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February 9, 2005

New faculty

Editor's note: When new faculty arrive at the university—step off the bus, hoist their duffle bags over their shoulders and stare in wonder at the palm trees and short-sleeved shirts—the rest of the Stanford community may be forgiven for not noticing their presence; we are, after all, caught up in the daily hustle and bustle of our duties, and the regular ebb and flow of new faces on campus can go unheeded. Likewise for new faculty promoted through the ranks of Stanford instructors, adjunct professors and visiting fellows. Stanford Report, however, refuses to let these men and women set up shop anonymously (occasionally despite their best efforts). Therefore, without further ado: Introducing the newest appointments to the university's esteemed professoriate. (The following list includes new faculty from all schools except the School of Medicine.)

Natural Sciences, Engineering & Mathematics

Tom Abel, associate professor of physics, came to the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology from Pennsylvania State University. His expertise is in computational cosmology, particularly the formation of the first stars.

Steve Ward Allen, assistant professor of physics, came to the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology from the University of Cambridge. Allen studies ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy in the universe by employing X-ray observations of galaxy clusters.

Zhenan Bao, associate professor of chemical engineering, earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995 and conducted research at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., from then until 2004. Her areas of expertise include organic semiconductor design and synthesis, nanotechnology and flexible electronics.

Wei Cai, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, came to Stanford after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Cai's interests include predicting material strength under diverse conditions, simulating defects, identifying mechanisms of interaction and dislocation across boundaries, and optimizing simulations of long-term processes.

Valdo Durrleman, Szegö Assistant Professor of Mathematics, received his doctorate in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University in June 2004. His expertise is in mathematical finance (implied volatility, model calibration and computational finance) and stochastic processes (Malliavin calculus and rough paths).

Charbel Farhat, a professor who shares his time between the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, came to Stanford after 17 years at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where most recently he served as director of the Center for Aerospace Structures and chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. He is a leading figure in computational engineering and computational sciences, with a broad range of contributions running from fundamental scientific and mathematical developments to their implementation in software and their application to complex engineering problems.

Kelly Gaffney, assistant professor at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, earned a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley in 2001. Gaffney makes "movies" of chemical reactions using unique sources of femtosecond (one-quadrillionth of a second) X-ray pulses in conjunction with femtosecond lasers.

Soren Galatius, Szegö Assistant Professor of Mathematics, earned a doctorate in 2004 from Aarhus University in Denmark. He is an expert in topology, a subfield of geometry. While a torus ("doughnut"), for example, is a geometric object, so too is its surface, and Galatius studies the properties of "the space of surfaces."

Eleny Ionel, associate professor of mathematics, earned a doctorate from Michigan State University in 1996 and subsequently did postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She conducts research in the area of differential and symplectic topology.

Ramesh Johari, assistant professor of management science and engineering, earned a doctorate in June 2004 from MIT. Interested in the design and control of large-scale systems, particularly networks such as the Internet and the electric power grid, Johari focuses on the interplay between economic issues (such as incentives) and engineering issues (such as stability, reliability and scalability).

Steven A. Kivelson, professor of physics, was at UCLA prior to joining Stanford in 2004. A theoretical physicist, he studies the macroscopic electronic properties of solids, especially those in high-quality semiconductor devices and in novel "synthetic metals" including high-temperature superconductors.

Scott Klemmer, assistant professor of computer science, is an expert in human-computer interaction who received his doctorate from UC-Berkeley in December. His research focuses on tangible user interfaces—those that move beyond the mouse and keyboard to offer direct control of digital information through physical objects—and user interface software tools.

Vera Luth, professor (research) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is an expert in particle physics. She studies the fundamental interactions of matter at the level of its constituents—quarks and leptons—and focuses her research on understanding the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in these interactions and in today's universe.

Stephen Quake, professor of bioengineering, came to Stanford from the California Institute of Technology, where he was a professor of applied physics and physics. His areas of expertise include biophysics and bioengineering, specifically single-molecule biophysics, microfluidics and biological automation.

Timothy Roughgarden, assistant professor of computer science, received his doctorate from Cornell University in 2002 and did postdoctoral work at Cornell and UC-Berkeley. His research interests include design and analysis of computer algorithms, optimization in networks and game theory, especially as it applies to networks.

Amin Saberi, an assistant professor who splits his time between the Management Science and Engineering Department and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, earned his doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. He is interested in algorithms and algorithmic game theory and their application in the context of the Internet and other large-scale complex networks.

Peter Storm, Szegö Assistant Professor of Mathematics, has a doctorate from the University of Michigan and was an instructor at the University of Chicago prior to coming to Stanford in September 2004. He studies and applies geometric principles to objects with many edges (such as crystals) or fractional properties (such as the air surrounding a snowflake), where traditional methods do not work well.

