Faculty Promotions
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
and Dr. Karen Antman, Dean of the School of Medicine and Medical Campus Provost
On behalf of President Brown, we are delighted to announce the promotion of 18 members of our faculty on the Charles River Campus to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure, 2 to the rank of Full Professor, 1 award of tenure to an Associate Professor, and 1 promotion to the rank of Associate Professor for a non-tenure track faculty member. Additionally, we are pleased to announce the promotion of 10 members of our Medical Campus faculty to the rank of Associate Professor and 1 to the rank of Full Professor.
These promotions and awards of tenure mark an especially proud moment for the BU community, as we’ve had the pleasure of watching these talented women and men develop from promising junior faculty into scholars and teachers of national impact and recognition. In fields as diverse as the sciences, humanities, mathematics, medicine, business, and law, these faculty members have fulfilled the promise we saw in them as they began their careers at Boston University. They are having a demonstrable impact in their disciplines and they are excelling as teachers in our classrooms. We see great things ahead for them and are pleased they have chosen BU as the place to launch their independent careers:
Ana Albuquerque, Questrom, Accounting, specializes in the research of executive compensation, with emphasis on comparative studies based on productivity. Her work in relative performance evaluation has been recognized as definitive in her area of study and has been the basis of many well-regarded papers and presentations in both academia and the business press. A regularly invited speaker at national conferences, she is a past recipient of Questrom’s Broderick Prize for Excellence in Research. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Amy Appleford, CAS, English, specializes in literature and culture of late medieval England, focusing on the relationship between writing, religion and civic practices of everyday life. Considered among the foremost scholars in her field, she has authored a critically acclaimed book, Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540 (2015), with another volume forthcoming, and has penned numerous widely cited book chapters, journal articles and reviews spanning medieval and modern studies. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Margaret Beck, CAS, Mathematics & Statistics, specializes in dynamical systems, with additional research in applied mathematics. Recognized as a pioneer in bringing techniques from invariant manifold theory to the study of partial differential equations, she has developed new computational methods considered major advances for mathematical theory. She is a recent Sloan Research Fellow, has received continuous NSF funding to support her work and publishes consistently in top journals. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Tulika Bose, CAS, Physics, specializes in high-energy particle physics, focusing on the pursuit and understanding of some of nature’s most fundamental physical forces and particles. A recipient last year of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Distinguished Researcher Award, she has earned international stature in experimental physics, having recently been appointed Trigger Coordinator for the CMS Experiment on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a past Sloan Research Fellow and has been a co-author on more than 500 widely cited papers. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Renee Boynton-Jarrett, MED, Pediatrics, specializes in the study of social determinants – specifically early life adversity – and their long-term impact on health outcomes for populations. A principal investigator on numerous privately funded studies exploring child abuse prevention, early puberty and adolescent obesity, she co-directs the Academies of Investigation and the Academic Development Block for the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics and serves as a faculty mentor for the combined residency program’s Urban Health Advocacy Track for the Community Health Mentorships Group. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Khiara Bridges, LAW, specializes in interdisciplinary research concerning race, class and reproductive rights and how these areas intersect. Recently named among the nation’s “50 Under 50” most influential minority legal academics, she has authored a highly-touted book, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2011), as well as numerous articles for top law reviews. Last year, she received the School of Law’s Michael Melton Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has been promoted to Professor, with Tenure.
Christopher Connor, MED, Anesthesiology, specializes in the invention of new technologies to improve patient safety and postoperative outcomes, from critical care to pain management. Considered among the world’s top investigators in airway management and new technology studies, he holds distinction as the only scientist/innovator in his field to earn four out of five national safety awards over the last five years. He currently serves as director of research for the Department of Anesthesiology and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Ayse Coskun, ENG, Electrical & Computer Engineering, specializes in computer systems – from chip to data center design – and the development of novel methods to increase energy efficiency, power and temperature management. She is recognized internationally for algorithmic advances that synchronize software performance, hardware activity and thermal balance to optimize system performance. An NSF CAREER Award winner, she holds six patents and has authored two book chapters and dozens of refereed conference articles and archived papers for top journals. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Douglas Densmore, ENG, Electrical & Computer Engineering, specializes in design automation, blending electronic design techniques with synthetic biology to build synthetic biological systems, primarily expressed as software packages. He is an NSF CAREER Award winner and past recipient of his school’s Early Career Research Excellence Award and BU’s Reidy Family Career Development Professorship. His computational research has generated two textbooks, one patent, two book chapters and dozens of widely cited journal and conference papers. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Anna di Robilant, LAW, specializes in property law and theory, legal history and comparative law between the United States and Europe. Her uniquely focused scholarly work led to her appointment as chair of the Property Law section of the Common Core of European Private Law. She has published numerous articles in leading journals and law reviews examining issues of common and civil law and the design of property law institutions in free and democratic societies. She has been promoted to Professor, with tenure.
