Faculty Council
The BU Hillel Faculty Council advises Hillel staff on student and faculty concerns as issues arise throughout the academic year and serves as a liaison cohort to the University. The group meets three times per year (at the end of the fall and spring semesters and at the end of the summer). Contact Ethan Sobel (esobel@bu.edu) to consider joining.
Debbie Danielpour-Chapel (Co-Chair) is associate chair of COM’s Department of Film and Television. She writes fiction, libretti, and screenplays and teaches screenwriting, genre studies, and fiction to film adaptation. A recipient of COM’s teacher of the year award in 2011 and 2017, she earned her BA at Harvard University, an MA in film production at San Francisco State University, and an MFA in fiction at the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Pearl Steinbuch (Co-Chair) is a professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Professor Steinbuch previously served as a professor in the department of business administration at Mount Ida College, a senior manager of corporate development at Oracle Corporation, and in a variety of senior consulting and management roles at American Airlines/Sabre (AMR Corporation).
Binyomin Abrams is an associate professor at the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for Chemistry. The Abrams group is focused on developing novel approaches to teaching introductory chemistry that excites students across disciplines. Recent projects include the development of the Boston University Chemical Writing Program (BUCWP), the LA program, out-of-class activities to strengthen visual models for quantum concepts, and more. Additionally, students in the Abrams group study biomimetic oligomers (foldamers) using molecular dynamics simulations.
Mira Angrist is a Hebrew language and Jewish culture specialist. She is the head of the Hebrew Language Program at Boston University. Angrist has taught at the Modern Languages and Comparative Literature Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University since 2008.
Irving J. Bigio received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1974. From then until 2000 he was a member of the scientific staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico), including service as Leader of the Laser Science and Applications Program (1988-1994). During leaves of absence, he has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, a Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a Guest Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. Since 2001 he has been Professor at Boston University, with appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics, and Medicine (Gastroenterology). Dr. Bigio leads a research program in biomedical optics, focusing on the development of diagnostic optical spectroscopy for clinical applications, on optical monitoring of drug delivery and response to treatment, and on the imaging/sensing of basic cellular dynamics. He is a Fellow of the OSA, the SPIE, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Sol Eisenberg’s research is directed towards understanding the functional role played by electrically mediated interactions in connective tissues and membranes, as well as the effects and mechanisms of interactions of externally applied electric and magnetic fields. Specifically, his research addresses: electromechanical interactions in cartilage; electrically mediated transport in charged and neutral materials; computational modeling of electric field distributions in the human thorax and heart during electrical defibrillation.
Abigail Gillman is an Associate Professor of Hebrew, German, and Comparative Literature in the Department of World Languages and Literatures. Gillman is an active member of the Jewish Studies faculty, and served as interim director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in 2016-17. She recently published A History of German Jewish Bible Translation (University of Chicago Press, 2018). This book takes as its starting point the remarkable number of re-translations of the Hebrew Bible produced in Germany—translations into German and Yiddish—from the Haskalah through the twentieth century. The book demonstrates that bible translation in Jewish society was (and still is) used to promote diverse educational, cultural, and linguistic goals. She is currently writing about the parable/mashal across Jewish Literature, and about “monstrous motherhood” in recent Israeli (and Jewish) films and memoirs.
Dr. Dori Hutchinson has worked at Boston University for 36 years and is currently the Director of Services at the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, an Associate Professor at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Services, the faculty advisor for BU’s ACTIVE MINDS group, and a Faculty in Residence in a first-year dorm, living with 600 first years students.
Over the last 2 decades, Dr. Hutchinson has worked to develop innovative college mental health services that support the success of students who live with mental health conditions. Her programs and services help students cope with wellness strategies, build skills that promote resiliency and help students thrive, support student-led initiatives in Peer academic coaching for students with mental health conditions and suicide prevention. In addition, Dr. Hutchinson works closely with faculty and staff to enhance their knowledge and strategies in supporting students with empathy and responding to students in distress. She is a firm believer that everyone on campus has a responsibility and a role to play in creating campus cultures to support student mental health.
