University Promotion and Tenure Decisions
From: Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
On behalf of President Robert A. Brown, I am delighted to announce the promotion and tenure of 22 members of our Charles River Campus faculty to Associate Professor and of two within our Law School to Full Professor at Boston University.
These promotions mark an especially proud moment for the BU community, as we’ve had the pleasure of watching these talented women and men develop from junior faculty into scholars and teachers of national impact and recognition. From engineering and science to the humanities, mathematics, finance, law and theology, these faculty members have fulfilled the promise we saw in them as they began their careers at Boston University. They are producing substantive research and scholarship and excelling as teachers in their classrooms. We see great things ahead for their careers and we are pleased that those careers will be spent here at BU:
Hatice Altug, ENG, Electrical & Computer Engineering, specializes in nanoscience and plasmonics, developing new bio-sensing technologies to detect proteins and viruses. A recipient of Popular Science Magazine’s Brilliant 10 Award, an NSF CAREER Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, she holds a patent and has authored two book chapters and dozens of widely cited publications on the use of photonics for disease diagnosis.
Sean Andersson, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, specializes in systems engineering, developing new applications for powerful microscopes and methods for handling the complexity of robots in real-world environments. He is the current recipient of an NSF CAREER Award and the author of numerous acclaimed publications on single molecule tracking and previously unknown capabilities of atomic force, confocal and fluorescence laser scanning microscopies.
Christopher Brown, STH, specializes in Christianity from the Renaissance through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to the period of Orthodoxy and Pietism. The author of the acclaimed Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (2005), he has emerged as a young leader in Lutheran scholarship, with a forthcoming book on Lutheran art, and numerous book chapters, articles and presentations on Lutheran texts and history.
Kristin Collins, LAW (Full Professor), specializes in gender and law, legal history, federal courts, and civil procedure. The recipient of a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, she has built a national profile within her field as a respected civil rights lawyer and legal historian, authoring several substantial and frequently cited articles on equal protection, women and citizenship, the history of federal regulation of the family, and modern federalism jurisprudence.
Marah Curtis, SSW, specializes in studying the effects of public policy on the well-being of children and families with particular emphasis on housing policy, incarceration and poverty. A Peter Paul Career Development Professorship recipient, she has authored dozens of widely cited journal articles and presentations on the effects of public housing on child health, the impact of incarceration and release on fathers and families, and the housing experiences of foster youth.
Wiebke Denecke, CAS, Modern Languages & Comparative Literature, specializes in the multiple fields of Chinese, Japanese, and Comparative Literature. She is the author of The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi (2010) and has written or edited numerous book chapters, anthologies, articles and presentations on East Asian literary works and their Greek and Latin influences.
Linda Doerrer, CAS, Chemistry, specializes in synthetic inorganic chemistry and in the development, through her lab, of dynamic new compounds and materials. She is the author of dozens of nationally recognized papers, journal articles and reviews detailing the creation or bonding of new complexes, metallic conductivity, and the chemical transformation of metals through contact with oxides and other outside elements.
Uri Eden, CAS, Math & Statistics, specializes in bridging the fields of mathematics, statistics and computational neuroscience to develop new methods for analyzing brain activity. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and the author or co-author of several book chapters, three forthcoming books and dozens of widely cited papers, journal articles and multiple patents related to statistical and neural modeling.
François Gourio, CAS, Economics, specializes in macroeconomics with a focus on monetary theory, as well as risk and finance. An expert at simplifying relatively complex macroeconomic models to deliver key empirical data, he is the recipient of a recent NSF grant and the author of numerous widely cited journal articles and working papers on tax policy, disaster recovery, labor supply and risk models.
Hyeouk Chris Hahm, SSW, specializes in identifying and understanding the sources of Asian adolescent risky behaviors, including the role of gender, ethnicity and acculturation. The recipient of a significant NIMH grant to study STI/HIV risks among Asian women, she has authored numerous widely cited book chapters, journal articles and presentations on health care utilization by Asian American adolescents, sexual minorities and those with mental illness.
Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, CGS, Rhetoric, specializes in the rhetoric of feminism, her recent work focusing on the rhetoric of motherhood within second-wave feminism. She is author of the national award-winning Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice: Explorations into Discourses of Reproduction (2010), as well as another recent volume, and numerous acclaimed book chapters, articles and presentations on contemporary maternity and white feminism.
Douglas Kriner, CAS, Political Science, specializes in American political institutions, military policymaking, and the dynamics produced by separation of powers. He is the author of After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War (2010), the co-author of a volume on the Korean War and has written numerous articles, book chapters and presentations exploring White House-Congressional relations, the use of force, and the human costs of war.
