Celebrating Duke’s Newly Tenured Faculty
Earning tenure after a rigorous review process by peers inside and outside Duke is a testament to the excellence of each individual faculty member and the impact of their research, teaching and service as well as their standing in their disciplines. It is also an invitation to be a partner in shaping the next 100 years of Duke and its core mission and playing a role in advancing its excellence and broader impact.
Information provided by the Office of Institutional Research includes recently tenured faculty at the associate professor rank with appointment dates of November 2023 to September 2024, plus those hired at the rank of associate professor with tenure since last year's list.
Andrew Bragg
Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Andrew Bragg is an associate professor of civil & environmental engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering. His research interests include the physics and modeling of turbulence and turbulent transport, theoretical and computational fluid dynamics and applied mathematics. He was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER award and the EUROMECH Young Scientist Award. Before joining the Duke University faculty in 2016, Bragg was a postdoctoral associate in the Applied Mathematics and Plasma Physics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Fluid Dynamics from Newcastle University in England.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
David Carlson
Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
David Carlson is an associate professor jointly appointed in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering and the Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics in the School of Medicine. His general research focus is on developing novel machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that can be used to accelerate scientific discovery and working collaboratively to implement these strategies into practice. His interdisciplinary work bridges engineering, medicine and computational science, with applications ranging from understanding brain dynamics to addressing environmental challenges. Carlson earned his Ph.D. from Duke University.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Maureen Craig
Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience
Maureen Craig is a social psychologist in the psychology and neuroscience department in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. She was previously an assistant and associate professor of Psychology at NYU, prior to joining Duke. Craig leads the Diversity and Social Processes Lab, a research group conducting research seeking to understand how people navigate an increasingly diverse and often inequitable social world. Her work investigates how diversity, inequality and discrimination shape people’s attitudes and relations with people from other social groups, policy preferences and support for social change.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Michael D’Alessandro
Associate Professor of English
Michael D’Alessandro is an associate professor of English with a secondary appointment in theater studies in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He holds an M.F.A. in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Yale University and a Ph.D. in American studies from Boston University. His principal research focuses on American literature and theatre history in the long 19th century. Before arriving at Duke, D’Alessandro served as lecturer and assistant director of studies in Harvard’s History and Literature Program. His book, “Staged Readings: Contesting Class in Popular American Literature and Theatre, 1835-1875” was published in the fall of 2022. Examining the overlaps between print and popular theatre, “Staged Readings” analyzes how working- and middle-class citizens shifted between roles as literary consumers and theatrical spectators in 19th century America.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Michael Dinerstein
Associate Professor of Economics
Michael Dinerstein is an associate professor of economics in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He is an applied microeconomist who brings industrial organization concepts and tools to labor, public and development economics. Dinerstein’s research has primarily studied education markets, with a focus on school competition and teacher labor markets. He has also studied online platforms and Kenyan agricultural markets. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Benjamin Eva
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Benjamin Eva is an associate professor of philosophy at the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He organizes the Duke Causation Group and the Duke/UNC Epistemology Workshop. Before joining Duke faculty in 2024, he was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow and five-year Zukunftskolleg research fellow at the University of Konstanz. Eva earned his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Sarah Goetz
Associate Professor of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology
Sarah Goetz is an associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology in the Basic Sciences division of the School of Medicine with a joint appointment in cell biology. She is also a member of the Duke Cancer Institute. Goetz’s lab is broadly interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying the regulation of important cell and developmental signaling cascades, specifically focusing on the cell biology of primary cilia. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Tenure awarded: January 1, 2024
Neil Gong
Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Neil Gong is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering. His research interests include cybersecurity and trustworthy AI. He received a B.E. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010 (with the highest honor) and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Gong has received the NSF CAREER Award, Army Research Office Young Investigator Program Award, Rising Star Award from the Association of Chinese Scholars in Computing, IBM Faculty Award, Facebook Research Award and multiple best paper or best paper honorable mention awards.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Sara Haravifard
William M. Fairbank Associate Professor of Physics
Sara Haravifard is the William M. Fairbank Associate Professor of Physics in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences with secondary appointments in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering. Her research focuses on experimental condensed matter and quantum materials. In 2017 she received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. Haravifard earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Zakiyyah Jackson
Associate Professor of Literature
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson is an associate professor of Literature in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Her research investigates the fundamental function of (anti)blackness in the literary and aesthetic projects of Western philosophical and scientific discourse and investigates the engagement of African diasporic literature, film and art with the historical concerns, knowledge claims and rhetoric of Western science and philosophy. Jackson is the author of “Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World.” The book is a call for rethinking the philosophical import of African diasporic literature and visual art and is the winner of the Harry Levin First Book Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association, the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Award from the National Women’s Studies Association and the Lambda Literary Book Award for LGBTQ Studies.
