UChicago News

Mary Lou Gorno appointed chair of Smart Museum Board

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:15 -0500

Mary Lou Gorno, a business executive and alumna of Chicago Booth who serves as vice chair of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees, has been appointed chair of the Smart Museum of Art’s Board of Governors.

Gorno, managing director of the executive search firm Ingenuity International, serves the University in a variety of capacities, including chair of the University of Chicago Phoenix Society, a trustee of Court Theatre and a director at NORC. She has been a member of UChicago’s Board of Trustees since 2004.

“Mary Lou Gorno brings to the Smart Museum Board of Governors a deep knowledge of the University of Chicago and extensive experience in leading organizations. I look forward to seeing momentum as the Smart Museum continues to grow with her board leadership, supporting the expanding role of the arts at the University,” President Robert J. Zimmer said.

Gorno’s two-year appointment as board chair is effective Sept. 1. The Smart Museum of Art is UChicago’s fine arts museum, home to thought-provoking exhibitions, a wide-ranging collection, and public programs that encourage the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice, both contemporaneously and across history.

"The arts have an important and growing role at the University of Chicago. I look forward to working with my fellow board members in support of Alison Gass and her dynamic team as the Smart Museum writes the future of university art museums," Gorno said.

Gorno succeeds Pamela Hoehn-Saric, MAT’81, who has served as chair of the Smart Museum Board since 2012. During that period, the Smart Museum celebrated its 40th anniversary, appointed Alison Gass as the Dana Feitler Director and launched the Feitler Center of Academic Inquiry. Hoehn-Saric will continue to serve as a member of the Smart Museum Board.

“I am thrilled to welcome Mary Lou to the board as chair-elect,” said Hoehn-Saric. “The Smart is on an exciting trajectory, and Mary Lou brings extensive experience and talent in board development and strategy, which will help Ali, the board and the staff realize Ali’s exciting vision for the museum.”

Gorno earned a bachelor’s degree in business and economics from Saint Mary’s College, a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and master’s degree in finance and accounting from UChicago’s Booth School of Business.

Gorno began her career in advertising, becoming a senior executive at the Leo Burnett Company where she worked with Walt Disney, Reebok and Procter & Gamble. She later moved to the executive search profession and currently leads the CEO and Board practice for Fortune 500, mid-cap and privately owned companies. As a board and CEO adviser, she specializes in organizational governance, succession planning and leadership issues.

In addition to her extensive involvement at the University, Gorno serves as vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, vice chair of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic School Board and director of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan to join Booth faculty as University Professor

Mon, 21 May 2018 12:10 -0500

Influential economics scholar Sendhil Mullainathan will join the University of Chicago Booth School of Business faculty on July 1, 2018, where he has been appointed University Professor. He currently serves as the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Mullainathan’s research spans broad areas of economics: behavioral, labor, public economics and corporate finance, and most recently has focused on the intersection of machine learning and public policy. His seminal research includes topics ranging from the impact of poverty on mental bandwidth to showing that higher cigarette taxes make smokers happier.

“Sendhil is a phenomenal scholar, whose work has had great impact in a variety of fields,” said Madhav Rajan, dean of Chicago Booth and the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting. “Sendhil’s history of collaboration across disciplines will strengthen ties among Booth’s research areas and deepen the school’s connections to the rest of the University.”

University Professors are selected for internationally recognized eminence in their fields as well as for their potential for high impact across the University. Mullainathan will become the 22nd person to hold a University Professorship, and the ninth active faculty member holding that title.

After completing his PhD in economics at Harvard in 1998, Mullainathan taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 2004, when he moved to Harvard, where he is a professor of economics and affiliate of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“The University of Chicago has a grand tradition of defining new disciplines: the phrase ‘Chicago School of’ has its own resonance in many academic fields,” Mullainathan said.

“Today a new discipline is emerging at the intersection of human and machine intelligence. Algorithms are now capable of amazing feats, and fully harnessing their capacities requires integrating them equally with marvelous aspects of human cognition,” he added. “I’m excited to join Booth and be part of a team that will hopefully define another ‘Chicago School’ in this emerging discipline.”

Mullainathan has published more than 50 journal articles, including 14 papers in top economics journals. He recently co-authored Scarcity: Why Having too Little Means so Much and writes regularly for The New York Times. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and serves on the board of the MacArthur Foundation.

In 2012, Mullainathan was designated a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum; was labeled a “Top 100 Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, and named to the “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world” by Wired Magazine.

He helped co-found the non-profit organization ideas42, which applies behavioral science to positively change lives; and co-founded Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a center to promote the use of randomized control trials in development. Mullainathan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Madhav Rajan appointed dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:30 -0600

Madhav Rajan, former senior associate dean at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he holds the Robert K. Jaedicke Chair in Accounting, has been appointed the next dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier announced the appointment, which will begin July 1, 2017.

Rajan served as senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Stanford GSB from 2010 to 2016. That role included leadership of Stanford’s MBA program, with oversight of admissions, curriculum, the student experience and career management. He launched new joint-degree programs with Stanford’s engineering school and rolled out initiatives for tighter integration with the rest of the university.

“We sought the most outstanding candidate whose values, ambition and abilities fully comport with the distinctiveness of Chicago Booth as one of methodological rigor in its research and education, and through that commitment one of high impact on the world,” Zimmer and Diermeier wrote in announcing the appointment. “We are confident that Madhav will be an outstanding leader for Chicago Booth in the coming years.”

“The values I have in research and education are deeply valued at Chicago Booth,” Rajan said. “People come here to do rigorous, empirically based research and analysis, which provides the basis for a transformative student experience and an extremely effective MBA curriculum. We have an exciting opportunity to take Booth’s deep strengths and leverage them here and around the world. I am thrilled to have the chance to be dean at what is unquestionably the greatest academic business school.”

Rajan’s primary research interest is the economics-based analysis of management accounting issues, especially as they relate to the choice of internal control and performance systems in firms. He served as editor of The Accounting Review from 2002 to 2008 and is co-author of Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, the leading cost accounting textbook used around the world.

In 2000, Rajan won the David W. Hauck Award, the highest undergraduate teaching award at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This April he will receive the Robert T. Davis Award for lifetime service and achievement, the highest faculty recognition awarded by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Rajan completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Madras, India. He holds a PhD and two master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. Before going to Stanford in 2001, Rajan held faculty positions at the Wharton School. He held a visiting professorship at Chicago Booth in 2007-08.

Rajan succeeds former Dean Sunil Kumar, who was named provost of Johns Hopkins University in July 2016. His appointment follows a national search, informed by a Booth faculty committee chaired by Reid Hastie, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at Booth.

In a note to the Chicago Booth community, Zimmer and Diermeier thanked Douglas Skinner, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting, who served as interim dean. They noted his vital leadership on the Francis and Rose Yuen Center in Hong Kong, which is scheduled to open in 2018.

Prof. Michael Greenstone to lead Becker Friedman Institute

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 16:15 -0600

Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor and a leading economist, has been appointed director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

Greenstone will build upon the work of Lars Peter Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor and inaugural director of the Becker Friedman Institute, and Kevin M. Murphy, the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor, who has served as co-chair with Hansen since 2014. The institute supports economic research and interdisciplinary scholarship, bringing together scholars from around the world and building programming and public outreach that draws upon the University’s strength in the field of economics.

“The Becker Friedman Institute carries on the University’s distinctive tradition of developing new ideas through intense discussion and collaboration. Michael embodies those ideals in his work, and he is the right leader to continue developing the institute’s ambitious intellectual approach,” President Robert J. Zimmer said.

“Michael is an exceptional scholar who also has a deep understanding of public policy,” Provost Daniel Diermeier said. “As director, he will further enhance the development and impact of the creative thinking and rigorous research for which the institute has become known under the leadership of Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy.”

The research of Greenstone, who is director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), spans issues of energy and the environment, developed and developing country growth, and financial markets. He brings to the institute extensive policy experience, including serving as chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisors and director of The Hamilton Project, an economic policy group studying a range of policies to promote broad-based economic growth. He is currently on the Hamilton Project’s Advisory Council.

“Michael’s research has had a considerable impact on the modern study of economics, underscoring the field’s relevance for policy and people’s quality of life,” said John List, chairman of the Department of Economics and the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor. “He is a prominent voice in the field who will build importantly on the innovative insights and groundwork laid by Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy.”

“Becker and Friedman were giants in helping to shape understanding of the world, both within economics and more broadly. It is an honor to lead an institute that aims to carry on the tradition and high bar for excellence that they have set for Chicago economics.” Prof. Michael Greenstone

Greenstone’s appointment takes effect July 1, 2017. He will continue in his role as director of EPIC, which will function as an integral part of the Becker Friedman Institute. EPIC is an interdisciplinary center that brings together the University’s research efforts on energy and the environment and translates research to maximize its impact on policy, while working to train the next generation of global energy leaders.

“Becker and Friedman were giants in helping to shape understanding of the world, both within economics and more broadly. It is an honor to lead an institute that aims to carry on the tradition and high bar for excellence that they have set for Chicago economics,” said Greenstone, a professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School of Public Policy. “Specifically, we will continue to build economic theory that deepens understanding, tests those theories with all of the modern tools available to researchers today and communicates the results in ways that are broadly accessible. I feel especially fortunate to be able to build upon the tremendous foundation that Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy have constructed.”

Greenstone said his new role at UChicago comes at an exciting time for economic research, when a confluence of advances in techniques, computing and access to data have laid the groundwork for much deeper understanding of economics and the world. “We are entering a golden era where economic theory and empirical work are poised to make great advances that can be of tremendous value outside of academia, particularly to policymakers,” Greenstone said.

“Michael’s research is cutting-edge, practical and relevant to real-world challenges,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr., chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago who serves on the Becker Friedman Institute Council. “He combines great analytical and communications skills and is an excellent choice for this role.”