F. Nathaniel Thiem, Szegö Assistant Professor of Mathematics, earned his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. He works with combinatorial representation theory, which studies algebraic structures via combinatorial objects.

Matthew West, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, joined the faculty this year after earning a doctorate from the Caltech in 2003. His research uses geometric mechanics to develop novel numerical methods for computational mechanics, including fluid/structure interaction and contact/impact dynamics.

H.-S. Philip Wong, professor of electrical engineering, earned a doctorate from Lehigh University in 1988 and subsequently joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The holder of 35 U.S. patents, Wong joined Stanford in September 2004 and will continue his research in nanoscale science and technology, solid-state devices and electronic imaging.

Wing Wong, professor of statistics, develops statistical and computational methods and applies them in analysis of the rapidly accumulating data from genomics projects. A major goal is to understand control signals in the genome that regulate when and where genes get expressed during animal development.

Dmitry Yandulov, assistant professor of chemistry, earned a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from Indiana University. His lab strives to systematically advance catalytic methods of synthesis as a technological solution to the challenge of sustainable development.

Arts & Humanities

Arto Anttila, assistant professor of linguistics, earned a doctorate in linguistics from Stanford. He studies phonology (the sound systems of human languages), word structure and language variation, with an emphasis on the interaction of phonology with other aspects of language.

Susanna Braund, professor of classics, previously was a professor of classics at Yale University. Her areas of expertise include Latin literature, especially satire, epic and drama; Roman culture; and the translation history and reception of Latin literature.

Jindong Cai is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies and the music director and conductor of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. He previously was on the faculty at Louisiana State University and has held professional conducting positions with the Cincinnati Symphony and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra.

Charitini Douvaldzi, assistant professor of German studies, earned her doctorate in comparative literature at Harvard University. Her interests are 18th- to 20th-century German literature and culture; autobiography and the Bildungsroman; psychoanalytic and cultural theory; narrative, vision and the arts of memory; and the ethics and aesthetics of incompletion.

Dan Edelstein, assistant professor of French, earned a doctorate in French at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on the end of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, especially in the intersection between mythology, culture and political theory.

Ursula Heise, associate professor of English, specializes in contemporary American and European literature and literary theory. Her major fields of interest are theories of modernity, post-modernity and globalization; ecology and eco-criticism; literature and science; narrative theory; science fiction; and media theory.

Daniel Jurafsky, associate professor of linguistics, previously was associate professor in linguistics, computer science and cognitive science at the University of Colorado. He studies speech and language understanding for applications, including automatic speech recognition or automatic question answering.

Pavle Levi, assistant professor in art and art history, earned his doctorate at New York University and previously was an adjunct professor in the Conservatory of Theater Arts and film at the State University of New York-Purchase. His special interests are European cinema with emphasis on Eastern Europe; aesthetics and ideology; avant-garde film theory and practice; and psychoanalytic theory of the media

Indra Levy, assistant professor of Asian languages, previously taught at Rutgers University. Her current work examines the nexus of Westernesque women; translation and modern vernacular literary style in Meiji fiction and theater as a key index of how Japanese writers responded to the exotic difference of modern Western literature; and the life and work of the socialist-feminist critic Yamakawa Kikue.

Judith Richardson, assistant professor of English, earned her doctorate at Harvard. She specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture; place and historical memory; technology and culture; regionalism; women's studies; popular culture; and folklore.

Christopher Rovee, assistant professor of English, earned his doctorate at Princeton. His interests include 18th- and 19th-century British literature and culture; aesthetics and politics; painting and literature; and theory of the museum.

Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, assistant professor of art and art history, earned his doctorate from Yale University. His expertise is in African and Afro-American graphic writing systems; African and Afro-Diaspora religious traditions; Caribbean art and visual culture; and Afro-American visual arts.

Gail Wight, assistant professor of art and art history, previously taught at Mills College. Wight's work engages the cultural impact of scientific practice. She currently is working on homages to animals that have played important roles in the history of science.

Laura Wittman, assistant professor of French and Italian, previously taught at UC-Santa Barbara. She is at work on a project focusing on the sacred and society in the works of Pasolini and Bataille.

Michael Zimmermann, assistant professor of religious studies, earned his doctorate at the University of Hamburg. His expertise is in the doctrine and history of Indian Buddhism; Buddha-nature doctrine in Buddhism; and Buddhist ethics and violence/nonviolence.

Social Sciences, Law & Business

Rebecca Bird, assistant professor of anthropological sciences, previously taught at the universities of Utah and Maine. Her specialty is human behavioral ecology: the analysis of culture, behavior and social interactions within an evolutionary and ecological framework.

