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Northwestern University

New Weinberg College Faculty for 2017-18

Eric Auerbach

Eric Auerbach

Position: College Fellow
PhD Institution: UC Berkeley
Previous Title and Institution: UC Berkeley, PhD Student
Home Department: Economics

As an econometrician with an interest in network economics, I focus on developing statistical tools for analyzing models with network data (i.e, models where groups of agents are connected in an economically meaningful way). In economics, it is natural to interpret networks as random since connections are often the result of human decision making, which can be heterogeneous and indeterminate. However, standard statistical tools are often difficult to implement because the number of possible connections between agents can be intractably large. My research emphasizes methods for reducing this complexity without imposing too many restrictions on how agents might be connected. I am particularly interested in nonparametric and semiparametric methods and in understanding how they might be adapted to a network setting.

Veronica Berns

Veronica Berns

Position: Associate Professor of Instruction
PhD Institution: University of Wisconsin, Madison
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Education at Northwestern University
Home Department: Chemistry

I'm a professor of instruction in General Chemistry.

Vivek Bhattacharya

Vivek Bhattacharya

Position: College Fellow
PhD Institution: MIT
Previous Title and Institution: Graduate Student at MIT
Home Department: Economics
Research Website

I study industrial organization and game theory, with a focus on empirical mechanism design, auctions, and procurement. In the auctions realm, I have worked on projects analyzing the behavior of participants in auctions both before and after the actual bidding takes place -- mostly studying auctions for natural resources, like timber or oil. I have a recent interest in defense procurement, and especially the interaction between the procurement process and the evolution of the defense industry. Finally, I have broader interests related to industrial organization as well, and I am also studying financial markets and their response to regulation.

Shelby Blythe

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University
Home Department: Molecular Biosciences

My research focuses on understanding how information encoded in DNA is utilized to direct the process of embryonic development, using as a model system the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Genomic DNA is stored in the nucleus not as a naked polymer, but rather as a complex nucleoprotein complex referred to as chromatin. Chromatin structure subdivides functional domains within the genome, relegating DNA sequences to either 'active' or 'inactive' compartments. My research combines classical embryology, genetics, genomics, and quantitative imaging to focus on three main questions. 1) How does chromatin structure evolve over the course of embryonic development as cells acquire unique fates and distinct patterns of active and inactive compartments? 2) What are the mechanisms and regulatory strategies used by the embryo to drive these changes in chromatin structure? 3) Can we develop optical tools to both observe and manipulate chromatin states in real time?

Sarah Bouchat

Sarah Bouchat

Position: College Fellow
PhD Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Home Department: Political Science
Research Website

My focus is on political methodology with substantive applications to comparative politics, especially in Southeast Asia. Broadly, my research agenda seeks to bridge the qualitative/quantitative divide by adapting Bayesian statistical models and machine learning techniques to leverage diverse information, particularly applied to the study of authoritarian regimes and settings with sparse or manipulated data. My current research investigates novel machine learning and text-as-data approaches to eliciting and aggregating priors for Bayesian analyses, with examples from Myanmar legislative participation and American elections. Other projects expand the pool of "experts" from whom to elicit priors, emphasize new methods for characterizing priors based on ethnographic sources and published research, and validate these priors using traditional focus group and survey-based methodologies.

John Bullock

John Bullock

Position: Associate Professor
PhD Institution: Stanford University
Previous Title and Institution: Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin
Home Department: Political Science
Joint Department or Program at Northwestern: Institute for Policy Research
Research Website

Most of my research is about the effects of partisanship on people's political views. I've also studied what ordinary voters know about politics, the problem of "fake news" in elections, and the ways in which people take policies into account (or don't) when deciding how to vote. A related thread in my research is about the statistical analysis of causal mechanisms. I continue to work in all of these areas, and I'm now also studying education's effects on attitudes toward redistribution.

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem Denna

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem Denna

Position: Associate Professor
PhD Institution: Universite Lumiere Lyon 2 (France)
Previous Title and Institution: Professor, University of Nouakchott, Mauritania
Home Department: Political Science
Joint Department or Program at Northwestern: Institute For the Study of Islamic Thought In Africa/Program of African Studies

I specialize in Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa in comparative perspective. Situated at the intersection of African politics and Islamic studies, my research engages contemporary academic debates regarding religion and politics, especially the interplay in contemporary African societies of a variety of issues such as: the state, religious authority, race, social hierarchies, identity politics, Islamic knowledge and political power. Based on long-term fieldwork, my published work is concerned with the religious formation of the postcolonial state and socio-religious change, social movements, radicalization, Islam and social hierarchies. I am currently conducting a long-term project looking at the impact and transformations of religious authority and political influence of West African 'ulamas (Islamic scholars) in postcolonial times at home and abroad. My forthcoming shorter pieces examine respectively the rise of new religious leaders; new forms of Sufism, "Sharia politics", Islamic NGO's, "blasphemy controversies". Other research interests include everyday negotiations over citizenship and bureaucratization in Africa.

Michelle Driscoll

Michelle Driscoll

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: University of Chicago
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Soft Matter Physics, New York University
Home Department: Physics

I am a soft condensed matter experimentalist, and my research lies at the interface between soft-matter physics and fluid dynamics. My lab focuses on understanding how structure and patterns emerge in a driven system, and to how to use this structure formation as a new way to probe nonequillibrium systems. I study emergent structures in a diverse array of driven systems, from the microscopic (driven colloidal suspensions) to the more table-top (fracturing meta-materials). By developing a deeper understanding of patterns and structures which emerge dynamically in a driven material, we can learn not only how these structures can be controlled, but also how to use them to connect macroscopic behavior to microscopic properties.

Matthieu Dupas

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle and University of Michigan
Previous Title and Institution: PhD Candidate, University of Michigan
Home Department: French and Italian

Matthieu Dupas is a specialist of early modern French literary studies and of late modernity. Theoretically, his work focuses on the history of sexuality and queer theory with particular engagement with the work of the French thinker, Michel Foucault. Interested in particular in the cultural phenomenon of gallantry, he traces in his research the implications of gallantry for theories and history of sexuality. He also has a broad linguistic training that allows him to work across centuries and linguistic traditions in French, English, German, Latin and ancient Greek. Matthieu Dupas has garnered two PhD's: the first from Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, in Paris, in 2015 and the second from the University of Michigan in 2016.

Gerald Gabrielse

Gerald Gabrielse

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: University of Chicago
Previous Title and Institution: Levenson Professor of Physics at Harvard University
Home Department: Physics
Research Website

My research group and I make some of the most stringent tests of the most fundamental mathematical description of physical reality. We test its most precise predictions and test its most fundamental symmetries. The intricate apparatus we build is capable of making parts in 10^{13} measurements on one isolated particle that we suspend for months within our apparatus, for example, and the particle is so cold that we observe the quantum structure in the homemade atom that is one particle bound to our apparatus.

Brett Gadsden

Brett Gadsden

Position: Associate Professor
PhD Institution: Northwestern University
Previous Title and Institution: Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Emory University
Home Department: History

Brett Gadsden is a historian of 20th century American and African American history, with a specific focus on black political and social history, black freedom struggles, and political economies of racial discrimination, segregation, and inequality. He is currently working on his second book, titled “From Protest to Politics: The Making of a ‘Second Black Cabinet,’” which explores the set of historical circumstances that brought African Americans into close consultative relationships with presidential candidates and later into key cabinet, sub-cabinet, and other important administrative positions in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations and opened to them unprecedented access to centers of power in the federal government. The rise of these figures to prominence marked the beginnings of modern African American executive authority in modern U.S. history.

Nathan Gianneschi

Nathan Gianneschi

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: Northwestern University
Previous Title and Institution: Professor, Teddy Traylor Faculty Scholar, University of California, San Diego
Home Department: Chemistry

The Gianneschi laboratory focuses on how nanomaterials interact with cells, tissues and biomolecules, with an interest in synthetic materials programmed with biopolymers as delivery systems, enzyme-responsive targeting systems and gel-forming materials for IV injection of self-assembling probes and therapeutic nanoparticles. Each of these projects involves the development of fluorescence, and MRI-contrast agent labeled polymeric and nanoparticle systems. We are currently synthesizing and testing these materials in mouse and rat models of human cancer and heart disease. Furthermore, we have programs supporting basic research efforts in the development of responsive materials and “smart” nanoparticles as well as a large program focused on developing new techniques for the discovery of functional nanomaterials and bionanomaterials via library screening methodologies being developed in our group. This work is supported and underlined by a heavy emphasis on the development of advanced characterization tools for capturing dynamics of self-assembled nanoparticles and complex nanoscale materials in biological milieu including the in vivo and ex vivo analyses of targeted tissues.