The Becker Friedman Institute was created in 2011 with the joining of the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. Based in the Saieh Hall for Economics, the institute works in collaboration with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Department of Economics, the Law School and the Harris School of Public Policy.

The institute’s first chair was Gary S. Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, University Professor of Economics and Sociology, who pushed economics into new scholarly fields and policy areas, such as crime, discrimination, education and addiction. Becker died in 2014.

Before coming to the University in 2013, Greenstone served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an editor of The Journal of Political Economy.

In addition to serving as the chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2009 to 2010, Greenstone now serves on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, and continues to consult with governments around the world to develop sound economic policies. He was a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Greenstone has deep roots at UChicago. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and served as an assistant professor of economics at the University from 2000 to 2003. His grandmother, Erika Fromm, was on the psychology faculty at UChicago and his father, J. David Greenstone, was a professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science before his death in 1990.

Prof. Douglas J. Skinner named interim dean at Chicago Booth

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:30 -0500

Douglas J. Skinner, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and deputy dean for faculty, will serve as the interim dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, effective Aug. 15.

“Doug’s appointment will help sustain the momentum that has been built to further establish Chicago Booth as one of the world’s preeminent business schools while the search for the next dean is conducted,” said President Robert J. Zimmer.

A UChicago faculty member since 2005, Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. His teaching topics include financial accounting, financial statement analysis, corporate finance and empirical methods in accounting research.

Prior to his appointment at Chicago Booth, Skinner was the KPMG Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

“It is a great privilege to be a member of the Booth faculty, and even more so to serve in the dean’s office for the last 16 months. I am now honored to have the opportunity to serve Booth and the University in this even more important role,” Skinner said. “Our faculty, staff, alumni and students continue to make Booth one of the world’s best business schools, and I look forward to working with all of our constituents to continue our success while preserving the school’s long-held values. I am confident that Chicago Booth will continue to flourish during this transition.”

Appointed Booth’s deputy dean for faculty in 2015, Skinner oversees the finance, operations, macroeconomics, organization and markets, and entrepreneurship faculty groups, as well as the Initiative on Global Markets, the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Social Enterprise Initiative, and the Harry L. Davis Leadership Center.

The formal process for selecting the next dean of Booth will begin soon with the election of a faculty committee to advise the president and provost.

Skinner succeeds Sunil Kumar, the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management, who will become provost of Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 1, after serving as Booth’s dean since 2011.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:20 -0600

A total of 19 faculty members recently have received named professorships or have been named distinguished service professors. Graeme I. Bell, Philip Bohlman, Eric D. Isaacs and Konstantin Sonin have received distinguished service professorships; and Daniel Abebe, Sian Beilock, Diane Brentari, Kathryn A. Colby, Nicolas Dauphas, Justin Driver, Robert D. Gibbons, Melissa L. Gilliam, Gary Herrigel, Aziz Huq, Michèle Lowrie, David Meltzer, Andrey Rzhetsky, Amir Sufi and Gary Tubb have received named professorships.

Biological Sciences Division

Graeme I. Bell, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, has been named the Kovler Family Distinguished Service Professor.

Bell studies the genetics of diabetes mellitus and the biology of the insulin-secreting pancreatic beta-cell. He cloned and characterized many of the genes involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism, including insulin, glucagon, glucose transporters and others.

He has won many honors in the field, including the 2013 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement from the American Diabetes Association for his pioneering work in understanding the role of genetics in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes. In 2012, he received the Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research. Bell is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As a core member of the University of Chicago Medicine’s diabetes genetics team, Bell works to personalize treatment based on a patient’s specific genetic defect. Many of these patients are children, and some can be treated with pills that compensate for the genetic defect, rather than with insulin shots. More than 1,500 patients and family members are now participating in genetic studies aimed at improving treatment through a better understanding of genetics.

Bell joined the UChicago faculty in 1986.

Kathryn A. Colby, Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

Colby is an internationally renowned corneal surgeon, educator and researcher with expertise in a wide variety of corneal diseases, neoplastic diseases of the surface of the eye, and the implantation of artificial corneas. She has a longstanding interest in Fuchs’ corneal dystrophy, the most common cause for corneal transplantation in the United States and her studies in this area have run the gamut from basic science to clinical trials and novel surgical treatments to improve patient outcomes.

In addition, she has specific expertise in the management of ocular surface tumors, including conjunctival melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. Colby spearheaded efforts to improve surgical techniques for a variety of implanted eye devices, including the Boston keratoprosthesis (artificial cornea) and the implantable miniature telescope, the only FDA-approved device to improve vision for patients with advanced macular degeneration.

Colby is an active teacher, who has trained hundreds of medical students, ophthalmology residents, clinical cornea and pediatric ophthalmology fellows, many of whom are leaders in ophthalmology. Colby was the founding director of the pediatric cornea service at Boston Children’s Hospital and is a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the Cornea Society.

Colby joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2015.

Robert D. Gibbons, Professor of Medicine, Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry has been named the Blum-Riese Professor.

Gibbons is a nationally recognized authority on a range of statistical disciplines, including mental health statistics, environmental statistics, item-response theory and drug safety. Gibbons has led the Center for Health Statistics since it was established in 2010. From its beginning, the center has continuously earned federal funding and acclaim for its work applying complex statistical theory to inform public policy.

Gibbons has authored or co-authored nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications and six textbooks. In addition, he has served on several editorial boards, including the board of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry.

Gibbons is a Pritzker Scholar, a fellow of the American Statistical Association and cofounder of its Mental Health Statistics section. He also is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and the National Academy of Medicine. Gibbons has earned numerous important accolades, including lifetime achievement awards from the American Statistical Association, the American Public Health Association, and Harvard University, as well as two W. J. Youden Awards for outstanding contributions to statistics in chemistry.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2010.

Melissa L. Gilliam, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, has been named the Ellen H. Block Professor in Health and Justice.

Gilliam is section chief of family planning and contraceptive research at the University and serves as dean for diversity and inclusion for the University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences Division.

As an authority on contraception and adolescent health, Gilliam addresses the gynecologic needs of girls and adolescents, especially youth of color, sexual minorities and young people at risk for poor sexual and reproductive health. Gilliam says her work focuses on “marginalized populations, reduction of health disparities through community-based interventions and efforts to increase diversity and improve health policy.” She heads the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, also known as Ci3. She cofounded the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, which develops games and digital media interventions for youth.

In October of 2015, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine, which honors those who have made major contributions to the fields of health and medicine and demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Gilliam joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2005.

David Meltzer, Professor of Medicine, Economics and Public Policy, has been named the Fanny L. Pritzker Professor.

Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, and the cost and quality of hospital care. In his research, Meltzer uses economic analysis to address problems in health economics and public policy, focusing on the cost and quality of care, especially in teaching hospitals.

He is a national leader in the study of the relatively new specialty of hospital medicine. He heads the Hospitalist Scholars Program at UChicago, which provides training in this field and examines the economic forces that have fueled growth of this specialty. Meltzer also pioneered the development of the Comprehensive Care Physician model, in which physicians provide inpatient and outpatient care for patients who are at an increased risk for hospitalization. The model is designed to leverage the power of the doctor–patient relationship and improve outcomes while controlling costs.

Meltzer also directs the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and chairs the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science. Meltzer also is director of the University of Chicago Urban Health Lab. In October of 2015, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Meltzer joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1996.

Andrey Rzhetsky, Professor of Medicine, has been named the Edna K. Papazian Professor.

Rzhetsky is a pioneer in the development of novel computational strategies that shed light on the complex genetic, molecular and environmental interactions involved in human health and disease.

His research utilizes powerful approaches to extract insights from big data. To harvest as much information as possible, his group runs data-mining projects that involve mathematical modeling and analysis of disparate datasets, such as electronic medical records, scientific texts and high-throughput experimental data. His models require dynamic collaboration with a range of experts in disease phenotypes, genetics, statistical modeling, epidemiology and the sociology of science. Rzhetsky also developed in invented the first automated literature extraction program for the prediction of molecular interactions.

Rzhetsky is the director of the Conte Center for Computational Neuropsychiatric Genomics, and is a senior fellow of both the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Computation Institute.

He serves as associate editor for numerous high-profile journals, including Nature Scientific Reports and PLoS Computational Biology.

Rzhetsky joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Humanities Division

Philip Bohlman, the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and in the College, has been named the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History.

An ethnomusicologist, Bohlman studies a wide range of topics related to music and modernity, with a focus on Jewish music and the politics of religion and race in the music of the Middle East and South Asia. His other research interests include Song Loves the Masses (2016) a translation of the musical writings of the 18th-century philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Bohlman is the author of Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity (2013), Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe (2011), Jewish Music and Modernity (2008), and World Music: A Very Short Introduction (2002). He also edited The Cambridge History of World Music (2013).

An active performer as well as a scholar, Bohlman is the artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society. The eight-member Jewish cabaret troupe is the ensemble-in-residence of the Division of the Humanities at the University.

The group’s recent projects include As Dreams Fall Apart (2014), a CD that draws on music from Yiddish and German-Jewish films from the 1920s to the post-Holocaust generation of the 1950s, and for which the ensemble received a 2016 Grammy Award nomination. Bohlman and the New Budapest Orpheum Society were the recipients of the 2011 Noah Greenberg Award for Historical Performance from the American Musicological Society.

Bohlman joined the UChicago faculty in 1987.

Diane Brentari, Professor of Linguistics and in the College, has been named the Mary Werkman Professor.

Brentari, PhD’90, studies sign languages from around the world to better understand their similarities and differences and to illuminate the properties that all languages share. Her work has included projects on phonetics, phonology, morphology and prosody. She has developed the Prosodic Model of sign language phonology.

Currently, her work addresses cross-linguistic variation, particularly the differences and similarities among sign languages. She is also interested in the emergence of language, and is engaged in studies of the cognitive, social and cultural aspects of gesture, homesign systems and well-established sign languages.