Michael Dietze, CAS, Earth & Environment, specializes in ecology, focusing on forest demography and the factors that influence mortality in forest ecosystems. The recipient of a NASA grant and numerous NSF awards to support his research, he has earned national recognition for novel advances in data assimilation by integrating field research, statistical methods, numerical models and ecoinformatics tools. He has published three book chapters and dozens of articles in premier journals. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Kira Fabrizio, Questrom, Strategy & Innovation, specializes in areas of innovation, intellectual property rights and sustainability, with particular emphasis on energy and environmental policy. A past Sloan Research Fellow and winner of her school’s Broderick Prize for Excellence in Research Scholarship, she serves as Advisory Editor for Research Policy and co-created a new MBA concentration in Energy and Environmental Sustainability. She has authored three book chapters and numerous articles for top journals in her field. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Alik Farber, MED, Surgery and Radiology, specializes in vascular disease, with focus on clinical trials research in critical limb ischemia. As chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at BMC, he directs the Center’s Vascular Surgery training program, and in 2013 was elected to Distinguished Fellow Status by the Society for Vascular Surgery. He is a co-principal investigator on a $25 million NIH award comparing outcomes of open vascular surgery and endovascular surgery in patients with critical limb ischemia and has been named a “Top Doc” by Boston Magazine each of the last four years. He has been promoted to Professor.
Horacio Frydman, CAS, Biology, specializes in evolutionary cell and molecular biology and the role symbiosis plays in the development of organisms. His seminal research on Wolbachia bacteria in insects – both as a means of manipulating a host’s reproduction and as a possible preventative tool against the spread of malaria and dengue fever – has resulted in significant NIH and NSF grant funding and the publication of articles in three leading journals: Science, Nature and PNAS. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Rani Ghose Elwy, SPH, Health Policy and Management, specializes in the study of how patients’ perceptions of their health, doctor-patient communication and complementary and alternative therapies can be tailored to improve engagement and access to care. A recognized leader among her school’s faculty, she has won four excellence-in-teaching awards from SPH since 2007. In addition to her BU work, she serves as investigator with the Bedford (MA) VA Medical Center’s Center of Innovation, where she is site principal investigator on multiple VA awards, and serves as peer reviewer for numerous premier journals. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Sharon Goldberg, CAS, Computer Science, specializes in network security, using tools from theory and networking to solve practical problems and help safeguard Internet routing from attack. Regarded as a leading international authority in her field, she has received numerous NSF grants (including a CAREER Award) and a Sloan Research Fellowship to support her work, and has won two Applied Networking Research Prizes for papers from the Internet Engineering Task Force. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Vivek Goyal, ENG, Electrical & Computer Engineering, specializes in modern signal processing, developing theory and applications of wavelet methods to produce practical wavelet coding techniques. The recipient of numerous NSF grants, including a CAREER Award, he is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and distinguished lecturer of its Signal Processing Society. Consistently rated at the top of his field, he holds 18 patents and has published six books, four book chapters and dozens of widely cited conference papers and articles in leading journals. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Amie Grills, SED, Counseling Psychology & Human Development, specializes in research surrounding childhood anxiety and differential responses to traumatic experiences across age groups. A nationally respected clinician in child interventions and a frequently invited conference lecturer, she has received significant NIH grant funding to support her research and has authored a book, two book chapters and dozens of widely cited articles for top field publications. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Anna Henchman, CAS, English, specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, with emphasis on the relationship between literature, science and epistemology. Considered a top scholar in a highly interdisciplinary field, she has authored a well-reviewed new book, The Starry Sky Within: Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature (2014), with another tome forthcoming that explores scientists’ and writers’ understanding of cognition, scale and selfhood. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Lucy Hutyra, CAS, Earth & Environment, specializes in terrestrial ecology, with particular focus on the terrestrial carbon cycle. A recognized leader in the new field of carbon dynamics in urban environments, she has garnered significant NOAA, NASA and NSF (including a CAREER Award) support for uniquely innovative approaches that integrate direct observation, modeling and remote sensing to produce findings. She has authored two book chapters and dozens of invited presentations and articles for leading journals. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Shiela Kibbe-Hodgkins, CFA, Music, specializes in piano performance, musical collaboration and voice coaching. The chair of her school’s Department of Piano Performance, she has earned international distinction for solo and ensemble work, including invited service as visiting faculty at Juilliard. She has produced three acclaimed CD recordings, including this year’s Modern Fairy Tales, performed more than 100 concerts, and taught more than a dozen master classes across the U.S. and China since 2000. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Mark Kramer, CAS, Mathematics & Statistics, specializes in mathematical neuroscience, incorporating techniques from dynamical systems theory, differential equations and statistics, among several fields, to produce new discoveries in the study of epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. The recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award and significant NIH funding to support his work, he has been championed for identifying a dynamical mechanism that controls the termination of seizures in humans. He has authored two book chapters and published dozens of articles for top journals. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Devin Mann, MED, Medicine, specializes in the enhancement of health care delivery through novel technologies and the integration of multiple disciplines, including bioinformatics, behavioral medicine and human-computer interactions. He serves as Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for Innovation and Population Health for BMC and is the physician lead on a project to standardize health information across 61 specialty clinics. A presidential appointee to the Office of the National Coordinator’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee, he has authored more than 50 scholarly publications. He has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Ashley Mears, CAS, Sociology, specializes in gender studies and economic sociology, focusing on the intersection of culture and markets and the commoditization of beauty and glamor. She has emerged as a nationally recognized scholar in sociological literature, authoring a critically acclaimed book, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (2011), four book chapters and numerous articles and reviews exploring the impact of race, gender and class inequalities on culture. She has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Paul Monach, MED, Medicine, specializes in the research and treatment of vasculitis, with an emphasis on genetics and the development of biomarkers. He serves as director of the Vasculitis Center and of the Rheumatology Fellowship Program at BMC and is an active member of several prominent vasculitis consortia. Additionally, he is co-principal investigator and site investigator on a major National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases study. Under his leadership, BMC’s Vasculitis Center has developed into a regionally recognized resource for patient care and research. He has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Rebecca Perkins, MED, Obstetrics & Gynecology, specializes in cervical cancer prevention and the promotion of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine into clinical practice. A member of the Society of Gynecologic Investigation, she has performed seminal work identifying social and educational barriers to vaccination on the part of parents and health providers and piloted interventions to increase vaccination rates and acceptance. She has published consistently in top journals and been awarded four grants as a principal investigator and two as a co-investigator to support her research. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Rady Roldán-Figueroa, STH, History of Christianity, specializes in the early modern history of Christianity, with emphasis on the Protestant and Roman Catholic Reformations in the Spanish-speaking world. His research – including investigation of the Spanish Bible’s influence on the King James version – has yielded new discoveries regarding understudied figures, religious movements, religio-cultural encounters and spiritual practices, producing a wealth of well-regarded scholarly analysis. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Frederick L. Ruberg, MED, Medicine, specializes in amyloid heart disease and the use advanced imaging technology to assess cardiomyopathy. He serves as director of his school’s Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship Training Program and is an attending cardiologist and Director of the Advanced Cardiac Imaging program at BMC. The author of dozens of peer-reviewed publications, he is principal investigator of an AHA Scientist Development Grant and was recently site principal investigator for an NIH-funded study on the evaluation of chest pain. He has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Edward A. Ruiz-Narvaez, SPH, Epidemiology, specializes in the intersection of molecular, nutritional and cardiovascular disease epidemiology to identify genetic risk factors for a variety of diseases among African American women. A principal or co-investigator on five major grant awards, including two from the National Cancer Institute, he has earned widespread recognition for studies covering diseases that disproportionately affect black women, including breast cancer, obesity and type 2 diabetes. He has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Andrew West, CAS, Astronomy, specializes in the study of M-dwarf stars, focusing on their magnetic activity and influence on the structure and evolution of our galaxy. The recipient of a Cottrell Scholars Award and numerous NSF grants – including a CAREER Award – to support his research, he is a regularly invited speaker at international conferences and has published more than 100 widely cited journal articles, papers and abstracts exploring the properties, formation and aging of stars. He has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure.
Adrian Whitty, CAS, Chemistry, specializes in the study of protein-protein interactions and their potential for achieving biological function or inhibition. Unique for its ability to apply quantitative analysis to the study of biological problems, his research has been continuously supported through NIH grants and has resulted in four patents. It has also garnered significant attention across the fields of pharmacology, medicinal chemistry and systems biology for its impact on the development of small molecule therapeutics. He has been granted tenure.
Shannon Wiltsey-Stirman, MED, Psychiatry, specializes in implementation science, focusing on the integration of evidence-based interventions into practice settings, including VA and community health clinics. Named a “rising star” by the Association for Psychological Science, she has been actively funded as a principal investigator since 2007, amassing more than 1,000 citations for her work, which presently includes a study on technology-enhanced psychotherapy for PTSD. In addition to her work at BU, she leads two international special interest groups on cognitive therapies and traumatic stress studies. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Ann Zumwalt, MED, Anatomy and Neurobiology, specializes in perceptual changes as individuals grow from naïve learners to experts and in pedagogical approaches that bridge the gap between basic science and clinical education. A recognized leader within her program, she has been recognized with her school’s Preclinical Educator of the Year Award and is course director of its Medical Gross Anatomy course. She has published extensively on science education, serves in leadership posts for numerous national organizations for anatomists, and is director of her department’s Vesalius Program. She has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Please join us in congratulating these exceptionally talented rising scholars, teachers and researchers on their recent promotions and in wishing them the best of luck in their new positions. The standard of academic excellence they – and you – continue to set each day heralds an incredibly bright future for Boston University as both a research leader and launching pad for some of the nation’s finest faculty.