Three Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Chairs at Research Universities

Kia Nobre will join Yale University in July 2023 as the Wu Tsai Professor in the department of psychology. She will also serve as associate director of the Wu Tsai Institute, and the director of Wu Tsai Institute’s Center for Neurocognition and Behavior. Dr. Nobre joined Oxford University in England in 1994 as the university’s first psychology Junior Research Fellow. Prior to her current appointment as Statutory Chair in Translational Cognitive Neuroscience in 2014, she was the first female Tutorial Fellow in a science discipline at New College. She then was a professor in cognitive neuroscience in the department of experimental psychology.

Dr. Norbe is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She earned a Ph.D. at Yale University.

Marisol Berti, a professor of plant sciences at North Dakota State University, has been appointed to the Jordan A. Engberg Presidential Professorship. Her research focuses on forage and biomass production research for feed and biofuels. Dr. Berti joined the faculty at the university in 2009.

Professor Berti earned her bachelor’s degree at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago. She holds a master’s degree in crop production and a doctorate in plant sciences from North Dakota State University.

Shabaana A. Khader has been named the inaugural Bernard and Betty Roizman Professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Chicago. Dr. Khader’s research focuses on the interaction of the host immune system with the causal agent for tuberculosis. Dr. Khader joined the faculty last fall after serving as the Theodore and Berta Endowed Professor in the department of molecular microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis. Earlier, she was on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2007 to 2013.

Professor Khader earned a Ph.D. in biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj University in Tamil Nadu, India.