Office of the Provost

Amy Kahng joins Brandeis University this fall as the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in the Art of Asia’s Diasporas and Asian American Art with Curatorial Work. Amy received her PhD in Art History and Criticism at Stony Brook University in 2025. Her book project examines twentieth-century Asian American artists and their relationship to land, colonial vision, and conditional racialization. Amy's research has been supported by institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Amy has taught courses throughout New York City, and as an independent curator, organized exhibitions across New York State and California.

• Hannah Altman
• Christian Gentry
• Jared Hudson
• Fangchao Ji
• Chelsea Kerl

Troy Luster joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Biology & Director of the Master of Science Program in Biotechnology. Troy has over 15 years of experience working in the biotechnology industry, most recently developing genetically engineered cell-based therapies for cancer at Intellia Therapeutics and Clade Therapeutics (acquired by Century Therapeutics in 2024). Since September 2024, Troy has been teaching biotechnology-related courses (lecture and laboratory) at Northeastern University and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. Troy is excited to prepare students for careers in biotechnology and help grow the PSM program at Brandeis.

Yihan Shao joins Brandeis University this fall as an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Professor Shao completed his PhD in 2002 at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked at Q-Chem, a chemistry software company, from 2002 to 2016. He has been on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma as Assistant Professor from 2016 to 2022 and Associate Professor from 2022 to 2025. Professor Shao is the author or co-author of 170 peer-reviewed publications in the area of Computational Chemistry and Biology.  

Sean Lutz joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Sean completed his PhD from Indiana University in August of 2020 with a focus on the electronic structure of iron complexes. His independent career, as a lecturer, started at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2020 then to Bowdoin College in Maine from 2021 to 2024, and most recently Butler University in Indianapolis.

Kostas Solomos joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2025. Prior to his doctoral studies, he received a BSc and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Crete, where he also worked as a Research Assistant at the ICS-FORTH in Crete. His research spans cybercrime, web security, and online privacy, with a focus on the leakage of personally identifiable information (PII), browser fingerprinting, web security policies, and large-scale Internet measurements. His work has appeared in top-tier venues, including USENIX Security, NDSS, and CCS. He has served on and continues to serve on program committees, such as ACSAC, Transactions on Web, and regularly reviews for top-tier venues in the field.

Elijah Rivera joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor (OTS) of Computer Science. In May of this year, Professor Rivera earned his PhD at Brown University. He previously earned his SB and MEng from MIT in 2019 and 2021 respectively. His research has been published in top venues for computing education, and is already informing the design of an upcoming AI-centric software engineering course.

Duane Juang joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Engineering in Biology. Professor Juang is a biomedical engineer experienced in developing assays, devices, and chemistries for research and diagnostics across both academia and industry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Life Science from National Tsing Hua University, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a second PhD in Chemistry from National Tsing Hua University. Prior to joining Brandeis, he also worked at various biotech startups developing platforms for infectious disease diagnostics, single cell sequencing, and ultrasensitive protein diagnostics. He has 10 patents.

Justin Campbell joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. His research focuses on the geometric Langlands program, which lies at the intersection of representation theory, algebraic geometry, number theory, and mathematical physics. Professor Campbell was previously an instructor at the University of Chicago and Caltech. Before that, he completed his PhD at Harvard in 2018.

Taehyeong Kim joins Brandeis University this fall as an Instructor in Mathematics. Dr. Kim received his PhD in 2022 from Seoul National University. He held postdoctoral positions at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (2022–2023), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2023–2024), and was most recently affiliated with the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS). His research focuses on homogeneous dynamics and its connections to number theory, particularly Diophantine approximation.

Surena Hozoori joins Brandeis University as an Instructor in Mathematics. He was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, where he obtained his BSc in Electrical Engineering and MSc in Pure Mathematics from the Sharif University of Technology. He was then admitted to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he received his PhD in Mathematics in 2022. Subsequently, he joined the University of Rochester as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics between 2022 and 2025. Professor Hozoori’s current research focuses on the geometric theory of chaos and the geometric structures that arise in such systems.

