Celebrating FAS faculty achievements

To: All FAS Faculty and Staff
Cc: FAS Steering, FAS Dean’s Office, OPAC, President’s Office, Provost’s Office, University Cabinet, Development

[Summary: Congratulations to FAS faculty honorees!]

Dear colleagues,

As we welcome the start of spring, I invite you to join me in celebrating the exceptional achievements of our community. I’m pleased to share this spectacular list of some of those in the FAS who have recently been honored for their work.

This list largely includes awards and honors announced since June 2023 that have been shared with the FAS Dean’s Office by department and program chairs. There are likely some that we have missed: if you received an award, honor, or prize in the latter half of 2023 or early months of 2024 that is not listed here, please share it with us by emailing fas.dean@yale.edu and we will be sure to include it in a future update.
 

FAS-wide Awards and Prizes

Last June, I had the pleasure of announcing the recipients of several FAS-wide prizes: We presented the Faculty of Arts and Science Dean’s Award for Inclusion and Belonging to Claire Bowern, Professor of Linguistics and of Anthropology; Wendy Gilbert, Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and of American Studies; and Rebecca Toseland, Senior Lecturer in Economics.

In addition, four FAS faculty members were honored for scholarly achievements in their respective fields: Jill Jarvis, Assistant Professor of French, received the Samuel ’60 and Ronnie ’72 Heyman Prize; Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Zhou Fan, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science; and Juan Lora, Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, each received the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize.
 

Named Professorships

Since June of 2023, one of our FAS colleagues has been named to a Sterling Professorship – Yale’s highest academic honor: 

•  Scott Miller was appointed Sterling Professor of Chemistry

In addition, in 2023 and 2024, the university announced that the following FAS faculty have been appointed to named professorships, in recognition of their achievements and scholarship:

• Jessica Brantley was appointed the Frederick W. Hilles Professor of English
• Ruth Blake was appointed the Edward P. Bass (BS ’67, ARTA ’72) Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and of Environment
• Richard Bribiescas was appointed the Clayton Stephenson/Yale Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
• Dominique Brancher was appointed the Henri Peyre Professor of French
• Helen Caines was appointed the Horace D. Taft (B.A. 1949) Professor of Physics
• Joe Cleary was appointed the John M. Schiff Professor of English
• Enrique De La Cruz was appointed the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
• Thierry Emonet was appointed the Lewis B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Professor of Physics
• Eckart Frahm was appointed the John M. Musser Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
• Beverly Gage was appointed the John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History
• Karsten Heeger was appointed the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics
• Marina Halac was appointed the Stanley B. Resor (B.A. 1901) Professor of Economics
• Millicent Marcus was appointed the Sarai Ribicoff Professor of Italian Studies
• Mushfiq Mobarak was appointed the Jerome Kasoff ’54 Professor of Management and Economics
• Gerard Padró I Miquel was appointed the Samuel C. Park Jr. (B.A. 1925) Professor of Economics and Political Science
• Jutta Joormann was appointed the Richard Ely Professor of Psychology
• Kia Nobre was appointed the Wu Tsai Professor of Psychology
• Wendy Berry Mendes was appointed the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology
• Sam Raskin was appointed the James E. English Professor of Mathematics
• Nicholas Sambanis was appointed the Kalsi Family Professor of Political Science
• Paul Tipton was appointed the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics 
• Jing Tsu was appointed the Jonathan D. Spence Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature

Faculty Honors

The following faculty received honors recognizing the significance of their contributions to their respective fields of study over the course of their careers: 

• Joseph Altonji, Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Economics and Professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and of Management, has received the Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Contributions to Labor Economics. 
• William Jorgensen, Sterling Professor of Chemistry, has been named the recipient of the American Chemical Society’s 2024 Arthur C. Cope Award for his ongoing achievements in organic chemistry.
• Kia Nobre, Wu Tsai Professor of Psychology, was awarded the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s 2024 Fred Kavli Distinguished Career Contributions Award.
• Scott Miller, Sterling Professor of Chemistry, was presented the 2022 Ira Remsen Award by the Maryland Section of the American Chemical Society.
• Stuart Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Lisbon, to be conferred this summer.
• Phillip Atiba Solomon, Carl I. Hovland Professor of African American Studies, was awarded the 2023 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association, and the 2023 Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.  