Pallab Goswami

Pallab Goswami

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Fellow at Condensed Matter Theory Center and Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland
Home Department: Physics and Astronomy

The main goal of condensed matter research is to study emergent low temperature phases in correlated and disordered materials. A comprehensive understanding of different strongly correlated materials requires complementary analytical and numerical methods of varying degree of complexity. My research interests are focused on developing new theoretical tools for addressing emergent quantum phases and quantum phase transitions in strongly correlated and disordered materials, with a special emphasis on underlying topological properties. This is motivated by the recent progress in quantum material science, which allows us to study interplay between strong electronic interactions and spin orbit coupling in iridium based oxides, Heusler and heavy fermion compounds, where phase diagrams can display a confluence of competing orders, topological properties and exotic quantum critical phenomena. While my research topics involve fundamental questions of quantum field theory, they are often motivated by exotic properties of novel materials, requiring close collaboration with different experimental groups.

Michelle Huang

Michelle Huang

Position: College Fellow
PhD Institution: Penn State
Home Department: English
Joint Department or Program at Northwestern: Asian American Studies

Michelle N. Huang received her Ph.D. in English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Penn State in 2017. Her research interests include Asian American literature, feminist science and technology studies, and posthumanism. Her current project, "Molecular Aesthetics: Race, Form, and Matter in Contemporary Asian American Literature," examines posthumanist aesthetics in post-1965 Asian American literature to trace racial formation at the molecular scale. Michelle's work has appeared in Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia, and Twentieth-Century Literature, among other venues. During the Fall 2017 quarter, she will be teaching a seminar cross-listed in Asian American Studies and English on "Techno-Orientalism."

Seth Jacobson

Seth Jacobson

Position: Assistant Professor 
PhD Institution: University of Colorado
Previous Title and Institution: Joint Postdoctoral Researcher at the Côte d'Azur Observatory and the University of Bayreuth
Home Department: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Research Website

I am a planetary scientist who studies the Solar System with the tools of planetary dynamics and physics, celestial mechanics, geophysics, and geochemistry. My science is driven by the big questions: Where did we come from? What else is out there? and, How unique is our history? My published research has ranged from the evolution of small asteroid systems to dating the Moon's formation, but my interests extend further. For example, I am currently studying how the Earth's interior structure and chemistry were established by combining models of planetary accretion and differentiation.

Valerie L. Kilman

Position:  Associate Professor of Instruction in Neurobiology, Director of Undergraduate Studies
PhD Institution:  Brandeis University
Previous Title and Institution:  Research Associate Professor in Neurobiology, Northwestern
Home Department: Neurobiology

I am teaching faculty and serve as the administrator of the undergraduate major in Neuroscience. I helped establish this program in Fall 2015. My duties include teaching undergraduate Neuroscience coursework, academic advising for over 250 declared majors, and administrative tasks including curriculum management, community building, running honors and other research programs, and managing the undergraduate teaching laboratory. I have a special interest in diversity, low-income, and first-generation students in science. Previously I worked as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Neurobiology. My research examined the molecular genetics and neural networks underlying circadian rhythms and sleep. Using fruit flies as a model system, I worked to identify conserved genes, pathways, and behaviors regulated by the biological clock. Projects included the role of the clock in health-relevant processes such as neurodegeneration, aging, metabolism, and learning. My primary areas of technical expertise include quantitative anatomy, neurobiology, genetics, and behavior.

Stephanie Knezz

 Stephanie Knezz

Position:  Assistant Professor of Instruction
PhD Institution:  University of Wisconsin - Madison
Previous Title and Institution:  Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Education, Northwestern University
Home Department:  Chemistry

As a teaching-line faculty member and general chemistry co-lab director, I focus on the assessment and improvement of the general chemistry courses at Northwestern. In particular, I am interested in the integration of formative assessment as a scaffold to complex concepts in large lecture courses and improving pedagogical training for graduate students who are interested in teaching. These aims are also intended to promote inclusion in the chemistry classroom by encouraging autonomy in both undergraduate and graduate students involved in the course.

Arend M. Kuyper

Arend M. Kuyper

Position: Assistant Professor of Instruction
PhD Institution: Northwestern University
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor at Northwestern University
Home Department: Department of Statistics

My focus is on improving the introductory statistics experience for Northwestern undergraduates. I want students enrolled in my courses to gain both practical statistical skills and a deeper understanding of how and when to deploy statistical techniques. Practical skills range from how to use statistical software to understanding and consuming statistics they encounter on a daily basis. Ultimately, I hope students come to understand and appreciate how statistical concepts and thinking significantly impact their daily lives.

