To reach an SMU expert, please call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or e-mail news@smu.edu
Anthropology
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Caroline Brettell
Anthropology Professor and Department Chair
Technology's effect on immigration, trends of new immigration gateway cities such as Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis, and the challenges of women immigrants. Research includes anthropology of Europe; migration and ethnicity; folk religion; and cross-cultural perspectives on gender.
Sunday Eiselt
Anthropology Professor
Archaeological ceramics and pottery manufacturing, community-based archaeology, the historical archaeology of Native and Hispanic people of the Southwest, and the effects of colonialism on indigenous cultural identities and traditions in the Spanish borderlands.
David Meltzer
Anthropology Professor
The origins, antiquity, and adaptations of the first Americans who colonized the North American continent at the end of the Ice Age, including how these hunter-gatherers met the challenges of significant climate change.
Neely Myers
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Works at the intersections of culture, gender, global mental health, madness, trauma, neuroanthropology, health disparities, and human rights.
Nia Parson
Anthropology Professor
Interpersonal and collective forms of violence, and mental and physical health and how they relate to gender.
Carolyn Smith-Morris
Associate Professor of Anthropology
As a medical anthropologist, she studies how people in different cultural settings experience health and illness.
Arts
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James Hart
Director of Arts Entrepreneurship and Professor of Practice
Arts management and arts entrepreneurship.
Sam Holland
Dean of Meadows School of the Arts and Professor of Music
Arts and the community, music, learning to play the piano.
Zannie Voss
Director, SMU DataArts and Arts Management Professor
Arts management, including cultural event attendance, and arts entrepreneurship.
Business
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Michael Cox 
Director, O’Neil Center for Global Markets & Freedom
Impact of competitive market forces on freedom and prosperity in the global economy.
Michael Davis
Senior Lecturer
Business trends and crises
Dan Howard
Marketing Professor
Consumer behavior, advertising, marketing, marketing research and retail marketing.
Albert Niemi
Professor of Economics and the O’Neil Chair in Global Markets and Freedom
Economic growth, economic forecasting and American business history.
Bernard Weinstein
Business Professor
National and local economy, economic development, public policy and taxation, and economic impact.
Campus Life
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Deanie Kepler
Former Director of Parent & Family Programs
Student-parent relationships, adjusting to campus life, roommates, preparing for final exams, how university life changes students.
Chemistry
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Elfi Kraka
Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry; Head of the Computational & Theoretical Chemistry Group (CATCO) at SMU
An expert in computational chemistry, quantum mechanics, and drug discovery.
Climate Change
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Corporate Communications
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Maria Dixon Hall
Associate Corporate Communications Professor and SMU Chief Diversity Officer
Maria Dixon Hall’s primary research interests are organizational strategy and planning, as well as, the intersection of power, identity, and culture in corporate, non-profit, and religious organizations.
Cyber Security and the Internet
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Suku Nair
Vice Provost for Research and Chief Innovation Officer
Computer Science and Engineering Professor
Cyber security and fault-tolerant computing.
Mitch Thornton
Computer Science and Engineering Professor
Hardware Security including IoT and embedded systems, system and network modeling, computer architecture, quantum computing, and formal methods
Dispute Resolution
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Betty Gilmore
Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management
A licensed clinical psychologist, she specializes in conflict engagement, human rights, communication and cross-cultural issues
John Potter
Professor, Center for Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management
Active practitioner in dispute resolution and conflict management. He has mediated more than 3,000 disputes with most of those occurring in the health care field
Earthquakes
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Heather DeShon
Earth Sciences Professor and Department Chair
Leader of the team researching the cause of recent earthquakes in the North Texas area; earthquake generation, volcano seismology and plate tectonics.
Brian Stump
Earth Sciences Professor
Seismic wave propagation, earthquake source theory and explosions as a source of seismic waves, and science and politics in the nuclear age.
More Earthquakes Experts
Earthquakes triggered by human activity have been happening in Texas since at least 1925, and they have been widespread throughout the state ever since.
Economics
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Cullum Clark
Director, Bush Institute - SMU Economic Growth Initiative
J.H. Cullum Clark, Ph.D., is founding director of the SMU Economics Center, which has a mission of producing and promoting policy research on major economic issues affecting North Texas and the wider U.S. and global economy.
Michael Cox
Director, O’Neil Center for Global Markets & Freedom
Impact of competitive market forces on freedom and prosperity in the global economy.
Michael Davis
Senior Lecturer
Business trends and crises.
Tom Fomby
Economics Professor
Economic forecasting and data mining.
Dan Howard
Marketing Professor
Consumer behavior, advertising, marketing, marketing research and retail marketing.
Daniel Millimet
Economics Professor and Department Chair
Environmental economics.
Albert Niemi
Professor of Economics and the O’Neil Chair in Global Markets and Freedom, economic forecasting and American business history.
Bernard Weinstein
Business Professor
National and local economy, economic development, public policy and taxation, and economic impact.
Education
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Jill Allor
Education Professor
Reading acquisition for students with and without disabilities, including students with learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities.
Mark Chancey
Religious Studies Professor
Recognized authority on the constitutional, political and academic issues raised by Bible courses in public schools.
Leanne Ketterlin Geller
Education Professor
Mathematics education, including procedures and decision-making targeting student needs.
Peter Weyand
Physiology Professor
Human performance limits, such as how fast humans can run.
Energy
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Bruce Bullock
Director, Maguire Energy Institute
Management, marketing and policy issues related to the energy industry, including oil, gas, wind and geothermal.
John Lowe
Law Professor
Oil and gas production regulations, as well as energy policy, U.S. oil policy in the Middle East and international arbitration.
Engineering and Humanity
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Andrew Quicksall
Engineering Professor
Drinking water safety in refugee camps.
Ethics
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Rita Kirk
Director, Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs
Ethics analysis and social media as a campaign tool.
Tom Mayo
Law Professor
Medical ethics, health care law, bioethics, medical-legal humanities, constitutional law, family law, administrative law and legislation.
Evolution
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Mark Chancey
Religious Studies Professor
Recognized authority on the constitutional, political and academic issues raised by Bible courses in public schools.
Pia Vogel
Biology Professor
Evolutionary science and scientific inquiry.
Fashion & Media
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Jenny B. Davis
Professor of Practice in Fashion Media
Jenny Davis focuses on fashion trends, the business of fashion, and streetwear fashion and culture.
Geothermal Energy
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Maria Richards
Geothermal Lab Coordinator
Geothermal energy -- the use of the earth's natural heat to general electrical power.
Games - Electronic
Gary Brubaker
Director of The Guildhall at SMU
Has extensive experience in the games industry, having served as a development director, a manager of core technology, and lead programmer.
Health Care Issues
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Eric Bing
Professor of Global Health
Worldwide health issues and initiatives, obstacles to adequate health care, health care in Third World countries.
Nathan Cortez
Law Professor
Health law, administrative law, and FDA law, as well as emerging markets in health care and biotechnology.
Tom Mayo
Law Professor
Medical ethics, health care law, bioethics, medical-legal humanities, constitutional law, family law, administrative law and legislation.
Carolyn Smith-Morris
Associate Professor of Anthropology
As a medical anthropologist, she studies how people in different cultural settings experience health and illness.
History
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Edward F. Countryman
History Professor
Professor Countryman's career has been spent exploring the social consequences of cultural clashes in America.
Melissa Barden Dowling
Associate History Professor and Director of Classical Studies
Professor Dowling is a specialist in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and related topics.
Jeffrey Engel
Associate Professor Director of the Center for Presidential History Presidential Studies American Diplomatic History
Jeffrey A. Engel, Ph.D., is an award-winning American history scholar and director of the Center for Presidential History at SMU. He is an expert on the U.S. presidency and American diplomatic history.
Andrew Graybill
History Professor
Director, Clements Center for Southwest Studies
Professor Graybill's primary research interest is the North American West, with particular interest in expansion, borders, race, violence, and the environment.
Alexis McCrossen
History Professor
Alexis McCrossen's work is part of an emerging area in historical research, temporal studies, a new way of looking at the past through the study of measurement, importance and recognition of time.
Human Rights
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Rick Halperin
Director, Human Rights Program
Human rights, genocide, and historical and current abuse of human rights in various countries. He is past chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA.
