Each year an impressive group of scholar-teachers joins the ranks of Dartmouth’s faculty, and this year is no different.
The tenured and tenure-track professors are published authors, poets, engineers, historians, cultural experts, a pharmacologist, an astrophysicist, computer scientists, and more.
One scholar has been featured in National Geographic’s “Women of Impact” series. Another is an ethnomusicologist who runs the Black Sound Lab at Dartmouth—a research environment dedicated to amplifying Black life through digital practice. A handful of the new faculty members are dedicated to studying machine learning—contributing to Dartmouth’s continuing impact in the field of artificial intelligence. An engineer in the cohort installed a dilution refrigerator that was not only the coldest place in the state, but colder than outer space.
The new professors are making discoveries, writing books, and researching some of the most relevant topics to our society. Their contributions are having an important impact, and they are passing the wealth of their knowledge on to Dartmouth students.
“We are excited to have this dynamic group of faculty members now here with us at Dartmouth,” says President Philip J. Hanlon ’77. “Their work in classrooms, research labs, and other venues is going to have a tremendous impact on students and society for decades to come.”
Mauricio Acuña
Mellon Faculty Fellow of Spanish and Portuguese
Education: BA, University of São Paulo | MS, University of São Paulo | MA, Princeton University | PhD, University of São Paulo | PhD, Princeton University
I specialize in the contemporary literature and cultures of Afro-Latin America, particularly Brazil. I research the poetics, performances, and aesthetics of Afro-diasporic artists and intellectuals, race relations, and capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art). My current book project explores how previously understudied Afro-Latin American artists and writers shaped aesthetic creations, anti-racist politics, and the rise of Black internationalism between 1950 and 1970.
Rufus Boyack
Assistant Professor of Physics
Education: MSc, Victoria University of Wellington | PhD, University of Chicago
My research is focused on understanding the quantum properties of superconductors when they undergo a phase transition. In superconductors, individual particles combine together and display collective phenomena that are observed only in the many-particle state. I study these physics using symmetries and conservation laws.
Ingrid Brioso Rieumont
Mellon Faculty Fellow of Spanish and Portuguese
Education: BA, Smith College | MA, Princeton University | PhD, Princeton University
I am a scholar of modern and contemporary Latin America with a focus on the relationship between slavery and literary form, and critical theory and aesthetics of both the Hispanic Caribbean and Brazil. My book project is a cultural history of the dead bodies of the enslaved as they appear in 19th century novels. I analyze how literature delays the end of slavery through posthumous representations of the enslaved in Brazil and Cuba, the two longest slave-holding societies in the Americas.
Peter Chin
Professor of Engineering
Education: BS, Duke University | PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
My LISP (Learning, Intelligence + Signal Processing) lab is focused on asking fundamental questions such as “Can intelligence be learned?” at the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, game theory, extremal graph theory, and computational neuroscience. My students and I are developing geometric and topological methods to learn and understand information in general—signals (neural, images, videos, hyper-spectral, audio, language, RF), graphs (social networks, communication networks), and human interactions via game theory.
Jorge Cuéllar
Assistant Professor of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies
Education: BA, University of California Santa Barbara | MA, University of Southern California | MPhil, Yale University | PhD, Yale University
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of transnational Central America working at the intersections of Latin American, Latinx, and American studies. My work explores 21st century Central American culture and politics through critical and interdisciplinary frames to examine social problems such as inequality, race, migration, insecurity, development, and governance. In my teaching, scholarship, and public writing, I advocate for Central America as an indispensable site to understand the contemporary, and for making sense of, shared planetary issues. My current book project, drawing on long-term ethnographic and archival research, theorizes the dialectics of living and dying in modern El Salvador.
Mark DesJardine
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Education: BBA, Acadia University | PhD, Western University
I study issues at the intersection of business strategy, sustainability, and finance. My primary goal is to unpack how investors shape the sustainability of companies and their actions toward other stakeholders.
Sujin Eom
Assistant Professor of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages
Education: BArch, Seoul National University | MS, Seoul National University | PhD, University of California, Berkeley
I am an architectural historian whose research is anchored in a historical inquiry into race, migration, and the built environment. My research and teaching interests include colonial architecture and urbanism, migration and diaspora, race and racism, Asian/American studies, and infrastructures. I am currently completing my first book manuscript that situates “Chinatown” within the global history of empire, labor migration, and violence. My second research project examines the underexplored work of Asian American architects in the midcentury.
Tatiana Filimonova
Assistant Professor of Russian
Education: BA, Herzen University | MA, Northwestern University | PhD, Northwestern University
Much of Russian literature has been shaped by Russia’s colonial history and its resulting multiethnic population. The identity of Russia’s people and their aspirations are the subject of many novels and have inspired powerful imperialist intellectual trends. In my research, I examine how these trends play out in literature and how a geopolitical frame of mind affects Russia’s collective identity. I am also interested in regional identities, migration narratives, and the history and writing of Siberia’s Indigenous peoples.
