New University Faculty Appointments for Seven Women

Susan Altizer was named the University of Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Ecology. She has been serving as a professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the university’s Odum School of Ecology. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases.

Dr. Altizer joined the faculty at the University of Georgia in 2005 after teaching for four years at Emory University in Atlanta. She holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Minnesota.

Maria Chudnovsky was appointed professor of mathematics at Princeton University in New Jersey. She will begin her new role in January. Currently she is a professor in the department of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University in New York City. Her research focuses on graph theory. In 2012, she earned a MacArthur Fellowship.

Maria Chudnovsky received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She earned a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Nadine Finigan-Carr was named a research assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. She was a clinical research specialist at the university.

Dr. Finigan-Carr is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she majored in psychology and African American studies. She holds a master’s degree in applied psychology from the University of Baltimore and a doctorate from the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Robin Hunicke was appointed an associate professor of art and game design at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She will begin teaching in the spring semester. She is the co-founder and CEO of the independent game studio, Funomena.

Hunicke is a graduate of the University of Chicago. She is completing work on a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence at Northwestern University.

Sarah L. Harris is a new associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For the past decade, she has served on the faculty at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

Dr. Harris is a graduate of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Kami Chavis Simmons was appointed director of the new criminal justice program at the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Professor Simmons has been on the law school’s faculty since 2006.

Professor Simmons is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation from Harvard Law School, Professor Simmons practiced law in Washington and later was an assistant United States Attorney.

Abby Walker is a new assistant professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. She is teaching a course on linguistics and leading a research project on language and gender.

Dr. Walker holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University.