Evgeny Lyandres, SMG, Finance, specializes in corporate finance and industrial organization, developing tools to analyze market volatility and the risk-return trade-off of stocks, as well as the effects of firms’ financial structures on product markets. He has authored a book chapter and numerous seminal publications on markets and providing an investment-based explanation of several important puzzles discovered in the security issuance literature of the late 1980s.
Heng-Ye Man, CAS, Biology, specializes in cellular and molecular neurobiology with a focus on the brain mechanisms that underlie learning and memory. The current recipient of a significant NIH grant, he is the respected author of dozens of extensively cited journal articles, peer-reviewed publications and a recent book chapter on the biology of synapses, neural metabolism, and cellular mechanisms and their implications in neurological diseases.
Harold Park, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, specializes in computational nanomechanics, developing sophisticated modeling approaches to better understand the properties and behavior of ultrafine materials like silicon nanowires and graphene. An NSF CAREER Award recipient, he has authored dozens of widely cited articles on atomistic and multi-scale modeling and won a Gallagher Young Investigator Award from the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics.
Sarah Phillips, CAS, History, specializes in environmental, agricultural and 20th century U.S. political history. The author of This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (2007) and a forthcoming book on post WWII farm-to-food politics, she has written numerous acclaimed articles and essays on antebellum agricultural reform, transatlantic agricultural developments, the interwar economy, and the conservation policy of state governors.
Tyrone Porter, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, specializes in bridging ultrasound technology, biophysics, chemistry and nano-medicine to diagnose or treat disease through microscopic carriers, thus reducing adverse side effects. The recipient of multiple NIH and NSF grants, he has earned international recognition for his research, holding a patent and authoring numerous articles on the creation of vessels to internally deliver drugs or diagnostics to cancer patients.
Carrie Preston, CAS, English, specializes in modernist literature and performance, feminist theory, gender studies, transnational theatre and dance. She has received a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship and is the author of Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance (2011), as well as numerous book chapters, journal articles, poems, performances and lectures on modernist culture, gender identity, Irish theatre and Japanese Noh theatre.
Shelly Rambo, STH, specializes in constructive theology, engaging the textual tradition of Christianity with attention to feminist and postmodern literary analysis and criticism. She is the author of Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (2010) with another book forthcoming and has written numerous book chapters, essays, reviews and presentations exploring trauma and faith and, most recently, the moral and spiritual crisis of war and its aftermath.
Björn Reinhard, CAS, Chemistry, specializes in the interface of nanotechnology, chemistry and biology, developing new optical materials to explore fundamental life processes. He is a recent NSF CAREER Award recipient, the holder of a patent, and the author of a book, a book chapter and dozens of journal articles with more than 1,000 citations on the creation of new nanoparticles for use in biomedical technology to study cellular processes and treat disease.
Robert Sloane, LAW (Full Professor), specializes in multiple areas of international law, from the law of war and national security to transnational criminal law and international investment law and arbitration. He has received the Francis Leiber Prize from the American Society of International Law and earned international distinction as a scholar, authoring a book, six book chapters, and numerous acclaimed articles ranging from human rights law to executive power.
Pamela Templer, CAS, Biology, specializes in forest ecology, developing new methods of measuring nitrogen saturation and the effects of climate and land use change on forest ecosystems. A recent NSF CAREER Award recipient, she is the author of two book chapters and numerous widely cited and reviewed articles and papers on the impact over time of natural and human activity on nitrogen retention and the ability of forests to continue regenerating.
Muhammad Zaman, ENG, Biomedical Engineering, specializes in the interface of cell biology, mechanics, systems biology and medicine, using computational and experimental tools to understand and ultimately prevent cancer metastasis. He is equally devoted to the delivery of modern medical technology to the developing world. The recipient of numerous NIH grants, he has authored a book, five book chapters and dozens of widely cited articles on the properties of cell clusters and improved global health.
Katherine Yanhang Zhang, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, specializes in using experimental techniques and advanced computational modeling to both understand the mechanical behavior of soft biological tissues and composites and help diagnose and treat disease. She is an NSF CAREER Award recipient and the author of numerous journal publications on the biomechanical behavior over time of native and engineered blood vessels by using multi-scale modeling.
Please join me in congratulating these exceptionally talented rising scholars, teachers and researchers on their recent promotions and in wishing them the best of luck in their new positions. The standard of academic excellence they – and you – continue to set each day heralds an incredibly bright future for Boston University as both a research leader and launching pad for some of the nation’s finest faculty.