Princeton University

Faculty

Seven selected for endowed professorships

Seven faculty members have been named to endowed professorships. All were effective Sept. 1, 2005. They are:

• Sharad Malik, the George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering.
• Philip Nord, the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History.
• Vincent Poor, the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering.
• Gyan Prakash, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History.
• George Scherer, the William L. Knapp ’47 Professor of Civil Engineering.
• Christine Stansell, the Edwards Professor of American History.
• Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History.

Board approves six promotions

The Board of Trustees has approved the promotions of six faculty members. The faculty members and their departments, by the academic rank to which they are being promoted, are:

Professor — Steven Gubser, physics; Martin Kern, East Asian studies; Sivaji Lal Sondhi, physics; Suzanne Staggs, physics; and Keith Whittington, politics. All were effective July 1, 2005, except for Kern’s, which was effective Sept. 1, 2005.

Associate professor — Daphne Brooks, English, with continuing tenure, effective July 1, 2006.

Forrest transfers to emeritus status

The transfer to emeritus status of Stephen Forrest, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering, has been approved by the Board of Trustees. It was effective Jan. 1, 2006.

Forrest has become the vice president for research at the University of Michigan this month. He will oversee an enterprise exceeding $750 million, one of the largest university research programs in the country. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Michigan in 1979.

A noted optoelectronics researcher, Forrest joined the Princeton faculty in 1992. He previously had been a researcher at Bell Labs and a faculty member at the University of Southern California. At Princeton, he has led the Optoelectronic Component and Materials Laboratories. He is a former chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and former director of Princeton’s Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials.

Forrest is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Optical Society of America. He has received numerous awards for both research and innovation. He received the IEEE/Laser and Electro-Optics Society Distinguished Lecturer Award in 1996-97. He was co-recipient of the Intellectual Property Owners National Distinguished Inventor Award in 1998 as well as the Thomas Alva Edison Award for innovations in organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In 1999, he received the Materials Research Society Medal for pioneering contributions on organic semiconductor thin films. He was awarded the IEEE/LEOS William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award in 2001 for advances made on photodetectors for optical communications systems. He has written 371 scholarly papers and has been awarded 134 patents.

Faculty submit resignations

The following faculty members have submitted their resignations:

Effective Sept. 1, 2005: Randolph Wang, assistant professor of computer science.

Effective Jan. 1, 2006: Timothy Watson, assistant professor of English, to accept a position at the University of Miami.

Effective Feb. 1, 2006: Celia Perez-Ventura, senior lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures, to accept a position at Molloy College.

Effective July 1, 2006: Yusef Komunyakaa, professor of the Council of the Humanities and creative writing, to accept a position at New York University.