New faculty

Introducing New Members of the Faculty

To help introduce to the Cornell community the new members of the faculty, the Cornell Chronicle will be publishing brief, new-faculty profiles through December.

Aquino

Francis

Klonner

Lee

Molinari

Wilkins Aquino

Assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering
College: Engineering
Academic focus: Health monitoring of structures through sensing and modeling techniques. Development of material models from non-uniform distribution of state variables by using autoprogressive neural networks (self-learning numerical models). Application of autoprogressive neural networks to obtain numerical models of biomaterials from medical images. Response of structures to blast loads.
Previous position: Senior engineer, engineering mechanics and infrastructure division, Simpson Gumpertz and Heger Inc., Waltham, Mass., 2002-03.
Academic background: B.S. civil engineering, Purdue University, 1997; M.S., 1999, and Ph.D., 2002, both in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Last book read: Trujillo: La Tragica aventura del poder personal (Trujillo: The Tragic Adventure of Personal Power) by Robert Crassweller.

Paul Francis

Associate professor, computer science
College: Engineering
Academic focus: Computer networking, including peer-to-peer applications, overlay networks (especially multicast), network host proximity, Internet scaling, and IP mobility.
Previous position: Instructor, Cornell Department of Computer Science. Earlier, chief scientist at two high-tech startups, Tahoe Networks and Fast-Forward Networks.
Academic background: B.S., electrical engineering, Colorado State University, 1980; Ph.D., computer science, University College London, 1994.
Last book read: Carter Beats the Devil: A Novel by Glen David Gold.

Stefan Klonner

Assistant professor, economics
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Economic development, specifically informal financial arrangements in developing countries, regional focus on Southern India.
Previous position: Postdoctoral fellow and visiting lecturer, Yale University, 2001-03; lecturer, Universität Heidelberg, 2003.
Academic background: B.A., economics, Universität Heidelberg, 1995; M. Stat., statistics and econometrics, University of Utah, 1996; Ph.D., economics, Universität Heidelberg, 2001.
Last book read: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil.

Kwangwon Lee

Assistant professor, plant pathology
College: Agriculture and Life Science
Academic focus: Through rice research, to understand the role of the environment and the circadian clock in plant-microbe interaction. Seeking to learn how plant pathogens sense the ambient environment and prepare the change of the environment through circadian regulation. Once understood, he hopes this will lead to a more-efficient plant disease control strategy.
Previous position: Post doctoral fellow, Dartmouth Medical School, molecular genetics and genomics, 1997-2003.
Academic background: B. Eng., genetic engineering, University of Suwon, 1989; M.S., biological science, Chicago State University, 1991; Ph.D., plant pathology and microbiology, Texas A&M University, 1997.
Last book read: Experiencing God by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King.

Francesca Molinari

Assistant professor, economics
College: Arts and Sciences
Academic focus: Theoretical and applied econometrics; estimation and inference in presence of contaminated, corrupted, and missing data; data quality evaluation; and survey design.
Previous position: Ph.D. candidate and research assistant, Northwestern University, 2002-03.
Academic background: B.A., economics, University of Turin, 1997; M.A., economics, Coripe-Piemonte and University of Turin, 1998; Ph.D., economics, Northwestern University, 2003.
Last book read: Partial Identification of Probability Distributions by Charles F. Manski.

October 16, 2003