Immigration
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Caroline Brettell
Anthropology Professor and Department Chair
Technology's effect on immigration, trends of new immigration gateway cities such as Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis, and the challenges of women immigrants.
James Hollifield
Director, John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies
Global migration, immigration assimilation in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Pia Orrenius
Fellow, John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies
The causes and consequences of Mexico–U.S. migration, illegal immigration, and U.S. immigration policy.
Other Immigration Experts
Immigration continues to be an issue after decades of wrangling by both major political parties.
Journalism
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Jake Batsell
Associate Professor and William J. O'Neil Chair in Business Journalism
Jenny B. Davis
Professor of Practice in Fashion Media
Jenny Davis focuses on fashion trends, the business of fashion, and streetwear fashion and culture.
Tony Pederson
Tony Pederson's teaching focuses on media ethics, and he has written extensively on the subject and serves as a local resource for media in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Jared Schroeder
Associate Professor Jared Schroeder specializes in First Amendment law, particularly as it relates to freedom of expression in virtual spaces, how information flows and how individuals come to understandings in democratic society.
Jayne Suhler
Jayne Suhler teaches a range of Journalism courses including advanced reporting, literary journalism and feature writing, and has helped develop curriculum for the division’s fashion media program.
Karen Thomas
Karen Thomas has spent more than 25 years in the trenches of daily journalism, working as a feature writer specializing in family issues, narrative writing and column and essay writing.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at SMU
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a standing-room-only audience in SMU's McFarlin Auditorium on March 17, 1966. Read more.
Legal Matters
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Lackland Bloom
Law Professor
Freedom of speech, the rhetoric of Supreme Court opinions, copyright, and constitutional law.
Dale Carpenter
The Judge William Hawley Atwell Chair of Constitutional Law
Professor Carpenter teaches and writes about Constitutional Law, as well as LGBT Rights and the Law. The winner of numerous awards, he also has taught Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law.
Anthony Colangelo
Gerald J. Ford Research Fellow and Professor of Law
Professor Anthony Colangelo’s scholarly and teaching interests are in the fields of Conflict of Laws, Civil Procedure, U.S. Foreign Relations Law, and Private and Public International Law and Theory.
Nathan Cortez
Adelfa Botello Callejo Endowed Professor of Law in Leadership and Latino Studies, and Associate Dean for Research
Health law, administrative law, food and drug law, and the legislative process, as well as emerging international markets in health care and biotechnology and cross-border health care.
Julie Forrester Rogers
Law Professor
Property, real estate transactions, and land use, as well as real estate finance, predatory lending, and bankruptcy law.
Jeffrey Kahn
Law Professor
American constitutional law, Russian law, human rights, and counterterrorism, right to travel and national security.
Tom Mayo
Law Professor
Medical ethics, health care law, bioethics, medical-legal humanities, constitutional law, family law, administrative law and legislation.
Natalie Nanasi
Law Professor
Teaches and supervises students who represent gender-based violence victims and those involved in immigration issues.
Meghan Ryan
Law Professor
Criminal law and procedure, torts, and law and science, including the impact of evolving science and technology on criminal convictions and punishment.
Marc Steinberg
Law Professor
Securities law, corporate law and business ethics.
Jessica Dixon Weaver
Law Professor
Academic interests range from the psychoanalysis of race and gender to French literature.
Liberal Arts & the Humanities
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Thomas DiPiero
Dean of Dedman College and professor in the Departments of English and World Languages and Literatures
Academic interests include the psychoanalysis of race and gender, French literatures, value of liberal arts education, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
Locomotion and Running
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Peter Weyand
Professor of Applied Physiology and Biomechanics
One of the world’s foremost experts on human performance, Peter G. Weyand, Ph. D., is a frequent source for journalists worldwide on the topic of performance limits such as how fast humans can run.
Lottery and Powerball - Chances of Winning
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Scott Norris
Associate Professor of Mathematics
An expert on the subject who has been interviewed by news media on the likelihood of winning the lottery or the Powerball.
