Celebrating FAS Faculty Achievements

With the holidays upon us, I invite you to join me in celebrating the exceptional achievements of our colleagues. It is a joy to share this spectacular list of some of those in the FAS who have recently been honored for their work.

This list includes awards and honors received by faculty who have primary or fully-joint appointments in the FAS. The awards and honors listed below were announced between April 1, 2024, and December 10, 2024, and 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 between April 1, 2024, and December 10, 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 announcement.

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:

• Edwin Duval, Henri Peyre Professor Emeritus of French, was awarded the Grande Médaille de la Francophonie for 2024 by the Académie Française in December 2024.
• Gilbert Joseph, Farnam Professor Emeritus of History, received the 2024 Distinguished Service Award by the Conference on Latin American History.
• Laura Nasrallah, Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo in September 2024.

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: 

• Julien Berro, Associate Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, received a Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health.
• Lauren Benton, Barton M. Biggs Professor of History, was shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in History for her book They Called it Peace.
• Ned Blackhawk, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History, was awarded the 2024 PROSE Award in North American and US History for his book The Rediscovery of America.
• Ned Blackhawk, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History; Marta Figlerowicz, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature; Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History and African American Studies; Tavia Nyong’o, William Lampson Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and of American Studies; Douglas Rogers, Professor of Anthropology; and Travis Zadeh, Professor of Religious Studies, were awarded 2024 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
• Marijeta Bozovic, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, was awarded the Matei Calinescu Prize by the Modern Language Association for her book Avant-Garde Post—Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union.
• Francesco Casetti, Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies, received the 2024 Limina Award for Best International Book on Film and Media for his book Screening Fears: On Protective Media.
• Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, was named a co-winner of the 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. She was also awarded Honorable Mention for both the 2024 Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize by the French Colonial Historical Society and the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies by the Modern Language Association for her book Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of Haiti.
• Alessandro Giammei, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, was awarded the 2024 Howard R. Marraro Prize by the Modern Language Association and the 2023 AAIS Book Prize for Literary and Cultural Studies by the American Association for Italian Studies for his book Ariosto in the Machine Age.
• Thomas Allen Harris, Professor in the Practice of Film and Media Studies and of African American Studies, received an award from the National Science Foundation in support of his Scientists in the Family project.
• Seth Herzon, Milton Harris ’29 Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry, received the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry.
• Daniel HoSang, Professor of American Studies, was named a 2024 Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
• Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Professor in the Practice of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, won three Tony Awards for his play Appropriate.
• Walter Jetz, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Noah Planavsky, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Anna Pyle, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; and Hailiang Wang, Professor of Chemistry, received the 2024 Yale Faculty Innovation Award.
• Walter Jetz, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and his Map of Life Rapid Assessments team placed second in a five-year competition to explore Earth’s biodiversity held by XPRIZE Rainforest.
• Edwin Ko, Lecturer and Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Linguistics, was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Alice Kaplan, Sterling Professor of French, received a special mention by the jury of the Prix Littéraire Fetkann for her book Baya ou le grand vernissage. 
• Daniel Karell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, received the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award from the American Sociological Association for his article “'Born for a Storm': Hard-Right Social Media and Civil Unrest.”
• Millicent Marcus, Sarai Ribicoff Professor of Italian Studies, won the Bridge Book Award for Best American Non Fiction for her book Italian Film in the Present Tense.
• Chiara Mingarelli, Assistant Professor of Physics, and Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy, won a Frontiers of Science Award in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.
• Martha Muñoz, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was named a 2024 MacArthur “genius” fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
• Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy, was featured in Time Magazine’s 2024 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
• Brandon Ogbunu, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was awarded the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
• Julián Posada, Assistant Professor of American Studies, was awarded the Just Tech fellowship administered by the Social Science Research Council.
• Daniel A. Spielman, Sterling Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Statistics and Data Science, won a Frontiers of Science award in the area of Discrete Geometry and Graph Theory.
• Sarah Stillman, Lecturer in English, won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her article “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away.”
• Philipp Strack, Cowles Foundation Professor of Economics, received the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association.
• Dara Strolovitch, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, was named a co-winner of the 2024 Race, Ethnicity and Politics Best Book Award by the American Political Science Association for her book When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America.
• Noël Valis, Kingman Brewster, Jr. Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, was elected to the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. Valis also received Special Mention by the Victoria Urbano Award for Critical Essay for her 2024 essay “Spanish Lessons” and the 2023 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers for her book Lorca After Life.
• Travis Zadeh, Professor of Religious Studies, was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Middle Eastern Studies by the Modern Language Association of America, the 2024 PROSE Award in World History, and the Parviz Shahriari Book Award for History of Mathematics, Science and Technology for his book Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos.
• The Yale Review received its first National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Congratulations to Meghan O’Rourke, Editor of The Yale Review and Professor in the Practice of English and Creative Writing, and the entire Yale Review staff.

