Inspiration in the Classroom

DISTINGUISHED LEADERS SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE

Dr. Yafeng Xia

Dr. Omar Tliba

Dr. Bhaskar Das D 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. D 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

many national and international funding agencies such as the National Institute of Health, British Lung Foundation, MRC and asthma UK, Netherlands Respiratory Society, Singapore National Research Council, and the French National Research Agency. He is also an associate editor of BMC Immunology and editorial board member of multiple prestigious respiratory journals such as The American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, Allergy-Asthma & Clinical Immunology, Toxicogenomics, and International Journal of Molecular Sciences. He is also a reviewer for different high impact journals such as Lancet Respiratory Medicine and Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He is also authored also in various high impact journals such as Annual Review of Physiology, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. Dr. Tliba earned his DVM at El-Tarf School of Veterinary Medicine in Algeria and his PhD and MS in immunology at the University of Francois Rabellais and Pasteur Institute in France.

Dr. Bhaskar Das is a tenured professor of pharmacological science at LIU. He is an adjunct professor in the Weill Cornell Medical College, NY, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Wake Forest School of Medicine. He earned his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, and M.Phil from Delhi University India. He received his Postdoctoral training experience from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard Medical School, and University of Tennessee.

His research interests are to develop with/without boron containing small

Dr. Das is committed to training the next generation of scientists and physicians at LIU.

molecular probes and pharmacological agents targeting mitochondrial, metabolic and oxidative signaling pathways for brain development and diseases. Dr. Das’ laboratory has successfully applied rational design to target single components of different signal transduction pathways (retinoic acid, oxidative stress and metabolic signaling pathways) of relevance for physiology and in embryonic development. To achieve these objectives Dr. Das’ group uses multidisciplinary tools including organic synthesis, molecular modeling, chemical biology, bio-orthogonal chemistry, molecular imaging (radio synthesis of PET, SPECT, MRI ligands and optical probes), molecular therapeutics (in-vitro and in-vivo study), molecular biology, neural stem cell biology, regenerative medicine, and bio-molecular nanotechnology. Dr. Das’ research is supported by NIH, DOD and many foundations. Currently Dr. Das and his group are supported by 10 active NIH grants from different institutes including NINDS, NIDDK, NIAID, NCI, and NIAAA and DOD.

He has been active in training physicians and scientists at all levels. He regularly works with PhD students, residents, fellows, medical students, graduate students, and high school students as a commitment to train the next generation of scientists and physicians. He has 28 world patents (six technologies have been transferred to pharmaceutical companies) and 89 Peer-reviewed publications. He is a reviewer, editor and associate editor on many international journals and also reviewer of many national (NIH, DOD, AHA, NSF, and many foundations) and international (Romania, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Poland, UAE, and India) funding agencies. Based on Dr. Das’ contribution to boron research in June 2014, he received the prestigious “Boron in the Americas Award” (for exceptional service to boron research and commitment to excellence) and many national and international awards. He was awarded as International Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2014), received the Research Collaboration Award from the British Pharmacological Society at the University of Aberdeen (2011), and the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Center (2009).