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Instructors

Course Instructors

Edward Schoolman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, History

Dr. Schoolman is associate professor in the history department at the University of Nevada, Reno with a background in archaeology and training as a medieval historian. While his past research has focused on religious practices and aristocracy in Italy, his two current projects have moved in new directions: one on integrating paleoecology and history to understand the intersections of past climate, environment, and societies, and the other on migration and Greek identity before the year 1000.  He has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of Poitiers (France) and Padova (Italy) and held fellowships at the University of Tübingen (Germany), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and during 2022-23, the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies.

Portrait of Fang Jiang, instructorFang Jiang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Psychology

Fang Jiang joined the Department of Psychology faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2015. Her research examines the relationship between brain structure and function/behaviors and the mechanisms underlying such relationship. Ongoing projects in her lab are looking at the impact of aging on cognition and mobility. She uses research methods including neuroimaging and behavioral measures.

She received her doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007. After graduation, she received a postdoctoral fellowship award from the Human Frontier Science Program (2008-2011). In 2013, she was awarded the NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award for her work investigating how cross-modal plasticity might be influenced by the normal functional specialization of a cortical region.

Darren Ripley, Ph.D.
Instructor, Mathematics

A Reno native who’s been working in the educational field for over 28 years, Dr. Ripley enjoys outdoor activities with his friends and his 19-year-old son. He has taught math at all levels of secondary education and all introductory levels of higher education, both at the community college and the university level. This is his nineteenth year at Davidson THINK Summer Institute; he also teaches at the Davidson Academy. His hobbies include, but aren’t limited to, mountain and road biking, snowboarding, playing the banjo and the piano, chess, and gardening. He teaches mathematics because it is the language of science, and feels that science will save the world.

Marin Pilloud, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Anthropology

Marin Pilloud has been with the anthropology department at the University of Nevada, Reno since 2014.  Prior to this position, she was a forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.  She is a board-certified forensic anthropologist and a registered professional archaeologist.  As a biological anthropologist, Dr. Pilloud’s research focuses on studying human skeletal remains in both archaeological and forensic contexts.  In addition to Introduction to Biological Anthropology, she teaches courses in Forensic Anthropology, Bioarchaeology, Human Osteology, Gross Anatomy and Embryology, and Diseases in Antiquity.  Dr. Pilloud loves public outreach and has been in an episode of Expedition Unknown and The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer.  She has numerous published journal articles, book chapters, an edited volume, and co-authored the book Ethics and professionalism in Forensic Anthropology.