Yuehwern Yih is the Tompkins Distinguished Professor in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Yih has been a Purdue faculty member since 1989. Her research centers on the fields of health and humanitarian supply chains and smart production systems. Dr. Yih is director of the university’s Smart Operations and Systems Laboratory and the former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development LASER PULSE.
Dr. Yih received her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and her Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dominique Somda was named the Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Professor of African Studies at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Dr. Somda joined the college in 2024 after serving as a research fellow with the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She currently directs the college’s African studies concentration. Her research explores questions of power, social hierarchy, and ethics through anthropology. Her work examines the enduring legacies of slavery, Christianity and Lutheran missions, gender, and the religious ethics of healthcare technologies within Madagascar’s postcolonial context and in conversation with feminist studies.
Dr. Somda holds two master’s degrees from the University of Paris Nanterre and the University Clermont Auvergne and a Ph.D. from the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative at the University of Paris Nanterre.
Abigail Swingen has been named the W. S. Lewis Librarian and Executive Director of the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale Library. Dr. Swingen comes to Yale from Texas Tech University, where she has served as an associate professor of early modern British and European history for more than a decade. Her research interests include the origins of the British Empire, ideas of political economy, and the cultural and political consequences of economic change. Dr. Swingen is the author of Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (Yale University Press, 2015) and the forthcoming book The Financial Revolution and the Politics of Moral Crisis in Early Modern Britain.
Dr. Swingen holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago.
Erika Consoli has been named the inaugural Saad Hafez Presidential Endowed Chair in Nematology at the University of Idaho’s Parma Research and Extension Center. She has been a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University since April 2025. An expert on nematodes (tiny organisms in soils that can cause crop damage, spread disease, and reduce yields), Dr. Consoi has experience in field and greenhouse research, nematode diagnostics, plant and nematode interactions, and molecular techniques, with an emphasis on developing practical approaches to nematode management.
Dr. Consoli earned her bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. She went on to complete a master’s degree in agricultural engineering through a joint program at her undergraduate alma mater and the School of Engineering in Agronomy, Food, and Environment in Lyon, France. Dr. Consoli received a second master’s degree in agricultural and environmental nematology from Ghent University in Belgium and a Ph.D. in plant sciences from Montana State University.
Melanie Kornides is the Hildagarde Reynolds Endowed Term Chair of Primary Care Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Kornides, an associate professor of nursing in the department of family and community health, is known for her expertise in vaccination, preventative care, health communication, and population health. Her research focuses on strategies to combat misinformation and improve equitable uptake of vaccines and other forms of preventative health care.
Dr. Kornides earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Ohio State University, She holds a master’s degree in community health nursing from the University of Michigan, a master of public health degree in epidemiology from George Mason University in Virginia, and a doctorate in epidemiology with a minor in biostatistics from Harvard University.