Universities Announce the Appointment of Three Women Scholars to Endowed Chairs

Cathy Yang Liu has been named the Michael and Enid Mescon Endowed Chair in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Dr. Liu, who chairs the department of public management and policy, is an expert on topics related to community and economic development, urban policy, migration, and the labor market, as well as entrepreneurship and the creative economy in the U.S. and international contexts. Professor Liu currently serves as a managing editor for the Journal of Urban Affairs.

Dr. Liu holds a master of public policy degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of Southern California.

Alexandra (Sasha) Boltassev was named the Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her research centers on nano- and quantum photonics, plasmonics, and optical metamaterials. Dr. Boltassev is a past editor-in-chief of the journal Optical Materials Express.

Professor Boltassev earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia. She holds a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Denmark.

Erika Tatiana Camacho has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Manuel P. Berriozábal, Ph.D. and María Antonietta Berriozábal Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She will serve as a professor in mathematics and neuroscience, developmental and regenerative biology departments. Most recently, Dr. Camacho held a three-year position as a program director at the National Science Foundation, where she supported several programs advancing racial and gender equity in STEM disciplines. Earlier, she spent 16 years at Arizona State University, most recently as a professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.

A native of Guadalajara, Mexico, Dr. Camacho migrated to the United States at the age of seven. She is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in mathematics and economics. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Cornell University.