Brentari is the author of Sign Languages: A Cambridge Language Survey (2010) and A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology (1998), and editor of Foreign Vocabulary in Sign Languages: A Cross-linguistic Investigation of Word Formation (2001) and Morphology and its Relation to Syntax and Phonology (1998).

She is the director of the Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory and co-director of the Center for the Study of Gesture, Sign, and Language.

Brentari joined the UChicago faculty in 2011.

Michèle Lowrie, Professor of Classics and in the College, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Professor.

A literary scholar with interests in ideology and forms of expression, Michèle Lowrie traces the history of political concepts and their transmission by figurative means. Her research focuses on Roman literature and political thought and ancient Rome’s continued resonance in modernity.

Her current projects include: the emergence of security as a concept in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Republic; the Roman tradition of representing civil war, in collaboration with Barbara Vinken; the exemplum and exceptional politics from Cicero to Augustus; “Thinking through Tropes,” a faculty seminar funded by the Neubauer Collegium that examines the representational methods for structuring traditions; and transformations in the public sphere between Cicero and Horace.

Lowrie has written two monographs and numerous articles, as well as edited four volumes. She is a recipient of the Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, a visiting research professorship at the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg, a fellowship from the Research Center for Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary at the University of Konstanz, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig-Maximilian’s University in Munich. Lowrie is currently in residence at the American Academy in Berlin as the Dirk Ippen Berlin Prize Fellow. Her sabbatical has received additional funding from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship.

Lowrie, who will become deputy dean for the Division of the Humanities on July 1, joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Gary Tubb, Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and in the College, has been named the first Anupama and Guru Ramakrishnan Professor.

A leading Sanskrit scholar, Tubb examines the tradition’s poetics, grammatical forms and commentarial traditions. In addition to his scholarship of Sanskrit language and literature, Tubb studies the literary, religious and philosophical traditions of India.

Tubb is the author of Scholastic Sanskrit: A Handbook for Students (2007). He is an editor and primary contributor in the book Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature (2014). Another book, On Poets and Pots: Essays on Sanskrit Poetry, Poetics and Philosophy, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Alongside his teaching and research, Tubb is the faculty director of the University of Chicago Center in Delhi.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Physical Sciences Division

Nicolas Dauphas, Professor of Geophysical Sciences and in the College and the Enrico Fermi Institute, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

A leading isotope geochemist, Dauphas draws upon the analytical and modeling methods of his training as an engineer to develop novel strategies for solving important scientific questions using naturally occurring isotope variations. He founded and directs UChicago’s Origins Laboratory to examine questions pertaining to the early evolution of the Earth and what meteorites reveal about the formation of planets, asteroids and comets.

His research has included an examination of how the rapid formation of Mars makes it more akin to a planetary embryo than a fully grown planet, and the discovery of microscopic remnants in a meteorite of a nearby supernova that exploded before the solar system was formed.

Just last year, a paper Dauphas published was named an Editors’ Choice by Science Magazine. The paper addressed a longstanding problem regarding the origin of Earth’s depletion in silicon and the origin of Earth’s core density deficit. His research bridges the gap between planetary sciences and astrophysics, as attested by his invitation to deliver the 2015 Spitzer lecture in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

Dauphas has received the American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Medal, the European Association for Geochemistry’s Houtermans Medal, and the Meteoritical Society’s Nier Prize. He also is an American Geophysical Union fellow and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellow.

Dauphas joined the UChicago faculty in 2004.

Eric D. Isaacs, Provost and Professor of Physics and in the College, has been named the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor.

Isaacs’ distinguished research career as a condensed matter physicist has focused on quantum materials. His early research in developing synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques continues to play an important role in nanoscale scientific research.

Isaacs served as director of Argonne National Laboratory from 2009 to 2014. Under his leadership, Argonne researchers focused on solving the grand scientific and engineering challenges of our time—particularly the vital national priority of developing game-changing sustainable energy technologies. During that period he also played key roles in the creation of the Institute for Molecular Engineering and expanding the impact of the Computation Institute—two joint efforts of the University and Argonne.

From 2003 to 2008 he served as founding director of Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Isaacs has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers and presentations. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and has served on multiple national scientific advisory committees, including the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee.

Isaacs joined the UChicago faculty in 2004 and became University provost in 2014.

Social Sciences Division

Sian Beilock, Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and Professor of Psychology and in the College, has been named the Stella M. Rowley Professor.

Beilock, whose research focuses on topics at the intersection of cognitive science and education, explores the cognitive and neural substrates of skill learning as well as the mechanisms by which performance breaks down in high-stress or high-pressure situations.

Beilock is one of the world’s leading experts on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to one’s golf swing. In her laboratory, the Human Performance Lab, Beilock employs a wide range of methods such as measures of performance, physiological measures of stress, and neuroimaging techniques. She also conducts studies in the classroom with students from early elementary school through college.

She has authored two books: How The Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015) and Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveals About Getting It Right When You Have To (2010).

Beilock joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Amir Sufi, the Chicago Board of Trade Professor, has been named the first Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy.

In his research, Sufi focuses on finance and macroeconomics. His recent research on household debt and the economy has been profiled in The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He also has presented this work to policymakers at the Federal Reserve, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. This research forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014.

Sufi also is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and he serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His articles have been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Sufi graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. As a PhD student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he received the Solow Endowment Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching and Research.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

The College

Gary Herrigel, Professor of Political Science and in the College, has been named the Paul Klapper Professor.

Herrigel’s research interests include comparative political economy and alternative forms of governance in economic process and regulation throughout the developed and developing world. A common thread in his work has been an interest in the changing boundaries of firms and the political arrangements that govern them in Europe (particularly Germany), the United States and Japan.

Herrigel’s most recent book, Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the U.S., Germany and Japan, applies pragmatist theories of creative social action to contemporary industrial transformation processes.

Currently, he is completing a book on recursivity and governance in the globalization of German manufacturing. He also is beginning a project to explore the intersection of public and private governance architectures in environmental, health and safety regulation in the Norwegian offshore oil industry.

In the face of pessimism regarding the future of manufacturing in developed countries, Herrigel aims to understand and identify possibilities for continued growth and employment by conceiving of contemporary manufacturing in a globally interactive way.

In addition to the books Herrigel has authored and co-edited, he has written numerous articles and book chapters and has edited a special issue of the journal Enterprise and Society.

Herrigel joined the UChicago faculty in 1989.

Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Konstantin Sonin, Professor of Public Policy, has been named the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor.

A prominent scholar of Russian, Sonin’s research interests include political economics, development and economic theory and political economy. In recent years Sonin has focused on applying behavioral microeconomic concepts to an array of social and political phenomena, including corruption, dictatorship and the inequitable distribution of property.

His academic work has earned him three medals from the Global Development Network, best economist awards from the Russian Academy of Science in 2002-03, and the 2008 Ovsievich Memorial Prize in Mathematical Economics, given annually to a distinguished Russian scholar under 40.

Sonin’s papers have been published in leading academic journals of economics such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies and political science such as the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science.

Sonin joined the UChicago faculty in 2015.

University of Chicago Law School

Daniel Abebe, Professor of Law, has been named the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law.

Abebe’s research interests focus primarily on the relationship between the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, public international law and international politics; international courts and the structure of international organizations; and cyber warfare and presidential power.

He has taught foreign relations law, public international law, conflict of laws, international trade law, legal issues in international transactions, and refugee and asylum law, among other courses and seminars.

He is a contributor to a forthcoming book Why Comparative International Law Needs International Relations Theory, (Oxford University Press 2016) and two of his papers, “Cyber War, International Politics and Institutional Design” and “International Human Rights Law in Africa: Are Courts Effective,” will be published in the University of Chicago Law Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law respectively.

Abebe’s articles have appeared in the Chicago Journal of International Law, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Supreme Court Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law.

Abebe clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

He joined the UChicago Law School faculty in 2008.

Justin Driver, Professor of Law, has been named the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law.

Driver’s principal teaching and research interests include constitutional law, constitutional theory, education law and the intersection of race with legal institutions.

His writing has appeared in publications such as the University of Chicago Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Harvard Law Review, and the New Republic.

His paper, “The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court” (published in the California Law Review), was awarded the 2012 William Nelson Cromwell Article prize for the best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar.

Driver served as a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Driver joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 2014.

Aziz Huq, Professor of Law, has been named the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law.

Huq’s teaching and research interests include constitutional law, criminal procedure, federal courts and legislation. His scholarship concerns the intersection of institutional design and individual rights and liberties.

He has been published in both leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. His recent research articles have won the Association of American Law Schools’ Junior Scholars Paper Competition Award in Criminal Law and have been selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. His co-edited volume “Assessing Constitutional Performance” is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press this year.

Prior to UChicago, Huq litigated cases in both the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. He also was a senior consultant analyst for the International Crisis Group, researching constitutional design and implementation in Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka.

He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Huq joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Sunil Kumar appointed to second term as dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:00 -0500

Sunil Kumar has been appointed dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for a second five-year term, President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs announced.

In their message to the Chicago Booth community, Zimmer and Isaacs commended Kumar for his energetic leadership, which has earned the respect of the school’s worldwide community.

“We look forward to working with Sunil in the years ahead to ensure that Booth remains a preeminent destination for business education and scholarship,” Zimmer and Isaacs wrote. “He has demonstrated a commitment to the success of Booth’s faculty individually and as a whole, and to the success of Booth students and alumni in Chicago and around the globe.”

Under Kumar’s leadership, Booth has broadened and strengthened its intellectual footprint, recruiting and expanding faculty with expertise in diverse areas ranging from marketing to operations management.

Kumar has supported students in realizing their broader aspirations by expanding student scholarships and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, as well as establishing the Social Enterprise Initiative and the Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership. Chicago Booth has continued to aggressively develop its highly ranked full-time MBA program.