Tenure awarded: September 1, 2024
Kyle Jurado
Associate Professor of Economics
Kyle Jurado is an associate professor of dconomics in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. His research interests include how changes in agents’ expectations about current and future economic conditions influence aggregate economic outcomes. His most recent work focuses on dynamic models of attention allocation in the face of information processing constraints, and on rational expectations equilibria in dynamic models with learning from endogenous variables. Jurado earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Li Lan
Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology
Li Lan is an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Basic Science division in the School of Medicine. Her lab is dedicated to researching how cancer cells respond to DNA damage through DNA repair mechanisms and developing innovative strategies to target these pathways in cancer therapy. Significant contributions include uncovering the critical role of PARP and RNA modifications in DNA repair, leading to successful applications of PARP inhibitors in the treatment of breast, ovarian and other types of cancer. Her lab is actively pursuing and developing new drug targets mRNA modifications in DNA repair in cancer. Lan earned her Ph.D. from Tohoku University in Japan.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Nuo Li
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Nuo Li is an associate professor of Neurobiology in the Basic Sciences division of the School of Medicine. His research focuses on how the structure and dynamics of neural circuits give rise to cognitive brain functions and movement. He has identified novel organizations of the brain that support motor and cognitive functions, including how a hindbrain structure, the cerebellum, interacts with the front cortex to support cognitive processes. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Simon Miles
Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
Simon Miles joined the faculty of the Sanford School of Public Policy as an assistant professor in 2017. He is an expert on Russia and the Soviet Union whose research focuses primarily on Cold War diplomatic and military history and its relevance to our world today. His first book, “Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War,” uses international archives — from both sides of the Iron Curtain — to explain how and why the US-Soviet rivalry underwent such unexpected and profound change in the 1980s that it has since become a textbook case of adversaries setting aside disagreements and cooperating. Miles is currently working on his second book, “On Guard for Peace and Socialism: The Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991,” an international history of the Soviet-led politico-military alliance. He teaches courses on grand strategy, military and diplomatic history, Russia and the Cold War.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Tolu O. Oyesanya
Associate Professor in the School of Nursing
Tolu Oyesanya is an associate professor in the School of Nursing. Her research program centers on care of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in acute and post-acute treatment settings, as well as support of their family caregivers. Her current NIH/NINR R01 focuses on testing the efficacy of her team’s transitional care program for patients with TBI, discharged home from acute hospital care, and their family caregivers, with an emphasis on improving patient quality of life and decreasing caregiver strain. Oyesanya earned her BSN, MSN, and Ph.D. in Nursing from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Brain Injury Research at Shepherd Center in Atlanta. Her research has been consistently supported by federally funded awards. Oyesanya is actively involved in several professional organizations, including serving as Chair of the Career Development Networking Group of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and as a member of the Association of Rehabilitation Nurses and the International Brain Injury Association.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Sarah M. Quesada
Associate Professor of Romance Studies
Sarah Quesada is a comparatist and an associate professor of romance studies in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences with a secondary appointment in the Department of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies. Her main interests are literatures of the Global South—Latin American, Latinx, and African literatures. Her book “The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature” won Honorable Mention for First Book in 2023 from the Modern Languages Association (MLA). The book examines hidden archives of African influence in most widely read Latinx and Latin American authors of the last 50 years, through these authors' conjuring of the era of Slave Trade, 19thcentury imperialism, Cold War internationalism, and the rise of UNESCO heritage tourism. Quesada’s work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, the Stanford Humanities Center and Stanford's Center for African Studies, among other places. She has served on executive committees for the Latin American Studies Association and the MLA. She is the book review editor for Cambridge’s journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry and serves on the editorial board of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism (Duke UP).
