Brandeis welcomes new faculty to campus for 2025-26 academic year
By Julian Cardillo ’14
September 2, 2025
Brandeis University is welcoming new faculty members to campus for the 2025–26 academic year, bringing fresh expertise and perspectives across disciplines and areas of inquiry.
The new faculty cohort includes 20 full-time professors, fellows and lecturers, alongside 17 part-time instructors, reflecting the university’s continued investment in teaching and research.
The incoming faculty represent a wide range of disciplines and experiences. Their scholarship and professional accomplishments will enrich classrooms, strengthen research programs and expand opportunities for students across the Brandeis community.
Here is a breakdown of new faculty members by school and academic department. For a full description of new faculty, visit the Office of the Provost’s full announcement.
School of Arts, Humanities and Culture
Amy Kahng is the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in the Art of Asia’s Diasporas and Asian American Art with Curatorial Work. Kahng received her PhD in art history and criticism at Stony Brook University. Her book project examines 20th-century Asian American artists and their relationship to land, colonial vision and conditional racialization.
Nicholas Anthony Mancini is a lecturer in fine arts. He received his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and his MFA from Boston University. He has been a resident artist at Hewnoaks in Lovell, Maine as well as The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency in West Cork, Ireland.
New part-time faculty:
School of Science, Engineering and Technology
Troy Luster is a professor of biology and director of the Master of Science Program in Biotechnology. Luster has more than 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. He has taught biotechnology-related courses at Northeastern University and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences.
Yihan Shao, an associate professor of chemistry, completed his PhD in 2002 at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked at Q-Chem, a chemistry software company, before joining the faculty of the University of Oklahoma. He is the author or co-author of 170 peer-reviewed publications in computational chemistry and biology.
Assistant professor of chemistry Sean Lutz completed his PhD at Indiana University in 2020 with a focus on the electronic structure of iron complexes. He served as a lecturer at SUNY Plattsburgh, Bowdoin College and Butler University.
Kostas Solomos, an assistant professor of computer science, earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2025. His research spans cybercrime, web security and online privacy, with a focus on the leakage of personally identifiable information, browser fingerprinting, web-security policies and large-scale Internet measurements.
Elijah Rivera is an assistant professor of computer science. Rivera earned his PhD at Brown University in 2025. 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, an assistant professor of engineering in biology, is a biomedical engineer experienced in developing assays, devices and chemistries for research and diagnostics across both academia and industry. He holds 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 worked at various biotech startups developing platforms for infectious disease diagnostics, single cell sequencing and ultrasensitive protein diagnostics. He holds 10 patents.
Justin Campbell, an assistant professor of mathematics, researches the geometric Langlands program, which lies at the intersection of representation theory, algebraic geometry, number theory and mathematical physics. Campbell completed his PhD at Harvard in 2018.
Taehyeong Kim, an instructor in mathematics, earned his doctorate in 2022 from Seoul National University. His research focuses on homogeneous dynamics and its connections to number theory, particularly Diophantine approximation.
Mathematics instructor Surena Hozoori received a PhD in mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022. His current research focuses on the geometric theory of chaos and the geometric structures that arise in such systems.
Mathematics instructor Spyros Garouniatis researches probability theory and statistical mechanics, particularly limit theorems and multiscale models.
Caleb Cook is a lecturer in physics. 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. He earned a PhD from Stanford University in 2022. Prior to Brandeis, he taught at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics and the College of William & Mary.
Assistant professor of psychology Amanda N. Faherty earned her PhD in developmental psychology from Clark University in 2020. Faherty researches 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.”
New part-time faculty:
School of Social Sciences and Social Policy
Rachel Klein is the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Carceral Studies and the Humanities in the departments of African and African American studies, English, and legal studies. Klein earned a PhD 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.” Klein has taught in prisons since 2016 and is a member of the prison abolitionist group, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
Beth Derderian is the Renee & Lester Crown Chair Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East Studies and Anthropology. Derderian earned a PhD in anthropology at Northwestern University. She was previously a postdoctoral associate at Yale University's Council on Middle East Studies and assistant professor of anthropology and museum studies at the College of Wooster. Derderian's book, “Art Capital: Museum Politics & the Making of the Louvre Abu Dhabi,” will be published in January 2026 (Stanford University Press).
Khalil Shikaki is visiting professor in politics and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Shikaki is the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, and a member of the steering committee of the Arab Barometer. He is also a senior fellow at the Crown Center. He earned a PhD at Columbia University and has taught at 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, the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Korean and Japanese History, studies Korean political history and Japan-Korea relations. He earned a PhD at Harvard. His publications include "Bracing for Disorder: The Red Turbans and Chosŏn-Ming Relations" (Journal of Korean Studies); and "Imperial Loyalism and Political Fissures in Early Modern Japan" (Journal of Japanese Studies).
Ayumi Teraoka, an assistant professor of politics, earned a PhD in security studies from Princeton University in 2022. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University, where she taught Japanese Foreign Policy at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Her book, “Strategy of Alliance Management: Procedural Autonomy in U.S.-China Competition” (Columbia University Press), examines the history of U.S. alliance management in Asia from the 1960s to the present.
Preston Stone is the Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Stone earned a PhD in English from the University of Miami. They were most recently a lecturer in the department of English and the department of ethnic studies at Santa Clara University. Their work has been featured in Studies in American Fiction and the Journal of Modern Literature. They have been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2025-2026.
New part-time faculty:
New part-time faculty:
- Andrew Bursick
- Wei-Chiang Chen
- Larry Cohen
