Four Women Appointed to Named Professorships at the University of Chicago

Mercedes Pascual has been named the Louis Block Professor in the department of ecology and evolution. She is an expert in the field of how disease spreads through populations based on changes to the environment, in particular how climate variability and climate change affect vector-borne and water-borne diseases like malaria and cholera. Dr. Pascual is a graduate of the Universidad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University and a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Frances Ferguson has been named the Mabel Greene Myers Distinguished Service Professor in the department of English language and literature. She focuses her scholarship on writing from the 18th century and the Romantic period. Dr. Ferguson is the author of Pornography, the Theory: What Utilitarianism Did to Action (University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation (Routledge, 1992). Professor Ferguson is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Yale University.

Ka Yee C. Lee has been named the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Lee was appointed provost of the University of Chicago in February 2020. She previously served as the vice provost for research. Dr. Lee’s research focuses on membrane biophysics. Dr. Lee is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she majored in electrical engineering. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University.

Linda Waite has been named the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor in the department of sociology. Her research interests include social demography, aging, the family, sexuality, and health, as well as the links between biology, psychology, and the social world. Dr. Waite is a graduate of Michigan State University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.