University of Houston-Downtown
Dr. Mary Jo Parker
Dr. Parker is currently a faculty member in the Natural Sciences department at University of Houston-Downtown. She also directs the Scholars Academy, an academic unit in the College of Sciences & Technology supporting STEM majors through scholarships and a mentoring network system. She currently is PI on five active federal grant awards ($1.7M). She brings extensive experience in curriculum and development, supervision and leadership at K-12 and higher education, K-16 outreach and STEM recruitment, online instruction, and closing the achievement gap for minority STEM students. Dr. Parker has incorporated service learning into the University Seminar (Transfers) course. She is piloting service learning in her online non-majors biology course currently.
Dr. Weining Feng
Dr. Feng joined UHD in Fall 1999 as an associate professor in control and instrumentation engineering technology. Dr. Feng teach regularly a range of courses in electronics and electric power systems, measurement and instrumentation, automation and control engineering, data communication and networking. Dr. strongly believes in offering students’ academic grown opportunities through undergraduate research experience. Some of undergraduate research projects were sponsored by a variety of government funding agencies such as NSF, THECB, and NRC. Findings from undergraduate research projects have been reported at UHD student research conferences over recent years.
Dr. Feng has a particular interests applied research and development and is currently pursue research interest in areas such as power management systems, system conditioning monitoring, and robotic manipulator control.
Dr. Mian Jiang
Department of Natural Sciences, University of Houston Downtown, Houston, TX 77002
713/221-8954 (O), jiangm@uhd.edu
2005 –Present University of Houston-Downtown, Assistant/Associate Professor.
2000– 2005 Drury Univ (MO) and East Tennessee State Univ (TN), Assistant Professor.
1995 – 2000 Northwestern Univ (IL) and New Mexico State Univ (NM)., Postdoctoral Associate.
1988 – 1991 Ph.D., Wuhan University, Analytical/Physical Chemistry
Dr. Lisa Morano
Professor of Biology and Microbiology University of Houston-Downtown.
Lisa Morano earned a B.S.(1990) from the University of California, Irvine in Biology and a Ph.D. (1995) from the University of California, Davis in the Department of Viticulture and Enology. Her thesis work focused on grapevine biology including root distribution patterns, root growth and metabolic responses of rootstocks crosses and wild Vitis species. In 1995 she worked with the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association in Sonoma, California creating a computer database for growers on soil and macroclimate compatibility data for rootstock/ scion combinations in the area. Since 1995 she has taught biology, microbiology, plant physiology, and cell biology at universities in California, Michigan and now in Texas. Since coming to the University of Houston-Downtown in 2001, her research interests have focused on the bacterial infections associated with grapevines. Specifically, she is focusing on the genetics and epidemiology of the bacterium that causes Pierce’s disease in grapevines. Her research has also included two USDA-NIFA funded programs. In 2010 she ran the UHD Rocks to Wine program which gave UHD students education in geology, grape biology, winemaking, marketing and included undergraduate research and an industry internship. In fall of 2015 she was awarded a USDA-NIFA grant to build new curriculum and experiential learning opportunities through the new UHD Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability.