Endowed Faculty Appointments for Three Women Scholars

Lana Alagha has been named the Robert H. Quenon Associate Professor of Mining Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She joined the university in 2012 as an assistant professor, making her the institution’s first-ever woman mining engineering faculty member. Her research interests include mineral processing, critical materials, surface chemistry, rare earth metals, and separation science.

Dr. Alagha received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Bethlehem in Palestine. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in materials chemistry and nanotechnology from the University of Texas at Dallas.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui has been named the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies at Princeton University. She has been serving as a professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she has taught for over two decades. She previously served the university as director of the Center for the Americas and founding director of the Indigenous Studies Research Network. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008).

Dr. Kauanui holds a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in the history of consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Melissa Haendel has been named the Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor in the department of genetics of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She currently serves as chief informatics officer, endowed chair in data science, and professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus . She also heads the university’s Translational and Integrative Sciences Laboratory.

Dr. Haendel received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.