Princeton University Hires Four Women to Full Professor Positions

The board of trustees of Princeton University in New Jersey has announced the appointment of six new full professors. Four the six new full professors are women.

Leah Platt Boustan has joined the faculty as a full professor of economics. Since 2006, she has served on the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Boustan is the author of Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton University Press, 2016). Dr. Boustan is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Yiyun Li was appointed a professor of writing and will join the faculty at Princeton this summer. Since 2008 she has taught at the University of California, Davis. Earlier, Professor Li was an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland. A native of Beijing, China, Professor Li came to the United States in 1996. She is the author of two short story collections and the novel The Vagrants (Random House, 2009). Professor Li is a graduate of Peking University and holds a master of fine arts degree and a master’s degree from the University of Iowa.

Neing Yan was named the Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology, effective this fall. Since 2012, she has been a professor at Tsinghua University in China. Her research is focused on the structural and functional study of membrane transport proteins. Dr. Yan earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and biotechnology at Tsinghua University. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology at Princeton University.

Leeat Yariv will join the faculty for the spring 2018 semester as a professor of economics. Since 2005, she has taught at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and became a full professor there in 2010. Earlier, she was an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Yariv earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics and a master’s degree in pure mathematics from Tel-Aviv University in Israel. She holds a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.