2021-2022 Career Development Professorship Awardees
From Dr. Jean Morrison University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
Each year, Boston University has the pleasure of recognizing a number of talented junior faculty who are emerging as future leaders within their respective fields with the awarding of Career Development Professorships.
Presented to promising junior faculty who have been at BU for less than two years and who have held no prior professorships, these awards are made possible through the generous support of BU Trustees Peter Paul (Questrom ’71), Richard Reidy (Questrom ’82) and his wife Minda (Questrom ’82, ’84), and S.D. Shibulal (MET ’88) and his family; alumnus Peter J. Levine (ENG ’83); an alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous; and proceeds from the University’s Technology Development office.
The awards highlight the caliber, potential, and continued vitality of Boston University’s dynamic faculty and include a three-year, non-renewable stipend designed to support research, scholarship, and creative work, as well as a portion of the recipients’ salaries. Nominations for the Peter Paul, Reidy Family, Shibulal Family, East Asia Studies, and Innovation Career Development Professorships are submitted by the academic deans, and awardees are selected by the Office of the Provost. Awardees for the Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship are selected by the dean of the College of Engineering.
- The Peter Paul Career Development Professorship recognizes a faculty member in the School of Medicine.
- The Reidy Family Career Development Professorship is given to faculty members in the College of Engineering and the Questrom School of Business.
- The Shibulal Family Career Development Professorship supports the research of rising faculty within the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences.
- The Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship supports rising junior faculty in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
- The East Asia Studies Career Development Professorship, supported by a BU alumnus based in Taiwan, recognizes assistant professors in the College of Arts & Sciences, the Pardee School of Global Studies, the College of Communication, the College of Fine Arts, and the Questrom School of Business whose research is specific to East Asia, particularly China and Taiwan.
- The Innovation Career Development Professorship recognizes junior faculty whose translational research is likely to lead to future licensed technology.
This year’s Career Development Professorship recipients have been recognized for their extraordinary accomplishments in their areas of study, their passion for the creation and transmission of new knowledge, their efforts to enhance the student experience, and their potential to develop into outstanding faculty members. I am delighted to announce that this year’s Career Development Professors are:
Peter Paul Career Development Professorship
Michael Wallace
Assistant Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology, School of Medicine
Mike Wallace’s research uses new technologies and imaging techniques to better understand the synapses, cells, and circuits – particularly in the basal ganglia – that guide motivated behaviors, with the goal of developing new therapeutics to treat disorders, including depression, Parkinson’s disease, and drug addiction. He received his PhD in neurobiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and his bachelor’s degree in cell biology and neuroscience from Rutgers University. He completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.
Reidy Family Career Development Professorship
Abdoulaye Ndao
Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Abdoulaye Ndao focuses on light-matter interactions at the nanometer scale, known as nano-optics and nano-photonics, using topological light sources, metamaterials, and electro-optical sensors for applications with broad impact for society, from digital imaging to medical diagnostics. He received his PhD in physics from University of Franche-Comté in France, and his master’s degree in physics, lasers, and materials from University of Bourgogne in France. He performed his postdoctoral training at the University of California San Diego and the University of California, Berkeley.
Shibulal Family Career Development Professorship
Kira Goldner
Assistant Professor of Computing & Data Sciences, Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences
Kira Goldner uses techniques from game theory – primarily algorithmic mechanism design and approximation algorithms – to help address societal problems, including access to opportunity for disadvantaged communities, privacy rights, and climate change. She holds a PhD and master’s degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oberlin College. She completed her postdoctoral training at Columbia University.
Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship
Ashok Cutkosky
Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Ashok Cutkosky’s research in hyperparameter tuning seeks to develop algorithms that remove the guesswork currently required in building and training machine learning models – work that involves retraining models on multiple datasets to find optimal settings for learning rates, regularization constants, and model architectures. He received his PhD and master’s degree in computer science, as well as a master’s in medicine from Stanford University, and his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard University.
Eshed Ohn-Bar
Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Eshed Ohn-Bar’s work in machine intelligence focuses on improving the perception and decision-making of real-world assistive and autonomous systems, like safety applications for autonomous driving and assisted navigation for people with visual impairments. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from University of California San Diego and a master of education and bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of California, Los Angeles.
East Asia Studies Career Development Professorship
Christopher Chao Su
Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Studies, College of Communication
Chris Su uses computational methods to explore and compare how media audiences take shape in an increasingly fragmented digital media environment, particularly within the context of China, Hong Kong, and the Greater China region, including Taiwan and Macau. He received his PhD in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, his master’s degree in educational communication technology from New York University, and his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Wuhan University in China.
Innovation Career Development Professorship
Ana Fiszbein
Assistant Professor of Biology, College of Arts & Sciences
Ana Fiszbein uses systems biology and bioinformatics to study the mechanisms of mammalian gene regulation, with the goal of understanding how gene architecture determines the dynamic regulation of gene expression in normal cells and disease – translational research with implications for the development of targeted cancer therapies. She received her PhD and licenciado (equivalent to bachelor’s and master’s degrees) in biology from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Please join me in congratulating these talented junior faculty for their achievements and in wishing them continued success in their teaching and research at Boston University in the years ahead.
2021-2022 Career Development Professorship Awardees – 9.20.21