13 new faculty to join the ranks of the FAS

Façade of Warner House during the day
January 25, 2017

As of January 1st, 2017, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has welcomed 13 new tenured and tenure-track faculty members to Yale.

Conventionally, scholars recruited to join the FAS during Spring as opposed to Fall term, come from the sciences and engineering, a necessary delay given the time-consuming process of transferring a lab from one institution to another. And true to form, this semester, 10 of our incoming faculty will join the departments of Applied Physics, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Geology & Geophysics, MCDB, Physics and Electrical Engineering. Dragomir Radev, senior faculty in the Computer Science Department, has dedicated himself to the boundary-pushing field of natural language processing, while Rajit Manohar of Electrical Engineering, explores the nuances of computer architecture at the Yale Computer Systems Lab. The prominent scientist, Vidvuds Ozolins studies the intricacies of solid state and materials physics through complex modeling, and will join the Applied Physics faculty. In addition, 7 new assistant professors begin their academic careers in the sciences and engineering at Yale; the FAS is privileged to receive them and support their unique paths of research.

Three new faculty remain—each a senior level professor in the humanities or social sciences. With great fortune, we welcome two new members to the English Department, both globally recognized scholars with a history of field-defining work: Joe Cleary, counted among the greatest living scholars of modern Irish literature, and John Durham Peters, whose writings in media history and social theory are particularly salient in our time. Finally, Nicholas Turk-Browne, professor of psychology, will continue his neuroscientific research here, furthering our collective understanding of the way cognitive processes interact.

This addition complements the 25 faculty who began in Fall of 2016, leading to a total of 38 new FAS academics in the 2016-2017 year. Their collective excellence, both historically and extending into the future, is sure to enrich the vibrancy of our Yale community.

Below is a complete list of the 13 Faculty, their departmental affiliations, links to their respective online bios and which institutions they are joining us from: 

David Breslow, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology, joining us from Stanford University.

Joe Cleary, Professor of English, joining us from Maynooth University.

Amir Haji Akbari Balou, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, joining us from Princeton University.

Stavroula Hatzios, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and Faculty affiliate at the Microbial Sciences Institute, joining us from Harvard Medical School.

Michael Mak, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, joining us from MIT.  

Rajit Manohar, John C. Malone Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Computer Science, joining us from Cornell University.

Nir Navon, Assistant Professor of Physics, joining us from the University of Cambridge.

Laura Newburgh, Assistant Professor of Physics, joining us from the University of Toronto

Vidvuds Ozolins, Professor of Applied Physics and Faculty affiliate at the Energy Sciences Institute, joining us from UCLA.

John Peters, Professor of English and Film & Media Studies, joining us from the University of Iowa.

Dragomir Radev, Professor of Computer Science, joining us from the University of Michigan.

Alan Rooney, Assistant Professor of Geology & Geophysics, joining us from Harvard University.

Nicholas Turk-Browne, Professor of Psychology, joining us from Princeton University.

For more information on the faculty who have joined us in Fall of 2016, click HERE