A talented cohort of new professors has joined the Dartmouth faculty this year, breaking new ground in labs and classrooms across campus.
Some 43 strong, the tenured and tenure-track professors are power-probing sociologists, forward-thinking researchers in quantitative social science, biomedical engineering, and cybersecurity, and thought-provoking writers in such fields as Indigenous modernism and Asian American culture.
One of the new faculty members—Professor of Economics Heidi Williams ’03—was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year and in 2015 received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, aka the “genius” awards.
And whether at the Tuck School of Business, Thayer School of Engineering, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Geisel School of Medicine, or Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, the new professors are already adding to Dartmouth’s scholarship and student-centered experience.
“We are delighted to have so many accomplished, innovative new faculty members helping to drive research to new levels and knowledge to new fields at Dartmouth,” says President Sian Leah Beilock, a cognitive scientist and a professor of psychological and brain sciences.
“I look forward to working with them for years to come as we expand Dartmouth’s impact on education and improve the world we live in.”
Shaonta’ E. Allen
Tianna Barnes
Alexander J. Boys
Adam Breuer ’09
Tucker Burgin
Herbert Chang ’18
Alena Erchenko
Rachel Feldman
Daniel Fetter
Raquel Fleskes
Steven Frankland
Dipon Ghosh
Reighan Gillam
Miguel I. Gonzalez
Christophe Hauser
Franz Hinzen
Kenneth Hoehn
Matt Hooley
Jodi Kim
Kyungtae Kim
Michelle Kinch
Anjuli Raza Kolb
Jennifer Landino
Yi Lu
Julia Melin
Ernesto Mercado-Montero
Sonya Mishra
John Murray
Aseel Najib
Esteban Orellana
Wei Ouyang
Hart Posen
Anthony Romero
Alexandra Leewon Schultz
James Siderius
Casey Stockstill
Yu-Wing Tai
Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila
Smriti Upadhyay
Elsa Voytas
Charnan Williams
Heidi Williams ’03
Yang-Yang Zhou
Shaonta’ E. Allen
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Education: BA, University of Washington; MA, Middle Tennessee State University; PhD, University of Cincinnati
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research draws on race, social movements, and intersectionality literatures to examine how Black resistance to racial inequality varies across social institutional contexts. I specifically explore how religion, higher education, and pop culture and sport shape political ideologies and behaviors among Black emerging adults to theorize contemporary strategies for navigating racial and gendered hierarchies. I also study the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Believing in the radical potential of sociology, I teach and produce research with the goal of facilitating social change.
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research explores how people make sense of multiple social identities, with an emphasis on social group membership perceptions. The connection, association, and relationship people have with their social identity groups (i.e., membership perceptions) has implications for how they then engage with those social identities. I’m most curious about that process; specifically, how individual’s think about themselves as “one part of a whole,” or one member of a larger social group. With this, I explore two broader questions: 1) How do non-work and work-related social identity group membership perceptions interact? 2) What are the work consequences and managerial implications of those interactions? I also consider these outcomes at different work stages, such as the organizational newcomer experience versus that of established organizational members.
Alexander J. Boys
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Education: BS, Lehigh University; MS, Cornell University; PhD, Cornell University
I am a materials scientist and biomedical engineer focusing on the development of bioelectronic and tissue-engineered implant systems. My work is aimed at creating the next generation of two-way interfaces with the body to improve regeneration and to reach hard-to-access areas of the body. I am particularly interested in developing mechanisms to seamlessly integrate electronics into tissue.
Adam Breuer ’09
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Assistant Professor of Government
Meeting New Challenges of Cybersecurity Cluster
Education: AB, Dartmouth College; MA, Harvard University; PhD, Harvard University
I am Harvard’s first double PhD in the departments of government and computer science. My political science research focuses on how algorithms, AI, and new technologies are reshaping collective political behaviors via social media, social networks, and information/disinformation. My computer science research designs new algorithms for machine learning applications such as large-scale social network analysis, data summarization, and text analysis. I am also an academic collaborator with Facebook Research, where I design machine learning algorithms to help detect billions of fake social media accounts.
