Faculty Achievements in Fall 2024

By: Phuc Ngo ’26

Each semester, The Connection shares highlights, including faculty fellowships, awards, publications and other achievements, with the community. Read more about the research and accomplishments that define the intellectual life of the University. 

Fellowships and Awards 

Professor of Dance, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global South Asian Studies Hari Krishnan was awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship for Choreography. His work explores the postcolonial complexities and queer themes at the intersection of traditional South Asian and global contemporary dance forms in the North American diaspora. 

Professor of Philosophy Lori Gruen has been named the 2024 Distinguished Philosopher of the Year by the Eastern Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) for her work on topics in the philosophy of animal ethics, feminism, and incarceration. She will be honored at Session G 10 B of the upcoming Eastern Division American Philosophical Association Convention on Jan. 10, 2025. 

Andrea Negrete, assistant professor of Psychology and Integrative Sciences, received a Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2024-2025 academic year under the Community Psychology specialization for her project “Understanding the Role of Return Migration on the Wellbeing of Mexican-Origin Adolescent Children.” 

Professor of Hispanic Literatures and Cultures and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures María Ospina won the Colombian Ministry of Culture’s Premio Nacional de Novela (National Novel Prize) for her novel Solo un poco aquí.  

Publications 

Michael Singer, professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, along with co-writers Riley Anderson (PhD ’23), Andrew Hennessy (BA ’21/MA ’22), and Kiran Kowalski (BA ’23), published an article in the August 2024 edition of Current Biology on a bizarre ecological interaction among insects on oak trees. 

Professors Michael Weir (Biology), Kelly Thayer (Integrative Sciences), and Daniel Krizanc (Mathematics & Computer Science) published a cross-disciplinary paper with 11 current and recently graduated students entitled “GNN Codon Adjacency Tunes Protein Translation” in the May 29, 2024 edition of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. This study investigates how a recently discovered interaction surface in the ribosome machine acts as a sequence-dependent braking system for tuning the rates of protein translation. 

Assistant Professor of Film Studies and Global South Asian Studies Sadia Shepard published the article “Dear Barbara Loden: Reconsidering Wanda (1970)” in a special issue of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Studies on Women and Aging. The study references Shepard’s time as a Wesleyan undergraduate in the late 1990s and a special connection between the film Wanda and Wesleyan in the 1970s. 

Iris Yoon, assistant professor of Mathematics, had a paper accepted into the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal. A collaboration with five other researchers, the paper is entitled “Tracking the topology of neural manifolds across populations.” 

Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Integrative Sciences Teresita Padilla-Benavides’ paper “Cysteine Rich Intestinal Protein 2 is a copper-responsive regulator of skeletal muscle differentiation and metal homeostasis” was published online in the PLOS Genetics journal. 

Padilla-Benavides’s lab also recently published the review “Emerging perspectives of copper-mediated transcriptional regulation in mammalian cell development” in Metallomics. Primary author Fa’alataitaua Fitisemanu is a Wesleyan alumnus from the class of 2024. 

Padilla-Benavides also recently had another collaborative study accepted with PNAS. 

Nadya Potemkina, adjunct associate professor of Music and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies as well as director of Private Music Lessons, had her article “‘You Are Now One of the Boys’: Congratulations?” in the first edition of Routledge’s Perspectives on Conducting. 

Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Sumarsam recently published his most recent book The In-Between in Javanese Performing Arts: History and Myth, Interculturalism and Interreligiosity, the first comprehensive overview of Javanese performing arts from their origins to their dynamic present. 

Bernardo Gonzalez, professor of Spanish, emeritus, published a review of Catalina Bárcena: Voz y rostro de la Edad de Plata, a biography on Spanish actress Catalina Bárcena, in the journal Don Galán. 

Additional Achievements 

Alan M. Dachs Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Sonia Sultan was invited to be a member of the external advisory board for the newly formed Kellner Center for Neurogenomics, Behavior and Society at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  

Professor Sumarsam presented his paper “Transcending bounded regionality and nationality: Wooden puppet wayang krucil performance and mythical-creature barong dance in an annual village celebration in Blora-Central Java” in the symposium Wayang, Ecology, and the Sacred: Engagements with Indonesian Puppet Theatre at the Yale Institute for Sacred Music. 

Undercrank Productions, a boutique Blu-ray label run by Visiting Professor of Film Studies Ben Model released a new 2K digital restoration of Roland West’s The Bat (1926), which Model also scored on theatre organ. 

Note: Faculty and departments are invited to share recent awards, fellowships and publications with The Connection by contacting media@wesleyan.edu.