(EDITOR'S NOTE: This article incorporates corrections published on June 11, 1997)
The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation has approved the awarding of tenure to the following faculty members:
Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson of the Sloan School of Management has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Brynjolfsson received the AB in applied mathematics and the SM in applied mathematics and decision science from Harvard University (both in 1984), and the PhD in managerial economics from the Sloan School (1991). He was an assistant professor from 1990-95. He has been the Douglas Drane Career Development Associate Professor since 1995. Professor Brynjolfsson is a leading researcher into the implications of the advances in information technology using theoretical and empirical tools from economics. His widely cited research on the productivity and organizational impact of information technology has won several awards. More recently, he has developed a new pricing model for information goods sold on the Internet.
Dr. Jung-Hoon Chun in the Department of Mechanical Engineering has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1996. Professor Chun received the BS from Seoul National University (1976), the MASc from the University of Ottawa (1980) and the PhD from MIT (1984). He joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1989 and was promoted to associate professor without tenure in 1984. Before pursuing an academic career, he was an engineer for Daelim Engineering Co. from 1975-77 and vice president of the Sutek Corp. from 1984-89. Professor Chun has developed two major inventions and conducted research in materials processing and manufacturing. He has taught the core departmental manufacturing course and a school-wide elective in engineering management and served on many departmental committees.
Dr. Christopher C. Cummins of the Department of Chemistry has been promoted from assistant professor to full professor, effective July 1, 1996. Professor Cummins received the AB degree magna cum laude in chemistry from Cornell University (1989) and the PhD in inorganic chemistry from MIT (1993). He has been assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at MIT since 1993. Professor Cummins has received numerous awards including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship (1995) and the DuPont Young Professor Award, and he has been the E. Bright Wilson Prize Lecturer at Harvard. His research focuses on the use of specially designed transition metal complexes to achieve unprecedented chemical transformations. He serves on several department committees.
Dr. Elazer R. Edelman of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Professor Edelman holds the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot chair in HST, and is the director of the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center. He is an internationally recognized expert in vascular biology and bioengineering who integrates skills as an engineer, biologist and clinician in studying mechanisms of arteriosclerosis and vascular repair. Dr. Edelman received four degrees from MIT including the SB in life sciences/applied biology, the SB in electrical engineering (1978), the SM in electrical engineering and computer science (1979), and the PhD (1984) in medical engineering/medical physics. He also holds the MD (1983) from Harvard. Dr. Edelman completed an internship and residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has been an instructor, (1989-91), assistant professor (1991-95) and associate professor in medicine (1995-present) at Harvard Medical School. Professor Edelman has been associate physician at Brigham and Women's since 1989. He was appointed as an MIT associate professor in HST in 1996. He has received numerous honors, including the prestigious Burroughs-Wellcome Award in Experimental Therapeutics and the Marcus Prize in Integrated Physiology from the American Heart Association.
Dr. Glenn Ellison of the Department of Economics has been promoted to full professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Ellison received the AB in mathematics from Harvard (1987), and the MPhil from Cambridge University (1988) and the PhD from MIT (1992), both in economics. He was an assistant professor of economics at Harvard from 1992-94 before coming to MIT as the Ford Career Development Associate Professor of economics in 1994. He won a Sloan Faculty Research Fellowship in 1996. His research concentrates on game theory and empirical industrial design. Before pursuing an academic career, Professor Ellison was an associate and senior associate at Charles River Associates from 1988-89.
Dr. Dara Entekhabi in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Entekhabi received the BA (1983) and two MA degrees in geography (1984 and 1987) from Clark University. He received the PhD in civil and environmental engineering from MIT in 1990. He was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and an assistant professor at the University of Arizona. He returned to MIT as an assistant professor in 1991 and was promoted to associate professor without tenure in 1995. Professor Entekhabi, a hydrologist, specializes in the new fields of hydrometeorology, hydroclimatology and satellite remote sensing of land-surface processes.
Dr. Mary Fuller of the literature section has been named associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Fuller earned the BA from Dartmouth College (1981), and the MA (1985) and PhD (1989) from Johns Hopkins University. She began her academic career as an instructor in liberal arts at Johns Hopkins (1987-89) and came to MIT as an instructor in literature in 1989. She was named an assistant professor of literature in 1990 and promoted to associate professor in 1994. Professor Fuller is an accomplished scholar of the English Renaissance; her 1995 book Voyages in Print is a central text in the field of American exploration. Her latest work focuses on colonial narratives of exploration, including those concerned with Turkey, Newfoundland and other less studied sites.
