SAS Welcomes 16 New Faculty Members

The School of Arts and Sciences has appointed 16 new members to its standing faculty for the 2010-11 academic year. The new hires join the faculty at the junior and senior levels across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

This year's new senior appointments are:

Ufuk Akcigit, Assistant Professor of Economics. His research interests include macroeconomics, economic growth, industrial organization and computational economics. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kimberly Bowes, Associate Professor of Classical Studies. She studies classical archaeology, with an emphasis on Roman Imperial culture during Late Antiquity. Bowes comes to Penn from Cornell University, and she received her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Xu Cheng, Assistant Professor of Economics. Cheng studies economic theory and applied econometrics, and she received her Ph.D. from Yale University.

David Chenoweth, Assistant Professor of Chemistry (as of January 1, 2011). Chenoweth focuses on bioorganic chemistry. He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

David Dillenberger, Assistant Professor of Economics. His research interests include microeconomic theory and decision theory. Dillenberger received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Marie Escalante, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages. Escalante's research interests include Modernismo, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Zahra Fakhraai, Assistant Professor of Chemistry (as of January 1, 2011). Fakhraai focuses on experimental physical chemistry, with an interest in properties of materials at interfaces. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo.

Greg Kaplan, Assistant Professor of Economics. His research interests include macroeconomics, labor economics, and applied econometrics. Kaplan received his Ph.D. from New York University.

Timothy Linksvayer, Assistant Professor of Biology (as of March 1, 2011). Linksvayer studies evolutionary biology, with a special interest in the impact of social interactions on the genetic basis of evolution. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Neil Malhotra, Associate Professor of Political Science. Malhotra focuses on American politics, with emphases on political behavior, legislative institutions and public finance, and survey and political methodology. He comes to Penn from Stanford University, where he also received his Ph.D.

Luis Moreno-Caballud, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages. Moreno-Caballud's research interests include contemporary Spanish literature, film and culture. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Florian Schwarz, Assistant Professor of Linguistics. Schwarz studies formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language, and psycholinguistics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Holger Sieg, Joseph M. Cohen Term Professor of Economics. Sieg studies public finance, urban economics and labor economics. He comes to Penn from Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D.

Kaja Silverman, Katherine Stein Sachs CW'69 and Keith L. Sachs W'67 Professor of Art History (Department of History of Art). Silverman's research interests include contemporary art, film theory, feminist theory and psychoanalysis. She comes to Penn from the University of California, Berkeley, and she received her Ph.D. from Brown University.

Joseph Subotnik, Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Subotnik studies theoretical quantum chemistry, with interests in electronic transport in molecules and man-made nanostructures. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jane Willenbring, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. Her research interests include geomorphology, with a focus on landscape development and mechanisms controlling climate change and landscape evolution. She received her Ph.D. from Dalhousie University.