Board approves 24 faculty appointments

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of 24 faculty members, including five full professors, two associate professors and 17 assistant professors.

Professor

Iain McCulloch, in electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, specializes in polymer chemistry. He joins the Princeton faculty this winter from his professorship at the University of Oxford, where he has taught since 2020.

McCulloch, who was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 2020, served as a professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology from 2014 to 2021 and at Imperial College London from 2007 to 2020. He has published more than 450 journal articles and filed 67 patents, in addition to serving as an advisor to Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and companies such as Samsung, Plextronics and Sumitomo.

He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Royal Society Armourers and Brasiers Prize, the European Academy of Sciences 2020 Blaise Pascal Medal for Materials Science and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2020 Interdisciplinary Prize. Prior to his academic career, McCulloch worked in industry for 17 years, including seven as technology platform manager at Merck Chemicals from 2000 to 2007.

McCulloch holds a B.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde. His appointment is effective Jan. 16, 2024.

Will Sawin, in mathematics, specializes in number theory. He comes to Princeton from Columbia University, where he served on the faculty since 2018, most recently as an associate professor.

Sawin previously served as a Clay Research Fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute from 2018 to 2021 and as a junior fellow at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Theoretical Studies. He is the recipient of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

He earned a Ph.D. from Princeton and a B.S. from Yale. Sawin’s appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2024.

Robert Spoo, in English, specializes in modern Irish, British and American authors, and literature and law. His appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2024. He has a B.A. from Lawrence University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Princeton and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Spoo returns to Princeton (where he taught as a lecturer from 1984 to 1988) from the University of Tulsa, where he has taught since 1988, most recently as a law professor. He was named associate professor in 1994 and assistant professor in 1988. He served as a law clerk for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and has practiced law with firms in New York, California and Oklahoma.

He is the author of numerous books, articles and monographs, including “Modernism and the Law” (2018) and “Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain.” Spoo is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has received numerous awards for his teaching.

Zeynep Tufekci, in sociology and public affairs, specializes in information technology policy and social movements. She joined Princeton’s faculty this summer from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to that, Tufekci taught at the University of North Carolina, where she was named associate professor in 2016 and assistant professor in 2011. She also served as assistant professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County from 2008 to 2011. 

Her book "Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protests" (2017), which produces an analysis of social movement theory in the age of social media, has garnered over 12,000 citations. 

Tufekci, who is an opinion columnist for The New York Times, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2022 “for identifying the failings of the international health system, and in particular public agencies, in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.” She is a freelance writer for publications including The Atlantic, Wired and Scientific American. 

She earned a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. from Istanbul University. Her appointment was effective July 1, 2023.

Gabriele Villarini, in civil and environmental engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, specializes in hydroclimatology and hydrometeorology. He comes to Princeton from the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 2012, most recently as a full professor.

Villarini served as the director of IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, the University of Iowa’s center for education, research and public service focusing on fluids-related research, and is a member of the Iowa Flood Center.

He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Nature, Science and Nature Climate Change, and is the recipient of the Hydrological Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award by the European Geosciences Union and the James B. Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union.

Villarini holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and a B.S. from the Sapienza University of Rome.

Associate professor

Kathryn Farris, in creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, specializes in poetry and creative writing. She joined the Princeton faculty this fall from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she served as an associate professor since 2019. She previously taught at San Diego State University.

Farris holds an M.F.A. from Brown University and a B.A. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Hye Young You, in politics and public affairs, specializes in political economy, lobbying and interest groups. She joined Princeton’s faculty this summer.

You comes to Princeton from New York University, where she has taught since 2017, most recently as an associate professor. She served as an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University from 2014 to 2017.

She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Seoul National University.

Assistant professor

Arash Adel, in architecture, specializes in technology and structural architecture. He joined the Princeton faculty in July. He holds master’s degrees from Azad University, the University of Tehran and Harvard University, and a D.Sc. from ETH Zurich.

Christopher Blair, in politics, joined the faculty in July. He specializes in political economy, conflict, forced displacement and gender. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.

Zachary Bleemer, in economics, joined the faculty in July from the Yale School of Management, where he was an assistant professor. He specializes in economics and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and a B.A. from Amherst College.

Benjamin Hofman Bradlow, in sociology and international affairs, joined the faculty this summer. He was a lecturer at Harvard from 2021 to 2022 before joining Princeton as a lecturer in 2022. Bradlow holds a Ph.D. from Brown University, an M.CP. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.

Monica Bravo, in art and archaeology, joined the faculty this fall. She specializes in the history of photography and art history. Bravo has a Ph.D. from Brown University, an M.A. from Stony Brook University and a B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Matija Bucic, in mathematics, joined the faculty this summer. Bucic, who specializes in discrete mathematics, holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich.

Saptarshi Chaudhuri, in physics, will join the faculty in January 2024. Chaudhuri specializes in particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S. from the California Institute of Technology.

Benjamin Eysenbach, in computer science, joined the faculty this summer. Eysenbach, who specializes in machine learning, holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Naima Green-Riley, in politics and international affairs, joined Princeton’s faculty this summer. Green-Riley, who studies political science, has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.P.P. from Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Pravesh K. Kothari, in computer science, will join Princeton’s faculty this winter from Carnegie Mellon University, where he has been an assistant professor since 2019. Kothari is a specialist in theoretical computer science. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Lydia Liu, in computer science, studies machine learning. She joins Princeton’s faculty this winter. Liu holds a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and a B.S.E. from Princeton.

Jesse Lundquist, in classics, joined the faculty this fall from the University of California-Los Angeles, where he has been a teaching professor since 2021. A specialist in ancient Mediterranean languages and cultures, Lundquist also served as a tutor at the University of Oxford from 2020 to 2021 and a lecturer at the University of Vermont from 2017 to 2018. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-Los Angeles and a B.A. from the University of Manchester.

Daniela Mitterberger, in architecture, will join the faculty in January. She specializes in robotics and in technology in architecture. Mitterberger holds a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich and a B.Arch and an M.Arch from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Gautam Reddy Nallamala, in physics, will join the faculty this winter from NTT Physics & Informatics Labs, where he works as a research scientist. He specializes in machine learning. Reddy Nallamala earned a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of California-San Diego.

Wei Peng, in public and international affairs and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, joined Princeton’s faculty this summer from Pennsylvania State University, where she has been an assistant professor since 2019. Peng, who studies energy policy, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton and a B.S. from Peking University.

Ikaika Ramones, in anthropology, studies cultural anthropology. He joined the faculty this fall. Ramones has a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. from New York University and an A.B. from Harvard University.

Anna Yu Wang, in music, joined the faculty this summer. She specializes in music theory. Wang holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Harvard University and a B.A. from McGill University.