Karen Jacobs, EdD, OT, OTR, CPE, FAOTA is a past president and vice president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). Dr. Jacobs is a clinical professor of occupational therapy and the program director of the online post-professional doctorate in occupational therapy (OTD) program at Boston University. She has worked at Boston University for 34 years and has expertise in the development and instruction of online graduate courses. In addition, she is a faculty-in-residence at Boston University where she hosts the weekly Sargent Choice Test Kitchen. In addition to being an occupational therapist, Karen is also a certified professional ergonomist (CPE) and the founding editor-in-chief of the international, interprofessional journal WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation (IOS Press, The Netherlands) and is a consultant in ergonomics, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Dr. Jacobs earned a doctoral degree at the University of Massachusetts, a Master of Science at Boston University, and a Bachelor of Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Irit Ruth Kleiman is the Associate Professor of Roma Studies. She received her BA from UMich, MA, and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. Professor Kleiman teaches courses on the literature and cultures of medieval and Renaissance France and serves on the faculty of the Core Curriculum in the Humanities. Her research interests include historiography, law and literature, intellectual history, the cultures of memory, Mediterranean studies, the material turn, history of the senses, psychoanalysis and literature, and the tropes of embodiment. Kleiman’s first book, Philippe de Commynes: Memory, Betrayal, Text(University of Toronto Press, 2013), received the Newberry Library’s Weiss/Brown Award. She is also the editor of Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Her other publications include articles and book chapters on topics including the apocryphal Life of Judas Iscariot, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the crusade narrative of Jean de Joinville, and the rhetoric of late-medieval political resistance. She is currently at work on a book about historical witness and the sense of touch. Kleiman served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Romance Studies from 2013 until the end of 2016 and as Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Medieval Studies from 2014-2016.
Leora Halpern Lanz is Assistant Dean, Academics of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration and Associate Professor of the Practice, also currently serving as Chair of its Graduate Programs. At Boston University she also serves as Faculty Advisor to the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity. Prior to joining Boston University in 2015, Leora served as principal of LHL Communications, worked for nearly ten years as Director of Public Relations & Advertising for the ITT Sheraton Hotels of New York and for five years as Director of Public Relations for the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau (now MeetBoston). A native of New York, she volunteered in the IDF when she was 20, brought her children to Israel for their bar and bat mitzvahs, and loves following Israeli chefs on Instagram.
Glenn Markenson is a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine for CLINE Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Francine Montemurro was appointed Boston University’s first Ombuds in September 2009. She practices in accordance with the International Ombuds Association (IOA) Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice. She holds a BA from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, and a JD from Syracuse University. She established the Office of the University Ombudsman at SUNY Binghamton 1997, and served as the Ombudsman there through 2009. She has extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution, including providing interventions and workshops on mediation and conflict management. She served two terms on the IOA Board of Directors and served on numerous IOA standing committees. She is also the ombuds for American Finance Association.
Nancy Moore, Professor of Law and Nancy Barton Scholar, is a nationally recognized leader in
the field of professional responsibility, an area in which she first became interested while
working as a prosecutor in Philadelphia. Before joining Boston University School of Law in
1999, Professor Moore taught at Rutgers University School of Law, where she offered the
school’s first course in professional responsibility. Professor Moore has written numerous articles on attorney ethics. Her most recent articles include “Forming Start-up Companies: Who’s My Client?”, “The Future of Law as a Profession,” and “Why is There No Clear Doctrine of Informed Consent for Lawyers?” She recently published a case book titled Professional Responsibility for Business Lawyers. She was chief reporter for the ABA Commission on Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct (“Ethics 2000”) and is a former chair and current member of the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination Test Drafting Committee. A member of the Boston Bar Ethics Committee, Professor Moore served twice as chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Professional Responsibility and was an adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers. She was the 2021 recipient of the annual ABA Michael Frank Professional Responsibility Award.
Ruth Paris, Ph.D., LICSW is an Associate Professor of Clinical Practice at Boston University School of Social Work where she serves as the Chair of the Clinical Practice Department. At BUSSW, she teaches courses on clinical practice with families, trauma in early childhood, and clinical research methods. Dr. Paris’ program of research focuses on attachment-based interventions for vulnerable families with young children. With support from SAMHSA, DOD, NIH, HRSA, and private foundations, she has developed and evaluated multiple interventions implemented in a variety of community settings focused on families at-risk. These include mothers with substance use disorders and their children, immigrant/refugee mothers and young children with trauma histories, women with postpartum depression and their infants and post-deployment military families. In 2016, Dr. Paris served as a Fulbright Specialist at the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University where she worked to develop the capacity for clinical research. Dr. Paris is a graduate of Smith College (MSW) and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.).
Davida Pines is the chair and associate professor of Boston University College of General Studies. She graduated from Yale University with a BA degree, got her MA degree in English and American Literature from NYU, and Ph.D. from Oxford University. She is interested in teaching “Argument and Composition”, “Graphic Narrative”, “Modernism”, and Harlem Renaissance. And her research focuses on long-form autobiographical comics, the relationship between image and text, and the teaching of writing.
