Eight Hariri Faculty Affiliates Have Been Newly Promoted

BY HARIRI INSTITUTE STAFF

Recognized as Leaders in Their Fields & Classrooms

Eight faculty affiliated with the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering have been promoted to the rank of full professor at Boston University. They were among 23 faculty from the Charles River Campus who were promoted recently in an announcement from Dr. Gloria Waters, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer.

“The individuals we recognize today are leaders in their respective disciplines and in their classrooms. As the world and institutions like BU navigate daily change that impacts our communities and missions, they are rising to the challenge by pursuing new areas of inquiry, employing innovative approaches, and helping launch entirely new fields of study through exciting collaborations with colleagues across departments, schools, and campuses,” says Dr. Waters. “In doing so, they exemplify each day the depth and excellence of Boston University’s talented academic community.” 

Those faculty promoted to full professor who are affiliated with the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering are:

Patricia Cortes is a Professor of Markets, Public Policy & Law at Questrom School of Business and a Hariri Faculty Affiliate. She is a labor economist with expertise in the effects of immigration on labor market activity and gender disparities in the workforce. Her immigration research has been cited extensively in presidential and congressional economic forecasting models, with recent work on gender disparities and their causes being utilized by policymakers and private industry. She has published numerous articles in top economics journals, including The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Labor Economics. She is currently a Dean’s Research Scholar at Questrom and received the school’s McCombe and Callahan Faculty Research Award in 2023.

Mary Dunlop is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering (ENG) and a Hariri Faculty Affiliate. She specializes in synthetic biology, microbial systems, feedback control, single cell methods, antibiotic resistance, metabolic engineering, deep learning, and optogenetics. Her research is supported by major grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and she serves as her department’s vice chair. A past NSF CAREER Award winner, she is a fellow of the American Institute of Medicine and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and has garnered numerous honors for her lab and classroom work, including BU’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring Postdocs, the College of Engineering’s Faculty Service and Teaching Excellence awards, the NSF Transitions Award, and a US Department of Energy Early Career Award. She has published 75 articles in top-tier biomedical journals.

Marco Gaboardi is a Professor of Computer Science (CAS). At the Hariri Institute, he is a Faculty Affiliate as well as an AI and Education Affiliate. He studies foundational methods to make computer programs more trustworthy and secure. His recent efforts have focused on developing formal techniques, using ideas from mathematical logic and probabilities to guarantee that computer programs respect data privacy. His work has been consistently published in top-tier journals and supported by several grants from the NSF and the US Census Bureau. He is a past recipient of an EU Marie Curie Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, and a Google Research Award.

Douglas Holmes is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science Engineering (ENG), and a Hariri Faculty Affiliate. He explores how structures bend, wrinkle, and snap under various forces. His work focuses on slender structures and soft materials, ranging from airplane wings and human hair to robotic grippers inspired by origami, leading to the development of new materials and devices with applications in robotics, aerospace, and biomedical engineering. He has published extensively in journals such as Science Robotics, Advanced Functional Materials, and Matter, with lead articles in Physical Review Letters and Soft Matter on self-ordering of buckling beams and elastogranular mechanics.

Cara L. Lewis is a Professor of Physical Therapy & Athletic Training (SAR) and a Hariri Faculty Affiliate. She is a physical therapist and biomechanist who investigates the role of movement and joint load in the development of hip structure, function and pain. Her current NIH-funded work focuses on the prevention and treatment of variant hip morphology, such as femoroacetabular impingement syndrome and acetabular dysplasia, with the goal of reducing hip pain and preventing osteoarthritis. She has published over 95 peer-reviewed articles and provided over 140 presentations at national and international conferences. She also serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy and Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal and on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Biomechanics.

Jordana Muroff is a Professor of Clinical Practice (SSW) and a Hariri Faculty Affiliate, is a researcher-clinician who focuses on the development of mental health interventions that are more easily accessible and culturally and linguistically responsive. She is particularly interested in health technology innovations that help reduce health inequities and stigma and improve access to mental health services for underserved populations. She has led federal, state, and foundation funded research studies in collaboration with community agencies and was lead author of the book, Group Treatment for Hoarding Disorder: Therapist Guide (2014). Her research has been featured in leading journals such as the American Journal of Public Health and Depression and Anxiety, and she is editor of the Oxford University Press ABCT Clinical Practice Series.

Alex Olshevsky is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Division of Systems Engineering (ENG). At the Hariri Institute, he is a Faculty Affiliate, an AIR Affiliate, and co-leads the Optimal Bio-Inspired Design of Holistic Rehabilitation Systems Focused Research Program. He researches reinforcement learning, multi-agent control, and distributed optimization. His work seeks to enhance our understanding of how classical gradient methods can be adapted for reinforcement learning and has enabled the creation of faster, more reliable algorithms. He is a past NSF CAREER Award winner and has received an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the INFORMS Prize for best paper at the intersection of operations research and computer science, and an International Medical Informatics Association Award for best clinical informatics paper. He has published dozens of articles and papers in leading engineering journals and conference proceedings, including SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization and Algorithmica. 

Chris Wells is a Professor of Emerging Media Studies (COM). He is a Hariri Faculty Affiliate and was a Junior Faculty Fellow (2011-2014). He studies digital media, public opinion and political culture, focusing on how news media coverage takes shape, how citizens learn about politics, and how they choose to participate. He is a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences and affiliate faculty with the Institute of Global Sustainability. His most recent projects – supported by the Hariri Institute for Computing, the Institute for Global Sustainability, and the Knight Foundation – examine the veracity of online information about climate change and the sociopolitical roots of our country’s epistemic crisis. He has published two books, including 2015’s The Civic Organization and the Digital Citizen: Communicating Engagement in a Networked Age, along with 45 academic articles and proceedings and 16 book chapters. He is associate dean for faculty development at COM.