Lera Boroditsky, assistant professor of cognitive psychology, came to Stanford from MIT. She studies the relationships between the mind, the world and language. Much of her research looks at how the languages that people speak shape the way they think about the world.

Anthony Bryk, the Spencer Professor of Education and of Organizational Behavior at the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business, previously was on the faculty at the University of Chicago. His research interests lie in school organization, educational reform and educational statistics.

Robert Daines, the Pritzker Professor of Law and Business at the Law School, previously taught at New York University. His main areas of expertise include corporate law, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and law and finance.

James P. Daughton, assistant professor of history, most recently held a Stanford Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship. He focuses on the history of modern Europe from 1789 to the present. His research and teaching also deal with European colonialism and imperialism.

Carol Dweck, professor of psychology, previously taught at Columbia University. Her work bridges developmental psychology, social psychology and personality psychology, and examines the self-conceptions people use to structure the self and guide their behavior.

Paula England, professor of sociology, previously taught at Northwestern University and was a faculty fellow at its Institute for Policy Research. Her main areas of expertise include research on households and families, divorce and gender inequality.

Grainne Fitzsimons, assistant professor of marketing at the Graduate School of Business, earned her doctorate in psychology from New York University last year. Her research focuses on the psychology of relationships with friends, family members and spouses, and the psychology of goal pursuit.

David Grusky, professor of sociology, came from Cornell University. His main areas of expertise include social mobility, gender inequality and social class.

Ilan Guttman, assistant professor of accounting at the Graduate School of Business, came from Hebrew University. His research interests focus on the economics of information, managerial reporting and corporate finance.

Sean Hanretta, an assistant professor of African history, previously was a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College. His interests include the history of Africa, Islam in Africa, and religion and the state in pre-modern Africa.

Peter Hansen, assistant professor of economics, previously taught at Brown University. He focuses on econometrics, time series analysis and forecasting.

Henning Hillmann, assistant professor of sociology, earned his doctorate from Columbia University last year. His research interests include social networks, historical and political sociology, economic sociology and organizations.

Alan Jagolinzer, assistant professor of accounting at the Graduate School of Business, is a major in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a former spin demonstration pilot. His research interests include the legal environment governing insider trading, financial reporting and financial accounting standards setting process.

Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law School and the Richard E. Lang Professor of Law, came from New York University, where he was associate dean for research and academics. He is an expert in constitutional law and history, federal courts, conflict of laws and civil procedure.

Jon A. Krosnick, the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, came from Ohio State University. Krosnick studies political attitudes and behavior, the impact of the news media and survey research methodology.

Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law and director of the Program in Law, Science and Technology, previously taught at UC-Berkeley. He teaches intellectual property law, computer and Internet law, patent law and antitrust law.

Alison Morantz, assistant professor of law, previously was an associate at a Boston law firm. Her areas of research include the impact of occupational safety and health laws, the law and economics of workplace regulation, the comparative effectiveness of state and federal enforcement, and legal history.

Stefan Nagel, assistant professor of finance in the Graduate School of Business, previously was at Harvard. Nagel's research is in the area of asset pricing, behavioral finance, financial econometrics and institutional investors.

Robert Proctor, professor of the history of science, previously taught at Pennsylvania State University. His areas of expertise include the history of science, the history of medicine and tobacco health history, and science and the Holocaust.

Sean Reardon, associate professor of education, came from Pennsylvania State University. He works on educational policy research, with a particular emphasis on racial and socioeconomic inequality in education.

Ian Robertson, assistant professor of anthropological sciences, previously taught at Brigham Young University. He specializes in the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica, with a particular focus on central Mexico.

Priya Satia, assistant professor of British history, previously was an acting assistant professor in the department. She studies 19th- and 20th-century British cultural and political history, and modern imperialism and colonialism.

Londa Schiebinger is a professor of history of science and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She previously taught at Pennsylvania State University. Schiebinger's work examines women and science, with a current focus on colonial science in the 18th century.

Kenneth Schultz, associate professor of political science, previously taught at UCLA. His research focuses on the impact of domestic politics, such as elections, party competition and public opinion, on foreign policy.

Jayashri Srikantiah, associate professor of law and director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic, previously was associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Her areas of expertise include immigration law and policy research exploring the intersection of immigration, race and criminal justice.

Ilya Strebulaev, assistant professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business, earned his doctorate in finance from London Business School last year. His research interests are in capital structure, credit risk, liquidity and financial auctions.

Jeremy Weinstein, assistant professor of political science, is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. Weinstein works on issues of civil war, poverty and ethnic politics, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Caroline Winterer, assistant professor of history, came from San Jose State University. Her expertise includes 18th- and 19th-century U.S. history; the influence of ancient Greece and Rome on America; and pre-20th-century American women.

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