Faculty members named to endowed chairs

Princeton NJ -- Sixteen faculty members have been named to endowed professorships by the Board of Trustees.

They are, along with their new titles: Yacine Ait-Sahalia, the Otto Hack '03 Professor of Finance and professor of economics; Michael Aizenman, the Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics; Leonard Barkan, the Arthur Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature; Marina Brownlee, the Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures; René Carmona, the Paul Wythes '55 Professor of Engineering and Finance and professor of operations research and financial engineering; Faruk Gul, the Harold T. Shapiro *64 Professor of Economics; Atul Kohli, the David Bruce Professor of International Affairs and professor of politics and international affairs; Joseph J. Kohn, the Henry Burchard Fine Professor of Mathematics; Kai Li, the Charles Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science; Willard Peterson, the Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies and professor of East Asian studies; Philip Pettit, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics; Lawrence Rosen, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Anthropology; Michael Rothschild, the William Stuart Tod Professor of Economics and Public Affairs; Scott Tremaine, the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation and professor of astrophysical sciences; Warren Warren, the Ralph Dornte *31 Professor of Chemistry; and Viviana Zelizer, the Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology. All appointments are effective July 1, 2002.

Ait-Sahalia is a specialist in finance and econometrics and the founding director of the Bendheim Center for Finance.

A 1987 graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, he received his M.S. degree in 1989 from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique in Paris and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. He came to Princeton in 1998 from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he was a faculty member for five years.

Ait-Sahalia won the University of Chicago's Emory Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1995, the Cornerstone Research Award in 1998 and the FAME Research Award in 2001. His research focuses on continuous-time financial models and their estimation. He has published numerous articles in Econometrica, the Journal of Econometrics and the Journal of Finance.

Aizenman, whose field is mathematical physics, studies disorder effects in classical and quantum physics. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1990 as a professor in the departments of physics and mathematics.

Aizenman is the author or co-author of more than 75 articles on issues relating to critical behavior in statistical mechanical systems and to quantum dynamics. His work was recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences and by several awards, including the 1990 Wiener Award of the American Mathematical Society and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In April, he received the Brouwer Medal of the Dutch Mathematical Society and Dutch Academy of Science. He is the editor-in-chief of Communications in Mathematical Physics and serves on the editorial boards of a number of other journals.

After receiving his Ph.D. from Yeshiva University in 1975, Aizenman came to Princeton as a research associate and, starting in 1977, as an assistant professor of physics. He moved to Rutgers University in 1982 and rose from associate professor to professor II in the departments of mathematics and physics. He spent three years at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the physics department at New York University before returning to Princeton.

Barkan came to Princeton in 2001 from New York University, where he had been the Samuel Rudin University Professor of the Humanities and professor of English and fine arts since 1994. He also served as director of the New York Institute for the Humanities from 1997 to 2001. Previously, he was a faculty member at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.

Barkan's fields of interest are Renaissance literature and art history, as well as drama. His publications include "Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture," "Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism" and "The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism." He has also edited a series of books on Renaissance drama published by Northwestern University Press.

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Barkan earned his master's degree from Harvard University and his doctoral degree from Yale University.

Brownlee, who earned her Ph.D. from Princeton in 1978, returned to the University as a professor of Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures in January 2002. She had been a professor of Romance languages at the University of Pennsylvania since 1988, and served as chair of that department for three years. From 1977 to 1988, she taught in Dartmouth College's Department of Spanish and Portuguese and in its comparative literature program.

She has written four books, among them "The Cultural Labyrinth of María de Zayas," published in 2000 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and "The Severed Word: Ovid's 'Heroides' and the 'Novela Sentimental,'" published in 1990 by Princeton University Press.

Brownlee's fields of interest are medieval and golden age Spanish literature and medieval and Renaissance comparative literature. She earned her B.A. at Smith College.

Carmona came to Princeton in 1995 after 16 years at the University of California-Irvine. He specializes in statistical data analysis as it applies to a wide range of applications, such as medical diagnostics, oceanography, speech processing and financial markets.

