Faculty Spotlights

Emory College historians Chris Suh (left) and Maria Montalvo will spotlight their research this fall at Emory College’s “First Fridays” series, monthly lectures that highlight innovative faculty scholarship in a wide variety of topics related to race, ethnicity and social justice.

Dr. Cosmin Pohoata, alongside MIT graduate students Alex Cohen and Dimitrii Zakharov, has achieved a groundbreaking mathematical feat by redefining the concept of the smallest triangle within the Heilbronn triangle problem. In their recently published proof, the trio has shattered a record that stood for four decades, drawing acclaim and sparking new interest in this seemingly simple yet profoundly complex mathematical challenge.

Elaine Walker, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, is this year’s recipient of the Cuttino Award, recognizing a legacy of support and academic excellence that reverberates across the fields of psychology and mental illness research.

Lauren Klein, whose research focuses on the digital humanities, data science and data studies, has been awarded the Chronos Faculty Fellowship in Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

On the latest episode of One Big Question, Emory President Gregory L. Fenves talks to bestselling author and creative writing professor Tayari Jones about the power of storytelling.

The ancient DNA lab of Emory anthropologist John Lindo, above, specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas.

As Rachelle Spell, this year’s winner of the Cuttino Award for Excellence in Mentoring, prepares to retire, she leaves a legacy of one-to-one guidance at Emory College.

On Feb. 17, Emory University professor Henry “Hank” Klibanoff and Gabrielle Dudley, instruction archivist in Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, were confirmed by the United States Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.

Emory historian Carol Anderson, whose research and award-winning books address the ways racial inequality affects the creation and unraveling of U.S. policy, has been selected for the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize.

Congratulations to Associate Professor of Sociology Alyasah “Ali” Sewell, who has been selected as the 2021 Georgia Sociologist of the Year by the Georgia Sociological Association. They are the founder and director of the Race and Policing Project. By advancing quantitative approaches to racism studies, they assess empirical links between the political economy of race and racial health(care) disparities using policing and housing policy data. 

Kali Gross, professor of African American studies at Emory University, has been named one of 26 recipients of the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Each fellow receives $200,000 to fund significant research and writing in social sciences and the humanities that addresses important and enduring issues confronting society.

“The specialized locomotion of sidewinders evolved independently in different species in different parts of the world, suggesting that sidewinding is a good solution to a problem,” says Jennifer Rieser, assistant professor of physics at Emory University. “Understanding how and why this example of convergent evolution works may allow us to adapt it for our own needs, such as building robots that can move in challenging environments.”

Anthropology faculty member Dr. Kristin Phillips has been named a co-winner of the 2020 Society for Economic Anthropology Book Prize for her 2018 book: An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun (Indiana University Press).  The award honors the best book in economic anthropology published during the last three years.  Phillips shares this honor with Dr. Kathleen Millar of the University of British Columbia for her 2018 book: Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio’s Garbage Dump (Duke University Press). 

Pearl Dowe, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, has been selected as a member of the inaugural advisory board of the Kamala Harris Project.

A groundbreaking effort within Emory College of Arts and Sciences brings books by humanities faculty to wider audiences through open access publication, making the works freely available online to anyone in the world with internet access.

Talea Mayo joined the Emory faculty in May as assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. A computational mathematician, she specializes in developing numerical hydrodynamic models to help predict coastal hazards.