FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
INSPIRATION IN THE CLASSROOM DISTINGUISHED LEADERS SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE
D Dr. Yafeng Xia
Dr. Omar Tliba
Dr. Bhaskar Das
22
LIUMAGAZINE | Fall 2020
r. Yafeng Xia joined LIU in the fall of 2003, and is presently senior professor of social sciences at Long Island University, Brooklyn. A leading scholar on Chinese foreign relations and U.S.China relations during the Cold War, Dr. Xia was a former public policy scholar and fellow at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has presented his works at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, the Wilson Center, the United States Institute of Peace, and many prestigious Chinese universities. Dr. Xia is the author of Negotiating with the Enemy: U.S.-China Talks During the Cold War, 1949–1972 (2006), which won the 2010 Abraham Krasnoff Memorial Award for Scholarly Achievement. He is coauthor of Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History, with Zhihua Shen (2015); Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1959–1973: A New History, with Danhui Li (2018); and A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976, with Zhihua Shen (2018). He has also published many articles on Cold War history and Chinese foreign relations.
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r. Omar Tliba is an NIH-funded professor, author, internationallyrecognized researcher, and pulmonary pharmacology pioneer. Dr. Tliba was an associate professor at the Institute of Translational Medicine and Science at Rutgers Medical School. Before that, he was founding faculty at Thomas Jefferson College of Pharmacy. Dr. Tliba has over 23 years of research expertise in the area of allergic diseases. His primary research interests are studying the pathogenesis of chronic lung diseases with a particular emphasis on asthma and COPD, specifically difficult-to-treat patients who suffer from severe asthma, a heterogeneous disease that is refractory to current therapy including corticosteroids. Dr. Tliba has pioneered the concept that airway structural cells such as airway smooth muscle may also orchestrate and perpetuate airway inflammation. Additionally, he has described novel mechanisms for studying corticosteroids insensitivity and has identified targets in remediating corticosteroids resistance. Dr. Tliba has received multiple NIH grants in the last 15 years including K99, R00, R21, and R01s grants in addition to grants awarded from prestigious foundations such as Parker B. Francis Families and The American Lung Association. He is a reviewer of
