Kathleen O’Neill (photo: Denise Applewhite)
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Spotlight
Name: Kathleen O’Neill.
Position: Department manager for the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Supervising the overall operation of the department, including five full-time staff members and many short-term professional employees. Assisting the department chair with faculty affairs.
Quote: “I’ve worked in this department for 15 years, and we have grown by leaps and bounds. We had 70 student enrollments in classes in the department in 1993. This year we are close to 1,000.”
Other interests: Visiting her two adult sons, Matthew and Mark. Serving as a volunteer for the Mid-Atlantic English Springer Spaniel Rescue organization. Working in her garden at her new house in Ewing, N.J.
Briefs
Five Princeton faculty members have been selected to receive 2008 Sloan Research Fellowships, highly competitive grants to outstanding scientists and scholars early in their careers. They are:
• Yueh-Lin Loo, associate professor of chemical engineering, whose research interests focus on materials chemistry and the physics of complex, soft materials. A faculty member since 2007, she received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton in 2001.
• Ulrich Müller, assistant professor of economics. A faculty member since 2003, his research interests include econometrics.
• Jason Petta, assistant professor of physics. His research focuses on quantum control of solid state systems. He has been a faculty member at Prince-ton since 2007.
• Roman Rafikov, assistant professor of astrophysical sciences. A specialist in theoretical astrophysics, he joined the faculty in 2007. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2002.
• Joshua Shaevitz, assistant professor of physics and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. A faculty member since 2007, he conducts research on the role that mechanical forces play in biology.
Board approves two promotions
The Board of Trustees has approved the promotions of two faculty members. The faculty members and their departments, by the academic rank to which they are being promoted, are:
Professor — Elizabeth Gavis, molecular biology, effective July 1, 2008.
Associate professor — Jan-Werner Müller, politics, effective July 1, 2008.
Employee retirements
Effective Feb. 1: in University Services, financial analyst Joseph Bielamowicz Jr., after 32 years; in molecular biology, lecturer Philip Felton, after 22 years.
Effective March 1: in ecology and evolutionary biology, administrative assistant Terry Guthrie, after 13 years; in administrative information services, senior programmer Susan Hurley, after 31 years; in parking and transportation, shuttle driver Walter Rice Jr., after 10 years.
Effective May 1: in alumni and donor records, matching gift coordinator Sarah Rogers, after 36 years.
