Teacher-Scholars Join Harvey Mudd Faculty

The world-class faculty at Harvey Mudd College provides top-notch science and engineering education in a liberal arts context so that graduates are uniquely prepared to lead and understand their impact on society. Five outstanding teacher-scholars joined the College July 1 as assistant professors and tenure-track faculty members.

Brian Bryce

Brian Bryce, previously a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, joins the Department of Engineering. Bryce has bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and physics from the University of Maryland and a PhD in applied physics from Cornell University. Formerly a postdoctoral researcher at IBM Research, Bryce is interested in societally impactful research in electronics, with a particular focus on applications with positive environmental implications.

Jason Gallicchio

Jason Gallicchio joins the Department of Physics. He comes to California from the University of Chicago via the South Pole, where he worked on the South Pole Telescope. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, and a PhD in physics from Harvard University. Besides his work on the cosmic microwave background, Gallicchio aims to close a loophole in tests of Bell’s inequalities—which confirm the  “spooky action at a distance” between quantum entangled particles—by using telescopes that look at widely separated quasars to generate the random settings in delayed choice experiments.

Jae Hur

After a two-year visiting professorship, Jae Hur joins the Department of Biology. Hur did his undergraduate work at California Institute of Technology and earned his doctorate at Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hur specializes in molecular and cellular biology with an emphasis on aging and longevity.

Salvador Plascencia

Salvador Plascencia joins the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts as an assistant professor of creative writing. Plascencia completed his undergraduate work at Whittier College, his master of arts in English at the University of Southern California and his master of fine arts in creative writing at Syracuse University. He is the author of a novel, The People of Paper, and his writing has been widely anthologized. He has taught at Pitzer College, Pomona College, the University of California (Riverside and Davis), USC and Cal Arts.

Matthew Spencer

A visiting professor last year, Matthew Spencer continues his role in the Department of Engineering, but with the new title of assistant professor. Spencer completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completes his doctorate in electrical engineering at University of California, Berkeley this year. His interests include engineering education, digital and mixed-signal circuit design, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and simulation techniques.