FAS and FAS-affiliated faculty have received awards for research, writing, service, and creative activities across fields that represent the breadth and depth of the FAS:

• Sybil Alexandrov, Senior Lector II in Spanish and Portuguese, received the Elga R. Wasserman Courage, Clarity, and Leadership Award from the Women Faculty Forum.
• Joerg Bewersdorf, Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Cell Biology and Professor of Physics and Biomedical Engineering; Jon Ellman, Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Pharmacology; and Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Dermatology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, received the Yale Faculty Innovation Award.
• Ned Blackhawk, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies, has won the National Book Award for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, which is also a New Yorker Best Book of 2023, a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2023, an Esquire Best Book of 2023, an NPR “Book We Love” for 2023, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023.
• Ivano Dal Prete, Senior Lecturer in History, won the Helen & Howard Marraro Prize for best book in Italian History from the American Catholic Historical Association for his book, On the Edge of Eternity: The Antiquity of the Earth in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
• Michel Devoret, F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics, and Robert Schoelkopf, Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics, received the Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences.
• Cécile Fromont, Professor in the History of Art, and Didac Queralt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, have been awarded the 2023 international book prizes by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. Fromont received the 2023 Gustav Ranis International Book Prize for best book for Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola. Queralt received the 2023 Gaddis Smith International Book Prize for best first book by a Yale ladder faculty member for Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance.
• John Geanakoplos, James Tobin Professor of Economics, was awarded the Stephen A. Ross Prize by the Financial Economics Foundation for Advancement of Research in Financial Economics for the paper “Leverage Cycles and the Anxious Economy,” written with Ana Fostel PhD ‘05.  
• Karsten Heeger, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, and the Daya Bay collaboration have been awarded the 2023 European Physical Society High Energy Particle Physics prize for an outstanding contribution to high energy physics.
• Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Dermatology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, has received the 2023 Dr. William E. Paul Distinguished Innovator Award from the Lupus Research Alliance.
• Frank Keil, Frank C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology and Professor of Linguistics, was awarded the 2024 Cognitive Development Society Book Award and the 2024 Eleanor Maccoby Book Award in Developmental Psychology for his book, Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science. 
• Anthony Koleske, Ensign Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and of Neuroscience; and David Spiegel, Professor of Chemistry and of Pharmacology, were awarded 2023 Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale Awards.
• Millicent Marcus, Sarai K. Ribicoff Professor of Italian Studies, was the recipient of the 2023 American Association of Teachers of Italian Book Award in the category of Performance and Visual Award for her new book, Italian Film in the Present Tense.
• Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Associate Professor of Anthropology, has been named a 2024 recipient of the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship in recognition of his work coediting the catalogue for a recent exhibition of Maya art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 
• Alan Mikhail, Chace Family Professor of History, was awarded the 2023 Victor Turner Prize for his book, My Egypt Archive.
• Meghan O’Rourke, Editor of The Yale Review and Professor in the Practice of English, and The Yale Review staff were nominated for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
• Nana Quarshie, Assistant Professor of History and of Anthropology and in the History of Medicine, was awarded two article prizes: the Walter D. Love Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies and the biennial Forum for History of Human Science prize for his article “Psychiatry on a Shoestring: West Africa and the Global Movements of Deinstitutionalization,” published by Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2022.
• Nicole Sheriko, Assistant Professor of English, received the 2023 Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize from the American Society for Theater Research for her essay “Prop Culture: The Shakespearean Clown and his Marotte,” published in Shakespeare Quarterly, 2021.
• Lloyd Sy, Lecturer in English, was the Jeopardy Champions Wildcard winner on January 24.
• Jeanine Tesori, Lecturer in the Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater, was awarded the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo.
• Shawkat Toorawa, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and of Comparative Literature, was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2023-2024.
• Shane Vogel, Professor of English and African American Studies, received the 2023 Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize from the American Society for Theater Research for his essay “Waiting for Godot and the Theater of the Absurd,” published in PMLA, 2022.

