NAS elects four faculty members
The National Academy of Sciences has elected four Columbia professors into its membership, which is one of the highest honors accorded to scientists in the US. The new inductees are Elena Aprile, a Columbia physics professor who leads one of the world’s most ambitious efforts to find dark matter; Joan Birman, an emerita research professor in mathematics at Barnard who specializes in topology and dynamical systems; Sankar Ghosh, the Silverstein and Hutt Family Professor of Microbiology and Immunology (and the chair of that department), who investigates the links between inflammation and cancer; and Robert Jervis, the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and an expert on international conflict and cooperation.
Nine professors join American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Last semester, nine Columbia professors joined the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.
The new AAAS fellows are Hilton Als, an associate professor in the School of the Arts’ writing program and a New Yorker theater critic; Kimberlé Crenshaw, the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and a scholar of civil-rights law, critical race theory, and Black feminist legal theory; Virginia Page Fortna, the Harold Brown Professor of US Foreign and Security Policy and an expert on anti-terrorism and peacekeeping strategies; David Henry Hwang, the head of the School of the Arts’ playwriting program and a Tony Award–winning playwright, screenwriter, television writer, and librettist; Gillian Lester, the dean of Columbia Law School and a leading authority on employment law and policy; Michele Moody-Adams, the chair of the philosophy department, the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory, and a scholar of moral psychology and applied ethics; Frederick Neuhouser ’88GSAS, a philosophy professor at Barnard and an expert on the works of Rousseau, Fichte, and Hegel; Gayatri Spivak, a University Professor whose research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, and postcolonial political theory; and Mabel O. Wilson ’91GSAPP, the Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, the director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, and a prominent scholar of art, architecture, and cultural history.
Bravos to top profs
Eight Columbia faculty members and graduate-student instructors have received the annual Presidential Awards for Outstanding Teaching. The 2021 recipients are Denise Cruz, a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature; Jeremy Dodd, a senior lecturer in the Department of Physics; Jasmine McDonald, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology; Timothy Mitchell, the William B. Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; Katherine Reuther ’20BUS, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering; Daniella Cádiz Bedini, a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature; Miguel Ángel Garrido, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Statistics; and Christopher Medina-Kirchner, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology.