Abraham (Avi) Seidmann is the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar of Information Systems, Associate Research Director for Health Analytics and Digital Health at the Questrom Digital Business Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the Boston University Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy. He is a national expert in the areas of Digital Health, Healthcare Analytics and Telemedicine, and has been leading clinical and economic research in these areas for the past 25 years. His current research interests involve around telemedicine 2.,0, medical applications of AI/ML, digital therapies, aging in place and loneliness in society. Professor Seidmann is the author of over one hundred research articles, has over 8,000 research citations, and in October 2012 he was named a “Distinguished Fellow” by the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Information Systems Society of INFORMS. The award was given to him in recognition of his contributions to the information systems discipline. Professor Seidmann has done pioneering work in Digital Health addressing medical imaging, neurology, ophthalmology, oncology, and dental care. He has consulted and works together with America’s foremost pharmaceutical companies and hospital systems, and earlier in 2020 he got invited to join the New York State Corona Task Force addressing the ‘safe opening’ policies upstate. Prior to joining Boston University, Professor Seidmann has taught at the University of Rochester, Tel-Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, the Technion and at Yale University. Professor Seidmann is the president of several commercial companies dealing with real estate, management consulting, medical imaging CME, and medical software development.
Amy Shanler has 25 years of experience managing communications activities for multiple organizations and industries, including retail, technology, business, health care, and entertainment. Amy co-directs the award-winning PRLab, the nation’s longest-running, student-led public relations agency, named “Best Training/Education Program” by PR News’s Agency Elite awards in 2018. In addition, Amy teaches courses on principles of public relations, crisis communications, and media relations.
David Starobinski is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Systems Engineering at Boston University, with an affiliated appointment in the Department of Computer Science. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the U.S. DoT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in 1993, 1996, and 1999, respectively. During the academic year 1999-2000, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the EECS department at UC Berkeley, and in 2007-2008 he was an invited professor at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL (Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne). Dr. Starobinski received a US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award and a US Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award for his work on Quality of Service engineering and network modeling.
Ari Trachtenberg received his Ph.D. in Computer Science (2000) and M.S. in Computer Science (1996) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and his S.B. in Mathematics with Computer Science (1994) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Trachtenberg has been involved with Ben Gurion University (Distinguished Scientist Visitor, 2016), TripAdvisor (2016), MIT Lincoln Lab (2015), and the Technion (Visiting Professor, 2014). He received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2013, 2003), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2002), and the UIUC Kuck Outstanding Thesis Award (2000).
David Waxman is a professor of biology, medicine, and biomedical engineering. He has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Harvard University, in addition to a B.A. in Chemistry from Queens College, CUNY. Professor Waxman’s primary interests are in genomic and epigenetic mechanisms controlling liver gene expression; molecular endocrinology and cell signaling through transcriptional networks; nuclear receptors and responses to environmental chemicals; the role of the immune system in cancer therapy and pharmacology.
Nancy Harrowitz is the Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies and Chair of the Dept. of Romance Studies at Boston University. Professor Harrowitz’s research and teaching interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature, science and literature, and Holocaust Studies. She is a specialist in Primo Levi and is currently writing a book on Levi, science and Jewish identity. She has published Antisemitism, Misogyny and the Logic of Cultural Difference: Matilde Serao and Cesare Lombroso (1995), has edited Tainted Greatness: Antisemitism and Cultural Heroes (1995), and co- edited with Barbara Hyams Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger (1996). Her work includes articles on Primo Levi, Giorgio Bassani, Carlo Levi, and Margherita Sarfatti among others.
Raviv Murciano-Goroff is an assistant professor of strategy and innovation at the Questrom School of Business. Professor Murciano has been teaching at Boston University since 2019 and previously was a research assistant professor at the Wagner Graduate School at New York University. He has published many research articles in gender equality within the sciences and the tech industry as well as new technology softwares and the effects of privacy laws in security conscientiousness. He has also won the 2019 award for Collaborative Archive & Data Research Environment Fellowship, the 2016 awards for Kauffman Foundation, Dissertation Fellowship, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and both the 2016 and 2015 award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at Stanford University.
Leora Lanz teaches the senior-required Advanced Strategic Marketing in Hospitality capstone and the graduate-level Digital Marketing Strategies course. She is Associate Professor of the Practice, Faculty Chair of the Master of Management in Hospitality, and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs.
