding proteins to organize inorganic nanoparticles along a DNA guide.

Professor Howard is a former prosecutor and judge who has taught evidence and other trial-related skills all over the United States, as well as in Hong Kong, in Ireland, and in Africa. In addition to her formal teaching, Professor Howard writes and speaks nationally on the art of trial advocacy and has appeared on several television programs as a legal commentator.