Brown University Adds Seven Women Scientists to Its Faculty

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has 12 new faculty members teaching in the school’s physical sciences division this fall. Nationwide, men tend to hold a large percentage of the faculty slots in these disciplines. But seven of the 12 new hires at Brown in the division of physical sciences are women.

Kareen Coulombe is an assistant professor of bioengineering. Her research is developing ways to grow new heart tissue, replacing heart muscle that has been irreversibly damaged. Dr. Coulombe is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Rochester. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

Kristie Koski is an assistant professor of chemistry. Before coming to Brown, she was conducting postdoctoral research in two-dimensional nanomaterials at Stanford University. Dr. Koski is a graduate of the University of Wyoming, where she double majored in physics and chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jung-Eun Lee is a new assistant professor of geological science. A native of rural South Korea, her research involves climate models and the hydrological cycle. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Seoul National University. Dr. Lee earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley and then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A native of Genoa, Italy, Sara Maloni was hired as an assistant professor of mathematics. An expert in hyperbolic geometry, she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Genoa. She earned her Ph.D. from the Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Before coming to Brown, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toulouse and the University of Paris.

Anita Shukla is an assistant professor of bioengineering. She was serving as a National Institutes of Health Ruth Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in the department of bioengineering at Rice University. A native of Rhode Island, Dr. Shukla is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on improving methods of dealing with injuries and wounds on the battlefield.

Stefanie Tellex joined the Brown faculty as an assistant professor of computer science. Before coming to Brown, she was a research scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Tellex holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, all from MIT. Her research seeks to develop better methods for human/robot communication.

Mei Yin is an assistant professor of mathematics. She was an instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Yin’s research involves the science of exponential random graphs. Dr. Yin holds a bachelor’s degree in information and computer science from the Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics with a minor in statistics from the University of Arizona.