The following are among the new faculty members at the University. Others will be introduced periodically in this space.
Dawn Brancati, Ph.D., joins the Department of Political Science as assistant professor. Her research interests include intrastate conflict and comparative elections. Brancati earned a doctorate from Columbia University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton and Harvard universities.
Isaac Kleshchelski, Ph.D., joins Olin Business School as assistant professor of finance. Before earning a doctorate from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Kleshchelski earned a master’s degree in law and banking at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He has worked for KPMG as a financial consultant for the high-tech sector and in international corporate taxation for PricewaterhouseCoopers. His areas of research include asset pricing and macroeconomics.
Ji-Eun Lee, Ph.D., joins the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. She earned a doctorate from Harvard University in Korean literature and culture with a dissertation on women’s reading in the later 19th and early 20th century. Before joining WUSTL, Lee worked and taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of British Columbia, Dartmouth College and the University of Toronto. Her research interests include construction of gender in modern and contemporary Korean literature and film, “space” in literature, and print culture and readership in the 19th and 20th century.
Selin A. Malkoc, Ph.D., joins Olin Business School as assistant professor of marketing. A native of Turkey, Malkoc began her academic studies in Ankara at Bilkent University before pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Texas and a doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Most recently, she was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Business. Her research interests include consumer behavior, behavioral decision-making, intuitive decision-making and the processing of aesthetic cues.
Rodolfo Manuelli, Ph.D., joins the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences as professor. After earning a doctorate at the University of Minnesota, Manuelli had appointments at Northwestern University, Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has served as editor and co-editor of several journals. His research areas include economic growth, development and macroeconomics.
Lori Markson, Ph.D., joined the Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. Markson earned a doctorate from the University of Arizona and studies cognitive development in infants and young children with a focus on conceptual and social-cognitive development. She is interested in how children learn the meanings of words, pragmatics and theory of mind and the development of social cognition in early childhood.
Liviu Mirica, Ph.D., joins the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. Mirica earned a bachelor’s degree from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate from Stanford University. For the past three years, Mirica has been a National Institute of Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Mirica’s research interests center around the role of metal ions in chemistry and biology and include renewable energy catalysis, biomimetic oxidation catalysis, metalloenzyme-catalyzed histone demethylation, and metal-mediated amyloid peptide aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease.
Alvin Murphy, Ph.D., joins Olin Business School as assistant professor of economics. Murphy earned a doctorate from Duke University after completing undergraduate and graduate degrees at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, respectively. His research interests include public and urban economics, industrial organization and applied econometrics.
Sherif Nasser, Ph.D., joins Olin Business School as assistant professor of marketing. Nasser earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Cairo University in Egypt. He worked for nearly a decade in marketing, sales and project management positions in Egypt and the United States. Nasser earned a master of business administration at Baruch College and a master’s degree and doctorate in marketing from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Nasser’s research interests include media management, game theory, advertising, social networks and competitive strategies.
Ryan Platte, Ph.D., joins the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. He earned a doctorate from the University of Washington. His field is ancient Greek and Latin language and literature, particularly Homer and archaic Greek poetics, Greek and Latin linguistics, Sanskrit and Roman invective.
Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis, Ph.D., joins the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Universitat de Valencia, a master’s degree from University College London and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He is using quantitative macroeconomics theory to explore the interaction between economic development, family structure and skill acquisition — and, for example, diseases such as AIDS that affect all of the above; the role of individual heterogeneity on development and aggregate fluctuations; and the identification of income uncertainty using durables and irreversible decisions.