Presented by Dr. Allison M. Johnson, Department of English & Comparative Literature
In August 1865, Ora D. Walbridge sat down with a pen in his left hand to produce a specimen of his best business penmanship. Three years earlier, a gunshot had left Walbridge’s right arm paralyzed. When he submitted his penmanship specimen, he joined a unique group of Civil War veterans: the self-proclaimed “Left-Armed Corps.” This talk examines the lives of these veterans in the decades following the conflict to highlight the lasting resonance of missing limbs during national reconciliation. Demographic and biographical information provides insights into how the veterans’ lives were shaped by their service and their wounds.
Allison M. Johnson is an associate professor of English at San José State University. Before joining SJSU, she was a lecturer at UCLA, where she earned her PhD, and UCSB. She is the author of “The Scars We Carve: Bodies and Wounds in Civil War Print Culture” (LSU 2019) and the editor of “The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans” (LSU 2022). Her work has also appeared in the “Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction” and “American Studies Journal.”
Presented by Dr. Mahboubeh (Marjan) Madadi, Department of Marketing and Business Analytics
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men and the fourth leading cause among women in the United States. This study aims to 1) investigate the dynamics of precancerous colonic neoplasia and their progression to colorectal cancer, and 2) develop colorectal cancer surveillance strategies to optimize patient health outcomes. To achieve these goals, we analyze colonoscopy reports from over 40,000 patients collected from four major VA hospitals. Statistical models are developed to capture the dynamics of CRC progression. These insights are then integrated into a reinforcement learning framework to design personalized CRC surveillance policies, ultimately enhancing patients quality of life.
Mahboubeh (Marjan) Madadi expertise is in the areas of operations research, applied probability and statistics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). Her research primarily focuses on optimizing stochastic systems and developing data-driven decision support systems using statistical and mathematical models, along with ML and reinforcement learning techniques. Her research spans both healthcare and manufacturing domains. In healthcare, Dr. Madadi specializes in predictive analysis of patient outcomes and the development of models aimed at optimizing patient health through personalized care. In manufacturing, she has designed predictive and prescriptive models to enhance system operations. Dr. Madadi’s work has received funding from leading organizations, including the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
