Board approves four faculty appointments

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointments of four faculty members, including one full professor and three assistant professors.

Professor

Joanna Dunkley, in physics, will join the faculty in fall 2016 from the University of Oxford's Exeter College, where she has been since 2007 a senior research fellow, associate professor and professor. Dunkley was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton in 2006-07, earned her M.S. at the University of Cambridge and her Ph.D. at Oxford.

Dunkley studies cosmology and astrophysics, with a focus on the origins and evolution of the universe. Her research is focused on the cosmic microwave background, the glow of heat left over from the Big Bang. 

Assistant professors

Divya Cherian, in history, will join the faculty in fall 2016. A scholar of South Asian history, Cherian earned her B.A. at the University of Delhi, master's degrees at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Columbia University, and a Ph.D. at Columbia.

Tetiana Shcherbyna, in mathematics, will join the faculty in fall 2016 from St. Petersburg State University, where she has been a postdoctoral fellow since 2013. Shcherbyna, who specializes in random matrix theory, was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2012-13. She earned her master's degree at Karazin Kharkiv National University and her Ph.D. at the Institute for Low Temperature Physics, Kharkov.

Mary Caswell Stoddard, in ecology and evolutionary biology, will join the faculty in summer 2016 from Harvard University, where she has been a fellow since 2012. Stoddard studies integrative, behavioral and evolutionary biology. She earned her B.S. at Yale University and her Ph.D. at Cambridge.