Introducing New Members of the Faculty

To help introduce to the Cornell community the new members of the university's faculty, the Cornell Chronicle is publishing brief, new-faculty profiles each week during the semester.

Csaba Csaki

Assistant professor, physics
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Research in the field of elementary particle theory, focusing on physics beyond the Standard Model. The goal of his research is to understand what the plausible theories for physics beyond the Standard Model are, and what their experimental consequences would be. He is focusing on two possible directions: theories with extra spatial dimensions that could lead to new connections between particle physics and gravitational physics; and supersymmetry, which is a new form of symmetries that would relate fermionic and bosonic particles to each other.
Previous position: J. Robert Oppenheimer fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1999-2001.
Academic background: B.Sc., physics, Eotvos University, Budapest, 1993; Ph.D., physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997.

Melissa J. Ferguson

Assistant professor, psychology
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Attitudes, including their sensitivity and flexibility across situations and their impact on subsequent judgment and behavior; the interface of affect, knowledge accessibility and motivation; social hypothesis testing and decision-making.
Previous position: Graduate research assistant, instructor, New York University.
Academic background: B.A., psychology, University of Vermont, 1994; M.S., experimental social psychology, Pennsylvania State University, 1997; Ph.D., experimental social psychology and quantitative psychology, New York University, 2002.

Sabine Haenni

Assistant professor, theatre, film and dance, and American studies
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: American cinema; silent film; mass culture; cinema in the context of other media (including theater); theories of race and ethnicity; immigrant cultures; and urban studies.
Previous position: Assistant professor and Harper-Schmidt fellow, University of Chicago, 1999-2002.
Academic background: Licence ès lettres, English and Russian, University of Geneva, 1991; diploma in American studies, Smith College, 1990; M.A., English, 1993, and Ph.D., English, 1998, both from the University of Chicago.

Van Dyk Lewis

Assistant professor, textiles and apparel
College: Human Ecology
Academic focus: The ethnographic and social psychological aspects of fashion and apparel, with a particular focus in youth subcultures, urban expression, the impact of new technology on fashion and self expression and the fashion media.
Previous positions: Lecturer, apparel design, Cornell, 2001-02; head of fashion, University of Salford, 1997-2001.
Academic background: B.A., fashion, Middlesex Polytechnic, 1983; M.A., 1993, and Ph.D., 2001, both in fashion and textiles, University of Central England.

Hiro Miyazaki

Assistant professor, anthropology
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Research in anthropology of knowledge, ritual production of hope, work of faith in financial markets, evidence, Christianity and tourist art; teaching in ethnography and historical method, anthropology of Japan, work and workplaces, religion and economy and utopia.
Previous position: Postdoctoral associate, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University, 2001-02; visiting assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell, spring 2001.
Academic background: B.A., Sophia University, 1990; M.A., social anthropology, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 1992; Ph.D., anthropology, Australian University, 1998.

September 19, 2002