Ayala Levin

Ayala Levin

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Columbia University
Previous Title and Institution: Princeton-Mellon Fellow at Princeton University Art History
Home Department:  Art History

I am an architectural historian specializing in 20th century architecture and urbanism. My main interests are architecture and urban planning in postcolonial African states, non-western modernisms, and north-south or south-south exchange. I am currently completing my first book project on the export of Israeli architectural and planning development models to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Ivory Coast in the 1960s-1970s. My next project will explore the work of American architects, planners, and landscape architects in Africa from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s.

José Medina

José Medina

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: Northwestern University
Previous Title and Institution: Professor at Vanderbilt University
Home Department: Philosophy
Research Website

José Medina works primarily in critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, political philosophy, communication theory and social epistemology. His books include The Epistemology of Resistance (2013) and Speaking from Elsewhere (2006). His current projects focus on how social perception and the social imagination contribute to the formation of vulnerabilities to different kinds of violence and oppression. These projects also explore the social movements and kinds of activism (including what he terms "epistemic activism") that can be mobilized to resist racial and sexual violence and oppression in local and global contexts. Current book projects include Racial Violence and Epistemic Activism and Theories of the Flesh: Latin-American and US Latina Feminist Theories (the latter with Andrea Pitts and Mariana Ortega).

Andrew Miri

Andrew Miri

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Princeton University
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University
Home Department: Neurobiology

My work tries to build mechanistic understanding of how the nervous system gives rise to movement. The patterns of muscle activation that drive movement reflect an interplay between neuronal circuits in the spinal cord and brain regions such as the motor cortex that engage these circuits through descending projections. Despite previous examination of these brain regions with neural recording and inactivation methods, the logic of this engagement remains obscure. To clarify the mechanisms that comprise this engagement, projects in my lab will combine contemporary approaches for measuring and perturbing activity in neuronal populations with quantitative and model-based analyses.

Shmuel Nili

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Yale University
Home Department: Political Science

My current research focuses on the collective agency of "the people" in a liberal democracy. My work addresses questions such as whether the people can have moral integrity in a sense that parallels the integrity of an individual person, as well as questions surrounding public property owned by the people as an agent. Other aspects of my current research include the relationship between political theory and real-world policy discourse, as well as the contribution that political theorists might make to grappling with obvious moral failures in public policy.

Andrew Papachristos

Andrew Papachristos

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: The University of Chicago
Previous Title and Institution: Professor of Sociology, Yale University
Home Department: Sociology
Joint Department or Program: The Institute for Policy Research
Research Website
Start Date: September 2018

Professor Andrew Papachristos applies the growing field of network science to the study of neighborhoods, street gangs, gun violence, and police misconduct. The underlying premise of this research is that social networks—the way people, organizations, institutions, and neighborhoods are connected—affect what we feel, think and do. Papachristos has used network science to understand how gun violence in U.S. cities spreads like an infectious disease and has applied findings from this research to gun violence prevention efforts and policies. Papachristos is also completing a book on the history and evolution of black street gangs and politics in Chicago. Papachristos will be launching the Northwestern Neighborhood and Network Lab—or N3 Lab—at The Institute for Policy Research.

Matthew Rognlie

Matthew Rognlie

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Previous Title and Institution: Postdoc at Princeton University
Home Department: Economics
Research Website

Macroeconomics, with a focus on aggregate demand and economic fluctuations, nominal rigidities, monetary policy, and income distribution. Recently working with heterogenous agent models, trying to bridge the gap between computation and theory for models where few analytical results exist. Also work with sovereign debt models.

Hanna Tzuker Seltzer

Hanna Tzuker Seltzer

Position: Assistant Professor of Instruction
PhD Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Home Department: MENA and Jewish Studies

My dissertation, titled "Retrospectivity as an Ethical Stance: Revisiting the Zionist Dream in Israeli Fiction and Film", engages with Israeli works of fiction and film whose plots return to the period from the pre-state Yishuv in Palestine till the first years of Israeli statehood. Through close reading and analysis of narrative strategies and cinematic techniques, I explore the ways in which this retrospective gaze presents an ethical critique of the Zionist enterprise. These works reexamine essential notions in Zionist ideology such as the ideal of the New Jew, the negation of the diaspora (shlilat ha-galut), the treatment of Middle- Eastern Jews, and the fate of the Palestinians. I argue that only through retrospective narration is it possible for these Israeli writers and filmmakers to propose a nuanced ethical critique that both depicts the experience of daily life in those heady ideological days and offers a historical reassessment of the values of that era. Throughout this dissertation, my theoretical framework remains grounded in narratology, as well as in conceptions of intertextuality as a bilateral cultural practice. At Northwestern University I will be teaching Hebrew language and culture.