During his first term as dean, Kumar has enhanced the school’s global presence, including a successful move of the Executive MBA Program Asia to Hong Kong in 2014, which resulted in a strong, geographically diverse student body.

In its effort to strengthen ties with alumni, Booth has created Reconnect, a weekend-long event that combines its popular management conference with class reunions and alumni celebrations. Kumar established an office to disseminate the school’s intellectual capital more effectively through its Capital Ideas website, videos, blogs and redesigned magazine.

Kumar’s leadership since arriving at Booth as dean in 2011 has brought strong alumni engagement and fundraising support for student scholarships, faculty chairs, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Social Enterprise Initiative and the Center in Hong Kong.

Prior to Booth, Kumar spent 14 years on the faculty of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Operations, Information and Technology. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. His research areas include performance evaluation and control of manufacturing systems, service operations and communications networks.

Kumar serves on the board of the Civic Consulting Alliance, Chicago, and the Indian Institute of Science Alumni Association of North America. He is a trustee of the University of Chicago India Trust, and the University of Chicago Hong Kong Trust.

Born in India, Kumar received a bachelor of engineering degree from Mangalore University in Surathkal, his master’s degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:00 -0600

Eleven UChicago faculty members—Andrew Cleland, Michael Greenstone, M. Todd Henderson, Ali Hortacsu, Wayne Hu, Jeffrey Hubbell, Jonathan Masur, John H. R. Maunsell, Larry Norman, David Rubin and Melody Swartz—have received named professorships, while five UChicago scholars—Victor Friedman, Lenore Grenoble, Chuan He, Ralph Weichselbaum and Luigi Zingales—have been named distinguished service professors.

Biological Sciences Division

John H. R. Maunsell has been named the Albert D. Lasker Professor in Neurobiology.

An internationally recognized neuroscientist, Maunsell has made fundamental contributions toward understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of vision and perception. Known for elegant, rigorous and technically demanding physiological experiments, he recently has focused on understanding how behavioral and cognitive factors, such as attention and learning, influence the way neurons process information in the visual circuits of the brain.

Since 2007, Maunsell has served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, one of the top peer-reviewed journals in its field and primary publication of the Society for Neuroscience, the largest neuroscientist organization in the world.

Maunsell’s honors include election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and appointment as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Maunsell joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2014.

David T. Rubin, section chief of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and co-director of the Digestive Diseases Center, has been appointed the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor in Medicine.

A nationally recognized authority on digestive diseases and investigational therapies, Rubin studies novel therapies for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, colon cancer prevention and clinical medical ethics. He is the principal investigator for multiple clinical research projects and trials of novel therapies, including the first Food and Drug Administration-authorized study of fecal microbiota transplantation for ulcerative colitis.

Rubin is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association, the American College of Gastroenterology, and American College of Physicians and an active national leader in the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America.

Rubin has earned many honors and awards in his field, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Clinical Research in 2003 and 2013 from the American College of Gastroenterology, and the Rosenthal Award in 2012 from the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. He is an associate editor for the journals Digestive Diseases & Sciences and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Rubin earned his medical degree with honors from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine.

Ralph R. Weichselbaum, chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center, has been named the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor.

A nationally recognized authority on the effects of radiation and on radiation therapy for cancer, Weichselbaum has been a leader in research into the ability of certain types of tumors to resist the lethal effects of radiation, the combination of radiation therapy with chemo- or immune-therapy, and the use of precisely targeted high-dose radiotherapy for patients with a limited number of metastases.

Weichselbaum is a member of many scientific and medical societies, including the prestigious Institute of Medicine, and has served on national committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology, and the Radiation Research Society. He serves on the editorial boards of several influential journals and on the advisory board of biotech companies.

Weichselbaum came to the University of Chicago in 1984 as professor and chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology.

Humanities Division

Victor A. Friedman, PhD’75, a linguist working on languages of the Balkans and Caucasus, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities. He is also director of the University’s Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

Friedman’s publications include more than a dozen books and edited works, as well as more than 300 scholarly articles and book reviews. In addition to his research on the Balkan languages, he has published extensively on Lak grammar, as well as on Georgian, and he has done field work in Daghestan in addition to more than 40 years of field work in the Balkans. His main research interests are grammatical categories, contact linguistics as well as sociolinguistic issues related to standardization, ideology and identity.

Friedman is president of the U.S. National Committee of the International Association for Southeast European Studies. He is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of Albania, the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Kosova, Matica Srpska and has been awarded the “1300 Years of Bulgaria” jubilee medal. During the Yugoslav Wars of Succession he worked for the United Nations as a senior policy analyst in Macedonia and consulted for other international organizations.

He has taught at UChicago since 1993.

Lenore Grenoble, an expert on Slavic linguistics and language contact and attrition, has been named the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in Linguistics and the College.

She specializes in Slavic and Arctic Indigenous languages, and is currently conducting fieldwork on Evenki (Tungusic) in Siberia, Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic, Inuit) in Greenland, and Wolof (Niger-Congo) in Senegal. Her research focuses on the study of contact linguistics and language shift, discourse and conversation analysis, deixis and issues in the study of language endangerment, attrition and revitalization.

She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian and Language Policy in the Former Soviet Union and co-author of Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization and a reference grammar for Evenki. Grenoble has co-edited multiple volumes such as Endangered Languages; Language Documentation: Practices and Values and, most recently, Language Typology and Historical Contingency.

Grenoble has taken an active role in promoting indigenous language vitality as coordinator of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Indigenous Languages Vitality project.

She joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Larry F. Norman has been named the Frank. L. Sulzberger Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, Theater and Performance Studies and the College. He is currently chair of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Norman’s research focuses on French and European literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, and theater across the ages. His interests include theater history, book history, intellectual and cultural history, literary criticism and theory, and the relation between the visual arts and literature.

He is the author of The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction, and The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France, which received the Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies from the Modern Language Association in 2012.

Norman was the University’s inaugural Deputy Provost for the Arts and held that position for two terms. His tenure was marked by the development of major new arts facilities, programs and initiatives. These include the planning, construction, programming and operation of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts; the creation of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; and the launch of the Arts and Public Life initiative and its Arts Incubator in the Washington Park community.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 1995.

Physical Sciences Division

Chuan He, who brings a chemist’s perspective to biological problems, has been named the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry. He’s research contribution spans a broad range in epigenetic, RNA biology, chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, structural biology and microbiology.

With colleagues at UChicago, He’s group is mostly known for the discovery of reversible modification on RNA that significantly affects gene expression regulation analogous to similar effects on DNA. His laboratory also is known for developing enabling technologies to label and sequence recently discovered chemical modifications in mammalian DNA that are particularly important for cell differentiation and development. A particular modification is also highly abundant in the brain. He’s work also has shed light on the roles of metals in biological systems, identified bacterial regulators of virulence and antibiotic resistance, and illuminated mechanisms of DNA repair. He continues to work on understanding how the addition and removal of methyl groups on genetic material and RNA affect genetic regulation.

He, who directs the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, joined the UChicago faculty in 2002. He holds a joint professorship with Peking University, and guest professorship at several other universities. The recipient of numerous honors, last year he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Wayne Hu, whose research focuses on understanding structure formation in the universe, has been named the Horace B. Horton Professor in astronomy & astrophysics.

Early in his career, Hu gained recognition for his theoretical work on the temperature differences of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang. His work has provided important insights on how to use the CMB temperature differences to test cosmological theories and to determine cosmological parameters.

Hu focuses his research on how structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies were seeded at the Big Bang and how they related to dark matter—an unknown force that causes the explanation of the universe to accelerate. Hu also uses gravitational lensing (and effect that distorts images of galaxies) to study the physics of dark energy at large scales.

Hu co-leads the dark energy portion of UChicago’s Physics Frontier Center, a $17 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation. He also is a member of the South Pole Telescope and Dark Energy Survey collaborations, and a senior member of UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. A member of the UChicago faculty since 2000, his many honors include elected membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Social Sciences Division

Michael Greenstone has been named the first Milton Friedman Professor in Economics.

His research focuses largely on the costs and benefits of environmental quality and energy policy. Over the years, Greenstone has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices and infant mortality. He is currently engaged in a large-scale project to estimate the costs of climate change around the world.

Greenstone now heads the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC). Prior to rejoining the faculty at Chicago, where he began his career as an assistant professor, he served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2006 to 2014. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and editor of The Journal of Political Economy. From 2009 to 2010, he was the chief economist for the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisors and has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Greenstone joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Ali Hortacsu has been named the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor.

Hortacsu’s research focuses primarily on how supply actually equals demand and he develops mathematical and statistical methods to model, analyze, and optimize real-world market clearing mechanisms. His methods have been used in many contexts, including government securities auctions, central bank refinancing operations, and wholesale electricity markets.

Hortacsu has written or coauthored some of the first academic papers in leading academic journals on online auctions, online dating/matchmaking, and online consumer search behavior. A fellow of the Econometric Society, and research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Hortacsu is the co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He was elected an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2006, and was a recipient of an NSF CAREER grant.

Hortacsu joined the UChicago faculty in 2001.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Luigi Zingales has been named the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance.

His research has covered corporate governance, financial development, political economy, the economic effects of culture and the best interventions to cope with the aftermath of the financial crisis. He developed the Financial Trust Index, designed to monitor the degree of trust Americans have in their financial system, with Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Zingales’ recent works include “The Values of Corporate Culture,” written with Luigi Guiso, of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, and Sapienza and forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, and “Liquidity and Inefficient Investment,” written with Oliver Hart and forthcoming in the Journal of the European Economic Association. He also has two working papers, “Diagnosing the Italian Disease,” written with Bruno Pellegrino of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and “Monnet’s Error,” written with Guiso and Sapienza.

Previous works have been published in the Review of Financial Studies, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Financial Economics and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. He has published three books—Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, with Raghuram Rajan, also of Chicago Booth, A Capitalism for the People and Europa o No.