Tucker Burgin
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Education: BS, University of Rochester; MS, University of Rochester; PhD, University of Michigan
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research focuses on the use of computational models to better understand and engineer enzymes and other proteins with a wide variety of applications in health care, energy, and the environment. I am especially interested in the use of high-throughput molecular simulations as training data for artificial intelligence approaches to manipulating the “language” that nature uses to design and evolve proteins.
Herbert Chang ’18
Assistant Professor in Quantitative Social Science
Education: BA, Dartmouth College; MSc, University of Edinburgh; PhD, University of Southern California
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a computational social scientist who studies social networks, online politics, and how artificial intelligence reshapes human relationships. My research considers how technology impacts political debate, such as how social bots share election misinformation on social media. More recently, I also applied social network analysis to wealth inequality and public health. My students and I use computational and mathematical approaches to investigate social behavior broadly and encourage students to find their core areas through research.
Alena Erchenko
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Education: MA, Lomonosov Moscow State University; PhD, The Pennsylvania State University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research lies in the field of dynamical systems. Broadly put, I explore mathematical descriptions of systems that change over time. The field of dynamical systems is largely inspired by the many complicated systems in our physical world. Chaotic behavior in a dynamical system prevents us from explicit determination of the future from the present over long periods of time. I am interested in understanding the invariants of systems that characterize aspects of their behavior.
Rachel Feldman
Assistant Professor of Religion
Education: BA, Franklin and Marshall College; MA, The New School for Social Research; PhD, University of California, Davis
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a cultural anthropologist specialized in the study of Judaism, Israel/Palestine, messianic movements, and feminist and post-colonial studies. I am the author of Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary (Rutgers University Press, Spring 2024) and recently received a Jordan Schnitzer First Book Award (2023) from the Association for Jewish Studies. I am also the co-editor of Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank (McGill-Queen’s University Press, Fall 2023). My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.
Daniel Fetter
Associate Professor of Economics
Education: BA, Wesleyan University; MSc, London School of Economics; PhD, Harvard University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research interests lie at the intersection of economic history and public policy. In my work, I have studied the role of government in the mid-20th century rise in home ownership in the United States, as well as the effects of the introduction of social insurance programs such as Social Security.
Raquel Fleskes
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Education: BA, University of Maryland; PhD, University of Pennsylvania
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research uses ancient DNA to understand histories of historic period archaeological populations in North America. Within this context, I focus on community engagement and scientific communication in collaboration with descendant communities and other community stakeholder groups to make science accountable to the communities it impacts. I am specifically interested in understanding the lived histories of European- and African-descended individuals by co-interpreting ancient DNA data with archaeological, osteological, archival, and oral history sources.
Steven Frankland
Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science
Education: BA, The College of Wooster; PhD, Harvard University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I study the computational principles and neural systems that allow the human mind to be so flexible in some cases—for example, able to generate and understand an infinite number of possible sentences, able to quickly reason about new situations, and able to plan for uncertain futures—while, at the same time, being so profoundly limited in others—for example, easily forgetting names, dates, and phone numbers. What makes our minds this way? I approach these questions using information-theory, classic neural network formalisms, and cognitive neuroscientific methods, in pursuit of some general principles.
Dipon Ghosh
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Education: BS, Carnegie Mellon University; PhD, Yale University
My laboratory studies how animals navigate complex and dynamic environments. We are particularly interested in exploring sensory systems that inform molecular and cellular physiology and organismal behaviors. I anticipate that my laboratory’s work will increase our understanding not only of novel sensory biological phenomena but also of biomedically important processes involved in the homeostasis and maintenance of diverse cells and tissues.
Reighan Gillam
Associate Professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies
Education: BA, University of Virginia; PhD, Cornell University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am an ethnographer of Black visual culture. My research examines media at the intersection of racial ideologies, anti-racism, and protest. Specifically, I focus on the ways that Afro-Brazilian media producers create images that render Black subjects and their experiences in complex ways. My next research project takes a transnational approach to the study of Black politics and culture. My second book, Diasporic Agency, examines how Afro-Brazilians engage African American people, culture, and performance.
Miguel I. Gonzalez
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Education: BS, University of the Philippines, Diliman; PhD, University of California, Berkeley
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research focuses on controlling the arrangement of molecules to define the outcomes of chemical reactions. Toward this end, my lab will design systems that confine molecules in specific orientations to realize highly precise heat- or light-driven reactivity. These efforts will address challenging transformations in fine-chemicals, industrial, and materials synthesis, which will ultimately accelerate the development of more efficient and sustainable chemical processes.
