Aaron Abrams
Assistant Professor of Math
Aaron earned his PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He joins us from the Emory University, where he was an Assistant Professor in Math and Computer Science. His research combines elements of geometry, topology, group theory, combinatorics and probability. He especially enjoys collaborating with other mathematicians. He once lived in a tree house.

Andrea Bini
Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow in Italian
Andrea has a Laurea in Literature and Philosophy from University La Sapienza of Rome, an MA in Film and Media Studies from University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Italian Studies from UCLA. He is a Mellon Post-doc in Romance Languages, teaching offerings in Italian language and literature.

Sarah Blythe
Assistant Professor of Biology
Sarah earned her PhD at Northwestern University; Evanston, IL. Her research interests include the mechanisms underlying learning and memory in the brain, as well as sex differences in the brain. Currently, she is using behavioral and anatomical techniques to examine how obesity affects regions of the brain known to be involved in memory formation.

Michael Bush
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Michael received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His interests are in structural and computational questions concerning certain field extensions and their Galois groups that arise naturally in number theory. He has been teaching as a visitor at Smith College.

Lynn Chin
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Professor Chin completed her PhD in Sociology at Stanford University. She joins us from Stanford, where she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS). Her research focuses on the impact of organizational work structure on the development of status hierarchies and group cohesion in teams.

Elizabeth Denne
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Professor Denne earned her PhD in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joins us from Smith College where she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics. Prior to that, she was a Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on geometric knot theory; which uses ideas from geometry, topology and analysis.

Matthew Gildner
Assistant Professor of History
Matthew received his PhD in History from the University of Texas. Up until now he was teaching colonial and modern Latin American history courses at Southwestern University in Texas. His research focuses on the cultural politics and history of the period of Bolivian nationalization.

Elliott King
Assistant Professor of Art History
Professor King earned an MA with distinction in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex. He joins us from Rhodes College, where he was a visiting Assistant Professor in Art History. Professor King’s research focuses on Surrealist art and thought -- specifically Salvador Dalí’s post-war intersections with science, mysticism, and popular culture. He has served on the curatorial committees for many of the most important Dalí exhibitions of the past decade including the critically acclaimed "Dalí: The Late Work" at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, for which he was Guest Curator. He is currently the Consulting Curator for a major exhibition of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s paintings opening at the High Museum of Art in February 2013. Professor King will be teaching courses in modern and contemporary art in Europe and the United States.

Athena Kirk
Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow in Classics
Athena Kirk received her Ph.D in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. She studies ancient Greek literature, epigraphy, cultural history, and linguistics. Her current research focuses on ancient reading and writing, and in particular the status of ancient inscriptions as material objects and the use of text to depict the physical world.

Michael Laughy
Assistant Professor of Classics
Prof. Laughy earned his PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley. He joins us from Monmouth College, where he was the ACM-Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Classical Archaeology; he previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cincinnati. His areas of research include the history and archaeology of ancient Athens, Greek and Roman historians, Greek art and archaeology, Greek religion, and Greek epigraphy.

Natalia Toporikova
Assistant Professor of Biology - HHMI
Professor Toporikova earned her PhD in Mathematical Biology from Florida State University. She joins us from Georgia Institute of technology where she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her research applies methods of mathematical modeling to understand operations of neural circuitry of the brain involved in regulation of breathing.

Paul Youngman '87
Associate Professor of German
Paul A. Youngman is Associate Professor of German Studies. He earned his PhD in German Literature at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. He is the author of Black Devil and Iron Angel (Catholic UP, 2005), an analysis of the aesthetic reception of the railway in nineteenth-century Germany, and We are the Machine (Camden House, 2009), a study of computers, the Internet, and information in contemporary Germany. He is also the author of numerous articles on technology and culture. Beyond technology and the German culture, Professor Youngman’s research interests include the digital humanities and complexity science. His current book project, “National Nanotechnologies: Nanodiscourse in Germany and the U.S.”, is under contract with Purdue University Press. Professor Youngman joins us from the University of North Carolina Charlotte where he was Associate Professor of German Studies and Director of the Center for Advanced Research in the Humanities.