Zingales also serves as American Finance Association president, Control Committee and of the Nominating Committee of Eni Spa board members and American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, and is founding director of the Center for Economic Analysis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He joined Booth in 1992, and has been the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance since 2006.

University of Chicago Law School

M. Todd Henderson has been named the first Michael J. Marks Professor.

Henderson’s research interests include corporate law, securities and financial regulation, and law and economics.

With an engineering degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1993, Henderson worked for several years designing and building dams in California before matriculating at the University of Chicago Law School. He was an editor of the Law Review, and captained the law school’s all-university champion intramural football team.

Upon graduating magna cum laude in 1998, Henderson was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as clerk to the Hon. Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He practiced appellate litigation at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston, where he specialized in counseling telecommunications and high-tech clients on business and regulatory strategy.

Henderson joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

Jonathan Masur has been named the John P. Wilson Professor of Law.

Masur’s research and teaching interests include patent law, administrative law, legislation, behavioral law and economics, and criminal law.

Masur clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Masur taught at the Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law before joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 2007. He served as deputy dean from 2012 to 2014 and as the Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar from 2011 to 2013.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

Andrew N. Cleland, who specializes in quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensors, has been appointed the first John A. MacLean Sr. Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Cleland led the team that built the first quantum machine—a device whose motion can only be described with the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics. That feat earned Cleland’s team “Breakthrough of the Year 2010” honors from Science magazine. The same work was named a top-ten discovery of 2010 by Physics World.

He also has been developing a quantum computer based on superconducting quantum circuits. Such a computer would be able to process many complete sets of input data at the same time—far exceeding the parallel processing capabilities of modern classical computers.

In the quantum-communication arena, Cleland seeks to provide a means for the completely secure transmission of information, without relying on conventional encryption methods, instead relying on the principles of quantum mechanics.

A member of the UChicago faculty since July, Cleland formerly served as a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and as associate director of the California Nanosystems Institute at UCSB. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

Jeffrey A. Hubbell, who develops a variety of biomaterial and molecular therapeutics, especially for regenerative medicine and immunological interventions, has been appointed the first Barry L. MacLean Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Hubbell is an entrepreneurial chemical and biological engineer who has founded three companies based on his academic research: Kuros Biosurgery in Zurich, Switzerland; Anokion in Lausanne, Switzerland; and Focal Inc., of Lexington, Mass. Along with his associates, he holds 88 U.S. patents. Recently he has been designing biomolecules and biomaterials to turn on immune responses to fight infection and cancer, and on the other hand, specifically turn off immune responses in auto-immune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes. He coined the term “immune-modulatory materials” to describe this newly emerging field of research.

Hubbell formerly served as the Merck-Serono Chair in Drug Delivery and acting dean of the School of Life Sciences at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he also had served as founding director of the Institute of Bioengineering. He joined the UChicago faculty in July.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an elected fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Melody A. Swartz, who studies how lymphatic vessels and their transport functions contribute to immunity and cancer, has been appointed the William B. Ogden Professor in Molecular Engineering.

Biomedical scientists typically regard the fluid drainage function of the lymphatic system as mostly important for maintaining tissue fluid balance. Cell transport functions, which regulate immunity, are considered separately. Swartz’s team has revealed new immune functions of lymphatic endothelial cells that are strongly linked to the transport functions of lymphatic vessels.

Her team also is trying to target lymphatic vessels for improved cancer immunotherapy because this is one aspect of the tumor microenvironment that seems to contribute to therapeutic failure. With these new insights, she is attempting to build a new picture of the lymphatic function in which the fluid and cell transport functions of the lymphatic vessels are intrinsically involved in regulating immune responses.

Schwartz previously held joint appointments as a professor of bioengineering and cancer research at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lusanne and served as director of its Institute of Bioengineering. A 2012 MacArthur Fellow, Schwartz also has received an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the Wenner Prize, Switzerland’s largest prize for cancer research. She joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Profs. Lars Peter Hansen, Kevin Murphy to lead Becker Friedman Institute

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 15:37 -0500

Two acclaimed University of Chicago economists, Lars Peter Hansen and Kevin M. Murphy, have been appointed co-chairs of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Hansen, formerly the research director for the Institute, will become its director.

Their appointments are effective immediately.

In his joint role, Hansen, a Nobel laureate and the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and Statistics, will guide the Institute’s scholarly direction. He also will develop programming and oversee operations.

Murphy, a MacArthur fellow, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will focus on the Institute’s outward-facing activities, including public outreach programs and development.

As co-chairs, Hansen and Murphy will work together in structuring the scholarly ambition of the Institute.

“It is a tribute to Chicago economics that two scholars as distinguished as Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy can step into this important role,” said Provost Eric D. Isaacs. “Their commitment and joint leadership will ensure that the Becker Friedman Institute continues to grow as a home for innovative research and a destination for outstanding economists from around the world.”

'powerful economic thinking'

The Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics was created in June 2011, joining the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. In collaboration with Chicago Booth, the Department of Economics, the Law School, and the Harris School of Public Policy, the Becker Friedman Institute supports interdisciplinary scholarship on a wide variety of topics and attracts visiting scholars and students at all levels.

Hansen was the founding director of the Milton Friedman Institute before it merged with the Becker Center in 2011, and continued as research director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Gary S. Becker, AM'53, PhD'55, who passed away in May, was the first chair of the Becker Friedman Institute.

“Steering this Institute through its startup years has been a terrific experience. I am proud of what we have accomplished, and pleased to have the opportunity to continue expanding its ambitions and impact,” said Hansen. “I look forward to working closely with Kevin to amplify the Institute’s role as a catalyst for collaboration and a recognized source of powerful economic thinking.”

“The Becker Friedman Institute is dedicated to the proposition that economics is not an academic exercise; economics is an analytical tool that can provide insight into and solutions to important economic and social issues, said Murphy. “Sound economic policies need to be firmly grounded in economic analysis and informed by careful and rigorous empirical research. Scholars at the Institute follow in the footsteps Milton Friedman and Gary Becker and apply economic analysis to many of the important issues of our day, including income inequality, health, macroeconomic policy and early childhood education. We are excited about the future of the Institute and look forward to working with our colleagues to set its direction.”

lars peter hansen

Hansen received the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his pioneering work in assessing economic models, specifically in developing time series statistical methods and applying them to understand the linkages between financial markets and the macroeconomy.

Hansen’s recent work focuses on uncertainty and its relationship to long-run risks in the macroeconomy. Hansen is co-principal investigator on a research initiative with the Macro Financial Modeling Group that develops macroeconomic models with enhanced linkages to financial markets to provide better policy tools for monitoring systemic risks to the economy.

He received the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management in 2010, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University in 2006, and the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2008. Hansen received a BS in mathematics in 1974 from Utah State University and a PhD in economics in 1978 from the University of Minnesota.

Under Hansen’s leadership, the Institute has developed active research initiatives addressing knowledge gaps and key economic issues. Topics include human capital development, inequality, the economics of health care, fiscal challenges, and linkages between financial markets and the macro-economy.

“Lars is a brilliant and creative economic scientist who understands the value of collaboration across fields within and outside economics,” said James Heckman, a Nobel laureate and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics. “He has made intellectual engagement of leading scholars with diverse points of view a cornerstone of the institute’s activities, and championed successful programs to engage and support young researchers. In its seminars and conferences, the institute lays the foundations for innovative scholarship on important economic and social questions. Under his leadership, rigorous, empirically-based and policy-relevant economic science will flourish.”

kevin murphy

Murphy’s research focuses on the empirical analysis of inequality, unemployment and relative wages; the economics of growth and development; and the economic value of improvements in health and longevity. In 2005, Murphy became the first professor at a business school to be chosen as a MacArthur fellow, cited for “revealing economic forces shaping vital social phenomena” in his areas of interest.

At the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, Murphy serves as co-director of the Rosenfield Program in Economics, Public Policy and Law, a role he will continue to play. In addition to his position at UChicago, he works as a faculty research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

More than 60 of his research papers have been published in academic journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Political Economy and American Economic Review.

He is the coeditor of Measuring the Gains from Medical Research: An Economic Approach, and has coauthored Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment with the late Gary Becker. He earned his PhD in 1986 from the University of Chicago after graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1981. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1984.

A fellow of the Econometric Society and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Murphy was a John Bates Clark Medalist in 1997 and has received fellowships from the Earhart Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the Friedman Fund. In 2007, Murphy and fellow Chicago Booth faculty member Robert Topel won the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for the best research paper in health economics for “The Value of Health and Longevity.”

"It is fitting that Kevin Murphy has assumed a leadership role in the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. He embodies the intellectual tradition that Milton and Gary helped to build,” said Robert H. Topel, the Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor in Urban and Labor Economics. “There is no better price theorist in the world today than Kevin. His abilities to apply economic theory and to explain its implications to non-economists are without equal. He is a perfect representative of the Institute and of the Chicago Economics tradition.”

growing institute beyond traditional boundaries

The Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics is named for two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Gary Becker and his mentor, the late Milton Friedman—Chicago iconoclasts who became icons in the field. While they pursued very different paths, Becker and Friedman shared a fundamental belief that economics is a powerful tool to help understand human behavior. They were devoted to rigorous research grounded in both empirical data and theory, which shaped their approach to their work.

The Institute hosts visiting scholars from around the world, including three distinguished research fellows who visit Chicago for extended periods and play leadership roles in research initiatives. It also supports promising young faculty and provides advanced professional training for outstanding postdoctoral fellows. In 2013-14, the Institute hosted 32 visiting scholars of various disciplines

That same year, the Institute organized 11 research conferences, and sponsored 27 student-led events and 13 outreach events. These activities reached an estimated audience of nearly 3,400 researchers, faculty, students, alumni and economics enthusiasts.