Mattias Fitzpatrick
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Education: BA, Middlebury College | PhD, Princeton University
I work on quantum computation and quantum sensing with superconducting circuits. When these circuits are cooled down to ultracold temperatures, they can be manipulated at the single photon level, where quantum effects arise. Through careful microwave engineering and optimal control, we develop new ways to manipulate the quantum states of photons in these circuits to enable the next generation of quantum computers.
Jane Henderson
Mellon Faculty Fellow of Geography
Education: BA, University of San Diego | PhD, University of California, Berkeley
I am interested in Black geographies beyond the plantation. My first book project examines the historical and contemporary relationship of Blackness to the frontier, in order to think through the place of Blackness in settler geographies and imaginaries. I ask questions about Black and Indigenous claims to space through my hometown of Minneapolis, Minn.
SouYoung Jin
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education: BS, Dongguk University | MS, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | PhD, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
My main research area is in computer vision, machine learning, and cognitive science. My area of expertise is video understanding. As a computer vision researcher, one of my ultimate aspirations is to build an AI system that can understand and respond to the richness of human experience and emotion, much like Jarvis in the Iron Man movie.
Marie Larose
Mellon Faculty Fellow of French and Italian
Education: BA, Rutgers University | MA, Rutgers University | MA, Brown University
My research focuses on 20th and 21st century Francophone literature specifically from France, the Caribbean, and Mauritius. I apply theories from gender, postcolonial, Black, disability, psychoanalytic, popular culture, and literary critical studies to explore the intricate links between violence and genealogy in the works of female writers, including Marie NDiaye, Kettly Mars, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Ken Bugul, Marie-Célie Agnant, and Ananda Devi. I’m also working on a digital archive of French Creole folktales throughout the Caribbean.
Michael Lee
Associate Professor of Medical Education
Education: BA, University of South Florida | MS, University of South Florida | PhD, University of South Florida
My research efforts are centered on the development and use of technology to enhance the engagement of health and life science students with educational activities. The goal of my research is to one, understand the factors and conditions that drive student engagement with different pedagogical approaches, and two, create/analyze novel interactive learning tools to enhance cognitive (i.e. durable, long-term retention of information) and noncognitive (i.e. motivation, communication, team-skills) processes.
Allie Martin
Assistant Professor of Music
Digital Humanities and Social Engagement Cluster
Education: BA, American University | MA, Indiana University | PhD, Indiana University
My work as an ethnomusicologist is attuned to questions of race, sound, and power. My forthcoming first book, Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, D.C., explores the relationships between race, sound, and gentrification in Washington. I am also the director of the Black Sound Lab at Dartmouth, a research environment dedicated to amplifying Black life and decriminalizing Black sound through digital practice.
Michael McGillen
Assistant Professor of German Studies
Education: BA, Northwestern University | PhD, Princeton University
I am a scholar of 20th century German literature, philosophy, and intellectual history. My forthcoming book Shapes of Time explores the construction of history in modernism, showing how a combination of mathematics and religious thought resulted in the imagination of new timescapes. My research agenda focuses on German-Jewish thought, modernism, postwar literature, and the history of science, religion, and philosophy. I am currently working on a book on the temporality of memory in the post-Holocaust era.
Kianna Middleton
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies
Education: BA, Colorado State University | MA, Colorado State University | MA University of California, Berkeley | PhD, University of California Berkeley
My research examines 20th and 21st century literary representations of Black disabled and queer people in African American fiction and within American medical literature and archives. Currently, I am working on my manuscript, wherein I theorize a Black feminist disability framework to account for the ableist and racist intersex medical protocols developed during the post-World War II era in the United States.
Felix Montag
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
The Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization Cluster
Education: BSc, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich | MSc, London School of Economics | MRes, University College London | PhD, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
I am an industrial organization economist, but most of my research lies at the intersection of international trade and public economics. My current research focuses on how market structure affects how firms set prices, choose product portfolios, decide on production locations and job creation, as well as how they react to tax changes.
Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Education: BSc, Bilkent University | MSc, Texas Tech University | PhD, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
I am an observational astrophysicist who works with large imaging surveys and tailored follow-up observations from large telescopes. My main science focus is to understand the nature of dark matter and galaxy formation via observations of nearby galaxies. I lead several observational campaigns to discover and characterize faint galaxies within the Local Group and beyond. I have been honored as a 2018 TED Fellow and 2020 TED Senior Fellow, featured in National Geographic as a “woman of impact,” named a 2019 AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador, and featured in a Science Friday documentary, Breakthrough: The Galaxy Hunter, and in CBS’s Mission Unstoppable.
