Faculty Fellows

Allison Anoll, Assistant Professor of Political Science

• How social context, connections, and norms affect political participation, especially among racial and ethnic minorities.

Megan Behringer, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

• Experimental evolution, environmental factors, genomic analysis and genetic variation

Brandon Byrd, Assistant Professor of History

• History of the 19th and 20th century U.S. with specializations in African American History and the African Diaspora.

Emmanuele Costa, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

• Early modern philosophy and metaphysics, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, Renaissance philosophy

Marcelo Disconzi, Assistant Professor of Math

• Geometric analysis, fluid dynamics, relativistic fluids, and mathematical physics.

Rebecca Epstein-Levi, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies

• Moral and textual implications of treating sex as one species of social interaction

Christy Erving, S Family Dean’s Faculty Fellow for the Study of Race, Racial Justice, or Social Justice in Sociology, Assistant Professor of Sociology

• Medical sociology, mental health, health disparities, population health, and the intersections of race, ethnicity, immigration, and gender.

Raheleh Filsoofi, Assistant Professor of Art

• Synthesizing socio-political statements, ancient and contemporary media

Patrick Greiner, Assistant Professor of Sociology

• Inequality emerging from social, political, and economic structures

Diana Heney, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

• Objectivity of ethical judgements, the nature of moral judgements, and ethical issues pertaining to mental illness.

Karan Jani, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy

• Black holes, general theory of relativity, gravitational wave detectors

Amanda Lea, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

• Evolutionary biology, genomics, and human health research

Michelle Marcus, Assistant Professor of Economics

• Environment, health disparities, public policy

Lars Plate, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

• Networks of protein interactions that drive the function of healthy cells that provide insights into what causes disease.

Raisa Rexer, Assistant Professor of French

• 19th century French literature and the early history of photography.

Tasha Rijke-Epstein, Assistant Professor of History

• Urban history, material culture, built forms, museums and public history, and politics of kinship and belonging.

Larry Rolen, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

• Number theory, particularly so-called harmonic Maass forms and modular-type functions.

Jessie Runnoe, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

• Quasar central engines, long-term variability, and unification; the host-AGN connection; low-frequency gravitational waves, and supermassive black hole binaries.

Akshya Saxena, Assistant Professor of English

• 20th and 21st century Anglophone world literature, film, and media, with a focus on South Asia.

Bradley Smith, Cornelius Vanderbilt Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science

• Studies questions at the intersection of international conflict and international cooperation, specifically military cooperation in the international system.

Stephen Taylor, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

• Gravitational wave astrophysics, multi-messenger astronomy, statistical inference, black holes, neutron stars, and pulsar timing arrays.

Ann Tate, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

• Temporal and evolutionary dynamics of host-microbe, the immune system, and its function.

Steven Townsend, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

• Human milk science and the synthesis of carbohydrates.

Rebecca VanDiver, Assistant Professor of Art History

• African American art

Guojun Wang, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

• Late imperial Chinese literature.

We Jung Yi, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

• Comparative Asian studies, translation theory, film and media studies, gender criticism, and histories of violence in the Pacific Rim

Erin York, Assistant Professor of Political Science

• How governing autocratic institutions influence political outcomes; legislative institutions and opposition participation

Meng Zhang, Assistant Professor of History

• Late imperial and modern China, economic and environmental transformation, transnational connections.