Tenured and Promoted Faculty 2023-2024: Weinberg College

Tenured and Promoted Faculty 2023-2024

Tenured Faculty 2023-24

Xiaomin Bao

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: Iowa State University
Home Department: Molecular Biosciences
Profile

Xiaomin Bao’s research is focused on understanding how human tissue and organ regenerates. Her lab uses human skin as the primary research platform, and uses multidisciplinary approaches (genomics, proteomics, genetics, cell biology and biochemistry) to investigate the fundamental rules.

Julia Behrman

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: New York University
Home Department: Sociology
Profile

Julia Behrman’s research investigates the causes and consequences of family change in a global perspective. Her research explores how the institution of the family shapes and is shaped by key social phenomenon in four main areas: (i) educational expansion; (ii) environmental change, natural disaster and climate shocks; (iii) expansion of women’s labor force participation; and (iv) migration. Much of her work is motivated by questions of power: who has power within families and how is it manifested? What events or experiences lead to changes in power dynamics within families? Do changes in family structures alleviate or perpetuate disadvantage between and within families?

Michelle Driscoll

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: The University of Chicago
Home Department: Physics and Astronomy
Profile

Michelle Driscoll is a soft matter physicist, whose research lies at the junction between soft-matter and fluid dynamics. Her lab uses advanced imaging techniques to study a wide range of materials, such as flowing suspensions, fracturing gels, and active colloids. The lab’s focus is to understand, characterize, and control soft materials. Soft materials, such as gels, pastes, and suspensions, are completely disordered, highly nonlinear, and fundamentally out-of-equilibrium; to understand these materials requires the development of new insights and innovative techniques. The Driscoll lab identifies model systems for soft materials, and then exploits their simplicity to understand complex material response. The lab employs emergent structure formation as a powerful new tool to probe soft materials. This approach enables new measurements of dynamical properties, and provides an understanding of how these dynamics are coupled to a material’s microscale structure.

Jeff Eden

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: Harvard University
Home Department: History
Profile

Jeff Eden is a historian of Central Asia and Russia. His books include God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World War (Oxford, 2021; paperback forthcoming), which was named one of Foreign Affairs' "Best Books of 2022"; Slavery and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge, 2018; paperback 2020), which was shortlisted for the CESS Book Award; and Warrior Saints of the Silk Road: Legends of the Qarakhanids (Brill, 2018). Before coming to Northwestern, he was Pandion Haliaetus Assistant Professor of History at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Before that, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities. He is currently working on two book projects, one about Turkmens in nineteenth-century Iran and the other about the Soviet Caucasus during the Second World War.

Brendan Fernandes

Associate Professor

MFA Institution: The University of Western Ontario
Home Department: Art Theory and Practice
Profile

Photographer, Kevin Penczak.

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based out of Chicago, Brendan’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Brendan’s projects take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance hall, part political protest...always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. Brendan is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014). In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, and is the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Canada Council New Chapters grant. Brendan is also the recipient of the Artadia Award (2019), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020) and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019). His projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial (New York); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); MAC (Montreal); among a great many others. He is currently artist-in-residency and faculty at Northwestern University and represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations at the Noguchi Museum (New York); Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago); the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto); and the Museo De Arte São Paulo (São Paulo).

Daniel Horton

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: University of Michigan
Home Department: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Profile

Daniel Horton is an Earth system scientist, whose research aims to build a better understanding of Earth’s climate system and its intersection with people, places, and things. His primary expertise lies in the detection, attribution, and projection of climate change, its near-term meteorological, societal, and environmental impacts, and the rigorous assessment of solution-based adaptation and mitigation strategies. In his research, teaching, advising, professional service, and public outreach he strives to elucidate and advance the science that underpins our knowledge of Earth’s climate system, make tangible the consequences of human-caused climate change, rigorously assess potential solutions, and inspire the courage required to meet the challenges at hand. A primary focus of his research examines the relationship between environmental factors such as extreme heat and poor air quality and their exposure, health, and environmental justice implications. While at Northwestern his research and outreach efforts have been supported by NSF, NASA, DOE, Microsoft Research, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, the Ubben Family, and an NSF CAREER award. Dr. Horton received a B.S in Physics from Tulane University, a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Texas A&M University, a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Michigan and performed postdoctoral research in Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science. In addition, Dr. Horton served one year in AmeriCorps as an environmental educator and trail boss, and five years in the U.S. Air Force as an operational weather officer.

Annie Liang

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: Harvard University
Home Department: Economics
Profile

Annie Liang is an economic theorist, whose work is at the intersection of information economics, machine learning, and behavioral/experimental economics. She has worked in particular on: (1) the welfare implications of algorithmic predictions, (2) how machine learning can improve economic modeling, and (3) how agents dynamically acquire information. Her work contributes theoretical results as well as new analysis of data, and uses techniques and insights from statistics and computer science in addition to economics. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard in 2016, and spent a year as a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award.

