Announcing Our New Faculty Appointments

The Graduate Center has appointed eight new faculty members for 2018–2019. “I am thrilled at the arrival of such an accomplished group of scholars and scientists who share our deep commitment to outstanding research and teaching and to the circulation of knowledge in the public good,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Joy Connolly. “They add to our strengths at every rank, bringing diverse research interests and backgrounds to The Graduate Center.”  
 
Julie Chi-hye Suk, one of the incoming faculty members, will also serve as The Graduate Center’s new dean for master’s programs. Suk taught for 13 years as a law professor after completing her master’s and doctoral degrees in politics, as well as a law degree. “Today’s students are facing a rapidly changing economy, which will require multi-disciplinary, rigorous, flexible, and affordable alternatives to traditional doctoral and professional degrees,” she said. “I aspire to deliver that combination to as many students as possible.”
 
Meet the new faculty. 

Kyle Gorman
Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Gorman studies speech and language technologies, with applications such as multilingual speech recognition and synthesis, characterization and diagnosis of developmental and degenerative disorders, and the cognitive underpinnings of language. He was previously a software engineer at Google Research in New York, and an assistant professor at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Gabriele Grosso
Assistant Professor, Physics / ASRC Photonics Initiative
Ph.D., Écolepolytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Grosso is joining the Photonics Initiative at The Graduate Center’s Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC). His lab will focus on investigating and manipulating the optical properties of 2D materials, which show promise for enabling the design and development of leapfrog electronic technologies such as optoelectronic devices and quantum information-processing systems. He was most recently a post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he has been a lead author or author on more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and conference proceedings in the photonics field. He begins his appointment in November. 

Christopher Loperena
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Loperena’s research examines indigenous and black struggles for territorial autonomy in Central America, ethicality and subject formation, and the socio-spatial politics of economic development. In addition to his current book project, A Fragmented Paradise: Anti-Blackness and the Limits of Progress in Post-Coup Honduras, he is co-editing a themed issue on the role of cultural evidence in the adjudication of indigenous rights. He joins The Graduate Center from the University of San Francisco, where he was an assistant professor of International Studies.

Lilia Maliar
Professor, Economics
Ph.D., University Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Maliar joins The Graduate Center from Stanford University, where she was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer in the Department of Economics. Her interests include macroeconomics, economic theory, computational economics, economic growth and development, dynamic games, transition economies, and international economics. Maliar’s research has appeared in numerous economic journals, including Econometrica, Quantitative Economics, and Review of Economic Dynamics. She currently serves as an associate editor for Quantitative Economics journal of the Econometric Society and advises the Bank of Canada.
 
 

Enrique Pujals 
Professor, Mathematics
Ph.D., Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Brazil
Pujals’ main areas of research include dynamical systems, ergodic theory and its application to operator theory, quantum mechanics, evolutionary autonomous agents, and game theory. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), has received the Order of Scientific Merit, and was a Guggenheim Fellow. He has published more than 60 scientific articles, including in the most prestigious mathematical journals, such as Annals of Mathematics, Acta Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, and Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure. He joins The Graduate Center from the Instituto Nacional de Matematica Pura e Aplicada.
 
 

Matthew Sfeir 
Associate Professor, Physics / ASRC Photonics Initiative
Ph.D., Columbia University
Sfeir will join The Graduate Center in January from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. As part of the laboratory’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials, his work focuses on enabling technologies for next-generation optoelectronic devices. He has received numerous awards for his work in photophysics, and in 2018 was named an “Inventor of the Year” by the global science and technology organization Battelle. He has served on several committees and advisory boards, including the executive committee for the Energy Subdivision of the American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry; co-authored more than 80 journal articles; and secured five patents. 
 
 
 

Orie Shafer
Professor, Biology / ASRC Neuroscience Initiative
Ph.D., University of Washington
Shafer, a neuroscientist and chronobiologist, studies the neurobiological basis of circadian timekeeping, the mechanism that times sleep and activity; and entrainment, the process by which circadian clocks are set to local time. His research employs genetic, physiological, imaging, and behavioral methods to understand how neural networks create a robust yet entrainable circadian rhythm, and he is particularly interested in how such networks operate when challenged by the unreliability of the modern light environment. He joins The Graduate Center from the University of Michigan and will begin his appointment in January 2019.
 
 

Julie Chi-hye Suk
Professor, Sociology
Dean, Master’s Programs
D.Phil., Oxford University
J.D., Yale University
Suk is a scholar of comparative law and society, focusing on women in comparative constitutional law. She is known for her work on ongoing efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, informed by recent women’s equality amendments in constitutions around the world. Her dozens of articles and book chapters address the potential and limits of antidiscrimination law as a tool for eradicating social inequality. Prior to joining The Graduate Center, she was a law professor for 13 years at Cardozo Law School, with visiting professorships at Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, and UCLA.