A number of our colleagues received early career awards:

• Charles Brown, Assistant Professor of Physics, received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.
• Caitlin Davis, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was named a Beckman Foundation Young Investigator.
• Eduardo Higino da Silva Neto, Assistant Professor of Physics, and Ian Moult, Assistant Professor of Physics, received awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program.
• Sarah Slavoff, Associate Professor of Chemistry and of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, received the 2024 ACS Chemical Biology Young Investigator Award from the Division of Biological Chemistry of the American Chemistry Society.

Several of our colleagues have been elected to academies:

• Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, and Lauren Benton, Barton M. Biggs Professor of History, were elected International Fellows of the British Academy.
• Susan Baserga, William H. Fleming, M.D. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Kia Nobre, Wu Tsai Professor of Psychology; and Hee Oh, Abraham Robinson Professor of Mathematics, were elected new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Nicholas Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, and James Mayer, Charlotte Fitch Roberts Professor of Chemistry, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
• Enrique M. De La Cruz, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, has been elected as a 2025 Biophysical Society Fellow.
• Jane Tylus, Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Italian Studies, was inducted into Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
• Claire Bowern, Professor of Linguistics; Vivian Irish, Eaton Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; and Claudia Valeggia, Professor of Anthropology, were named 2023 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Named Professorships

Since April 2024, the following FAS faculty have been appointed to named professorships in recognition of their achievements and scholarship:

• Daniel Botsman was appointed Sumitomo Professor of History.
• Jeffrey Brock was appointed William S. Massey Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Statistics and Data Science.
• Steven Girvin was appointed Sterling Professor of Physics.
• Robert Gooding-Williams was appointed Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Philosophy.
• Steven Lamoreaux was appointed Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics.
• Konrad Lehnert was appointed Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics.
• Kaivan Munshi was appointed Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Economics.
• Karla Neugebauer was appointed R. Selden Rose Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Professor of Cell Biology.
• Ian Quinn was appointed Allen Forte Professor of Music.
• Peter Salovey was appointed Sterling Professor of Psychology.
• John Schotland was appointed Zhao and Ji Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics.
• Philipp Strack was appointed Cowles Foundation Professor of Economics.
• Shawkat Toorawa was appointed Brand Blanshard Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Professor of Comparative Literature.
• Noël Valis was appointed Kingman Brewster, Jr. Professor of Spanish and Portuguese.
• Yihong Wu was appointed James A. Attwood Professor of Statistics and Data Science.

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.

Two FAS faculty members received the Graduate Mentorship Awards for outstanding commitment to advising and student support: 

• Jennifer Allen, Associate Professor of History, and Grace Kao, IBM Professor of Sociology.  

Six FAS faculty members were recipients of the Yale College prizes for exceptional undergraduate teaching, announced in 2024 by Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis: 

• David Blight, Sterling Professor of History, was awarded the Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for teaching excellence in the humanities.
• Sarah Demers, Professor of Physics, was awarded the Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for teaching excellence in the natural sciences.
• Carlos Eire, the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies, received the Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize.
• John Lafferty, John C. Malone Professor of Statistics and Data Science, was awarded the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for teaching excellence in the social sciences.
• Adriane Steinacker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, and Margherita Tortora, Senior Lector II in Spanish and Portuguese, were awarded the Richard Brodhead ’68 Prize for teaching excellence by instructional faculty.

Congratulations to all! It is an honor to celebrate the achievements of this community, and I am thankful for all you have accomplished.

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