David H. Webber is the author of the critically-acclaimed book, The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, published by Harvard University Press. Webber toured extensively for the book and published op-eds about it in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. It was reviewed or otherwise covered in the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Bloomberg Radio, CSPAN’s BookTV, Forbes, the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, the Harvard OnLabor blog, Cornell University’s ILR Review, Rorotoko, de Volkskrant, Calcalist, Splinter News, The National Review and Dissent. The book was published in Korean in 2020. In 2022, Webber published scholarly articles in the Harvard Business Law Review, the University of Chicago Business Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Business. He has a coauthored paper forthcoming in the Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance and has previously published in the New York University Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review. He has presented his research at the Harvard Stanford Yale Junior Faculty Forum, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the American Law and Economics Association conference. His coauthored article, “Shareholder Value(s): Index Fund ESG Activism and the New Millennial Corporate Governance,” was selected as one of the top ten corporate and securities law articles of 2020 in a national survey of law scholars by Corporate Practice Commentator. The BU Law Class of 2023 voted him the Mark Pettit Teaching Award winner. He also won the 2023 Dean’s award for excellence in teaching. In 2017 he was awarded the Michael Melton Award for Teaching Excellence. He has also received the Dean’s award for service to the law school in 2020 and 2021. He co-teaches the Pensions and Capital Stewardship course for the Harvard Trade Union program at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Columbia and NYU Law School, where he was an editor for the law review.
Jodi Luber is associate dean, faculty and student actions, and associate professor of the practice, film and television. She also is co-founder of womesforum.com, a top-10 website for women. After running womensforum.com as a start-up for three years, she secured $17 million in venture funding from Vantage Point Venture Partners. Today, womensforum.com is recognized as one of the pioneering women’s content and advertising networks in the industry. In 2012, womensforum.com was acquired by H.I.G. Growth Partners, a subsidiary of H.I.G. Capital. Prior to starting womensforum.com, Jodi wrote and produced for cable television and was a freelance writer. She earned a Master of Science degree in Reporting on Science and Medicine and a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Boston University. She is also the founder of thejewishkitchen.com, a website and mobile platform devoted to Jewish recipes and the stories behind the food.
Susan L. Mizruchi is Professor of English Literature at Boston University. She received B.A.’s in English and in History from Washington University in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985. Professor Mizruchi’s specialties are nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature; religion and culture; literary and social theory; literary history; and history of the social sciences. She has taught courses in literature, gender, and film at Boston University for twenty-nine years. Publications include: Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work (Norton, 2014); Film Rights Sold, 2014; Paperback Published, 2015; The Rise of Multicultural America (North Carolina UP, 2008); Becoming Multicultural: Culture, Economy, and the Novel, 1860–1920 (Cambridge UP 2005); The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory (Princeton UP, 1998); The Power of Historical Knowledge: Narrating the Past in Hawthorne, James, & Dreiser (Princeton, 1988); and, as editor Religion and Cultural Studies, editor (Princeton UP, 2001) and contributor to The Norton Critical Edition of The Souls of Black Folk (1999) and Everyman Edition of The Bostonians (1994). She is the recipient of many academic honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS, and the Fulbright Commission. She is the recipient, most recently, of the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education, 2015, and the Financial Times ‘Best Books of 2014 and Booklist Editor’s Choice, 2014’ for Brando’s Smile. She serves as the U.S. Delegate for Literature, Film and Media Studies for Oxford University Press, and a consultant for PBS, the Princeton University English Department Advisory Council, and the NEH, NHA, ACLS, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others.
Jonathan Katz teaches branding, marketing and communications courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs at Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration. He also serves as the faculty liaison for the BU Chapter of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) and the School’s Parent Advisory Council. In addition, as a partner at Acom Healthcare, Mr. Katz has worked closely with a broad range of clients within the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device markets to bring their corporate, product and service brands to life in a compelling manner. With more than 37 years of industry experience, he has extensive experience in leading brand workshops, strategic development sessions and advisory boards that are dynamic and highly interactive. Mr. Katz has been committed to helping clients cultivate, actualize and evolve positive brand experiences that are meaningfully differentiated and customer-focused. His pragmatic approach puts strategy first and is guided by understanding the market and prioritized needs of key constituents. Whether launching a game-changing innovation or helping an existing product capture additional share, he is focused on creating persuasive branding that resonates with audiences, shifts behavior and builds enduring loyalty. He has a keen interest in the intersection of healthcare and hospitality and firmly believes that there is an opportunity to develop optimal brand experiences based on shared objectives. Mr. Katz is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, New England-Israel Business Council, and the Forbes Boston Business Council. He also served for four years on the Washington University National Public Affairs Advisory Council and has guest lectured at Boston University and Northeastern University. He is also a licensed Justice of the Peace in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Before joining Acom Healthcare, he was a co-founder of Braithwaite & Katz, a firm dedicated to providing strategic public relations counsel. Mr. Katz holds a B.A. in Sociology from Ithaca College and a Master’s degree in Communications from Boston University.