Yuchen Liu

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: Princeton University
Home Department: Mathematics
Profile

I work in algebraic geometry, particularly on K-stability and moduli spaces of algebraic varieties. In recent years, I have been especially interested in K-moduli spaces of Fano varieties and their wall crossing phenomena, and their connections to other moduli theories via the minimal model program, geometric invariant theory, and Hodge theory.

Daniel Majchrowicz

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: Harvard University
Home Department: Asian Languages and Cultures
Profile

I am scholar of modern South Asian literature and history with a special interest in Islam, mobility, and gender. I pursue a transnational and multilingual research agenda that examines how South Asian literary traditions, particularly popular traditions, inhabit the world. Focusing on the intersection of Indian and Pakistani mobility with Hindi-Urdu literature from the nineteenth century to the present, my research shows that, against conventional understandings of globalization, ordinary South Asians have long inhabited a multipolar, interconnected world. I ask how readers and writers of Hindi-Urdu were shaped by the world as they moved through it, and how they shaped it in turn. My publications include two books, The World in Words: Travel Writing and the Global Imagination in Muslim South Asia (Cambridge UP, 2023) and the co-authored Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana UP, 2022). I am currently at work on two new book projects: A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910 (Indiana UP, 2025) and Hindi: A Global History.

Reza Vafabakhsh

Associate Professor

PhD Institution: University of Illinois
Home Department: Molecular Biosciences
Profile

Reza Vafabakhsh is a biophysicist who studies the dynamics of biological processes across different spatial scales, from individual proteins to whole cells. His lab employs an interdisciplinary approach that integrates biophysics, biochemistry, cell biology, protein engineering, optics, and quantitative microscopy. Recent work in his lab has uncovered activation mechanisms of key brain receptors and revealed how cells distribute critical components between daughter cells during division. Reza obtained his BSc and MSc in physics from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Iran and his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois. He conducted postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Promoted to Full Professor 2023-24

Traci Burch

Professor

PhD Institution: Harvard University
Home Department: Political Science
Profile

Traci Burch is a political scientist who studies race and ethnic politics, criminal justice, political participation, voting behavior, and barriers to voting. Her book, Trading Democracy for Justice, won several awards, including the Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association. She has published in several journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Political Behavior, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Professor Burch also has served as an expert witness in voting rights cases involving redistricting, voter id, pandemic restrictions, and voting after a felony conviction. Professor Burch holds a joint appointment as a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.

Claude-André Faucher-Giguère

Professor

PhD Institution: Harvard University
Home Department: Physics and Astronomy
Profile

Claude-André Faucher-Giguère is a theoretical astrophysicist best known for his research on the multi-scale physical processes that drive galaxy formation, including star formation, galaxy-black hole co-evolution, and connections with the intergalactic medium and cosmology. He and his group use a multi-pronged approach including large-scale numerical simulations, analytic modeling, and comparisons with observational data.

Faucher-Giguère is a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) [link: http://ciera.northwestern.edu] and is a founder and co-PI of the influential FIRE ("Feedback In Realistic Environments") galaxy formation simulation project [link: http://fire.northwestern.edu].

Faucher-Giguère has received multiple distinctions for his research, including the Eric R. Keto Prize in Theoretical Astrophysics from Harvard University, an NSF CAREER award, and a Cottrell Scholar Award. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher in Space Science every year since 2019.

Marco Gallio

Professor

PhD Institution: Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden)
Home Department: Neurobiology
Profile

Marco Gallio is a geneticist and neurobiologist who studies how animals sense and respond to changes in external temperature and humidity. Using the common laboratory fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, his laboratory at the Department of Neurobiology has elucidated the basic molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the species-specific preference for a particular temperature and humidity range. Increasingly, the Gallio Lab's research has expanded to include “wild” insect species, such as those adapted to life in hot, dry deserts or on snow-covered mountains. Their goal is to understand the diverse neurobiological and physiological mechanisms that enable animals to adapt to various thermal environments and respond to climate change. This work is significant from a biomedical perspective as it advances our understanding of how the brain processes external stimuli, including both pleasant and painful temperature. Moreover, given the limited knowledge about how animal behavior is impacted by ongoing climate change, understanding how insects adapt to different temperature and humidity conditions may help us better anticipate—and potentially mitigate—the impacts of climate change on insects and on the many ecosystems that depend on them.

Marco received his MS at the University of Pavia (Italy) and his PhD at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden). He carried out his postdoctoral research at University of California, San Diego and Columbia University as a HHMI fellow before joining Northwestern University in 2012. His work has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Pew Charitable Trust, the McKnight Foundation, the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy and the NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology. The Gallio’s lab research has been published in high profile journals such as Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications and Current Biology. Marco Gallio is currently the director of the WCAS Master program in Neurobiology.

