Introducing New Members of the Faculty

To help introduce to the Cornell community the new members of the university's faculty -- almost 60 new tenured or tenure-track faculty members have joined Cornell since July 1 -- the Cornell Chronicle is publishing brief new-faculty profiles each week for the rest of the semester.

Jack W. Bradbury

Robert G. Engel Professor, neurobiology and behavior
College:Agriculture and Life Sciences
Academic Focus:Animal communication and evolution of social behavior. Co-author (with co-worker and wife, Professor Sandra Vehrencamp) of a new, landmark textbook, Principles of Animal Communication. Bradbury is the director of the Library of Natural Sounds at Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology.
Previous position:Associate dean of natural sciences and professor, Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego.
Academic background:B.A., Reed College, Portland, Ore., 1963; Ph.D., Rockefeller University (N.Y.), 1968; and postdoctoral fellow, Rockefeller University and William Beebe Tropical Research Station, Trinidad, 1968-1969.

David Lewis

Assistant professor, architecture
College:Architecture, Art and Planning
Academic focus:Conducting research into the conventions and norms of architecture, with an emphasis on 20th century architecture and theory. Recently he has been engaged in an examination of the logic of surrealism and its potential for constructing a tactic of architectural practice.
Previous position:Partner in architectural design firm Lewis, Tsurumaki, Lewis in New York City.
Academic background:B.A., political science, Carleton College (Minn.); M.A., history of architecture, Cornell, 1992; and M.Arch., Princeton University, 1995.

Katerina D. Papoulia

Assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering
College:Engineering
Academic focus:Computational mechanics regarding infrastructure. Research focuses on the mechanics of elastomeric isolators, used as energy absorption devices for seismic protection. This work emerges from studies of hyperelasticity and finite viscoelasticity and the modeling and simulation of rate dependence and failure of quasibrittle materials (concrete, rock) using plastic-damage and fracture-failure theories.
Previous position:Researcher, Institute of Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering, Thessaloniki, Greece, 1996-1999; senior development engineer, MacNeal-Schwendler Corp., Los Angeles, 1991-1996.
Academic background: Dipl. C.E., National Technical University, Athens, Greece, 1979; M.A., mathematics, and Ph.D., engineering, University of California at Berkeley, 1992.

Michael G. Spencer

Professor, electrical engineering
College:Engineering
Research focus:Research focus is on the development of advanced electronic materials and novel electronic and micro-mechanical devices for high-power, high-temperature and high-speed applications.
Previous position:David and Lucile Packard Professor of Engineering, Howard University.
Academic background:B.S., Cornell University, 1974; M.Eng., Cornell, 1975; and Ph.D., Cornell, 1981.

Szonja Szelenyi

Associate professor, sociology
College:Arts and Sciences
Academic focus:Social inequality, particularly class and gender inequality. One project looks at the long-term trends in gender attitudes; another is a cross-national comparative study that focuses on Eastern European countries and their social transition to a postcommunist society. Author of new book, Equality by Design: The Grand Experiment with Destratification in Socialist Hungary.
Previous position:Associate professor, sociology, University of Wisconsin.
Academic background:B.A., Flinders University of South Australia, 1981; M.S., sociology, University of Wisconsin, 1984; and Ph.D., sociology, University of Wisconsin, 1988.

Sandra L. Vehrencamp

Professor, bioacoustics research and neurobiology and behavior
College:Agriculture and Life Sciences
Academic focus:Evolution of behavior, social organization and communication systems in higher vertebrates, especially birds. Co-author (with co-worker and husband, Professor Jack Bradbury) of Principles of Animal Communication.
Previous position:Professor, Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego.
Academic background:B.A., University of California at Berkeley, 1970; and Ph.D., animal behavior, Cornell, 1976.

October 7, 1999