New Assignments for Eight Women Faculty Members at Colleges and Universities

Yueh-Lin Loo, the Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Professor in Engineering and professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University, has been named the director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at the university.

Professor Loo is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she double majored in chemical engineering and materials science. She holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University.

Melina Hale, the William Rainey Harper Professor in the College and Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, has been given the added duties of vice provost for academic initiatives at the university. Previously, she has served as dean for faculty affairs in the Biological Sciences Division at the university. Professor Hale joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 2002 and was promoted to full professor in 2013.

Dr. Hale is a graduate of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she majored in zoology. She holds a Ph.D. in organismal biology and anatomy from the University of Chicago.

Lauren Wise was promoted to full professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at Boston University. She is conducting an NIH-funded study on whether diet, exercise, and medication have an impact of fertility and pregnancy outcomes.

Professor Wise is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Tiffany Lopez was appointed director of the School of Film, Dance, and Theatre at Arizona State University. She held an endowed chair in the humanities and was a professor of theatre, film, and digital production at the University of California, Riverside.

Professor Lopez is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Alejandra Dubcovsky will join the history department at the University of California, Riverside this fall. She will serve as a faculty fellow in the Program for the Advancement of the Humanities. Dr. Dubcovsky has been serving as an assistant professor of history at Yale University.

Dr. Dubcovsky is the author of Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Harvard University Press, 2016). She holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and a master of library and information science degree from San Jose State University.

Pratibha Varma-Nelson, a professor of chemistry at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, is the inaugural executive director of the university’s STEM Education Innovation and Research Institute. Professor Varma-Nelson joined the faculty at the university in 2008.

Dr. Varma-Nelson is a graduate of Poona University in India. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Renee Cottle was hired as an assistant professor of bioengineering at Clemson University in South Carolina. She has been invited to apply for five-year, $1.25 million Director’s Early Independence Award grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Cottle recently received her Ph.D. from the joint biomedical engineering program of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in Atlanta.

Daniela Kohen was promoted from associate professor to full professor of chemistry at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Professor Kohen, who joined the faculty at Carleton College in 2002, is a theoretical and computational physical chemist.

Dr. Kohen is a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She earned a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.