New Faculty Appointments for Ten Women Scholars

Caroline R. Paul has been appointed associate dean of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine’s Bowling Green campus. She comes to her new role from New York University, where she held several medical and academic roles including general pediatrician, associate professor of pediatrics, director of faculty development for the department of pediatrics, and medical education researcher in the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education.

Dr. Paul received her bachelor’s degree in biological science from the University of California, Davis and her medical degree from Loyola University Chicago.

Eden Kamar has been named an assistant professor in the department of public management and policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. She has held research positions with the university for the past three years. Most recently, she served as a postdoctoral research fellow with Georgia State’s Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group.

Dr. Kamar is a graduate of London Metropolitan University, where she double-majored in criminology and psychology. She holds a master’s degree in criminological research from the University of Cambridge in England and a Ph.D. in criminology from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Behnaz Farahi has joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty as an assistant professor of transformative design/design & technology for societal impact in the MIT Media Lab. With a focus on addressing critical feminist and social issues, she specializes in computational design, interactive technologies, additive manufacturing, and digital fabrication technologies.

Dr. Farahi is a native of Iran. She holds a master’s degree in architecture and doctorate in interdisciplinary media arts and practice from the University of Southern California.

Kelly Dunn has been named director of the Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. In addition to her research role, she will hold faculty appointments in the university’s department of psychiatry and the department of neurobiology. Currently, she serves as a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Dunn holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from the University of Vermont.

Kate Biberdorf has been named the first-ever professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She comes to her new role from the University of Texas at Austin, where she has taught for the past decade. In addition to her career in academia, she is the author of several children’s books including the Kate the Chemist (Philomel Books, 2020-2021) fiction series.

Dr. Biberdorf is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she double-majored in chemistry and German. She holds a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.

Nili Cimand has been named an assistant professor in the department of communication in the College of the Arts at Columbus State University in Georgia. She has served as a lecturer with the university for the past year. Before joining the Columbus State faculty, she was an associate broadcast producer at The Bravo Group.

Cimand holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and an MBA from Florida International University. She is completing work on a Ph.D. in telecommunications at the University of Florida.

Danielle Charette has joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an assistant professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership. She comes to her new role from the University of Virginia, where she served as an assistant professor and associate director of the program on constitutionalism and democracy.

Dr. Charette is a high honors graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in English literature. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought.

Rachel Scott has been named chair of the department of religion and culture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has been a member of the Virginia Tech faculty for the past two decades, currently serving as a professor of Islamic studies and a core faculty member of the ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) Ph.D. program. Her academic pursuits have led to several publications including Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making (Cornell University Press, 2021).

Dr. Scott is an honors graduate of the University of Oxford, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Arabic and Islamic studies and master’s degree in modern Middle Eastern studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of London.

Erica Brownfield has been appointed senior associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Georgia School of Medicine. She previously served as a professor of medicine and associate dean of medical education at Emory University at Atlanta, Georgia for six years.

Dr. Brownfield is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she majored in biology. She holds a medical degree from Chicago Medical School and an MBA from Emory University.

Jessica L. Roberts has joined the faculty at Emory University as a professor of law and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science. She comes to her new position after 14 years with the University of Houston Law Center, where she served as a full professor of law, the Leonard H. Childs Chair in Law, and director of the Health Law & Policy Institute.

Dr. Roberts is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Southern California, where she majored in political science with minors in law & society, theatre, and French. She received her juris doctorate from Yale Law School.