Christophe Hauser
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Meeting New Challenges of Cybersecurity Cluster
Education: BS, University of Rennes; MS, University of Rennes; PhD, CentraleSupélec/Queensland University of Technology
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research primarily focuses on software security, and in particular, on scaling reverse engineering and vulnerability discovery to address real-world security problems, as well as other aspects of systems security, including hardware security, embedded systems security, intrusion detection, usable security and privacy-preserving systems. I strive to develop new models leveraging program analysis, formal methods, and machine learning in order to reason about new cyber attacks and defenses across the software stack and hardware boundaries.
Franz Hinzen
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Education: BS, University of Mannheim; MPhil, University of Cambridge; PhD, New York University Stern School of Business
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research focuses on financial intermediation and banking. For a very large part of the corporate loan market, banks have evolved away from their traditional role as commercial banks. Rather than lending to firms directly, they serve as investment banks which market loans to nonbank financial institutions. In my research, I study how corporate loan markets function with this market structure, and I investigate how bank-nonbank interactions shape the terms at which firms borrow.
Kenneth Hoehn
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science
Education: BS, Duke University; DPhil, University of Oxford
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a computational immunologist with a background broadly within evolutionary biology. My research focuses on developing computational evolutionary approaches for studying B cell biology during infection, vaccination, and autoimmune diseases. As part of this research, I developed the software packages IgPhyML and Dowser. I also work extensively with experimental collaborators to understand adaptive immunity in a variety of conditions such as COVID-19, food allergies, and the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis.
Matt Hooley
Assistant Professor, Native American and Indigenous Studies
Education: BA, Carleton College; MA, University of Wisconsin-Madison; PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I work on cultures of colonialism and anticolonialism, paying special attention to intersections with the environment and poetics. Next year my first book will be published by Duke University Press, titled Against Extraction: Indigenous Modernism in the Twin Cities, and I’m currently working on a project on the cultural histories of drought.
Jodi Kim
Professor of English and Creative Writing
Education: BA, University of California, Los Angeles; MA, University of California, Berkeley; PhD, University of California Berkeley
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research and teaching interests are at the broad intersections of Asian American literary and cultural studies; interdisciplinary feminist and decolonial critiques of the conjunction of imperialism, settler colonialism, and militarism; and critical race and ethnic studies. I am the author of two books, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War and Settler Garrison: Debt Imperialism, Militarism, and Transpacific Imaginaries, and co-editor of Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader.
My research interests are in the area of systems and software security. I have been recently focusing on finding software bugs and mitigating their exploitation within various systems and embedded software.
Michelle Kinch
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Operations and Management Science
Education: BS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MBA, Harvard Business School; DBA, Harvard Business School
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My expertise is in the area of behavioral operations management. I use both laboratory and field experiments to develop insights into how firms optimally balance operational efficiency and service satisfaction goals in service design—particularly in emotional service settings.
Anjuli Raza Kolb
Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing
Education: BA, Columbia University; MA, Columbia University; PhD, Columbia University
I teach postcolonial literature and theory and poetry. My academic research focuses on race and racialization in the history of science and the disciplines. My first book, Epidemic Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2021), uncovers the history behind the dead metaphor of the “terrorism epidemic” through the joined histories of epidemiology and Islamophobia in the British, French, and U.S. empires. I am also a poet, essayist, and translator.
Jennifer Landino
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Education: BS, Grand Valley State University; PhD, Vanderbilt University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research is focused on the mechanisms that regulate cell division. I am particularly interested in how the cytoskeleton, which provides structural support for the cell, is remodeled throughout this process. My lab studies dynamic patterns of the cytoskeleton that travel along the cell cortex, the outermost layer of the cell, during cell division. We do this using an artificial cell cortex that is easily amenable to biochemical manipulations and live imaging.
I am a historian of modern China, with particular interests in the history of information, material culture, and digital humanities. At its core, my work explores how information technologies—from paper archives to AI tools—change what knowledge is, how it is made and used, and to whom it belongs. More specifically, I focus on 20th-century Chinese history, during which propaganda, censorship, and secrecy served as key instruments of bureaucratic governance and social control.