Matthew Olzmann
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing
Education: BA, University of Michigan, Dearhorn | MFA, Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers
I’m a poet, and I teach creative writing. My research interests include contemporary American poetry, humor, the epistolary poem, defamiliarization, and the poetic turn.
Nailya Ordabayeva
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Education: BS, Bilkent University | MS, Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires | PhD, Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires
I study how social and sensory perceptions shape consumption decisions. In ongoing projects, I examine how perceptions of socioeconomic hierarchies and political ideologies, as well as sensory perceptions of packages and portions, influence purchase behavior and well-being. I employ multiple methodologies to study these influences and identify strategies that can help consumers make more informed consumption decisions and attain healthful outcomes.
Raymond Orr
Mae and John Hueston Distinguished Professor in Native American and Indigenous Studies and Associate Professor
Education: AB, Cornell University | MA, University of California, Berkeley | PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Within the field of Indigenous studies, my work focuses on politics. This extends from how Indigenous peoples make decisions about their own tribes or political organizations to the ways that they are embedded within national politics. One of my appointments prior to joining Dartmouth was at the University of Melbourne where I taught classes on Australian Indigenous politics. I am currently working on a book that compares Indigenous politics in the United States and Australia.
Adithya Pediredla
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education: BTech, National Institute of Technology Warangal | ME, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore | PhD, Rice University
I build computational cameras. These cameras co-design the imaging and image processing pipelines to either acquire novel features of the scene, decrease the cost, or increase the robustness of the imaging system. My research touches multiple fields, including computer vision, computer graphics (physics-based rendering), optics, signal, and image processing. I built imaging systems for adaptive sensing, depth imaging, microscopy, non-line-of-sight imaging, imaging through scattering media, and rendering engines for time-of-flight cameras and acoustic-optic devices.
Roopika Risam
Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Comparative Literature
Digital Humanities and Social Engagement Cluster
Education: BA, University of Pennsylvania | MA, Georgetown University | PhD, Emory University
As digital knowledge production in the humanities has accelerated rapidly in the last few decades, the exclusions and biases that have long shaped print culture—products of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy—are being reproduced and amplified as we create digital archives, exhibits, and data visualizations. My scholarship examines the methodologies, reward structures, labor models, and ethics of research necessary for more fully realizing the promise of knowledge production in the digital age.
Kiara Sanchez
Mellon Faculty Fellow of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Education: BA, Rice University | PhD, Stanford University
My lab studies how people from different backgrounds interact with each other and discuss sensitive topics like race and ethnicity. I examine the risks and benefits people face in these conversations and test strategies to improve communication across group lines. I explore these questions in various contexts, including friendships, education, and social media. In doing so, my lab seeks to identify ways to support positive social identity development, shared racial-ethnic consciousness, and authenticity in diverse spaces.
Mahima Sneha
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Education: MS, National Institute of Science Education and Research, India | PhD, Stanford University
My research focuses on understanding photoinduced chemical processes in solutions and at interfaces. On the molecular level, chemical reactions occur on a wide range of timescales spanning from femtoseconds to seconds. My lab will utilize state-of-the-art time-resolved ultrafast laser spectroscopies to investigate photocatalytic reaction pathways in real time. The unprecedented knowledge gained from these studies will lead to building a comprehensive kinetic and mechanistic picture of complex chemical pathways, thereby providing synthetic chemists rational design tools for controlling reaction outcomes.
Li Song
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science
Education: BEng, Tongji University | MS, Michigan Technological University | PhD, Johns Hopkins University
My research interest is to design algorithms and develop highly efficient methods to analyze sequencing data from DNA or RNA. Our lab will develop computational methods to recover commonly ignored information in the sequencing data, including T-cell receptors, B-cell receptors, and microbiomes. We will apply these methods to patient samples, such as tumor samples, to study the immune system in various diseases.
I study histories of the built environment of peoples of African descent—in the continent and the diaspora—in the modern era. Part of what I focus on is the ways in which—in the hands of those architects—folklore, performance, music, and dance intersect and are used as architectural histories and as design tools for the generation of new architectural designs. To put it succinctly, I am a scholar of architectural experience.
Yujun Yan
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education: BS, Southeast University, China | MS, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
My research combines machine learning and network science, with the goal of providing a comprehensive understanding of machine-learning models applied to complex real-world networks. My primary interests are one, developing principles for graph-based ML models that are both expressive and generalizable, and two, exploring the practical applications of these models in domains such as neuroscience and program understanding.
Yaoqing Yang
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education: BS, Tsinghua University | PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
I study the fundamental aspects of machine learning, and my main contributions are toward improving reliability and generalization in the face of uncertainty, both in the data and the computing platform. Recent works of mine focus on the generalization and robustness of deep neural networks, and I also apply these studies to practical data analytics, such as 3D point clouds and graph neural networks.