Spyros Garouniatis joins Brandeis University as an Instructor in Mathematics. His research focuses on probability theory and statistical mechanics, particularly limit theorems and multiscale models. He brings a strong interest in both research and teaching and is excited to join the Brandeis community.

Caleb Cook joins Brandeis University this fall as a Lecturer in Physics. As a theoretical physicist, his research has explored topics ranging from the electron hydrodynamics of ultra-pure, low-symmetry metals to the physics behind the structural coloration of beetles and butterflies. Dr. Cook earned his AB from Harvard College in 2015, MSc from the University of Waterloo in 2016, and PhD from Stanford University in 2022. Prior to Brandeis, he taught at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics (2022–2024) and most recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of William & Mary.

Amanda N. Faherty joins Brandeis University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. She earned her PhD and MA in Developmental Psychology from Clark University in 2020 and 2018, respectively. From 2020 to 2025, she served as a faculty member at Ithaca College. As a developmental psychologist, Dr. Faherty examines both broad and nuanced sociocontextual influences on parent-child relationships and well-being during emerging adulthood, with a particular focus on culture. She is the co-editor of Parents and Caregivers across Cultures (Springer Publishing, 2020).

• Kathryn Parisi
• Kyeongmin Rim

Rachel Klein joins Brandeis University this fall as the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Carceral Studies and the Humanities in the departments of African & African American Studies, English, and Legal Studies. Dr. Klein completed her PhD in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her scholarship centers on the carceral state, gender, and social movements and has been featured in Gender & History and the Radical History Review. Dr. Klein has also been teaching in prisons since 2016 and is a member of the prison abolitionist group, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

Beth Derderian joins Brandeis University this fall as the Renee & Lester Crown Chair Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East Studies and Anthropology. Professor Derderian completed her PhD in Anthropology at Northwestern University (2019), and holds an MA in Near Eastern & Museum Studies from New York University (2010). She was previously a postdoctoral associate at Yale University's Council on Middle East Studies (2019-2020) and Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Museum Studies at the College of Wooster (2020-2025). Derderian's first book, Art Capital: Museum Politics & the Making of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, will be published in January 2026 with Stanford University Press. 

Khalil Shikaki joins Brandeis University this fall as Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Dr. Shikaki is a professor of political science, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah, and member of the steering committee of the Arab Barometer. He is also a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He finished his PhD from Columbia University in 1985, and taught at several Palestinian, Israeli, and American universities including al-Najah University, Birzeit University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), the University of South Florida (Tampa), the University of Utah, and the University of Michigan.

Ilsoo Cho joins Brandeis University this fall as the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Korean and Japanese History. He primarily works on Korean political history and aspects of Japan-Korea relations. He received his PhD from Harvard and researched at Kyoto University in Japan and Seoul National University in Korea. His recent publications include "Bracing for Disorder: The Red Turbans and Chosŏn-Ming Relations" from the Journal of Korean Studies and "Imperial Loyalism and Political Fissures in Early Modern Japan" from the Journal of Japanese Studies.

Ayumi Teraoka joins Brandeis University as an Assistant Professor of Politics this fall. After obtaining a PhD in security studies from Princeton University in 2022, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023) and Columbia University (2023-2025), where she taught Japanese Foreign Policy for Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her book, under contract with Columbia University Press, examines the history of U.S. alliance management in Asia from the 1960s to the present, illuminating the conditions under which the United States successfully negotiated geopolitically contested issues with allies, including air defense integration and the defense of Taiwan, in the face of China's opposition. 

Preston Stone joins Brandeis University as the Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Stone received their PhD in English from the University of Miami in 2023, after which they became the inaugural Associate Director of Native American Studies at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. They were most recently a lecturer in the Department of English and the Department of Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. Their work – which sits at the intersection of American literary and cultural studies, queer theory, and comparative ethnicities – has been featured or is forthcoming in Studies in American Fiction and the Journal of Modern Literature. They have been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for 2025-2026.

• Emma Bailey
• Laurin Bixby
• Lauren Crosser
• Nick Huntington
• Ramsey Merritt
• Sheryl Seller

• Andrew Bursick
• Wei-Chiang Chen
• Larry Cohen