Andrew Geraci

Professor

PhD Institution: Stanford University
Home Department: Physics and Astronomy
Profile

Andrew Geraci’s research interests include tabletop tests for physics beyond the Standard Model, experimental gravitation, gravitational wave detection, ultrasensitive force detection, hybrid quantum systems, and quantum optomechanics. The Geraci research group at Northwestern is developing new sensing techniques for experimental gravitational physics, involving laser cooled and trapped nanospheres which have achieved zeptonewton force sensitivity, an order of magnitude more sensitive than any room-temperature solid-state force sensor to date. Geraci also leads ARIADNE, an international collaboration using NMR-based techniques to search for the QCD axion, a notable dark matter candidate. He is fellow of the American Physical Society and was the recipient of the 2023 American Physical Society Francis Pipkin Award. He is a member of the Center for Fundamental Physics at Low Energy at Northwestern (CFP) and the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA).

Sarah Jacoby

Professor

PhD Institution: University of Virginia
Home Department: Religious Studies
Profile

Sarah H. Jacoby specializes in Tibetan Buddhist studies, with research interests in Buddhist revelation (gter ma), religious auto/biography, Tibetan literature, gender and sexuality, translation studies, and the history of eastern Tibet. She is the author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), co-author of Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (Oxford University Press, 2014 (3rd edition) and 2024 (4th edition), and co-editor of Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas (Brill, 2009). She has recently published articles in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Tibetan Literature, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion on Buddhism and motherhood, Tibetan Women’s writing, and the history of Vajrayāna sexuality. She is currently finishing a complete Tibetan-English translation of the autobiography of Sera Khandro Dewai Dorjé (1892-1940). She chairs the Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series at Northwestern and mentors a group of Buddhist Studies doctoral students.

Daniel Molden

Professor

PhD Institution: Columbia University
Home Department: Psychology
Profile

Daniel Molden is a social psychologist who studies how people’s varying motivations direct and alter the cognitive processes by which they regulate both their own actions and their interactions with others. His research has examined a wide variety of topics, including the bases of self-identity, the role of this identity in political persuasion, the importance of people’s beliefs about themselves in setting and achieving goals, and the motivational dynamics of professional, personal, and romantic relationships. This research has been featured in American Psychologist, the Journal for Personality and Social Psychology, and Political Psychology, among numerous other outlets, and has been funded by the NIMH and the NSF. Daniel received his B.A. in Psychology and Biology at Emory University and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Association for Psychology Science, and a Faculty Associate of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research.

Sadie Wignall

Professor

PhD Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Home Department: Molecular Biosciences
Profile

Sadie Wignall is a cell biologist and geneticist whose research focuses on meiosis, a specialized form of cell division that generates sperm and eggs during reproduction. Notably, meiosis in females is especially error prone: it is estimated that 10-25% of human embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes, and most of these defects arise from problems generating the egg cells. However, why the divisions of female reproductive cells are so error prone is not understood. Research in the Wignall lab is focused on investigating this important problem, by combining state-of-the-art microscopy with genetic, genomic, and biochemical approaches in the model organism C. elegans. She has received multiple awards to support her research over the years including the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Innovation Award, the March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Award, the V Foundation for Cancer Research “V Scholar” Award, and multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Wignall also serves as the Director of the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences (IBiS) PhD program at Northwestern, and as a Co-Leader of the Cancer Epigenetics and Nuclear Dynamics (CEND) program of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. In addition, she serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell, and she is a member of the Public Policy Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology, where she has worked to lobby Congress to support the scientific enterprise.

Sera Young

Professor

PhD Institution: Cornell University
Home Department: Anthropology
Profile

Sera Young is an anthropologist and nutritionist who has dedicated her career to understanding how women, especially in low-resource settings, cope to preserve their health and that of their families.

After her BA in Cultural Anthropology (U of Michigan), she pursued an MA in Medical Anthropology (U of Amsterdam), where she studied maternal anemia in Zanzibar, Tanzania. For her PhD in International Nutrition (Cornell) she returned to observations about anemia in Zanzibar: that anemic women craved earth, raw starch and other non-food substances (pica). During her post-doctoral and faculty positions at University of California (UC) Berkeley, UC Davis, and UC San Francisco, she was involved with a number of studies pertaining to HIV, food insecurity, and infant feeding in sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Young’s current research is focused on quantifying human experiences with problems with water, and unpacking their consequences for nutrition, health, and well-being. To that end, she led the development of the Water InSecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, the first cross-country equivalent way of measuring water access and use (www.WISEscales.org). The WISE Scales have now been used by hundreds of entities in more than 50 countries, and were recently recommended by the United Nations’ Joint Monitoring Program for global monitoring.

She has co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, USAID, and FCDO/BMGF; awards include the Margaret Mead Award for her book Craving Earth, the Nevin Scrimshaw Prize, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.