Julia Melin
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Organizational Behavior Group
Education: BA, Swarthmore College; MA, Stanford University; PhD, Stanford University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My expertise is in the areas of gender, career transitions, and labor market inequality. In my work, I use mixed-methods, online experiments, and large-scale digital interventions in real-world setting (including Fortune 500 companies and online career training platforms) to examine 1) how perceptions of gender influence organizational practices, including hiring and talent assessment and 2) how organizational practices can be designed to reduce gender inequality and improve women’s organizational advancement.
Ernesto Mercado-Montero
Assistant Professor of History
Education: BA, Complutense University of Madrid; MA, State University of New York Buffalo; PhD, University of Texas at Austin
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a historian of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. My book project, The Afro-Indigenous Caribbean: Slavery, Warfare, and Power in the Making of an Early Modern Archipelago, centers Afro-Indigenes in Caribbean history. This monograph examines how Afro-Indigenous people shaped Antillean geopolitics between the Spanish conquest of Puerto Rico in the 1510s and the French Revolutionary Wars in the 1790s.
Sonya Mishra
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Organizational Behavior Group
Education: BA, Georgetown University; MA, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business; PhD: University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research investigates how demographic diversity operates within hierarchies to shape perceptions and workplace outcomes of underrepresented individuals. For instance, I find that power-seeking women are less likely to face backlash when they desire status (i.e., respect) in addition to power (control over resources). My dissertation found that men, but not women, perceived their organizations as less inequitable as they rose in hierarchical rank.
John Murray
Gregg L. Engles Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Breaking the Neural Code Cluster
Education: BS, Yale University; MS, Yale University; MPhil, Yale University; PhD, Yale University
After completing a PhD in physics from Yale, I did postdoctoral research at New York University in the Center for Neural Science. I was primary faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine from 2015 to 2023, with secondary appointments in physics and neuroscience. My research is in the areas of computational neuroscience and computational psychiatry.
Aseel Najib
Mellon Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of History
Education: BA, Columbia University; MA, Harvard University; PhD, Columbia University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a historian of premodern Islam specializing in the late antique and early Islamic periods. My interests lie at the intersection of Islamic law and politics, which I explore in conversation with contemporary debates in political, critical, and postcolonial theory. My current research focuses on the legal theory and historical practice of conquest and land jurisdiction in early Islam.
Esteban Orellana
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology
E.E. Just Early Career Faculty Fellow
Education: BA, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador; PhD, Purdue University
I investigate whether changes in the chemical modification of RNA molecules play a role in the development of human cancers. RNAs perform various functions in all cells, including synthesizing proteins. Transfer RNAs “read” the information in a messenger RNA and supply the necessary amino acid building blocks. To function correctly, these transfer RNAs must fold into the correct three-dimensional shape, requiring the RNA to be chemically modified.
Wei Ouyang
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Education: BS, Peking University; MS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I develop bio-integrated microsystems in wearable and implantable forms to transform health care and neuroscience research by enabling advanced capabilities for sensing and modulating electrical, chemical, and physiological processes of life. My technological approach involves the integration of micro-engineered sensors and actuators with wireless electronics, wireless power transfer, and computing to deliver system-level solutions to science and society.
Hart Posen
Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Education: BS, University of Manitoba; MBA, Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario; MSc, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; PhD, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I study strategy and entrepreneurship to understand how firms create and leverage knowledge to gain an advantage over rivals—and why some firms fail to do so. I am particularly interested in how entrepreneurs learn about the merits of their ideas and how firms can use strategic imitation to leverage their rivals’ knowledge and ideas. My research uses computational social science methods in that I develop theoretical models of how collective intelligence emerges and evolves in organizations via learning processes. My interest in these topics was spurred by the decade I spent as an entrepreneur in the technology and retail sectors before earning my PhD.
Anthony Romero
Assistant Professor of Studio Art
Education: BA, Texas State University; MFA, School of The Art Institute of Chicago
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My areas of expertise are spatial justice, public art, Indigenous studies, critical border studies, performance studies, food sovereignty, Indigenous cultural resurgence, sound studies, and sonic arts.
