Four Women Named to Endowed Faculty Chairs

Sophia Chung was appointed to the Dr. Walter F. and Sharon Ryan Davisson Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology at Saint Louis University in Missouri.  Dr. Chung has been on the faculty in the department of ophthalmology and neurology since 1990.

Dr. Chung received her medical degree at Duke University and completed her residency at the Cullen Eye Institute of the Baylor College of Medicine.

Sharon Hammes-Schiffer was named to a Swanlund Chair in Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. She joined the university’s faculty this fall after teaching at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on protein engineering and drug design.

Dr. Hammes-Schiffer is a 1988 graduate of Princeton University and holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University.

Michela Taufer was named as the first holder of the David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills Chair of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware. Dr. Taufer joined the University of Delaware faculty in 2007. She previously taught at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Dr. Taufer holds a master’s degree from the University of Padua in Italy. She earned a Ph.D. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Beverly Roberts Gaventa was named Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation in the department of religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She will take her new faculty post in the fall of 2013. Currently, Dr. Gaventa is the Helen H.P Manson Professor of new Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Princeton Theological Seminary. She has been on the faculty there for 21 years.

Dr. Gaventa holds a master of divinity degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Ph.D. from Duke University.