University of Delaware Appoints Five Women Scholars to Endowed Professorships

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware has recently promoted 12 scholars to endowed professorships, five of whom are women.

Melinda Duncan has been named the Trustees Distinguished Professor in the department of biological sciences. She first joined the University of Delaware faculty in 1997. In addition to her teaching appointment, she also serves as the university’s associate vice president for research. She has conducted extensive research on cataracts and the side effects of cataract surgery.

Dr. Duncan is a graduate of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she majored in chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Jodi Hadden-Perilla has been named the C. Eugene Bennett Early Career Chair of Chemistry in the department of chemistry and biochemistry. She first joined the University of Delaware community in 2017 as a postdoctoral scholar. Her research leverages computational microscopes to study biological machines, including viruses and molecular motors.

Dr. Hadden-Perilla holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia and a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from the University of Georgia.

Tatyana Polenova has been named the C. Eugene Bennett Chair of Chemistry in the department of chemistry and biochemistry. She began her career at the University of Delaware in 2003 and became a full professor in 2011. She also serves as director of the NIH-COBRE “Molecular Design of Advanced Biomaterials” lab. Her research aims to the understand the structure, dynamics and function of complex macromolecular assemblies, biological tissues, and inorganic materials in the solid state.

Dr. Polenova received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Moscow State University in Russia and her Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University.

Rachel Hutchinson has been named the Elia Ahuja Professor of Japanese and Game Studies in the department of languages, literatures, and cultures. In addition to her faculty position, she is the co-founder of the University of Delaware Game Studies Research Group. Her academic work centers around Japanese identity in several narrative texts, including literature, film, manga, and video games. She is the author of Nagai Kafū’s Occidentalism: Defining the Japanese Self (State University of New York Press, 2011).

Dr. Hutchinson earned her bachelor’s degree in history and Japanese from the University of Newcastle in Australia and her doctorate in Oriental studies from the University of Oxford.

Jingmei Qiu has been named the Unidel Professor of Mathematical Sciences in the department of mathematical sciences. She first joined the university in 2017 as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor two years later. Previously, she held teaching appointments with the University of Houston and the Colorado School of Mines. Her research centers around numerical analysis and scientific computing.

Dr. Qiu received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology in China and her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Brown University.