Faculty Tenure and Promotions on the Charles River Campus
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
President Brown and I are delighted to announce the promotion of 21 faculty members on the Charles River Campus to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure and two to the rank of Associate Professor, non-tenure track.
Each year, these promotions and awards of tenure mark an especially proud moment for the BU community, as we’ve had the pleasure of watching these talented colleagues develop from promising junior faculty into teachers and scholars of national impact and recognition. This year, especially, we have seen them – and our entire teaching and research community – adapt and excel under exceedingly difficult circumstances.
In diverse fields across the University, these faculty members are having demonstrable impact in their disciplines and excelling as teachers in our classrooms and laboratories. We continue to see great things ahead for them and are pleased they have chosen BU as the institution at which to advance their careers.
Michelle Amazeen, COM, Mass Communication, Advertising & Public Relations, researches mediated persuasion and misinformation, investigating how media practices (such as political fact-checking and native advertising) facilitate and challenge public perceptions of society. She is a regular presenter at leading academic conferences and has published a textbook, Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship: From the Pioneers to the Next Generation (2015), in addition to three book chapters, an encyclopedia entry, and 19 articles in top-tier journals, including Journalism. Her work has been supported by the American Press Institute and the New America Foundation. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Kimberly Arkin, CAS, Anthropology, is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research has explored questions of identity, race, and belonging among Jews in France, and more recently widened to include medical ethics in the French Mediterranean. A frequently invited lecturer, she has published one book, Rhinestones, Religion, and the Republic: Fashioning Jewishness in France (2013), which won the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, alongside dozens of papers, book chapters, journal articles, and book reviews. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Ksenia Bravaya, CAS, Chemistry, studies theoretical and computational quantum chemistry, examining electronic structure phenomena and electronic transfer processes between biomolecules. She is a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow and past winner of BU’s Hariri Institute Research Award and Patricia McLellan Leavitt Research Fund Award, and has published nearly 40 widely-cited articles in top scientific journals. Her research is supported by major grants from the US Department of Energy, the Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure
Charles Chang, CAS, Linguistics, explores language acquisition, focusing on the ways in which individuals’ native languages influence – and are influenced by – the phonological systems of heritage or later learned languages. A past recipient of BU’s Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, he has published six book chapters and 15 articles in premier field journals, including Language and Journal of Phonetics, and received significant grant support from the NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Canan Gunes Corlu, MET, Administrative Sciences, develops and analyzes stochastic simulation models that account for input uncertainty in inventory and supply chains – tools used to help guide operations decision-making across a variety of industries. A frequently invited conference presenter, she has published extensively in her field’s top journals, including Operations Research, and is a member of INFORMS Simulation Society, INFORMS Analytics Society, and Women in Operations Research and Management Science. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Ian Davison, CAS, Biology, is a neurobiologist who examines how perception and behavior arise from intricately interconnected neural circuits, specifically through the sense of smell. His past research has centered on innate social behaviors such as aggression and courtship, while current studies focus on neural and vascular disruptions caused by traumatic brain injury. Supported through major awards from the NIH and NSF, he is a past Klingenstein Fellow in Neuroscience and has published extensively in his discipline’s leading journals, including Neuron and Frontiers of Cellular Neuroscience. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Chuanhua Duan, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, studies the transport of fluids and energy at the nanoscale, exploring phase-change heat/mass transfer and developing new devices for biomolecule sensing and separation – research translatable to biomedical applications. He is a current NSF CAREER Award recipient and past winner of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award and has authored or co-authored numerous widely-cited articles in high-impact nanoengineering journals, including Nature Nanotechnology and ACS Nano. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Katherine Levine Einstein, CAS, Political Science, is a scholar of American politics whose research focuses on political participation, inequality, race, and urban politics. She is a faculty affiliate of BU’s Initiative on Cities, serves on the editorial board of Urban Affairs Review, and has published two books, including 2015’s Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis, alongside two book chapters and a dozen articles in top political science journals. Her work has been supported through grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the NSF, and she is a past recipient of her college’s Templeton Award for Excellence in Student Advising and Mentoring. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Catherine Espaillat, CAS, Astronomy, investigates the formation of planets in concert with the formation of new stars. Recognized as a pioneer in the study of circumstellar disk structure and evolution, she is an NSF CAREER Award recipient and a past Sloan Research Fellow, Scialog Fellow of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. She is a frequently invited conference speaker and has published dozens of articles in leading astrophysics journals. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Pnina Feldman, Questrom, Operations & Technology Management, works at the intersection of operations and pricing management, specifically exploring innovative pricing strategies and strategic consumer behavior. She is a senior editor at the Production and Operations Management Journal and is acknowledged as being among the first to demonstrate the boundary conditions associated with advance selling. A recent recipient of Manufacturing & Operations Management’s Meritorious Service Award, she has published numerous articles in top-tier field journals, including Management Scienceand Marketing Science. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Kirsten Greenidge, CFA, Theatre, is a playwright whose works, which examine intersections of race, gender, and class, have been performed at major regional theatres around the country, including Lincoln Center Theater and Playwright Horizons in New York and Boston’s Huntington Theatre. She has produced dozens of acclaimed plays, two of which – Milk Like Sugar (2011) and Luck of the Irish (2012) – have received the Independent Reviewers of New England Award for Best New Play. She is a past recipient of the PEN/America Laura Pels Mid-Career Playwright Award and the TCG/Edgerton New American Play Award and was named Boston’s Best Playwright by Improper Bostonian. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Yoonsook Ha, SSW, Social Welfare Policy, researches the well-being of low-income children and families, focusing on how access to resources from the nation’s social welfare system can be improved to produce healthy outcomes. She is a regular presenter at national conferences around social policy, and her work has been supported through major grants from the US Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the BU Initiative on Cities. She has published extensively in top field journals and been tapped to co-author reports for the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Kirill Korolev, CAS, Physics and Bioinformatics, focuses on questions in biology and physics related to population dynamics, from ecology and evolution of interacting species, to developing evolutionary approaches to cancer and new statistical tools for analyzing microbiome data. His advances in research and teaching have led to his being named a Simons Investigator in the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems by the Simons Foundation and a Cottrell Scholar and Scialog Fellow by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. He has published dozens of articles in leading scientific journals, including Science and PLOS Computational Biology. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Siu-Cheong Lau, CAS, Mathematics & Statistics, studies complex algebraic geometry and symplectic geometry and their close relations with physics, working specifically in the area of mirror symmetry. Regarded among his field’s leading experts, he is a past recipient of the International Consortium of Chinese Mathematicians’ Distinguished Paper Award, has delivered dozens of invited lectures, and has authored two book chapters and numerous articles in top mathematics publications, including Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Christopher Laumann, CAS, Physics, is a quantum condensed matter theorist whose research interests lie at the interface of quantum computation and many-body theory. His most recent work has focused on interacting localization effects in dynamical systems and on characterizing generic constraint satisfaction problems. A frequent keynote lecturer and organizer of high-level conferences, he is considered among his discipline’s most influential young voices. He is a current NSF CAREER Award recipient and past Sloan Research Fellow and has written extensively, publishing two book chapters and dozens of papers in preeminent physics journals. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Jeremy Menchik, Pardee, International Relations, studies comparative politics, focusing on the role of religion in politics and civil society, including Muslim societies in Indonesia, global Christian missionary activity, and Wilsonianism. He has authored a book, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism (2016), which won the International Studies Association’s award for best book on religion and international relations, alongside three book chapters and numerous articles in top-tier journals, including International Studies Review. He is also a past winner of the Pardee School’s Gitner Family Prize for Faculty Excellence. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Alexander Nikolaev, CAS, Classical Studies and Linguistics, specializes in Indo-European historical linguistics and comparative philology, centering much of his research on Greek language, comparative grammar, and etymology. He additionally focuses on Greek literature, mythology, and religion, especially of the Archaic period. Fluent in 11 ancient languages and regarded internationally among the leading linguistics scholars of his generation, he has published a book, alongside 12 book chapters and dozens of articles in top peer-reviewed journals. He is a past winner of his college’s Neu Family Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Juan Ortner, CAS, Economics, is a microeconomic theorist, whose work in pure and applied theory involves dynamic settings (including bargaining and collusion), with applications in industrial organization, corporate finance, and political economy. He has co-authored articles in some of his field’s premier publications, including Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy, and serves on the editorial board of American Economic Review, from whom he has twice won Excellence in Refereeing awards. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Tyler Perrachione, SAR, Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, integrates basic science and clinical approaches to treat developmental disorders of language, learning, and reading, specifically in the area of dyslexia. He is director of BU’s Communication Neuroscience Research Laboratory, associate director of BU’s Hearing Research Center, and is a past Peter Paul Career Development Professor, with current research funded through major grants from the NIH and NSF. He has published a book chapter and dozens of articles in leading journals across multiple disciplines, including Science, Neuron, and Brain and Language. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Ana-María Reyes, CAS, History of Art & Architecture, is a scholar of Latin American art, specializing in modern and contemporary South American art and visual culture. She has published two acclaimed books, The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetic Discourses (2019) and a co-edited anthology on Simón Bolívar, along with four peer-reviewed journal articles. She is a founder of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project, which seeks to leverage the arts, cultural practices, and humanities to support victims of human rights violations. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Emily Ryan, ENG, Mechanical Engineering, creates computational models of reactive transport, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and electrochemistry to aid in the development of cleaner, more efficient energy systems. Supported by major grants from the NSF and US Department of Energy, she has published a book chapter and dozens of conference papers and articles in leading journals, including Chemical Engineering Science. She is a Scialog Fellow of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and was recently named Associate Director of BU’s multidisciplinary Institute of Sustainable Energy. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Michelle Sander, ENG, Electrical & Computer Engineering, explores optical material interactions and femtosecond pulse generation techniques to help develop compact fiber lasers and integrated microphotonic systems – research with applications in communications, biomedical diagnostics and treatment, environmental sensing, and spectroscopy. She is an NSF CAREER Award recipient, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Photonics Society, and a past recipient of the Optical Society of America’s Ambassador Award. A frequent conference presenter, she has published 19 articles in leading field journals, and her work is supported through grants from the NSF, NIH, and US Air Force Office of Scientific Research. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Christopher Wells, COM, Journalism, studies how news coverage takes shape, and how citizens learn politics and choose to participate. Current work investigates the impact of social media on coverage and how citizens use digital media to communicate and create possibilities for civic engagement. He has published an acclaimed book, The Civic Organization and the Digital Citizen: Communicating Engagement in a Networked Age (2015) and dozens of articles in premier communication journals, including Communication Theory and Journal of Communication. In 2018 he received the International Communication Association’s Young Scholar Award. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Please join us in congratulating these exceptionally talented rising scholars, teachers, and researchers on their recent promotions. The standards of academic excellence across a wide variety of fields that they – and you – continue to achieve herald an incredibly bright future for Boston University as both a research leader and an intellectual home for some of the nation’s finest faculty.
Faculty Tenure and Promotions on the Charles River Campus – 5.22.20