Suzanne Keen, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, announced the appointment of new faculty for the 2019-20 academic year, including nine tenure-track appointments.
New tenure track faculty include:
Naser Al Madi, Computer Science (Ph.D. candidate, Kent State University). Al Madi conducts research in the field of human-computer interaction, focusing on integrating models of human cognition in computer systems to allow these systems to adapt to the needs of the user. More specifically, he works on modeling eye-movement during reading to estimate comprehension difficulty in real-time allowing computers to take immediate action to aid the reading process. Understanding the strategies and processes applied by readers allows for better tools to enhance the productivity and quality of computer systems.
Al Madi earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Jordan and his master’s degree in computer science from Kent State University. During his time at Kent State, he worked as an instructor of computer science and a researcher in the Multimedia lab.
Mo Alloush, Economics (Ph.D. University of California, Davis). Alloush earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the American University of Beirut. His research interests are at the intersection of economics, psychology, and geography and in using insights from these disciplines to understand the persistence of poverty and to design effective poverty-alleviation policy.
He is specifically interested in urban poverty and how the conditions of poverty (including exposure to violence, noise, pollution, and lack of access to resources) affect psychological well-being which, in turn, plays a role in prolonging poverty. In his teaching, Alloush strives to create spaces where students collaborate to apply economic theory to develop solutions to real world problems that they care about.
Clark Bowman, Mathematics and Statistics (Ph.D. Brown University). Bowman earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of Rochester and taught for one year as a postdoctoral fellow in the Mathematics Department at the University of Michigan.
Bowman’s dissertation focused on applied statistics (especially uncertainty quantification) and high-performance modeling in cellular biology. He especially enjoys using statistical tools to connect mathematical models with real data, and he is currently working on large-scale data analytics and modeling of biomarkers from wearable devices (e.g., Fitbits) in collaboration with a research group at the University of Michigan Medical School. Bowman’s favorite courses to teach have been in computational probability and statistics, and he hopes to bring a "big data" flavor to the statistics curriculum at Hamilton.
Pritha Chaudhuri, Economics (Ph.D. Purdue University) Chaudhuri grew up in Kolkata, India, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Calcutta and master’s degree in applied economics from Presidency University. Her research is in the field of macroeconomics and focuses on how the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is affected by the changing composition of the labor market.
Jason Cieply, Russian Studies (Ph.D. Stanford University). Cieply completed his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures in 2016 and has taught at Wellesley College and Williams College. He is a scholar of early-Soviet and contemporary Russian culture and teaches courses in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russian culture and Russian language.
His current book project, Voices of Soviet Enthusiasm: Narrating Revolutionary Feeling, explores the emotional experience of revolution. In it, he focuses on how educated writers imitated the speech of the working classes, employing an experimental, affect-oriented narrative form in the hope of discerning the voice of the future socialist person in the chaotic intonations of the revolutionary present.
His second project attempts to counter the recent re-emergence of “totalitarian” models of Russian society. He attempts to do so by investigating the artistic, political, and everyday strategies by which late- and post-Soviet actors have pursued personal or collective sovereignty within quasi-authoritarian societies.
Usman Hamid, Asian Studies (Ph.D. candidate, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto). Hamid received his master’s degree from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. A historian of Islam, he specializes in the study of early modern South Asia and its connections with Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean world. His dissertation explores the significance of material culture i n cultivating devotion to the Prophet Muhammad in early modern South Asia with a particular focus on relics and pilgrimage.
Hamid’s research has been supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada. Previous to his work on Islam and religious materiality, he has published on the history of royal concubinage in late fifteenth century Iran and Central Asia and edited a collection of essays focusing on the circulation of Iranians in early modern South Asia.
Michael Welsh, Chemistry (Ph.D. the University of Wisconsin–Madison). Welsh received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Washington and Lee University then moved to Harvard Medical School as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow. Welsh’s research interests lie at the interface of chemistry and microbiology, and he is broadly interested in the biosynthesis of polymers that decorate the cell surface of bacteria. At Hamilton, he will study enzymes that build the bacterial cell wall with the goal of aiding the development of new antibiotics.
Jeanne Willcoxon, Theatre (Ph.D. the University of Minnesota). Willcoxon received her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated from the acting program at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. Her research focuses on feminist performance, performance phenomenology, and theatre for social change.
She has published reviews in Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Survey, and presented work at the annual conferences of the American Society of Theatre Research, Association of Theatre in Higher Education, Mid-America Theatre Conference, and The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Willcoxon has also worked professionally as an actor in New York City and regionally. Prior to coming to Hamilton, she taught and directed productions at St. Olaf College and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Ryan Carter, formerly visiting assistant professor of music, was also appointed to a tenure track position. His music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, the Metropolis Ensemble, Present Music, The Milwaukee Children’s Choir, and the Calder Quartet. Besides composing acoustic music, Carter is an avid computer musician and programmer.
Carter’s iMonkeypants app, which is available for download, is an album of algorithmically generated, listener-interactive electronica synthesized in real time from code in the RTcmix audio programming language. Carter previously taught at New York University and Virginia Tech. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music composition from Oberlin Conservatory and his master's from Stony Brook University. He received his doctorate in music composition from New York University.
Hamilton’s faculty members are accomplished scholars and distinguished teachers. In the classroom, the lab, the studio and beyond, professors engage actively in the intellectual lives of our students.
Other new faculty are:
Mairin Augustine, Psychology; Jonas Brodin, Government; Priya Chandrasekaran, Environmental Studies; Taylor Clock, Art; Megan Dean, Philosophy; Dannah Dennis, Anthropology; Rebecca Dyer, Psychology; Emma Flacard, French and Francophone Studies; Debra Freas, Classics; Adam Giannelli, Literature and Creative Writing; David Jacobs, Physics; Chitra Jogani, Economics; Ruth Lo, Art History; Heather MacArthur, Psychology; Francis MacDonnell, History; Theo Mazumdar, Communication; Anne Richard, Government; Tural Sadigov, Mathematics and Statistics; Michael Shapiro, Art History; John Shea, Art; Megan Marshall Smith, Physics; Stina Soderling, Women’s and Gender Studies; Katarzyna Stempniak, French and Francophone Studies; Mahala Stewart, Sociology; Emiko Stock, Asian Studies; Han-Hsin Sung, East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese); Yen Vu, French and Francophone Studies; Chenyu Wang, Anthropology; Fei Wu, East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese); Takuma Yoshida, East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese).