Carmona received his training at the University of Marseille, where he earned a These d'Etat in probability in 1977. He taught at the University Saint Etienne and worked for the French government before moving to California. His publications include more than 60 articles and six books in probability and statistics. He is on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed journals and book series and often has worked as a statistical consultant, including serving as a scientific adviser for several companies.

He was elected a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1984. In addition to his appointment in operations research and financial engineering, Carmona is director of the Committee on Statistical Studies, a member of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics and director of graduate studies of the Bendheim Center for Finance.

Gul joined the economics department in 1995 after earning his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1986. He has a B.A. degree from Bogazici University in Turkey.

Gul holds positions as associate editor at Econometrica and at the Journal of Economic Theory. He also has written frequently for both publications. He is a member of the editorial board of Games and Economic Behavior and a fellow of the Econometric Society.

He recently published a paper in Econometrica titled "Unobservable Investment and the Hold-Up Problem." He has a forthcoming paper, written with Wolfgang Pesendorfer, titled "Temptation and Self-Control."

Kohli, who specializes in comparative politics, international relations, and politics and development in India, has been on the Princeton faculty since 1983. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Carleton University in Canada and his doctoral degree from the University of California-Berkeley.

Kohli is the author of "The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform" and "Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability." He recently completed a major new book, "In Search of Development: Constructing States and Industry in the Global Periphery." He has edited several books, including "The State and Development in the Third World," "India's Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations," "State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World," "Community Conflicts and the State of India" and "The Success of India's Democracy." He also is editor of the journal, World Politics.

Kohli's published research on development in India and comparative development issues includes articles in World Politics, Comparative Politics and World Development. His new research interests include a small book on the politics and society of Pakistan, and a major project on democracy without capitalism, or with weak capitalism, a book that will investigate select new democracies in light of the theories that posit a strong relationship between democracy and capitalism.

Kohn, a mathematician specializing in complex analysis and partial differential equations, has been a professor at Princeton since 1968. He served as chair of the mathematics department two times, in the 1970s and 1990s, and is currently the acting chair.

Kohn received his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from Princeton, where he stayed on for a year as an instructor. He moved to Brandeis University in 1958 and rose from assistant professor to professor and chair of the mathematics department before returning to Princeton. Kohn also has held several visiting teaching positions and has been a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study four times.

Kohn is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served as editor of leading mathematical journals. He received the 1978 Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society and the 1990 Bolzano Medal from the Mathematics and Physics Society of Czechoslovakia, which is his native country.

Li received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1986 and joined the Princeton faculty as an assistant professor of computer science the same year. He was promoted to tenure in 1992 and to full professor three years later.

Li's research focuses on computer architecture and operating systems with a particular interest in systems in which multiple computer processors work on the same problem in parallel. His widely cited Ph.D. dissertation introduced the idea of sharing virtual memory between loosely coupled multiprocessors, a key advance in computer design. Among other projects, he has led an effort to develop high-performance, very low-cost computer systems.

In addition to having published more than 70 journal articles and conference reports, Li has served on dozens of program committees for conferences and symposia and has been the chair or vice chair for several of them. He has been a consultant to several leading technology companies and has held many visiting positions. Li is a fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery and is the 1994 recipient of the Princeton Undergraduate Engineering Council's Excellence in Teaching Award.

Peterson has taught at Princeton since 1971. He served as chair of the East Asian studies department from 1988 to 1999. He is currently working on a book-length study of intellectual alternatives in early Ch'ing China and editing a volume of the "Cambridge History of China."

He is the co-editor, with Pauline Yu, Peter Bol and Stephen Owen, of "Ways With Words: Writing About Reading Texts from Early China," published by the University of California Press in 2000. He also is a member of the editorial boards of Asia Minor and Ming Studies.

Peterson received his B.A. degree in history from the University of Rochester and his M.A. degree in Chinese history from the University of London. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Dartmouth College for a year before coming to Princeton.

Pettit arrives at Princeton this year from Australian National University in Canberra, where he has been a professor since 1983. In addition, he has been a visiting professor at Columbia University since 1997. From 1977 to 1983, he was a professor at the University of Bradford and chair of the School of Interdisciplinary Human Studies. Previously, he was a lecturer at University College in Dublin for two years.

