Board approves 17 appointments to Princeton faculty

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointments of 17 faculty members, including two full professors, 13 assistant professors and two senior lecturers.

Professors

Nathaniel Daw, in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and psychology, joined the faculty this fall from New York University, where he had taught since 2007. Previously a postdoctoral fellow at University College London, Daw is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University.

Daw's field of specialization is decision making in biological organisms. Combining computational models of neural mechanisms with fMRI experiments with human subjects, he is contributing to a greater understanding of how to interpret neuroscientific data.

Michael Flower, in classics, became a professor this summer after serving successively since 2003 as a lecturer, senior research scholar and lecturer with the rank of professor. Previously, he served on the faculty at Franklin and Marshall College for 17 years. Flower, a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. at Brown University.

A specialist in ancient Greek history, Flower has written on many topics including Greek religion and the truthfulness of ancient historians' work. Flower's courses at Princeton have spanned topics ranging from ancient Greek language to a freshman seminar on history and memory. 

Assistant professors

Anna Arabindan-Kesson, in art and archaeology and African American studies, joined the faculty this summer from Temple University, where she had been an assistant professor since 2014. A scholar of African American art, Arabindan-Kesson earned her B.A. from University of Western Australia and her Ph.D. at Yale University.

Joshua Billings, in classics, joined the faculty this summer from Yale, where he had been an assistant professor since 2011. Billings, who studies Greek literature and modern intellectual history, earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Harvard University and master's and doctoral degrees at Oxford.

Nathalie de Leon, in electrical engineering, will join the faculty this spring from Harvard, where she has been a postdoctoral fellow since 2011 and earned her Ph.D. She is an undergraduate alumna of Stanford University, and she studies quantum devices, materials and sensing.

Jacob Dlamini, in history, joined the faculty this summer from Harvard, where he had served as a postdoctoral researcher since 2014. A graduate of the University of Witwatersrand, Dlamini has a master's degree from the University of Sussex and master's and doctoral degrees from Yale. His research focuses on sub-Saharan African history.

Kyle Jamieson, in computer science, joined the faculty this fall from University College London, where he has taught since 2008. Jamieson, who earned his B.S. and Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studies networking.

Andrej Kosmrlj, in mechanical and aerospace engineering, joined the faculty this fall from Harvard, where he had been a postdoctoral fellow since 2011. A materials researcher, Kosmrlj earned his B.S at the University of Ljubljana and his Ph.D. at MIT.

Eve Krakowski, in Near Eastern studies and Judaic studies, joined the faculty this fall. Previously a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, Krakowski earned her bachelor's and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on women, gender, and social and cultural Jewish history in the medieval Near East.

Matthew Kunz, in astrophysical sciences, joined the faculty this fall after serving as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton since 2011. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Kunz earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign. He studies plasma astrophysics.

Kristin Valdez Quade, in the Lewis Center for the Arts and creative writing, will join the faculty in fall 2016. Currently a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Quade's area of focus is fiction. She earned her B.A. at Stanford and her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon. 

Brandon Stewart, in sociology, joined the faculty this summer. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, Stewart earned his Ph.D. at Harvard. He studies political methodology, computational social science and Bayesian statistics.

Jeffrey Thompson, in electrical engineering, will join the faculty this spring from MIT, where he has been a postdoctoral fellow since 2014. A graduate of Yale, Thompson received his Ph.D. from Harvard. Thompson's fields of specialization are atomic physics and quantum optics and nanophotonics.

Martin Wühr, in molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, will join the faculty in summer 2016. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Wühr studies proteomics and cell biology. He earned his B.S. at Technical University of Munich and Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and his Ph.D. at Harvard.

Mark Zhandry, in computer science, will join the faculty in fall 2016. Currently a postdoctoral associate at MIT, Zhandry specializes in cryptography. He earned his B.S. at UC-Berkeley and his Ph.D. at Stanford. 

Senior lecturers

Jonathan Fickenscher, in mathematics, joined the faculty this summer after serving as an instructor at Princeton since 2011. Fickenscher is a graduate of the University of Texas-Dallas and earned his doctoral degree at Rice University.

Justin Jungé, in psychology, joined the faculty this summer from Harvard, where he had been a postdoctoral fellow since 2008 and where he earned his undergraduate degree. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees at Yale.