Alexandra Leewon Schultz
Assistant Professor of Classics
Education: AB, Brown University; MSt, University of Oxford; PhD, Harvard University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
As a literary critic and cultural historian of the Greco-Roman world, I study the politics of literature, the history of knowledge, and gender and sexuality in classical antiquity. I also examine how ancient ideas about the past have influenced modern ideas about classical antiquity, from fantasies about the Great Library of Alexandria to ideas about the origins of “Western Civilization.”
James Siderius
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Operations and Management Science
Education: AB, Princeton University; MS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research lies at the interface of operations research, computer science, and economics, and broadly studies the role artificial intelligence plays in online platform operations. Through examining the strategic interplay between platforms, algorithms, and users, my work provides an understanding of the social impact of new technologies and offers prescriptive insights for more responsible business practices. The research spans topics such as online misinformation, information design for dating apps, and social media matching algorithms.
Casey Stockstill
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Provost Faculty Fellow
Education: BA, Columbia University; PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
I am a sociologist and race scholar. My work focuses on race, class, and the microlevel of social life. Much of my research is focused on childhood. My new book, False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers, is an ethnographic account of how young children experience segregated preschools. I also research how white observers interpret race markers and deploy racial prejudice.
Yu-Wing Tai
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Education: BE, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; MPhil, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; PhD, National University of Singapore
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My major research interests are in the broad areas of computer vision and machine learning, including low-level vision, segmentation, 3D reconstruction, human pose, and video analysis. I am also recently interested in AI-generated content, multi-modalities, and large generative pretrained models and their applications.
Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
E.E. Just Early Career Faculty Fellow
Education: BS, University of New Hampshire; MS, Stanford University; PhD, Stanford University
I am a terrestrial ecosystems ecologist investigating the response of ecosystems to global environmental change. My research program addresses: 1) the above- to below-ground dynamics of plants, their influence on the global carbon cycle, and their interactions with the environment, and 2) the future trajectory of forest carbon and their policy implications. Additionally, rooted in my philosophy as a Puerto Rican scientist, I collaboratively foster diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging in the academy through my scholarship.
Smriti Upadhyay
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Education: BA, McGill University; LLM, University of Warwick; MA, Johns Hopkins University; PhD, Johns Hopkins University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
What I’m most interested in as a sociologist is the unexpected ways that power is produced and challenged by different social groups. I’m currently engaged in two research projects. One looks at some of the millions of workers who have joined the labor union of India’s immensely powerful Hindu right-wing, and the other is a world-historical study of social protest in India, from the 19th century to the present.
Elsa Voytas
Assistant Professor in Quantitative Social Science
Education: BA, College of William and Mary; MA, Princeton University; PhD, Princeton University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research examines how experiencing, remembering, and confronting past violence influences contemporary political decisions. I study the individual-level impacts of engaging with historical memory and transitional justice policies. I apply a range of methodological techniques, including field and survey experiments, causal inference, focus groups, and interviews to ask how societies can advance social justice and build peace.
Charnan Williams
Assistant Professor of History
Provost Faculty Fellow
Education: BA, University of Southern California; MA, University of Michigan; PhD, University of Michigan
My research examines the history of slavery, free labor, and race in California from the Gold Rush to the Civil War. In scholarship, California is often viewed as exceptional to the national conflict around slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation in 19th-century America. By examining underutilized archival records, my research complicates these narratives that exclude California from the national struggle between the North and the South around the question of slavery, freedom, race, and labor. My research has received several awards including fellowships from the Huntington Library, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Heidi Williams ’03
Professor of Economics
Education: BA, Dartmouth College; MSc, University of Oxford; PhD, Harvard University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My teaching and research focus on how society can best support science and innovation, and how we can best ensure that science and innovation generate broad benefits to society.
Yang-Yang Zhou
Assistant Professor of Government
The Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization Cluster
Education: BA, New York University; PhD, Princeton University
(Photo by Katie Lenhart)
My research seeks to bring evidence to questions (and often misperceptions) about what happens when people migrate. I study the political causes and consequences of migration, such as how the presence of refugees affects local public goods provision and citizens’ voting behaviors to how different government policies shape migration decisions, particularly in lower-income countries. My current book project theorizes under what conditions minoritized citizens will embrace versus reject migrants who share cultural and ethnic ties.