Dr. Jonathan Gruber of the Department of Economics has been promoted to full professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Gruber received the SB in economics from MIT (1987) and PhD from Harvard (1992). He joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics in 1992 and became the Castle Krob Associate Professor in 1995. He was promoted to professor in 1997. Professor Gruber's research focuses on critical policy problems. He has been a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1992 and was named director of its Program on Children in 1996. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics since 1995. Professor Gruber has been awarded a National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship, a Sloan Faculty Fellowship and the Kenneth Arrow award from the American Public Health Association.
Dr. Dorothy Hosler, associate professor of archaeology and ancient technology affiliated with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been awarded tenure effective July 1, 1997. Professor Hosler received the BA from UCLA (1966), MA degrees from Boston University (1977) and the University of California at Santa Barbara (1980), and the PhD in archaeology from UCSB (1986). She joined the MIT faculty in 1989 as an assistant professor of anthropology and archaeology in the Department of Humanities and Social Science and a lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She was the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton assistant professor from 1991-93 and was promoted to associate professor without tenure in 1993. She was the visiting director of Mesoamerican archaeological studies at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Socialies in Paris from 1993-95.
Dr. Tyler Jacks of the Department of Biology has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Jacks received the BS in biology from Harvard University (1983) and the PhD in biochemistry from the University of California at San Francisco (1988). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the White-head Institute from 1988-92 and has been an assistant investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1994. He came to MIT as assistant professor of biology in 1992. Professor Jacks's research has been internationally acknowledged for its leadership in the area of genetic events that contribute to tumorigenesis, resulting in major implications for cancer therapy. He has supervised numerous undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral research projects in his laboratory.
Dr. Wolfgang Ketterle of the Department of Physics has been promoted from assistant professor to full professor, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Ketterle received the MS in physics from the Technical University of Munich (1982), and the PhD in physics from the Ludwig-Maxmilians University of Munich (1986). He was a research scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (1985-88) and at the University of Heidelberg (1989-90); he came to MIT as a research associate in 1990, becoming an assistant professor in 1993. Professor Ketterle's research focuses on atom trapping and cooling. He led a team that in 1996 created the first atom laser-a device analogous to an optical laser but which emits atoms instead of light. The previous year, his group reported significant advances in producing andstudying Bose-Einstein condensates. Professor Ketterle has received several prizes and fellowships, including the NATO/DAAD Postdoc-toral Fellowship (1990), the Michael and Philip Platzman Award (1994), the Packard Fellowship (1996), the I.I. Rabi Prize of the American Physical Society and the Gustav Hertz Prize of the German Physical Society (both 1997).
Dr. Leonid Levitov of the Department of Physics has been promoted to full professor, effective February 1, 1997. Professor Levitov received the BS (1982) and MA (1985) in physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and the PhD in physics from the L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was assistant professor of physics at MIT from 1991-95 and has been an associate professor since 1996. Professor Levitov's primary research accomplishments range over four main areas: quasicrystals, phyllotaxis, quantum noise and tunneling phenomena.
Dr. Richard M. Locke of the Sloan School of Management and the Department of Political Science has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1996. Professor Locke received the BA from Wesleyan University's College of Letters (1981), the MA in education from the University of Chicago (1990) and the PhD in political science from MIT (1989). He came to MIT as an assistant professor in 1988 and was promoted to associate professor of management and political science in 1993. Professor Locke's research focuses on labor relations and political economy. He is also interested in comparative industrial relations and issues of economic development and redevelopment in the United States.
Dr. Drazen Prelec of the Sloan School of Management has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Prelec received the AB in applied mathematics (1978) and the PhD in experimental psychology (1983) from Harvard University. He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1982-85 and an assistant professor of managerial economics at the Harvard Business School from 1985-91. He came to MIT in 1990 as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Economics and became an associate professor of management science in 1991. Dr. Prelec's principal research fields include consumer behavior, decision-making and expert judgment. He has designed four popular elective courses, and was co-developer and is co-director of the Sloan School's Track in New Product and Venture Development. Dr. Prelec has published articles on economics, psychology and marketing.