Deb Sokolow

Deb Sokolow

Position: Associate Professor of Instruction
MFA Institution: School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Previous Title and Institution: Lecturer, Northwestern University
Home Department: Art, Theory, Practice

Deb Sokolow is a visual artist and writer whose text-driven drawings use the voice of an unreliable narrator to speculate both comically and critically on a variety of topics such as the details of shadowy political histories, the foibles of heads of state, organizational brainwashing and the trope of the male genius. In her prior position as lecturer in the department of Art, Theory, Practice, Sokolow used these themes as a point of departure for developing courses such as Drawing Humor and Obsessive Investigation. Sokolow is currently at work on a novella commissioned by the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, Virginia which utilizes a nonlinear structure and is based on the Jorge Borges short story, "The Garden of Forking Paths."

Claire E. Sufrin

Claire E. Sufrin

Position: Associate Professor of Instruction
PhD Institution: Stanford University
Previous Title and Institution:Lecturer, Northwestern University
Home Department: Jewish Studies Program
Joint Department: Religious Studies

As a scholar of modern Jewish thought, I focus on the work of Jewish thinkers since the Enlightenment in European, American, and Israeli contexts, and my research is rooted in the close reading of modern Jewish philosophical and theological texts within the context of Judaism as a historical and living tradition. Reflecting the diverse circumstances in which modern Jewish thought developed, I also incorporate works of philosophy, history, and Christian theology and draw from literary theory, feminist theory, and legal theory. My current research project addresses theological themes in novels by post-WWII American Jewish writers. I have also published articles on the philosopher Martin Buber, on the impact of feminism on Judaism, and on religion and literature. In addition to my teaching position, I serve as the Assistant Chair of Jewish Studies in the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies.

Alexander Tchekhovskoy

Alexander Tchekhovskoy

Position: Assistant Professor
PhD Institution: Harvard University
Previous Title and Institution: Theoretical Astrophysics Center Fellow at UC Berkeley
Home Department: Physics and Astronomy
Research Website

As a computational astrophysicist, I focus on how black holes and neutron stars interact with their environment. They devour stars, eject relativistic jets, affect star formation and galaxy evolution, and enrich the Universe with heavy elements. To study these processes, I perform large-scale numerical simulations as well as algorithm and code development. My research interests range from investigating the basic physics of astrophysical accretion disks and jets to applying the physics results to interpreting observations and directly predicting electromagnetic emission from simulations for comparison to observations.

Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: University of Massachusetts
Previous Title and Institution: Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University
Home Department: English

The Board of Trustees Professor in English joins Northwestern from Emory University where she was the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing. She holds a prominent spot among the nation’s foremost contemporary poets, having captured the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “Native Guard,” one of her four published poetry collections, before serving two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States, from 2012 to 2014. She will bring added strengths to the creative writing program, the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium, and the Black Arts Initiative while amplifying Northwestern's reputation for innovation and outreach in the arts and humanities.

Christopher Udry

Christopher Udry

Position: Professor
PhD Institution: Yale University
Previous Title and Institution: Professor of Economics at Yale University
Home Department: Economics
Joint Department or Program at Northwestern: Buffett Institute
Research Website

Buffett Institute I am a development economist focusing on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. My work has involved field research in West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization. Current research includes directing the first long-term, nationwide socioeconomic panel survey of individuals across Ghana (in collaboration with the University of Ghana); randomized evaluations of a variety of governmental and NGO-led development programs in West Africa. I am also working on risk, information flows and agriculture in Mali, Ghana and India; on the role of psychological well-being on economic decision-making and on a variety of other related topics.

Tristram Wolff

Tristram Wolff

Position:  Assistant Professor
PhD Institution:  University of California, Berkeley
Home Department: English

Tristram Wolff specializes in 18th-/19th-Century British literature, Comparative and Transatlantic Romanticisms, critical theory, theories of language, poetry and poetics, translation, and the environmental humanities. His current book project, Frail Bonds: Romantic Etymology and Language Ecology, describes a poetics emerging from transatlantic Romanticism that transported the origins of language from the depths of the past to an ongoing present, in answer to an ethnocentric Enlightenment primitivism. Offering new readings of Herder, Blake, Wordsworth, and Thoreau, among others, it retrieves a chapter lost in familiar narratives of the long nineteenth century's shifts in "nature" as a category of thought.

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