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Gustavo Silva
Associate Professor of Biology
Gustavo Silva is an associate professor of biology in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. His lab investigates molecular mechanisms that support cellular defense and resistance to chemical and environmental stresses, which can help to halt the progression of many human diseases. Among several awards, he has been recognized with the Science Diversity Leadership Award and as a Distinguished Scholar by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative/Biohub, the Maximizing Investigator Award from the NIH, with the Paul T. Englund Emerging Scholar Award from Johns Hopkins, the Dean’s Award from Excellence in Mentoring at Duke, and named among the 100 Inspiring Black Scientists by CellPress. In addition to research, Silva is an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and transformation in higher education, serving as a mentor for the NIH-ASBMB MOSAIC program, an Ambassador for the undergraduate ABRCMS conference, and as the co-founder and director of the Black Think Tank, an Office for Faculty Advancement sponsored initiative to promote the advancement of Black faculty at Duke.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Purushothama Rao Tata
Associate Professor of Cell Biology
Purushothama Rao Tata is an associate professor of cell biology in the Basic Science division of the School of Medicine with a joint appointment in medicine. He is also the director of Duke Regeneration Center. His research focuses on understanding the ensemble properties of tissues in the context of development, homeostasis, regeneration and tumorigenesis in diverse epithelial tissues including lung. The lab is affiliated with the Duke Regeneration Center, Duke Cancer Institute and the Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies at Duke University. Tata earned his Ph.D. from the University of Ulm in Germany and received postdoctoral training at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard University.
Tenure awarded: January 1, 2024
Felix Tintelnot
Associate Professor of Economics
Felix Tintelnot is an associate professor of economics in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. His research is centered on international economics and extends into other areas such as industrial organization, networks, labor and economic geography. In 2018, he received the Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Tintelnot’s research is supported by the National Science Foundation, and he is a research fellow at the NBER, CEPR and CESifo. Tintelnot earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2024
Ophelia Venturelli
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Ophelia Venturelli is an associate professor of biomedical engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering. Her lab aims to understand how interactions at different scales of biological complexity combine to generate collective behaviors. In particular, her lab aims to engineer the multi-scale networks driving microbiomes for applications in precision medicine, agriculture and the built-in environment. Venturelli’s research combines multiplexed measurements of single cells, populations and ecosystems with concepts from nonlinear dynamical systems, control theory, multi-objective optimization and machine learning. She received the Thomas Langford Lectureship Award for the 2024-25 academic year. Venturelli earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.
Tenure awarded: August 1, 2024
Junjie Yao
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Junjie Yao is an associate professor of biomedical engineering the Pratt School of Engineering with a secondary appointment in neurology. His research focuses photoacoustic tomography (PAT) technologies and translating PAT advances into diagnostic and therapeutic applications, especially in functional brain imaging and early cancer theranostics. He was awarded the Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2022 by the National Science Foundation, and elected as fellow of OPTICA in 2023, International Society for Optics and Photonics in 2024, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2025. Yao earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.
Tenure awarded: July 1, 2023
Danfeng Zhang
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Danfeng Zhang is an associate professor of computer science in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. The goal of his research is to prove the absence of software errors, and further, generate fixes when things go wrong. Current research interests include security, privacy, type safety and software correctness. Honors and awards for Zhang include the Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2022 by NSF, the CCS'18 Outstanding Paper Award and PLDI'15 Distinguished Paper Award. Prior to joining Duke faculty, he was an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Tenure awarded: January 1, 2024