Dr. William J. Qualls, associate professor of marketing, has been awarded tenure effective July 1, 1997. Professor Qualls received the BB degree in management from University of Texas at Austin (1974), the MB degree in marketing from Southern Methodist University (1975), and the DBA degree in marketing from Indiana University (1982). He was assistant professor of marketing (1982-88) and associate professor of marketing (1988-89) at the University of Michigan. He was also visiting associate professor of management science at the University of Auckland-New Zealand (1988-90) and visiting professor of marketing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (1988-90). He came to the Sloan School as associate professor of marketing in 1990. Professor Qualls's areas of specialization are group decision behavior and marketing strategy.
Dr. Lisa Randall of the Department of Physics has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective February 1, 1997. Professor Randall received the BS (1983) and the PhD (1987) in physics from Harvard University. She was a President's Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley (1987-89), a post-doctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1989-90), and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (1990-91). She was an assistant professor of physics at MIT from 1991-95 and has been an associate professor since 1995. Professor Randall is a theoretical particle physicist whose work bridges the worlds of mathematical physics and experimental particle physics. During recent years her work has focused on supersymmetry, and she has made significant contributions to phenomenology, model building, super-symmetric field theory and cosmology.
Dr. Paraskevas Sphicas of the Department of Physics has been promoted to full professor, effective February 1, 1997. Professor Sphicas received the BS (1984) and the PhD (1988) in physics from MIT. He was a scientific associate at CERN from 1988-90 and an Wilson Fellow at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 1990-91. Professor Sphicas was assistant professor of physics at MIT from 1991-95. In 1994 he became the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor and in 1995 was named associate professor. Professor Sphicas is an outstanding experimental particle physicist who has distinguished himself both for his research accomplishments and his undergraduate teaching. In addition, he has exerted significant leadership with respect to American participation in the Large Hadron Collider and has been named coordinator of the American data acquisition group for CMS.
Dr. Lawrence J. Vale in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning has been named associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Vale received the BA summa cum laude in American studies from Amherst College (1981), the DPhil from Oxford University in 1985, and the SM in architecture from MIT in 1988. He joined MIT as a lecturer in the Department of Architecture in 1988 and became an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in 1990. He was the Linde Career Development Professor from 1990-93 and the Mitsui Career Development Professor from 1993-96. He was promoted to associate professor in 1995. Professor Vale was a consultant to the National Commission on Severely Distressed Housing from 1991-92. A student of the history, politics and sociology of urban design, he has written two books, including the award-winning Architecture, Power and National Identity, and has also authored two forthcoming works about public housing, From the Puritans to the Projects and Three Public Neighborhoods.
Dr. John R. Williams in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been named associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Williams earned the BA from Oxford University (1971) and the MS degree from UCLA (1973), both in physics, and the PhD in civil engineering from Swansea University (1977). He was a senior lecturer at the University of Wales before joining the MIT faculty as an associate professor in 1990. He directs the Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory and is affiliated with the Engineering Systems Group. Before pursuing an academic career, he worked for Dames and Moore in London and Boston from 1978-81, was vice president of Applied Mechanics Inc. from 1981-87 and CEO of Rockfield Software US Inc. in Boston from 1987-88.
Dr. James R. Williamson of the Department of Chemistry has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor William-son received the BS in chemistry from Mount Union College (1981) and the PhD in chemistry from Stanford University (1988). He was assistant professor of chemistry at MIT from 1990-95 and was subsequently promoted to associate professor. His research focuses on RNA structure determination and on the development of methods to study RNA biochemistry. Professor Williamson is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and has received several other awards. He has taught biophysical chemistry and the chemistry laboratory since 1991.
Dr. Evan Ziporyn of music and theater arts section has been named associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 1997. Professor Ziporyn received the BA cum laude in music from Yale University (1981) and the MA (1986) and PhD (1989) in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Natal in 1984 and a teaching assistant and lecturer at the University of California from 1985-90. He came to MIT as an assistant professor in 1990 and was promoted to associate professor in 1995. A clarinetist and saxophonist, he was founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 1992 and continues to perform with the group. He formed the Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993 and has been its director since then. As a Fulbright Fellow in 1987-88, he studied ethno-musicology in Indonesia. Professor Ziporyn has composed for the Kronos Quartet, Orkest de Volharding, Maya Beiser and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. His music incorporates popular and jazz elements with non-Western musical idioms, alongside avant garde compositional practice.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 4, 1997.