Mathematics Education - Importance of
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Thomas DiPiero
Dean of Dedman College and professor in the Departments of English and World Languages and Literatures
Academic interests include the psychoanalysis of race and gender, French literatures, value of liberal arts education, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
Leanne Ketterlin Geller
Education Professor
Director of Research in Mathematics Education and Director of K-12 STEM Initiatives
Mathematics education, including procedures and decision-making targeting student needs.
Scott Norris
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Says of mathematics, "Of all the classes a student might take during a college career, I believe mathematics offers some of the greatest potential for overall intellectual development."
Mental Health
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Neely Myers
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Works at the intersections of culture, gender, global mental health, madness, trauma, neuroanthropology, health disparities, and human rights.
Oldest Christmas Card
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What is believed to be one of the first mass-produced Christmas cards -- dating back some 175 years -- can be found among the extensive special collections of Bridwell Library at SMU's Perkins School of Theology. Read more.
Organizational Management
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Paleontology
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Louis Jacobs
Emeritus Professor and President, ISEM (Institute for the Study of Earth and Man)
Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Physics
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Jodi Cooley
Associate Physics Professor
The nature of dark matter, neutrino physics.
Fred Olness
Physics Professor
Elementary particle physics, origin of the universe, quantum mechanics, "Physics Circus" and CERN-related experiments.
Steve Sekula
Physics Professor and Department Chair
Experimental high energy physics and high-performance computing.
Krista Lynne Smith
Assistant Professor of Physics
Observational astrophysicist specializing in star formation in distant galaxies and the environments of super black holes.
Ryszard Stroynowski
Physics Professor
Experimental high energy particle physics and the structure of matter. Since 1996 he has worked on the ATLAS project at Large Hadron Collider and participated recently in the discovery of the Higgs particle.
Politics and Political Discourse
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Cal Jillson
Political Science Professor
Texas and national politics, political behavior, elections and political strategy. Books he has written include The American Dream, Lone Star Tarnished and Texas Politics: Governing the Lone Star State.
Rita Kirk
Director, Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs
Ethics analysis and social media as a campaign tool.
Joe Kobylka
Political Science Professor and Department Chair
Supreme Court, Constitutional law, judicial politics and American political thought.
Lynn Stokes
Statistical Science Professor
Surveys, polls and sampling, as well as in non-sampling survey errors, such as errors by interviewers and respondents.
Ben Voth
Director of debate and associate professor, Dedman College
Debate, political argument, international human rights and genocide
Matthew Wilson
Political Science Professor
The politics and voting behavior of religious voters, as well as public opinion, elections, religion and politics, and political psychology.
Other Political Experts
More SMU faculty experts are available to discuss the latest political developments from a variety of angles.
Psychology
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George Holden
Psychology Professor
Parent-child relationships; the nature and consequences of parents spanking and yelling at children; causes and consequences of family violence; child-rearing and parenting; and child maltreatment.
Ernest Jouriles
Psychology Professor
Children's responses to marital conflict and why certain types of marital conflict are more detrimental to children than others.
Renee McDonald
Psychology Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs (Dedman College)
Child adjustment problems, such as aggression and antisocial behavior, associated with exposure to family conflict and violence.
Religion and Theology
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Mark Chancey
Religious Studies Professor
The Gospels, the historical Jesus, early Judaism, archaeology and the Bible.
Craig C. Hill
Dean of Perkins School of Theology
New Testament scholar
Teaching
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Alexandra Pavlakis
Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Leadership
Her research focuses on the ways in which various policies and the actions of schools and communities mold the schooling experiences of homeless, highly mobile, and low-income families.
Video Games
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Steve Stringer
Deputy Director, Game Lab – SMU Guildhall
Can discuss Esports and their appeal to consumers, video game development and video games for simulation and training.
Corey Clark
Deputy Director of Research at SMU Guildhall
Can discuss game-based learning, human computational gaming, online gaming for data visualization, and data mining and machine learning.
Volcanoes
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James Quick
Earth Sciences Professor, Dean of the Moody School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, and Associate Vice President for Research
Volcanoes, early warning of eruptions, dangers of active volcanoes, volcanic ash.
Women and Disparity
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Anne Lincoln
Associate Professor of Sociology
Disparity between women and men in education, in the labor market, in the culture industry and in science careers.
Click here for an alphabetical list of experts.
SMU Experts by Subject in the News