The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointments of 13 faculty members, including one full professor, one associate professor and 11 assistant professors.
Professor
Thomas Conlan, in East Asian studies and history, joined the faculty on July 1, 2013, from Bowdoin College, where he had been a faculty member since 1998. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he earned his doctoral degree in history at Stanford University.
Conlan's research focuses on the political, social and intellectual transformations of Japan from the 11th to 16th centuries. His most recent monograph, published in 2011, is "From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth-century Japan."
Associate professor
Naomi Murakawa, in African American studies, joined the faculty on Sept. 1, 2013, from the University of Washington, where she had taught since 2005. She specializes in American politics with an emphasis on racial and gender politics, public policy, and American political development.
Murakawa was previously a visiting scholar at the University of California-Berkeley and a research fellow at Columbia Law School. She received her bachelor's degree at Columbia University, her master's at the London School of Economics and her Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.
Assistant professors
Forrest Meggers, in architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, will join the faculty on Feb. 1, 2014. He is currently an associate research scholar in architecture at Princeton, and his field of specialization is sustainable design. He has conducted research at the Singapore-ETH Centre's Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, earned a Ph.D. in architecture at ETH Zurich, and received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Iowa.
Charlotte Metcalf, in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and ecology and evolutionary biology, will join the faculty on Nov. 1, 2013. A specialist in evolutionary biodemography, Metcalf has held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Duke University, Princeton and the University of Oxford. An Oxford graduate, she earned her Ph.D. at Imperial College London.
Yulia Mikhaylova, in mechanical and aerospace engineering, joined the faculty on Sept. 1, 2013, from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. She previously was a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Mikhaylova received her master's and doctoral degrees from Lomonosov Moscow State University, and she specializes in applied physics.
Prateek Mittal, in electrical engineering, joined the faculty on July 1, 2013, from UC-Berkeley. A specialist in network information science, Mittal earned his bachelor's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology and his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign.
Silviu Pufu, in physics, will join the faculty on Jan. 1, 2014. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a focus on theoretical physics, Pufu received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton.
Alejandro Rodriguez, in electrical engineering, joined the faculty on Sept. 1, 2013, from MIT, where he was a postdoctoral associate. He previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Rodriguez received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from MIT. He specializes in nanophotonics and fluctuation-induced interactions.
Brian Steininger, in East Asian studies, joined the faculty on July 1, 2013, from Bates College, where he had been an assistant professor since 2010. His research focuses on Japanese literature. A graduate of Macalester College, Steininger received his Ph.D. from Yale.
LaFleur Stephens, in politics, will join the faculty on July 1, 2014. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton specializing in American politics. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and earned her Ph.D. at Michigan.
Mengdi Wang, in operations research and financial engineering, will join the faculty on July 1, 2014. She is currently an associate research scholar at Princeton with a focus on optimization. A graduate of Tsinghua University, she received her Ph.D. at MIT.
Omar Wasow, in politics, joined the faculty on Sept. 1, 2013, after coming to the University earlier this year as a senior research assistant and postdoctoral research associate. A specialist in race and ethnic politics and American political development, Wasow earned his bachelor's degree at Stanford and his Ph.D. at Harvard.
Juan Pablo Xandri, in economics, joined the faculty on Aug. 1, 2013. His research interests are macroeconomics and microeconomic theory. A graduate of Universidad de Montevideo in Uruguay, Xandri received his master's degree from Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Argentina and his Ph.D. from MIT.
