Penn Arts & Sciences Welcomes New Standing Faculty
Penn Arts & Sciences welcomed 27 new faculty members for the 2024–25 academic year. They are:
Squire Booker, Professor of Chemistry: A scholar of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, his broader research interest lies in the enzymology of natural product biosynthesis. Booker’s PhD is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kate Meng Brassel, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies: A scholar of satire and philosophy, her research focuses on the early Roman imperial period seeking to understand an interrelationship of problems including, self and the body, the material text and the voice, and authority and audience. She received her PhD from Columbia University.
Christian Chambers, Assistant Professor of Political Science: Interested in bridging political theory, social history, and the history of political thought, Chambers’ recent work explores discourses about uplifting the poor and managing their discontent to critically examine aporophobia. His PhD is from Yale University.
Melissa Charenko, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science: Charenko’s research focuses on understanding scientists’ diverse understandings of climate, and she is particularly interested in the way scientists use climate proxies to understand past and future climates. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hannah Feldman, Katherine Stein Sachs, CW'69, and Keith L. Sachs, W'67, Associate Professor of History of Art: Her research expertise is on late modern and contemporary art and visual culture, specifically global art and visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries in Europe and in the Middle East and North Africa. Feldman’s PhD is from Columbia University.
Andres Fernandez Herrero, Assistant Professor of Mathematics: A scholar of algebraic geometry and number theory, his research focuses on investigating some moduli spaces arising in algebraic geometry. His PhD is from Cornell University.
Nir Gadish, Assistant Professor of Mathematics: Specializing in the study of the representation stability phenomena in configuration spaces and moduli spaces, Gadish’s research interests include the interplay between algebraic topology, moduli problems, group theory and representation theory. His PhD is from the University of Chicago.
Shresth Garg, Assistant Professor of Economics: A scholar of macroeconomics and microeconomics, his research focuses on the intersection of industrial organization and development economics, which identify the equilibrium impact of government policies on market structure and consumer outcomes in developing countries. Garg’s PhD is from Harvard University.
Matthew Hewett, Assistant Professor of Linguistics: Specializing in Semitic languages, including especially spoken Arabic varieties, Hewett’s research interests include reevaluating the nature of syntactic and morphological dependencies. His PhD is from the University of Chicago.
Rana Hogarth, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science: Her research expertise is on medical and scientific constructions of race during the era of slavery and beyond. Her PhD is from Yale University.
Ketaki Jaywant, Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies: A historian of modern South Asia, her research focuses on critical caste studies, vernacular liberalism in South Asia, history of socio-religious reform, and print culture on the margins. Her PhD is from the University of Minnesota.
Paloma Jeretic, Assistant Professor of Linguistics: Her research expertise is on formal semantic theory grounded in cross-linguistic data, which draws from introspective judgments from her native and heritage languages of French, English and Spanish, as well as fieldwork elicitations, especially Ecuadorian Siona and Turkish. Jeretic’s PhD is from New York University.
Sara Kazmi, Assistant Professor of English: Specializing in the Panjab region, and more broadly, on South Asia and South Asian diasporas, Kazmi is a scholar, translator, and performer whose work takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of anticolonial, left, and oppositional literary production. Her PhD is from the University of Cambridge.
David Kirk, Professor of Criminology: His research focuses on three inter-related themes: the causes and consequences of cynicism and distrust of the police and the law, solutions to criminal recidivism, and the causes and consequences of gun violence. Kirk’s PhD is from the University of Chicago.
Hayden Lee, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy: A theoretical cosmologist, his research focuses on the interface between fundamental particle physics and cosmology, with the overarching goal of decoding the physics of the early universe. His PhD is from the University of Cambridge.
Laurie Lee, Assistant Professor of Music: A scholar of Korean music, her work focuses on voice studies, gender studies, and questions of labor and value, including the sociopolitical Korean history of entertainment, during the period of 1900–1950. Her PhD is from Harvard University.
Joel Mittleman, Assistant Professor of Sociology: Mittleman’s research focuses on inequality in schools and society with a focus on LGBTQ+ populations. His PhD is from Princeton University.
Daniel Moriarity, Assistant Professor of Psychology: A clinical psychologist, his research interest is in immunopsychiatry, psychiatric phenotyping, and methods reform in biological psychiatry. Moriarity’s PhD is from Temple University.
Lukas Nord, Assistant Professor of Economics: A macroeconomist, his research expertise is on combining quantitative models and micro data to learn the way micro-level heterogeneity and frictions in goods or labor markets interact with macro outcomes. Nord’s PhD is from the European University Institute, Florence.
Ana Ozaki, Assistant Professor of History of Art: Her research focuses on the complex ways racial ideologies have interfered with architectural understandings of climate and the environment within the African diaspora, mainly within the Black Atlantic. Ozaki’s PhD is from Cornell University.
Juan Ignacio (Nacho) Sanguinetti Scheck, Assistant Professor of Psychology: A neuroscientist, his research is focused on neural bases of navigation in the context of brain structure and ethologically relevant behaviors. His PhD is from Humboldt University of Berlin.
Andrew Santiago-Frangos, M. Jane Williams and Valerie Vargo Presidential Assistant Professor of Biology: A molecular biologist, his research focuses on the biochemistry and structural biology of natural bacterial immune systems, studying the natural function of the CRISPR system in its ecological context. His PhD is from Johns Hopkins University.
Mallika Sarma, Assistant Professor of Anthropology: Specializing in human biobehavioral changes related to stress and resilience in novel, energy-intensive, and extreme environments, Sarma is a human biologist whose work explores the protective effects of social support in harsh and unpredictable contexts. Sarma received her PhD from the University of Notre Dame.
Leigh Stearns, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences: Stearn’s research focuses on outlet glacier dynamics in both Greenland and Antarctica, using satellite remote sensing techniques, field-based observations, and numerical modeling. Her PhD is from the University of Maine.
Andrew Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science: A scholar of the role of race in American politics, his research focuses on how questions of racial threat generate democratic backsliding in the United States. Thompson received his PhD from Northwestern University.
Soosun You, Assistant Professor of Political Science: Her research focuses on three main challenges of gender relations, economic inequality, and demographic changes, which confront South Korea today. You’s research examines the consequences of broad macro-level changes of shifting demographics and rising economic inequality. Her PhD is from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ege Yumusak, Assistant Professor of Philosophy: A scholar of philosophy, her research examines how our perceptions can reinforce broader social structures, and how collective and collaborative imagination can bring about social change. Yumusak’s PhD is from Harvard University.