A number of our early career colleagues have been recognized in their fields:

• Four FAS faculty members have received an Air Force Research Laboratory Young Investigators Award: Charles Brown, Assistant Professor of Physics; Allison Didychuk, Assistant Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Yu He, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics; and Tianyu Zhu, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.
• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named five Yale scholars as recipients of a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship: Eduardo Dávila, Assistant Professor of Economics; Zhou Fan, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science; Stavroula Hatzios, Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and of Chemistry; Ryota Iijima, Associate Professor of Economics; and Junliang Shen, Assistant Professor of Mathematics.
• Charles Brown, Assistant Professor of Physics, was awarded the Joseph A. Johnson Award for Excellence from the American Institute of Physics and the National Society of Black Physicists. 
• Pincelli Hull, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has been named a 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath fellow.
• Julian Jara-Ettinger, Associate Professor of Psychology and Assistant Professor of Computer Science, was awarded a Jacobs Foundation Early Career Fellowship.
• Samuel McDougle, Assistant Professor of Psychology, will receive the Society for the Neural Control of Movement’s 2024 Early Career Award.
• Noah Planavsky, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is one of four young researchers worldwide highlighted by Nature for making an impact in the sciences. 
• Shruti Puri, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics, was awarded the Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing. 
• Philipp Strack, Professor of Economics, has received the 2023 Bodossaki Foundation Distinguished Young Scientist Award.

A number of our colleagues have been elected to academic organizations and academies, or have been named to leadership roles:

• Enrique De La Cruz, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Erika Edwards, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and of Environment; Vanessa Ezenwa, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, Professor of Anthropology and of Environment; David Lewkowicz, Associate Research Scientist in the Child Study Center and Professor (Adjunct) of Psychology; and Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and of Physics, have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Orazio Attanasio, Cowles Professor of Economics; Claire Bowern, Professor of Linguistics and of Anthropology; Hazel Carby, Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor of American Studies; Leonid Glazman, Donner Professor of Physics; Yair Minsky, Einar Hille Professor of Mathematics; Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics, were elected new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Michel Devoret, F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics and Physics; and Anna Marie Pyle, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Professor of Chemistry, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
• Susan Baserga, Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and of Genetics and of Therapeutic Radiology, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
• Ronald Breaker, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, was elected to the Class of 2024 by the American Academy of Microbiology. 
• Sarah Demers, Professor of Physics, was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. 
• Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and of Physics, has been elected a fellow of the American Astronomical Society.
• John Wettlaufer, A. M. Bateman Professor of Geology and Geophysics and Professor of Mathematics and of Physics, was selected as 2023 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellow.  

Teaching Awards

FAS faculty are among the foremost educators in their fields, and I am thrilled that the university has recognized their achievements in the classroom.

Four FAS faculty members received the Poorvu Family Fund for Academic Innovation Award: Nana Osei Quarshie, Assistant Professor of History and of Anthropology and in the History of Medicine; Ian Turner, Assistant Professor of Political Science and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies; Erika Valdivieso, Assistant Professor of Classics; and Meryem Ezgi Yalçın, Lector in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

The six recipients of the Yale College prizes for exceptional undergraduate teaching, announced in 2023 by Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis, are FAS faculty: John Carlson, Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, received the Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize, awarded to a faculty member who over a long period of service has inspired a great number of students and consistently fostered the learning process both inside and outside the classroom; Evangelia Chalioti, Senior Lecturer in Economics and in Management, was awarded the Richard H. Brodhead ’68 Prize for teaching excellence by a lector or a lecturer; Nilay Hazari, John Randolph Hoffman Professor of Chemistry, was awarded the Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for teaching excellence in the natural sciences; Matsuku Ngame, Senior Lector in French, was awarded the Richard Brodhead ’68 Prize teaching excellence by a lector or a lecturer; Rourke O’Brien, Associate Professor of Sociology and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, was awarded the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for teaching excellence in the social sciences; and Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History, was awarded the Sidonie Miskimin Clauss ‘75 Prize for teaching excellence in the humanities.

Congratulations to all! It is an honor to celebrate the achievements of this community.

With warmest wishes,

Tamar

Tamar Szabó Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science