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Donna Riley, PH.D.
Associate Professor of Engineering
Donna Riley's work combines methods in engineering and the social sciences to characterize and communicate chemical risk. She seeks to integrate quantitative modeling of chemical risks (from sources to exposure endpoints) with an understanding of the ways in which human beliefs and behavior influence risk. Recent projects have involved characterizing the risks of mercury use as part of religious and folk traditions in Latino and Caribbean communities, and developing improved consumer-product warnings
 In 2005 Riley received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for implementing pedagogies of liberation, based on the work of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and others, into engineering education. Aspects of liberative pedagogies that are operationalized in Riley's classrooms include connecting course material to student experience, emphasizing students as authorities in the classroom, integrating ethics and policy considerations in the context of social justice, problematizing science as objectivity, and de-centering western (and male) civilization. Her work capitalizes on the intimate, creative and collaborative environment at Smith, where intentional learners grow into critical thinkers and reflective actors.
Riley received her Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton University. Her dissertation work employed indoor air quality models to characterize chemical exposures from consumer product use, and to evaluate the effectiveness of different risk-reduction strategies. As the Clayton Postdoctoral Fellow in Industrial Ecology at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University and later as a AAAS Environmental Science and Engineering Fellow assigned to the Superfund Office of the Environmental Protection Agency, Riley focused on indoor exposures to elemental mercury.
Riley was pleased to join the faculty at Smith, where her interdisciplinary background helps students make the connections between engineering and other liberal arts disciplines.
In 2008, Riley published Engineering and Social Justice [Morgan and Claypool], encouraging all engineers to seek social change.
Riley's extramural activities include running, cooking, hiking, working for social justice, and spending time with Willow, her gray tabby cat. |
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