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More promotions, tenure appointments announced

The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation has approved the promotions of four associate professors to full professor, and nine other faculty members-eight associate professors and one assistant professor-to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1. These are in addition to the promotions announced in Tech Talk on May 15.

Those promoted to full professor were:

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Dr. David B. Ralston in the history section of the Department of Humanities. Professor Ralston received the BA degree from Yale University in 1952 and both the MA (1957) and PhD (1964) from Columbia University. He was a history instructor at Columbia from 1958 to 1963 and at MIT in 1963-64. He became an assistant professor in 1964 and was promoted to associate professor in 1967. Professor Ralston was a professor of strategy at the US Naval War College on two occasions, in 1973-75 and 1978-80. He was a visiting professor of history at the National University of Singapore in 1983-84. Professor Ralston has published or edited four books, mainly concerned with the military history of modern Europe. His most recent work, Importing the European Army, is a comparative analysis of the impact of military reforms on countries outside of Europe which attempted to copy the European military organization since the 17th century. He has taught survey courses on Western European history and on war, state and society in the modern world.

SCHOOL OF SCIENCE

Dr. Moungi G. Bawendi in the Department of Chemistry. Professor Bawendi received the AB degree in chemistry (1982) andthe AM in chemical physics (1983) from Harvard University, and the PhD (1988) from the University of Chicago. Professor Bawendi was a postdoctoral member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill from 1988 to 1990, when he joined the faculty as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1995. His research focuses on semiconductor nanocrystallite systems. Broadly defined, it probes the chemistry and physics of nearly monodisperse semiconductor nanocrystallites, so-called "quantum dots," isolated and in complex structures.

Dr. William G. Quinn in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Professor Quinn received the BA degree in biology from Harvard University in 1966 and the PhD in biochemical sciences from Princeton University in 1971. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the biology division at the California Institute of Technology from 1971 to 1974, when he joined the faculty at Princeton as an assistant professor of biology from 1974 to 1980 and associate professor from 1980 to 1984. He was appointed an associate professor with tenure at MIT in 1984. Dr. Quinn, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Biology, is currently concentrating on the multiple processes underlying memory storage. He has done his work with Drosophila, fruit flies that can learn an associative odor-discrimination task and can remember the information for several days.

Dr. Hermann Steller in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Professor Steller received the Diploma in microbiology from Frankfurt University in Germany in 1981 and the PhD in biology from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the University of Heidelberg in 1984. He did postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 before joining the MIT faculty that year as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1992 and was granted tenure in 1993. Since 1990, he has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute associate investigator and an assistant neurobiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Steller, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Biology, has expertise in molecular biology and neurobiology. His research focuses on the molecular basis of neural development in Drosophila, in particular the mechanism of axon guidance, neuron-target interactions and programmed cell death.

Those promoted to associate professor with tenure were:

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING

Dr. Leslie Norford in the Department of Architecture. Professor Norford received the BS degree (1973) from Cornell University and the MA (1982) and PhD (1984) in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton. He came to MIT as an assistant professor in 1988, was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and was named Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Professor in 1995. His research focuses on monitoring and control of energy-efficient buildings, reducing the energy impact of new electronic office equipment and developing and applying energy-efficient building concepts to the developing world. Professor Norford did the first in-depth monitoring of Russian building performance and is deeply involved in setting up rational energy standards for Russian housing. He has also established innovative joint educational and research activities between students in building technology and architectural design.

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Dr. Jacquelyn C. Yanch in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Professor Yanch received the BS degree (1981) in psychology, and BS (1983) and MS (1985) degrees in health and radiation physics, all from McMaster University, and the PhD in physics (1988) from the University of London. She came to MIT as a postdoctoral associate in 1988, became an assistant professor in 1989 and was promoted to associate professor in 1993. She is W.M. Keck Career Development Associate Professor in Nuclear Engineering and at the Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology. Professor Yanch's research has established her as a leading expert in neutronic and radiation transport simulation for development of new medical technology. Among her innovations has been boron neutron capture synovectomy to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Through collaboration with local industry, she has undertaken the design and assembly of the world's first compact accelerator-based neutron source for boron neutron capture therapy. She has also made highly regarded contributions to synovectomy based in interstitial electron-emitting isotopes and to interstitial X-ray therapy of brain tumors.

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Dr. Stephen D. Ansolabehere in the Department of Political Science. Professor Ansolabehere received the BS degree in economics and the BA in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1984, and the PhD in political science (1989) from Harvard. Professor Ansolabehere was appointed an assistant professor at MIT in 1993. He is a leader in the study of American national politics, focusing on political communication and voting behavior; in particular, he has made significant contributions to understanding the impact of advertising on voter participation. His research blending experimental and statistical analysis has shown that broadcast advertising has transformed the electorate, removing incentives for candidates to foster public-spiritedness and instead rewarding them for demobilizing large segments of the electorate. These conclusions are the basis of a widely acclaimed book he co-authored, Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate.

SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Dr. Steven Eppinger . Professor Eppinger received three degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT: the SB in 1983, SM in 1984 and ScD in 1988. He became an assistant professor of management at Sloan in 1988 and was promoted to associate professor in 1993. His research is at the intersection of product development, engineering design, manufacturing technology and operations management. Professor Eppinger's research, textbook and course development have changed the practice and teaching of product design. He has put his expertise to use in MIT programs including the International Motor Vehicle Program, the Leaders for Manufacturing Program and the System Design and Management Program.

Dr. Wanda J. Orlikowski. Professor Orlikowski received two degrees from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, a BComm in business information systems in 1978 and a master's in 1992. She received the PhD in information systems from New York University in 1988. She joined the MIT faculty in 1989 as assistant professor of information technologies, and became the Gordon Y Billard Career Development Associate Professor in 1994. Professor Orlikowski's work has made substantial contributions to the understanding of organizational change around information technology. She has been extensively involved in the MIT Centers for Coordination Science and Information Systems Research.

Dr. Jiang Wang. Professor Wang received a BS degree in physics (1981) from Nanjing University, and PhD degrees in physics (1985) and finance (1990) from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the MIT faculty in 1990 as the Nanyang Technical University (NTU) Career Development Assistant Professor, became NTU Associate Professor in 1994 and was appointed Ford Foundation International Career Development Associate Professor in 1995. Professor Wang is a specialist in the area of theoretical capital markets, where his writing is widely praised for its technical skill and applicability to real-world empirical testing. He has participated actively in the MIT-NTU program.

SCHOOL OF SCIENCE

Dr. Samuel A. Bowring in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Professor Bowring received the BS degree (1976) from the University of New Hampshire, MS (1980) from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and PhD (1985) from the University of Kansas. He was assistant professor at Washington University at St. Louis from 1984 to 1990, when he was appointed associate professor at MIT. Dr. Bowring is a geochemist who uses radiogenic isotopic techniques to address a variety of geological problems ranging from the early history of the continents to biological evolution. His isotope laboratory has been responsible for major advances in three distinct areas: 1) determining the duration and rate of the Cambrian explosion, the single most important evolutionary event in Earth history; 2) the age and geological history of the oldest continental crust on Earth, the 4 billion-year-old Acasta gneisses, and 3) the integration of high-precision geochronology, thermochronology,and isotope tracer studies in understanding the assembly and maturation of continental lithosphere.

Dr. Jacqueline Hewitt in the Department of Physics. Professor Hewitt received the AB degree (1976) from Bryn Mawr College and the PhD (1980) from MIT. She was a postdoctoral associate at MIT's Haystack Observatory from 1986 to 1988 and a research staff member at Princeton University in 1988-89. She was named assistant professor at MIT in 1989 and held the Class of 1948 Career Development chair from 1992-95. She was promoted to associate professor in 1995 and was selected as the Edgerton Award winner. A specialist in gravitational lenses, Professor Hewitt has been part of the MIT-Princeton group that has discovered five of the 12 gravitational lenses that are now well established. She was responsible for the disovery of the first "Einstein Ring," an image that occurs when the lens is highly symmetric and nearly perfectly aligned with the source. Her use of lenses as probes of dark matter and cosmological parameters is at the forefront of the field.

Dr. Xiao-Gang Wen in the Department of Physics. Professor Wen received the BS degree (1982) from the University of Science and Technology in China, and the MS (1983) and PhD (1987) from Princeton, all in physics. From 1987 to 1989 he was a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California and from 1989 to 1991 he was a five-year member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He joined the MIT faculty in 1991 and was promoted to associate professor in 1995. Professor Wen is a theoretical condensed matter physicist whose work on edge states in fractional quantum Hall systems is important and widely recognized. His recent research interests have been high Tc superconductors, and strongly correlated and disordered systems. He is a recipient of the 1994 Outstanding Young Researcher Award.

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Four promoted without tenure

The Executive Commitee of the MIT Corporation has approved the promotions of four assistant professors to associate professor without tenure, effective July 1. These are in addition to the promotions announced May 15. Promoted were:

Neil A. Gershenfeld, Kenneth B. Haase and Mitchel Resnick in Media Arts and Sciences in the School of Architecture and Planning. Hazel L. Sive in the Department of Biology in the School of Science.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 5, 1996.

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