Master Classes

Paul Tiffany is a Senior Lecturer at the Berkeley Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses competitive strategy, business, and public policy, leadership and management, the global economy, and global strategy and management. He has taught previously at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the Wharton School. His book The Decline of American Steel was published by Oxford University Press and later offered in a Japanese edition. His book Business Plans for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons), co-authored with Steven Peterson, was a worldwide top-five finalist in the annual Booz Allen/Financial Times “Best Business Book of the Year” award. Professor Tiffany is the recipient of awards for both his research and teaching, including the Anvil Award, presented annually to the outstanding professor in Wharton’s graduate program, the Lindback Award as the outstanding professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Cheit Award as the outstanding professor in the Executive MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Josh Tonies is an artist who works with drawing and the moving image. His work centers around temporary ecological studies that take form as animation, drawing, works on paper and book arts. He is a lecturer on record at University of San Diego and UC San Diego, teaching courses in film, video art, animation and studio arts. He has exhibited his work most recently at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, The Center for Fiction in NYC, Comfort Station in Chicago Illinois and the San Diego Museum of Art.

Mohammad Soltanieh-ha, PhD is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Information Systems department at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Prof. Soltanieh-ha obtained his Ph.D. in computational physics in 2015 from Northeastern University and his research interest revolves around computer vision applications of deep learning in automating histopathological diagnosis in cancer research as well as large scale computing and data science. His teaching experience involves data science programming, big data analytics, and applications of data science in business.

Dr. Ziah Dean is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the National Science Foundation(NSF) Science and Technology  Center(STC) for Cellular Construction at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF has one of the top 10 Medical Schools in U.S.). Dr. Dean completed his BS in Bioengineering at the University of California in 2011 and his PhD at the University of Michigan in 2018 in the area of Biophysics, studying in particular the fate of bacterial populations in the midst of drug combinations. His most recent work involves several projects including the development of a low-cost high resolution holographic microscopes for deployment in both field work and classrooms. Dr. Dean is also studying Microviscosity by analyzing the rotational diffusion of proteins in cells and viscous media. His teaching experience involves both mentorship and research in the areas of biological engineering and biophysics.

Thomas Augst teaches courses in American literature and culture. His writing focuses on literary history of the nineteenth-century, interpreting diverse forms of literacy and media in relation to questions about ethics and self-cultivation, the organization of knowledge, and the cultural politics of modern liberalism. He is the author of The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in 19th Century America (Chicago, 2003), co-editor of Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States (UMass, 2007), and co-editor of Cultural Agencies and American Libraries (2001). He earned his doctorate from Harvard University, and has received research fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. He is project director and with Nicholas Wolf, principle co-investigator of NewYorkScapes, a CAS initiative dedicated to place-based learning and project-based collaboration exploring the documentary record of the city.