In the future, Hansen and Murphy said the Institute will continue to move beyond traditional boundaries, and create opportunities for fruitful collaborations across disciplines. This fall, the Institute will jointly host two conferences with the Law School and Chicago Booth—one on creditors and corporate governance, and the other on normative ethics and welfare economics that brings together economists and philosophers.

In addition, the Institute has expanded its outreach to students with programs that increase their exposure to economics and expand their learning opportunities outside the classroom.

Graduate students at the University of Chicago take part in the Institute’s multi-year initiatives on key economic issues, fields and approaches. They pursue research with financial support from the Institute, present their work at the Institute’s rich array of academic conferences and take part in less formal discussion forums.

For undergraduates, the Institute offers programs that introduce advanced economic thinking and show students them how to apply it in research and practice. The Friedman Forum Lecture Series gives undergraduates first-hand access to distinguished economists who share their ideas and perspectives in informal discussions. A summer Research Experience for Undergraduates offers student working as research assistants access to software tutorials and lectures that broaden and deepen their economic knowledge and research skills.

This summer the Institute moved into the newly renovated Saieh Hall for Economics, a Gothic-influenced building that stands at the heart of the UChicago campus. Blending historic architecture with a fully updated facility, the building accommodates the instructional, research and conferencing needs of the Institute and Department of Economics. Hansen and Murphy said Saieh Hall will allow the Institute to increase the number of visiting scholars it hosts, better support Institute programming, and provide an excellent setting for scholars to meet informally to exchange ideas and build collaboration.

Chicago Booth alum Satya Nadella takes helm of Microsoft

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 13:36 -0600

Microsoft Corp. announced Feb. 4 that Satya Nadella, MBA’97, was promoted to CEO, effective immediately.

Nadella, a Chicago Booth graduate who recently returned to the University of Chicago campus to discuss the future of technology, will lead the world’s largest software company, where he has spent the last 22 years. Microsoft last year reported annual net revenue of $77.3 billion; Nadella will oversee a global workforce of more than 100,000 employees.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates praised Nadella’s global vision for technological development in announcing the appointment.

“Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together,” Gates said in a news release.

Originally from Hyderabad, India, the 46-year-old Nadella said as a young person he “always wanted to build things.”

“How I think has been shaped by my life’s experience,” the executive said in a video interview posted by Microsoft on the morning of the announcement.

“The one thing that I would say defines me is that I love to learn. I get excited about new things, I buy more books than I read or finish,” he said.

Previously the leader of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, Nadella has overseen computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services, leading Microsoft’s responses to many trends sweeping the technology industry.

“This is the first time I see four major trends evolving simultaneously: mobile, cloud, big data and social media,” Nadella told Booth students last November, during a fireside chat with Chicago Booth Dean Sunil Kumar, the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management.

Nadella took time to offer Booth students some career advice when he visited last fall. He said his UChicago education taught him to manage his division’s future performance as well as its current results. Nadella also confessed that as a Booth student, he initially thought he might want to be an investment banker, but that it wasn’t a match for his passions. He encouraged students to find their “superpower,” embrace hard work, and ask themselves where they can apply their strengths to produce the greatest impact.

“Play the long game,” he said.

Economist Michael Greenstone appointed to lead Energy Policy Institute at Chicago

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:00 -0600

Michael Greenstone, an international leader in energy and environmental economics, has been appointed Professor of Economics and director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago.

At EPIC, a joint project of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Department of Economics and the Harris School of Public Policy, Greenstone will lead a growing research and training effort with a focus on the economic and social consequences of energy policies. His appointment will start July 1, 2014.

“In his prolific and cutting-edge research, Michael has revolutionized the way we think about energy economics,” said John List, chairman of Economics. “He will be a leader in his field for decades to come, and his work will further broaden the impact of UChicago’s innovative thinking and research across disciplines and geographic boundaries.”

List said Greenstone’s expertise and leadership in environmental and energy economics also will strengthen EPIC’s search for sustainable policies that address energy needs and aid economic growth while limiting environmental and social damages.

As director of EPIC, Greenstone will lead a research and training initiative that “develops, tests, and promulgates energy and environmental policies that help solve the energy problems in the United States and other countries such as India and China. “Finding solutions has never been more urgent, as the extraordinary levels of air pollution in many countries are significantly shortening lifespans, and greenhouse gas emissions threaten the earth’s complex climate system that sustains us,” said Greenstone.

“The University of Chicago, where no assumption goes unquestioned, is a perfect crucible to develop these ideas. Further, I intend for EPIC to become a model for how to convert the best ideas into policy.”

Greenstone praised the founding co-directors of EPIC, Profs. Robert Rosner and Robert Topel, for the remarkable progress since its inception in 2011. “They are giants in their field, and I’m thrilled to be working with them to achieve these goals in the coming years,” he added.

Greenstone has served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2006. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a past editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics.

In addition to his academic achievements, Greenstone has extensive policy experience. He served as the chief economist for the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2009 to 2010, playing a leading role on energy and environmental policies. Following his return to MIT in 2010, he directed The Hamilton Project, an economic policy group at the Brookings Institution that studies a range of policies to promote broad-based economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. Greenstone has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee and continues to consult with governments around the world to develop sound economic policies.

“Not only is Greenstone an outstanding scholar dedicated to using field data to validate significant environmental and economic impacts, he is a colleague who is an effective and valued participant in a wide range of research and educational activities at the Institute,” said John Deutch, an emeritus Institute Professor at MIT. “His success as director of The Hamilton Project demonstrates his ability to bring serious academic research to the attention of senior government officials.”

Greenstone’s research focuses largely on the costs and benefits of environmental quality and energy policy. Over the years, he has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices and infant mortality. He is currently engaged in a large-scale project to estimate the costs of climate change around the world. In recent years, his research has increasingly focused on energy and environmental questions in developing countries, including a widely acclaimed paper that showed high levels of particulates air pollution are causing the 500 million residents of Northern China to lose more than 2.5 billion years of life expectancy.

“Greenstone is one of the very few best environmental economists, brimming with creativity and imagination,” said Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and a former faculty member of the University of Chicago Law School.

Robert N. Stavins, the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said, “The University of Chicago is exceptionally fortunate to have him join its already stellar faculty. I cannot think of anyone better to lead EPIC to new heights.”

A Chicago native, Greenstone has strong roots at UChicago, where he was assistant professor of economics from 2000 to 2003. His grandmother, Erika Fromm, was on the psychology faculty at UChicago and his father, J. David Greenstone, was a professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science before his death in 1990.

Michael Greenstone graduated from the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, and went on to receive a BA in economics with high honors from Swarthmore College and a PhD in economics from Princeton University.

EPIC was established in June 2011 and has assembled a core research team of world-class UChicago faculty members from economics, physical sciences, public policy, business and law. Computational science, engineering and policy experts from Argonne National Laboratory and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists join UChicago faculty to communicate experts’ research to decision-makers, the media and the public worldwide.

EPIC also contributes to the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, an Argonne National Laboratory-led partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop new breakthrough energy storage technology.

Raghuram Rajan named Governor of Reserve Bank of India

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:34 -0500

Raghuram Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Indian government’s Chief Economic Adviser, has been named Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, the school announced Aug. 6. While in this post, Rajan will be on leave from UChicago.

In August 2012, Rajan was named Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian government. Since then, he has continued to be associated with the school and University, while restructuring his academic commitments to meet his responsibilities in India. Previously, from 2008-12, Rajan served as an honorary economic adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while continuing to teach and conduct research at Booth full time.

Rajan will replace Duvvuri Subbarao, who is stepping down as governor after his five-year term ends Sept. 4.

“The job of governor is one of great responsibility. I am extremely grateful to Chicago Booth and the University for being so supportive of its faculty when they undertake public service,” Rajan said.

At Booth, Rajan most recently taught an MBA course in international corporate finance and a PhD course in the theory of financial decisions.

Rajan chaired the Indian government’s Committee on Financial Sector Reforms in 2007 and 2008, and he was economic counselor and director of research for the International Monetary Fund from 2003-06.

“We at Chicago Booth are very proud that one of our preeminent scholars is going to lead the central bank of a major country, and we believe this will be good for India. In turn, his experience in India will be extremely valuable to his research and his teaching when he returns,” said Sunil Kumar, dean of Chicago Booth.

Rajan’s most recent position in the Indian government was similar to a post that Austan Goolsbee, another Booth professor, held in the administration of President Barack Obama. Goolsbee was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2010-11.

Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. His academic papers have been published in all the top economics and finance journals. Rajan was president of the American Finance Association in 2011.

Before the financial crisis struck, Rajan presented his research paper titled “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?” at the central bankers’ annual Jackson Hole Conference in 2005. In the paper, he concluded that serious risks to the financial system existed, and proposed policies that would reduce such risks.

Earlier this year, Rajan, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Booth, was awarded the Center for Financial Studies-Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2013. His recent book, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award in 2010, and he won the Infosys Prize for Economic Sciences.

Rajan received the inaugural Fischer Black Prize, given every two years to the financial economist younger than 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the theory and practice of finance.

He joined the Booth faculty in 1991 after he received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Earlier, he received an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

Booth’s Anil Kashyap appointed to U.S. Financial Research Advisory Committee

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:18 -0600

The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Nov. 14 announced that Anil Kashyap, a Chicago Booth professor and an expert on banking and monetary policy, has been appointed to serve on the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the Office of Financial Research. He also will chair the subcommittee on research.

Kashyap is among 30 distinguished professionals in economics, finance, financial services, data management, risk management and information technology who will serve on the committee, the Treasury noted in its announcement. Members include two Nobel laureates in economics; a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve; leaders in business and nonprofit fields; and prominent researchers at major universities and think tanks.

