The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis. Others will be introduced periodically.
Derek Hoeferlin joins the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as assistant professor of architecture and urban design. Previously a senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School, he is principal of Derek James Hoeferlin Architect and, with H3 Studio Inc., helped lead the Unified New Orleans Plan — the only formally adopted post-Katrina recovery plan. He currently is collaborating with Waggonner & Ball Architects on New Orleans’ Integrated Water Management Strategy and works with Gutter to Gulf, which advocating for spatially integrated water designs. He also conducts global comparative delta and watershed research — primarily focused on the Mekong — to inform adaptive design strategies.
Irena Knezevic joins the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as assistant professor of art. Knezevic, a Serbian artist, works in various performative forms, materials, venues and means of distribution to construct programs for the public and institutions. Current areas of research include secrets, involuntary movement, dream-wreck, liquidity, topical and tropical disasters and downward spirals. Upcoming exhibitions include solo projects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, FotoFest 2012 Biennial in Houston, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. A monograph of Knezevic’s scores, programs and manifestos, titled The Victory Of Literary School X, is forthcoming from University of Illinois Press.
Seng Kuan, PhD, joins the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as assistant professor of architecture. Kuan earned a doctorate from Harvard University with a dissertation on the work of Kenzō Tange and urban design in postwar Japan. Curatorial work includes the exhibitions Metabolism, the City of the Future: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Post-War and Present-Day Japan (Mori Art Museum in Tokyo) and Utopia Across Scales: Highlights from the Kenzō Tange Archive (Harvard Graduate School of Design). He is editing an anthology of recent scholarship on Tange and postwar Japanese architectural culture. Previous books include Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China and Shanghai: Architecture and Modernism for Modern China.
Gary J. Patti, PhD, joins the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences and departments of Genetics and Medicine in the School of Medicine as assistant professor. Patti earned a doctorate at WUSTL in biochemistry in 2008 and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology. Patti’s research focuses on using cutting-edge mass spectrometry methods to study the levels of metabolites in biological specimens and how they change as a function of disease. With this approach, known as metabolomics, Patti has identified a novel metabolite in the central nervous system that plays an important role in mediating chronic pain. He is exploring therapeutics that target production of the metabolite as new treatments for the condition. Other research interests include integrating genomic information with metabolomic information and developing related bioinformatic tools for the analysis of complex datasets.
Monika Weiss joins the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as assistant professor of art. A Polish-American transdisciplinary artist, Weiss’ practice explores the body as cultural and physical signifier, in the context of historical and individual memory. She works in projected video, performance, sound composition, drawing and sculpture, often combining these elements into large-scale public installations. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. In 2009, Weiss was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in the interdisciplinary category. Publications about her work include Drawing Now: Between the Lines of Contemporary Art and Monika Weiss: Five Rivers.