Promotions & Appointments

Board approves three promotions

Princeton NJ -- The Board of Trustees has approved the promotions of three faculty members:

• Jessica Trounstine to assistant professor of politics and public affairs, effective Feb. 1, 2005.
• Edward Eigen and Paul Lewis to assistant professors in the School of Architecture, effective July 1, 2005.

New associate and assistant professors appointed

The Board of Trustees has appointed two new associate professors and 12 new assistant professors to the faculty.

The new associate professors are:

In politics:

• Alan Patten, who studies political theory. A 1988 graduate of McGill University, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Toronto in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1996. He has taught at McGill since 1997, and spent the 2000-01 year as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. His appointment with continuing tenure was effective Jan. 1, 2005.

In politics and public affairs:

• Brandice Canes-Wrone, who specializes in American politics. A 1993 Princeton graduate in economics, she earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1998. She was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years and at Northwestern University for two years. Her appointment with continuing tenure was effective July 1, 2004.

The new assistant professors are:

In computer science:

• Boaz Barak, a specialist in cryptography. A 1999 graduate of Tel-Aviv University, he earned a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2004. He has been conducting postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study. His three-year appointment is effective Sept. 1, 2005.

In molecular biology:

• Hilary Coller, who studies the regulation of cell growth. A 1989 graduate of Harvard University, she earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she also has been a principal investigator. Her three-and-a-half-year appointment was effective Feb. 1, 2005.

• Zemer Gitai, a specialist in developmental biology. A 1996 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-San Francisco in 2003. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His three-year appointment is effective July 1, 2005.

• Yibin Kang, who studies the biology of cancer. A 1995 graduate of Fudan University in China, he earned a Ph.D. from Duke University in 2000. He has been a postdoctoral research associate at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. His three-year appointment was effective Sept. 1, 2004.

In molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics:

• Manuel Llinás, a specialist in molecular biology and genomics. A 1992 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley in 1999. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco. His three-year appointment is effective July 1, 2005.

• Coleen Murphy, also a specialist in molecular biology and genomics. A 1992 graduate of the University of Houston, she earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco. Her three-year appointment is effective July 1, 2005.

In geosciences:

• Adam Maloof, a specialist in Earth history. A 1998 graduate of Carleton College, he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2004. His three-year appointment is effective July 1, 2006.

In electrical engineering:

• Jason Fleischer, who is interested in optics. A 1993 graduate of the University of Chicago, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-San Diego in 1999. He has been a senior research engineer at Lockheed Martin and a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials and at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. His three-year appointment was effective Sept. 1, 2004.

In mechanical and aerospace engineering:

• Mikko Haataja, a specialist in materials science. He earned a master’s degree from Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1995 and a Ph.D. from McGill University in 2001. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton and McMaster universities. His three-year appointment was effective Sept. 1, 2004.

In psychology and public affairs:

• Daniel Oppenheimer, who studies judgment and decision making. A 2000 graduate of Rice University, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2004. His three-year appointment was effective July 1, 2004.

In chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics:

• Joshua Rabinowitz, a specialist in chemical biology. A 1994 graduate in mathematics and chemistry of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he earned a Ph.D. in biophysics and an M.D. degree from Stanford University in 1999 and 2001, respectively. In 2000, he co-founded the Alexza Molecular Delivery Corp., where he has served as vice president for research. His three-year appointment was effective Sept. 1, 2004.

In economics and public affairs:

• Ricardo Reis, who studies macroeconomics and international economics. A 1999 graduate of the London School of Economics, he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2004. His three-year appointment was effective Aug. 1, 2004.