Economy, Technology, and People

Lee Branstetter 

Lee Branstetter is an associate professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, with a joint appointment in CMU's Heinz College, School of Public Policy and Management, and its Dietrich College, Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Branstetter is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  He served as the Senior Economist for International Trade and Investment at President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers in 2011-2012.  Before moving to Carnegie Mellon, Branstetterwas the Daniel Stanton Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, where he directed the International Business Program and was affiliated with the Center on Japanese Economy and Business.  Branstetter also served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Economics from 2003-2011. Branstetter received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1996 and his BA from Northwestern University in 1991.

Minking K. Chyu

Dr. Chyu is presently the Leighton and Mary Orr Chair Professor and Chairman of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1986.  He was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University for 13 years before joining the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. His primary research area lies in thermal and material issues relating to energy, power and propulsion systems. He has conducted research projects sponsored by a number of government agencies and turbine industry, such as General Electric, Pratt and Whitney, and Siemens.  Since he joined Pitt, he has initiated a number of collaborative research programs in advanced turbine systems, fuel cells, nanofluids, and thermoelectric conversion.  Professor Chyu is a recipient of four NASA Certificates of Recognition for his contribution on space shuttle main engine program, Air Force Summer Research Fellow, Department of Energy Oak Ridge Research Fellow, and DOE Advanced-Turbine-System Faculty Fellow.  He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aerospace and Aeronautics (AIAA), and a US delegate to the Scientific Council of the International Centre of Heat and Mass Transfer (ICHMT).  He was named the Engineer of The Year by the ASME Pittsburgh Chapter in 2002. In 2007, he was selected as Institute of Advanced Energy Solutions (IAES) Residence Fellow by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Department of Energy (DOE).  He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Heat Transfer, ASME, Advisory Board Member for the International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems, a Guest Editor for AIAA Journal of Propulsion, and a Foreign Editor for the International Journal of Chinese Institute of Mechanical Engineers.  He has published nearly 300 technical papers in archived journals and conference proceedings.

Frayda Cohen

Frayda Cohen is a Senior Lecturer and Undergraduate Adviser for the Women’s Studies Program. She is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests are on children, gender, adoption, population policy, and transnationalism. She has spent several years working in China and is also the Director for the summer 6-week study abroad program, Pitt in China. She regularly teaches courses on gender and food, global feminisms, gendered bodies, and popular culture.

Neil J. Diamant

Dr. Diamant is Professor of Asian Law and Society at Dickinson College and former Chair of the Department of Political Science. He is author of Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968 (2000), Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (2005) and Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949-2007 (2009). Before joining the Dickinson faculty in 2002, he taught Chinese politics at Tel Aviv University in Israel.  His articles on various aspects of Chinese law and society have appeared in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Journal of East Asian Studies, Politics and Society, The Law and Society Review and The China Quarterly, among others. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. He is currently working on political activism among PLA veterans (including lawsuits, petitions, mass protests and online blogging) as well as ideas about constitutionalism in China.

John Helveston

John Paul Helveston is a third year doctoral candidate in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. John's research compares how local factors in China and the U.S. influence the development of hybrid and electric vehicle technologies. His most recent work is on estimating consumer preferences for electrified vehicles in China and the U.S. He is co-advised by Erica Fuchs and Jeremy Michalek, and is a member of the Vehicle Electrification Group, Design Decisions Laboratory, and Global Competitiveness Lab at CMU. John graduated fromVirginia Tech in 2010 with a B.S. in Engineering Science and Mechanics and minors in Chinese and Violin Performance. He is a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese and also an internationally-renowned and award-winning swing dancer. Visit his personal homepage for more information.

Michael Johns

A 1990 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business (GSB), Michael has had an extensive career in consumer marketing consulting and marketing research in Asia over a 21-year period.  He lived and worked in China, Japan and Singapore, before moving backed to his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2012. He is currently an adjunct business professor at Pitt’s Katz GSB and College of Business Administration (CBA).  He also works part-time as an Executive-in-Residence in CBA’s Career Services Center. In Asia, his last role was as a Senior Partner of Mindshare Asia Pacific, based in Singapore.  He was responsible for developing and managing several key regional consulting clients, most notably McDonald’s in China, Japan and Australia. Michael earned his undergraduate degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1984.

Tina Phillips Johnson

Dr. Johnson is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of Chinese Studies at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Her research interests are in medicine and public health in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to numerous articles and lectures, her most recent book is on the history midwifery in early twentieth-century China, entitled Childbirth in Republican China: Delivering Modernity.

Elisabeth Kaske

Dr. Kaske is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at Carnegie Mellon's Department of Modern Languages.  Her research interests are in the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth century China. Her latest book was on the Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895-1919. She is currently working on fiscal history and the sale of public offices under the Qing Dynasty and teaches a course on Officialdom Literature.

Pierre F. Landry

Pierre F. Landry joined Pitt's Department of Political Science in the Summer of 2011. He is also a Research Fellow at the Research Center for the Study of Contemporary China at Peking University and an outside consultant on projects related to governance and rule of law with the United Nations Development Program in Hanoi, Vietnam. Pierre Landry graduated in Economics and Law at Sciences Po in Paris, has an M.A. in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia and received his PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is also an alumnus of the Hopkins-Nanjing program and taught in the Yale-Peking university joint undergraduate program in 2007. His research interests focus on Asian and Chinese politics, comparative local government, quantitative comparative analysis and survey research. Since 2007, he has been a consultant for the Universities Service Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he participates in the development of the Barometer on China's Development (BOCD), a project which aims to build a multidimensional GIS database of county and city development in China. His recent articles have appeared in Political Analysis, The China Quarterly and Comparative Political Studies. Dr. Landry's research has focused on the political management of cadres in China, looking at both the CCP's Formal and Informal channels control over local elites. He is the author of "Authoritarianism and Decentralization: The Party and Local Elites in Post-Deng China", by Cambridge University Press (2008).

Evelyn S. Rawski

Dr. Rwaski holds a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University and is currently Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She has published books on sixteenth and eighteenth-century Chinese agricultural development, elementary literacy, and the emperors and imperial institutions of the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911. She has co-edited conference volumes on popular culture, Chinese death ritual, and ritual music, and co-authored a book on eighteenth-century Chinese society.  Her current project, China and Its Neighbors in Northeast Asian History uses Chinese, Japanese, and Korean primary sources and secondary literature to analyze China’s geopolitical, diplomatic, and cultural relationships with Japan and Korea in the 1500-1800 period.

Donald Sutton

Dr. Sutton, a historian in Carnegie Mellon’s history department, specializes on China’s southern frontiers, with a focus on religion and ethnic relations. Among his publications are a history of the Yunnan Army in the warlord period, an ethnography of martial religious temple cults in 20^th century Taiwan, and numerous articles on the Miao of West Hunan and the Tibetan-Han region in Northwest Sichuan. He is completing with Xiaofei Kang (George Washington University) a 600-year history of a town and a pilgrimage center in this border region.

Khee Poh Lam

Khee Poh Lam is a Professor in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. As an educator, researcher, architect and consultant, Dr. Lam specializes in life cycle building information modeling and computational design support systems for total building performance analysis and building diagnostics. He is currently Carnegie Mellon’s Project Director for the Energy Efficient Buildings Hub, a U.S. DOE Energy Innovation Hub; a member of the Energy Foundation Board of Directors (supporting their China Sustainable Energy Program); and a board member of the Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN), a Best Practice Network (BPN) partner of ClimateWorks, an international network of affiliated organizations. Dr. Lam is a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has been a consultant for several award winning projects in US and Asia. He is currently Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, China and the School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong.