Board approves 15 new appointments to the faculty

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of 15 faculty members, including three full professors and 12 assistant professors.

Professor

Agustín Fuentes, in anthropology, joins the faculty in summer 2020 from the University of Notre Dame, where is the Edmund P. Joyce C.S.C. Professor of Anthropology. He taught at Notre Dame for 17 years. Earlier, Fuentes was on the faculty at Central Washington University.

His research focuses on the how and why of being human, and his current interests cover the roles of creativity and imagination in human evolution, multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the structures of race and racism. Fuentes earned his Ph.D. and B.A. at the University of California-Berkeley.

Alessandro Lizzeri, in economics, joins the faculty in summer 2020. Having begun his faculty career at Princeton in 1995, Lizzeri returns to the University after teaching at New York University since 2001.

The author of numerous papers on topics ranging from industrial organization to political economy, Lizzeri received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and his Laurea from Università Bocconi.

James Raymo, in sociology, joined the faculty this fall as the Henry Wendt III Professor of East Asian Studies. He comes to Princeton from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he had served on the faculty since 2000.

Raymo focuses his research on documenting and understanding the causes and potential consequences of demographic changes associated with population aging in Japan. He completed doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, earned an M.A. at Osaka City University and received a B.A. from Colgate University.

Assistant professor

Renèe Bolinger, in politics and the University Center for Human Values, joined the faculty this fall from Australian National University, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, M.A. from Northern Illinois University, and B.S. and B.A. from Biola University. Her research specializes in social and political philosophy and the philosophy of language.

Lawrence Cheuk, in physics, joins the faculty this winter from Harvard University, where he is completing a postdoctoral fellowship. A specialist in experimental physics, Cheuk earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and A.B. from Princeton.

Jesse Jenkins, in mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, joined the faculty this fall from his position as a postdoctoral environment fellow at Harvard. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon and Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jenkins’ research focuses on improving and applying optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate low-carbon energy technologies, policy options and robust decisions under deep uncertainty.

Chi Jin, in electrical engineering, joined the faculty this fall from the University of California-Berkeley, where he completed his Ph.D. His research interests lie in machine learning, statistics and optimization. Jin earned his B.A. from Peking University.

Jason Lee, in electrical engineering, joined the faculty this summer. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Southern California from 2016-19 and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California-Berkeley. He earned his undergraduate degree at Duke University and Ph.D. at Stanford University. Lee’s research interests span machine learning, large-scale optimization and statistics.

Bryan Lowe, in religion, joined the faculty this summer. After completing his Ph.D. at Princeton, Lowe taught at Vanderbilt University from 2012 though 2019. An expert in Buddhism in ancient Japan, he earned his B.A. from Middlebury College.

Peter Melchior, in astrophysical sciences, joined the faculty this fall after serving as a professional specialist at Princeton since 2015. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg, where he also served as a postdoctoral research associate. From 2011-15, Melchior pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University.

At Princeton, Melchior leads the Astronomy Data Group, which develops algorithms that accurately capture the properties of billions of stars and galaxies despite the limitations of real-world instruments.

Isadora Moura Mota, in history, joined the faculty this summer from the University of Miami, where she was an assistant professor. She is an expert in Brazilian history, comparative slavery, abolitionism, literacy and the African diaspora to Latin America.

Mota received her B.A. from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, M.A. from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and Ph.D. from Brown University.

Evrydiki Nestoridi, in mathematics, joined the faculty this summer from Cambridge University, where she was a research associate. Previously, she was an instructor of mathematics at Princeton. Nestoridi’s research concentrates on Markov Chains, combinatorics, representation theory and probability. She received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and B.S. from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Stefana Parascho, in architecture, joined the faculty this summer. She received her Diploma in Architecture from the University of Stuttgart and completed her doctoral studies at ETZ Zürich. Parascho’s research interests lie at the intersection of design, structure and fabrication, with a focus on computational design and robotic fabrication.

Jonathan Payne, in economics, joins the faculty in summer 2020 upon completing a BCF Pyewacket Fellowship at Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance. He completed his Ph.D. at New York University and undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne. His research examines questions in finance, banking and macroeconomics.

Elissa Redmiles, in computer science, joins the faculty in fall 2020 from her position as a postdoctoral researcher with Microsoft Research. Redmiles specializes in the use of computational, economic and social science methods to understand users’ security and privacy decision-making processes. She earned her Ph.D. and B.S. from the University of Maryland.