Princeton University

Eight new faculty members approved

Jennifer Greenstein Altmann

The appointments of eight new faculty members, one as a full professor, six as assistant professors and one as a senior lecturer, have been approved by the Board of Trustees.

The full professor is Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, professor of economics, effective Aug. 1, 2006.

The assistant professors are: Niklas Beisert, assistant professor of physics, effective Oct. 1, 2005; David Blei, assistant professor of computer science, effective Jan. 1, 2006; Laura Chioda, assistant professor of economics, effective Aug. 1, 2005; Michael Fara, assistant professor of philosophy, effective July 1, 2005; Valerie Halyo, assistant professor of physics, effective Feb. 1, 2006; and Sarah Whiting, assistant professor of architecture, effective Sept. 1, 2005. Beisert, Chioda, Fara and Whiting have three-year appointments; Blei and Halyo have appointments for three and a half years.

The senior lecturer is Ronald Witte, senior lecturer in architecture, effective Sept. 1, 2005, for a term of three years.

Kiyotaki will come to Princeton from the London School of Economics, where he has been a faculty member since 1997. Previously he was an associate professor at the University of Minnesota from 1991 to 1997 and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1985 to 1991.

A native of Japan, Kiyotaki earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tokyo and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has written numerous articles for economics journals in his field of specialization, macroeconomic theory. He received the Yrjo Jahnsson Award from the European Economic Association in 1999 and the Japanese Economic Association-Nakahara Prize in 1997. Both are awarded to young economists who have made significant contributions.

Beisert, a specialist in high energy theory, earned a bachelor’s degree from Technische Universität München and a Ph.D. from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. He came to Princeton as a research staff member in 2004, and has been a lecturer since earlier this year.

Blei, whose field is artificial intelligence, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. He has a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Chioda studies econometrics. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Bocconi University in Milan and a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Fara, a specialist in metaphysics and the philosophy of language and logic, has been an assistant professor at Cornell University since 2001. He received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 2001.

Halyo, whose field is experimental high energy physics, has a bachelor’s degree from Hebrew University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Since 2000 she has been a research associate at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Whiting specializes in the history and theory of architecture. A faculty member at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design since 2000, she also is a partner in WW, an architectural firm she co-founded in 1999. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s degree in architecture from Princeton in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Witte has been a faculty member at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design since 2002. He also is a partner in the architectural firm of WW. He received a bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University and a master’s degree in architecture from Princeton in 1989.