The committee members will advise the Office of Financial Research, “bringing diverse perspectives to inform the OFR’s research and data agendas and to help the OFR fulfill its mission,” according to the Treasury announcement. The advisory committee and the Office of Financial Research will work together to develop and employ best practices for data management, data standards and research methodologies.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act established the Office of Financial Research within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. “The OFR serves the Financial Stability Oversight Council, its member agencies and the public by improving the quality, transparency and accessibility of financial data and information; conducting and sponsoring research related to financial stability; and promoting best practices in risk management,” the announcement noted.

Kashyap is the Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Economics and Finance at Chicago Booth, where he teaches MBA courses in understanding central banks, and the analytics of financial crises.

In addition to his research on banking and monetary policy, Kashyap also studies business cycles, corporate finance and price setting. His scholarly work has won him numerous awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, the Nikkei Prize for Excellent Books in Economic Sciences and a Senior Houblon-Norman Fellowship from the Bank of England.

Before joining the Chicago Booth faculty in 1991, Kashyap spent three years as an economist for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He currently is a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and serves as a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

He graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 1982, with a BA in economics and statistics, with highest honors. In 1989, he earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chicago Booth’s Raghuram Rajan accepts post in India’s government

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:18 -0500

Raghuram Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been named the Indian government’s Chief Economic Adviser, the school announced Aug. 30. Rajan will continue to be associated with the school and UChicago, while restructuring his academic commitments to meet his responsibilities in India.

Since 2008, he has been an honorary economic adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while he continued teaching and doing research at Booth full time.

“The post-crisis world has been challenging for all countries, and India is no exception. I look forward to working to address the important issues it faces,” said Rajan, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance. “And I am pleased that I will be able to reorganize my duties at Booth to allow me to undertake these new responsibilities.”

At Chicago Booth, he teaches an MBA course in international corporate finance and a PhD course in the theory of financial decisions.

“I speak for our students and my colleagues on the faculty when I say we are delighted that Professor Rajan will be advising the Indian government. His experiences there will, no doubt, be invaluable for our students,” said Sunil Kumar, dean of Chicago Booth.

Rajan’s new position in the Indian government is similar to a post that Austan Goolsbee, another Booth professor, held in the administration of President Barack Obama. Goolsbee was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2010 to 2011.

Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance and economic development, especially the role of finance in economic development. His academic papers have been published in all the top economics and finance journals. Rajan was president of the American Finance Association in 2011.

Before the financial crisis struck, Rajan presented his research paper titled “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?” at the Jackson Hole Conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 2005. In the paper, he concluded that serious risks to the financial system existed, and he proposed policies that would reduce those risks.

Rajan’s recent book, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award in 2010, and he won the Infosys Prize for Economic Sciences.

Faculty members recognized for outstanding research with new professorships

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:15 -0500

Thirteen UChicago faculty members — Mark Bradley, Marshall Chin, Juan de Pablo, Frances Ferguson, Ayelet Fishbach, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Holly Humphrey, David J. Levin, Robert McCulloch, Kathleen Morrison, Paul Nealey, Nicholas Polson and Kazuo Yamaguchi — have received named professorships, while six faculty members — Alex Eskin, Michael Fishbane, David Jablonski, Bruce Lincoln, Eric Santner and Rosanna Warren — have been named Distinguished Service Professors. The William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor Richard Shweder has been named the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor. Alan Kolata, the Neukom Family Distinguished Service Professor, has been named the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor. Two faculty members, Kenneth Pomeranz and Dam Thanh Son, have been named University Professor.

Biological Sciences Division

Marshall Chin has been appointed the Richard Parrillo Family Professor in Medicine. Chin is a general internist with a research focus on reducing racial and ethnic health disparities. As the director of Finding Answers: Disparities Research For Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at UChicago, Chin oversees the funding and evaluation of disparities reduction projects around the country. Chin is also co-principal investigator for Improving Diabetes Care and Outcomes on the South Side of Chicago, which is working with local clinics, patients and the community on innovative solutions to controlling and treating the chronic disease.

Holly Humphrey has been appointed the Ralph W. Gerard Professor in Medicine. Humphrey studies how the medical school curriculum can be reshaped to fit the modern health care system and place a greater emphasis on professionalism, diversity, doctor-patient relationships, research and scholarship. Her work has informed the implementation of The Pritzker Initiative and other programs at the Pritzker School of Medicine, which Humphrey oversees as dean of Medical Education. Under her supervision, the Pritzker School of Medicine reached the top 10 in national medical school rankings in 2012.

Humanities Division

Frances Ferguson has been named the Ann L. and Lawrence B. Buttenwieser Professor in English Language & Literature and the College. Her research interests include 18th- and 19th-century literature, as well as 20th- and 21st-century literary theory. Ferguson, who comes to the University from Johns Hopkins University, is currently at work on a project that explores the rise of mass education and how it affects our conception of both individuals and society.

David J. Levin has been appointed the Addie Clark Harding Professor in Germanic Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Theater and Performance Studies, and the College. His latest book, Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zemlinksy, (University of Chicago Press, 2007), explores how radical stagings impact one’s understanding of classic operas. Levin, an expert on German opera, theater, cinema and performance theory, serves as executive editor of Opera Quarterly and as the director of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.

Eric Santner, a leading scholar of German literature, history and culture, has been named the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Germanic Studies and the College. Santner works at the intersection of literature, political theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis and religious thought. His most recent book, The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011.

Divinity School

Michael Fishbane has been named the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish Studies in the Divinity School and the College. His many works explore the ancient Near East, biblical studies and rabbinics, the history of Jewish interpretation, as well as Jewish mysticism and modern Jewish thought. He is presently completing a book that incorporates modern critical and traditional Jewish interpretations of the Song of Songs.

Bruce Lincoln has been named the Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Committee on Medieval Studies and the College. He is particularly interested in issues of discourse, practice, power, conflict, the violent reconstruction of social borders and ideological aspects of religion. Lincoln tends to focus on pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, with occasional excursions elsewhere. His Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions, which calls for a more critical approach to studying the role of religion in history and culture, was published in May by the University of Chicago Press.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

Juan de Pablo, who comes to UChicago from the University of Wisconsin, will become the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Theory and Simulations and the College, effective Sept. 1. de Pablo specializes in conducting supercomputer simulations to understand and innovatively design new materials and to find applications for them. He is one of the leading experts in simulating polymeric materials, substances that consist of long, flexible chains of identical molecules. de Pablo also develops computational simulations of molecular and large-scale phenomena, including DNA dynamics, protein aggregation and the latter’s poorly understood relationship to various diseases.

Paul Nealey, also formerly of the University of Wisconsin, will join the faculty as the Brady W. Dougan Professor in Molecular Engineering and the College as of Sept. 1. Nealey is a pioneer of directed self-assembly, a technique that is becoming important in microelectronics processing to create patterns for integrated circuits. He also is a world leader on patterning organic materials, which entails creating physical patterns of structure and composition in materials at the nanoscale, which affects the function of the materials. Nealey’s expertise in fabricating nanostructured surfaces extends to tissue engineering of corneal prosthetic devices.

Physical Sciences Division

Alex Eskin has been appointed the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and the College. Eskin is generally interested in the aesthetics of mathematics, but his particular research interests include the dynamics and geometry of Teichmüller space, billiards in rational polygons, and geometric group theory. He also studies Lie Groups, discrete groups, ergodic theory, applications to number theory and geometric group theory.

David Jablonski has been named the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences and the College. Jablonski is a paleontologist who studies macroevolution, which takes place above the species level and encompasses large-scale patterns of evolution, mass extinction, diversification and the origin of evolutionary breakthroughs. He also compares patterns of extinctions and survival during mass extinctions to better understand the evolutionary significance of extinction events. His methods emphasize the combining of data from living and fossil organisms to study the origins and fates of lineages and adaptations.

Dam Thanh Son has been appointed University Professor in Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute and the James Franck Institute, effective Sept. 1. Son currently serves as a professor of physics and a senior fellow in the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington. A theoretician, his research interests span nuclear, particle, condensed matter and atomic physics. Among his accomplishments, Son has borrowed ideas from string theory and black holes physics to explain some phenomena observed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Social Sciences Division

Mark Philip Bradley has been named the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History and the College. His research and teaching focuses on 20th-century U.S. international history, the global history of human rights politics and postcolonial Southeast Asian history. He is the author of Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, Vietnam at War and is completing a book that explores the place of the United States in the 20th-century global human rights imagination.

Alan Kolata has been named the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology and the College. He is leading ongoing interdisciplinary research projects studying human-environment interactions over the past 3,000 years in South America and Southeast Asia, including problems of water sustainability and climate change in Cambodia. His new book, Ancient Inca, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.

Kathleen Morrison has been named the Neukom Family Professor in Anthropology and the College. Her research examines the causes and consequences of agrarian transformations in southern India, especially the connections between power relations and environmental change. Morrison’s work indicated that these transformations, begun in ancient times, led to inequality and environmental degradation, including current construction of large dams and a current rash of farmer suicides. This work integrates data from archaeology, history and environmental sciences, including botanical and stable isotope analysis.

Kenneth Pomeranz, one of the nation’s leading scholars of modern China, joined the faculty July 1 as University Professor of History and the College. Pomeranz’s research is focused on three primary areas: reciprocal influences of state, society and economy in late Imperial and 20th-century China; the origins of a world economy as the outcome of mutual influences among various regions; and comparative studies of labor, family organization, and economic change in Europe and East Asia. His book, The Great Divergence (2000), won the John K. Fairbank Book Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association, one of the most important honors for a scholar of Asian studies.

Richard Shweder, a cultural anthropologist, has been named the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Comparative Human Development and the College. His recent research examines the scopes and limits of pluralism and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies. He also is working with a group of scholars from a number of universities to look at the “equality-difference paradox”—the apparent tradeoff between equality and diversity, such that very few contemporary countries have achieved both; and the implications of the evidence that the most economically egalitarian countries are also the most ethnically and culturally homogeneous.