Pettit, whose fields of interest are social and political theory and philosophy, is a fellow of Australia's Academy of Social Sciences and its Academy of the Humanities. Co-editor of the Journal of Philosophy since 1999, he also has written 11 books, including "The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and Politics" (1993), "Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government" (1997) and "A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency" (2001), all published by Oxford University Press.

Pettit received his B.A. degree from the National University of Ireland and his Ph.D. from Queen's University of Belfast.

Rosen joined the Princeton faculty in 1977 after teaching at Duke University. He holds both a Ph.D. degree in anthropology and a law degree from the University of Chicago. His main interests are in the connection between cultural concepts and their implementation in social and legal relationships.

He has conducted fieldwork in North Africa, and he has worked as an attorney on a number of American Indian legal cases. He is the author of several books, including "The Justice of Islam: Comparative Perspectives on Islamic Law and Society" and "The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society." He also edited "The American Indian and the Law."

Rosen received the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton in 1997 and was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 1997-98. He was among the first group of recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. He earned his B.A. degree from Brandeis University.

Rothschild first joined Princeton's economics department in 1972; he was professor of economics when he left in 1976 for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He returned to Princeton in 1995 as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and professor of economics and public affairs. He completed his service as dean in February 2002 to return to full-time teaching and research.

An economic theorist, Rothschild has written on a wide range of topics, including asymmetric information, decision-making under uncertainty, investment, taxation, finance and jury-decision processes.

Rothschild is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Econometric Society. He was the founding dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California-San Diego. He earned his B.A. degree from Reed College, his M.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tremaine joined the Princeton faculty in 1997 and has served as chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences since 1998. A theoretical astrophysicist, he focuses his work on the structure of galaxies and the formation and dynamics of the solar system, including comets and planetary rings.

A graduate of McMaster University in Canada, Tremaine earned his master's and doctoral degrees at Princeton. He has served as a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study and as a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto. He was director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics from 1985 to 1996. Since 1996, he has served as director of the Program in Cosmology and Gravity at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Tremaine is the co-author of the book "Galactic Dynamics," and the author or co-author of nearly 100 papers in the Astrophysical Journal, Icarus and other journals. A former Sloan Research Fellow, he is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the Beals Award of the Canadian Astronomical Society and the Rutherford Medal in Physics of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada, an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Warren joined Princeton's chemistry faculty in 1982, and also is an affiliated faculty member in the departments of electrical engineering, molecular biology and physics, and the Program in Neuroscience. He serves as director of the New Jersey Center for Ultrafast Laser Applications and Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging, and as associate director of the Princeton Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials.

Warren's research involves improving the capabilities of functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique used to measure brain activity in humans. His work could increase image resolution by more than 100 times to reveal active areas of the brain in greater detail. He also pioneered the development of pulse shaping technology for ultrafast laser systems, with applications to molecular spectroscopy, high-speed optical communications and biomedical imaging. He is the author of a textbook, "The Physical Basis of Chemistry."

A former Sloan Research Fellow and a fellow of the American Physical Society, Warren received a McKnight Innovation Award in Neuroscience in 1999. A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, he earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of California-Berkeley.

Zelizer came to Princeton in 1988 from New York, where she was a faculty member at Barnard College and Columbia University. She served as chair of Princeton's sociology department from 1992 to 1996. A specialist in economic processes, historical analysis and childhood, she earned her bachelor's degree from Rutgers University and a doctoral degree from Columbia.

Zelizer has written three prize-winning books: her "Morals and Markets" (1979) dealt with the development of life insurance; "Pricing the Priceless Child" (1985) with the changing economic and sentimental value of children in the United States; and "The Social Meaning of Money" (1994) with the way social and cultural values influence money. She also has written many articles for academic journals.

A former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Zelizer won a three-year Cotsen Faculty Fellowship at Princeton in 1998 to develop and teach new courses. She designed an undergraduate course on social relations in the economy and a freshman seminar on the history and sociology of childhood. She is writing two books, tentatively titled "The Purchase of Intimacy" and "Circuits Within Capitalism."

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