Rosanna Warren has been named the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and the College. An acclaimed poet, Warren examines poetry and translation, and the relations between classical and modern literature in her scholarship. Among her award-winning poetry are titles such as: Each Leaf Shines Separate; Stained Glass, which won the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Departure (2003). Her most recent book of poems is Ghost in a Red Hat (2011). She is also author of a book of literary criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (2008).

Kazuo Yamaguchi has been named the Ralph Lewis Professor in Sociology and the College. Yamaguchi is a prominent scholar of statistical modeling of family processes. A specialist in quantitative methodology, social stratification, the family and mathematical sociology, he is interested in statistical models for social data and rational choice theory. He also studies work-life balance and gender inequality in Japan, and is an advisor to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office, regarding the promotion of women in economic activities.

University of chicago Booth School of Business

Ayelet Fishbach has been named the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing. A member of the Booth faculty since 2002, Fishbach studies the process of self-regulation, specifically the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals. A primary focus of her research is on the practice of self-control, especially how people protect their long-term goals from the influence of short-term motives or temptations.

Chang-Tai Hsieh has been named the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, where his research is centered on growth and development. Several of his papers have been published in a number of top economic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Hsieh has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis.

Robert McCulloch has been named the Katherine Dusak Miller Professor of Econometrics and Statistics. His research centers on applications of data mining and Bayesian statistical methods in business, statistical computing and machine learning. A member of the Chicago Booth faculty from 1985 to 2008, he rejoined the faculty this year after serving on the faculty of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.

Nicholas Polson has been named the Robert Law Jr. Professor of Economics and Statistics. Polson is a Bayesian statistician who conducts research on financial econometrics and Markow Chain Monte Carlo methods. Inspired by an interest in probability, Polson has added a number of new algorithms to the field of financial econometrics, including the Bayesian analysis of Stochastic Volatility and sequential particle learning. He has published in a variety of disciplinary journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and the Journal of Finance.

Members of UChicago faculty honored for graduate–level teaching

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:43 -0500

Faculty Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching

Christine Mehring, Associate Professor in Art History and the College and Director of Graduate Studies for Art History

William Schweiker, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School

Robert Soare, the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science

Michael Stein, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in Statistics

Chicago Booth awards

Emory Williams Award for Teaching Excellence — Alan Bester, Associate Professor of Econometrics and Statistics

Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Awards — Matthew Bothner , Adjunct Associate Professor of Organizations and Strategy, and Ronald Burt, the Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy

Faculty Excellence Award — Linda Ginzel, Clinical Professor of Managerial Psychology

McKinsey Award for Excellence in Teaching— Lubos Pastor, the Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance

Harris School of Public Policy Studies awards

Kerwin Charles, the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor

Paula Worthington, Senior Lecturer

Law School awards

Graduating Students Class Award — Saul Levmore , the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law

Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence — David A. Strauss, the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law

Pritzker School of Medicine awards

Outstanding Basic Science Teaching Award — Ting-Wa Wong, Associate Professor of Pathology

Doroghazi Outstanding Clinical Teaching Award — Scott Stern, Professor of Medicine

Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award — Susan Glick, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Edward Naureckas, Associate Professor of Medicine

Faculty Physician Peer Role Model award — Peter Angelos, Professor of Surgery, Chief of Endocrine Surgery and Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics

School of Social Service Administration award

William Pollak Award— William Sites, Associate Professor

Kurt Ahlm named associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at Chicago Booth

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:11 -0500

Kurt Ahlm has been named associate dean of student recruitment and admissions for the full-time MBA program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the school announced April 4. Previously he was senior director of admissions at Chicago Booth.

“This is a very natural transition for us and for Kurt, who has spent nearly nine years in Booth admissions with responsibilities that have included virtually every aspect of the admissions process,” said Stacey Kole, deputy dean for the full-time MBA program.

In his recent role as senior director, Ahlm “was the primary driver of our admissions marketing efforts to showcase the Booth brand and bring the MBA experience to life for thousands of prospective students,” said Kole. “As a direct result of Kurt’s efforts, we have significantly exceeded the high goals that were set for our full-time admissions office.”

The appointment is effective immediately, the school said.

“I am delighted to take on these greater responsibilities and continue to help prospective students join our diverse and vibrant community,” said Ahlm. “In the months ahead, we intend to carry the Booth message to an even larger group of MBA hopefuls across the U.S. and worldwide.”

Before joining Booth, Ahlm was an admissions officer at Northwestern University’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions and a recruiting manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He received both his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Northwestern.

Ahlm earned an MBA at Chicago Booth with concentrations in marketing management, strategic management, and managerial and organizational behavior.

“When the position was vacated last summer, Kurt stepped up and made sure our entire admissions function didn’t miss a beat,” said Kole, who also is a clinical professor of economics. “He has already proven that he can succeed in this new role, where he will work closely with colleagues across the school.”

Joseph Buck named associate dean of alumni relations and development at Chicago Booth

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:48 -0500

Joseph Buck, an accomplished fundraiser who leads UChicago development efforts directed at individuals and families, has been named associate dean of alumni relations and development at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the school announced April 4.

The appointment is effective May 16.

“With his deep roots in education and more than eight years leading development teams at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania and La Salle University, Joe has demonstrated the energy, insight and enthusiasm to continue our efforts to transform the relationship we have with our 45,000 alumni,” said Sunil Kumar, dean of Chicago Booth.

“One of our objectives is to increase the engagement of our alumni in the intellectual life of the school,” Kumar said. “Joe’s ability to build strong relationships in complex organizations around the world is a perfect match to our goals and his knowledge of the University of Chicago’s values and history will provide a smooth runway for his entry into this position.”

Buck has spent the past four years in senior positions in UChicago’s central development office, most recently serving as assistant vice president for individual giving.

In that role he was the University’s chief individual giving officer and developed, managed and carried out programs to meet the University’s goals for privately contributed gifts from individuals and families. He managed a central fundraising staff of 35 people, which raised more than $35 million last year.

Earlier in his career Buck was senior major gifts officer at the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia and director of major gifts at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

He spent more than a year in China teaching English conversation and reading to Chinese college and middle school students.

The role of associate dean of alumni relations and development had been filled on an interim basis by Mark Zmijewski since July 2010. Zmijewski will return to his role as deputy dean for the part-time MBA programs and his faculty position as the Leon Carroll Marshall Professor of Accounting.

Axel Weber, Bundesbank president, to join Chicago Booth faculty

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:56 -0600

Axel Weber, president of Deutsche Bundesbank, is expected to become a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the school announced March 9.

Although details are still to be finalized, the appointment would begin soon after Weber steps down from his position at Bundesbank, expected at the end of next month. At Chicago Booth, he would teach MBA courses in central banking.

“The faculty and I are very enthusiastic about the possibility of having Dr. Weber join us,” said Sunil Kumar, dean of Chicago Booth. “Not only will our MBA students benefit from hearing him in the classroom, but the entire Booth community will benefit from his out-of-classroom involvement here at seminars, workshops and the many other opportunities we offer for students, faculty and alumni to hear from leading thinkers.”

Weber has been president of the Bundesbank since 2004. The bank is part of the Eurosystem, sharing responsibility with the other national central banks and the European Central Bank for the single currency, the euro.

Weber is currently on leave as a professor of international economics at the University of Cologne.

He was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, a group similar to the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in the United States. Earlier in his career he was a director of the Center for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, a professor of applied monetary economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt and a professor of economic theory at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn.

“After seven years as a practitioner as the head of a central bank, I have decided to return to economic research in order to help answer the many questions posed by economic policy after the financial crisis,” Weber said. “The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is an excellent place for me because its faculty includes many distinguished researchers who have already worked for several years on issues related to the crisis and how to cope with it, and I personally know them.

“Some of the very best colleagues at Chicago Booth have switched back and forth between academia and economic policy and have thus shaped economic thinking in both areas,” Weber added. “It matches my own experience.”

At Booth, Weber will join a faculty that includes Randall Kroszner, former governor of the Federal Reserve System, and Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund and current economic advisor to Indian Prime Minister Manoham Singh.

Weber also will be involved in Booth’s Initiative on Global Markets, a research center that studies how global movement of capital, products and people has fundamentally changed the nature of business in the 21st century. The IGM, which hosts the school’s annual U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, focuses on international business, financial markets, and role of policies and institutions. Co-directors of IGM are senior Booth faculty members Anil Kashyap, a former economist at the Federal Reserve System, and Christian Leuz, a member of the Expert Group on Financial Market Stability in Germany.

“I am looking forward to teaching at Chicago Booth because from my practical experiences, especially during the financial crisis, I have learned several lessons,” Weber said. “Results from economic research have been very important for the success in containing the crisis, not the least by preventing us to repeat policy mistakes committed in past crisis.

“A quick response to crises and the design of new instruments requires a profound understanding of the economic mechanisms at work, both in the financial system and in the transmission to the real economy,” he said.

“The understanding of precisely what went wrong before and during the crisis is still incomplete. We have plausible, sometimes competing, explanations, but the design of a more stable framework for the financial system and better supervision requires more robust results and therefore additional research. By implication, the crisis will continue to significantly enhance the state of economic knowledge,” Weber said.

Prof. James Heckman elected to lead Econometric Society

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:55 -0600

James Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics has been elected to the presidency of the Econometric Society.

Heckman, who has been elected Second Vice–President, will become First Vice–President in 2012 and President in 2013.

Heckman is the recipient of the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His research integrates econometrics, economic theory and policy analysis.

The Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics. The society promotes studies that attempt to unify the theoretical–quantitative and empirical–quantitative approaches to economic problems by employing constructive and rigorous thinking characteristic of the natural sciences.

Yale University economist Irving Fisher and the Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch, who later became the first economist to be awarded the Nobel Prize, founded the society in 1930.

University of Chicago economist Henry Schultz, the person whom Heckman’s named chair honors, also helped to establish the Econometric Society.