Please click the positions below to meet the candidates:

 

Professor of History

 

I am a professor of history, which is based in the College of Arts and Sciences. I have been at Cornell since 2005, when I arrived in the history department as an assistant professor. My primary teaching and research fields are in the history of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent. I teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the departments of history, Asian Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

 

I am the author of two academic monographs, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: the making of empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (Cambridge University Press, 2017); and with Dane Kennedy, the co-editor of Decentring Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World (Orient Longman, 2006). In addition to receiving fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge (MA), I am a recipient of the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly prize for mentoring and advising.
   

Since 2018, when I became a full professor, I’ve served two terms on the University Faculty Committee of the Faculty Senate and as a member of the faculty board for Cornell University Press. In addition to co-convening a mentoring group for women faculty in Arts and Sciences, I have also served on a task force to recruit and retain faculty, two working groups that addressed ways to combat anti-racism in the classroom, and a university-wide committee to draft a self-study for the university’s reaccreditation. I have been the director of graduate studies in the history department (2012-14), director of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (2017-2020), and most recently, director of the Humanities Scholars Program (2020-2023), which is open to students across the university and is located at the Society for the Humanities. I have also served on a number of search committees that include the deans of the School of Continuing Education, the Graduate School, the College of Arts & Sciences; and the directors of Cornell University Press and the Einaudi Center for International Studies.

 

In my free time, I am a devoted soccer parent.

 

 In the time since I’ve been at Cornell, the university has significantly advanced its core mission of providing a high-quality education. We have expanded access to financial aid, improved student housing, and developed stronger mechanisms to support students who struggle. The faculty and staff are admirably more diverse because Cornell offers a work environment that promotes innovative research.
   
As a young faculty member in 2008, it seemed that the university’s budget would never recover, and yet, the financial condition is now much better than it once was. As an older faculty member in 2020-21 (and member of the UFC), I watched the university navigate a pandemic by pulling together faculty, staff, and administrators to brainstorm ways to adapt to the effects of a changing virus. These moments of instability underlined the important of having robust processes of shared governance, like having a faculty representative on the Board of Trustees who is knowledgeable about different parts of the university.
   
As faculty, we are frontline workers who connect the different constituencies of the campus – we teach and mentor students, we promote the work of the next generation, we manage programs and departments with the support of staff. Although faculty rarely speak with a singular voice – a feature of having arenas for debate! – it’s important that the faculty trustee represents more than just faculty interests, but rather represents the collective experience of those with whom we work in making Cornell a place that we can all be proud of.

Professor of Physics

 

Robert Thorne is a professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research has been interdisciplinary, exploring low-dimensional electronic materials, challenges in determining biomolecular structures using x-ray and electron-based methods, recovery of ancient inscriptions, and the physics of cryopreservation. In 2004 he founded MiTeGen, LLC, which designs, manufactures, and distributes products for x-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy and is developing technology for assisted reproduction. His Cornell and MiTeGen work have yielded 16 issued and 5 pending patents and products used in laboratories around the world and on the International Space Station. As an educator he has engaged in multiple curriculum development and student support efforts, focusing on large introductory physics courses for non-majors. He established the Physics Department’s Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Program in 2008 and ran it from 2011 to 2018, eventually engaging 80-100 undergraduates per semester in facilitating student learning in several introductory and advanced physics courses. From 2003-2013 he was Physics course director for Cornell’s premedical program in Doha. In the last decade he has served on the Faculty Senate, the A&S and University Educational Policy Committees, the University Faculty Committee, the University Financial Conflicts of Interest Committee, and the University Mental Health Review Committee.

 

I am honored to stand for election as a faculty trustee. I am a first-generation college graduate. I worked through high school and college cutting grass and cleaning toilets and now own a small technology company. I did no teaching or tutoring prior to my hiring as an Assistant Professor and am a Weiss Fellow. I have benefitted from excellent, committed teachers throughout my education - including as a professor at Cornell - and have embraced learning from people that are different from me. I have experienced the power of education to generate upward socioeconomic mobility and how the rich environment of an institution like Cornell can help one to realize one’s ambitions. I have accepted the responsibility that comes with my good fortune, working hard to improve the education of our undergraduates and especially those from less fortunate backgrounds; to improve the functioning of the university to support its pursuit of excellence while addressing institutional, local, and national needs; and to convert academic research into local economic development and good jobs. I am an activist who constantly pushes for change while appreciating that achieving positive change is hard. I believe that our core undergraduate and graduate student educational activities are under-resourced for the challenges of closing large gaps in prior educational opportunity and for providing an increasingly diverse student population with the tools and mindsets needed for future success; and I believe that the most responsible way to secure the required resources is to increase the accountability and efficiency of our administration. If elected faculty trustee, I will work to implement institutional changes that strengthen and diversify our faculty, generate upward mobility for diverse students, and sustain and expand Cornell’s research and economic impact.

Professor of Computer Science

 

Nate Foster is a Professor of Computer Science and a Visiting Researcher at Jane Street. The goal of his research is to develop programming languages and tools that make it easy for to build reliable systems. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University, and a BA in Computer Science from Williams College. His awards include a Sloan Research Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the SIGPLAN Robin Milner Award, the SIGCOMM Rising Star Award, along with several teaching and research awards from Cornell.
   
At Cornell, Nate has enjoyed serving with colleagues from across the university on the Provost’s Task Force to Enhance Faculty Diversity, the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship selection committee, the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity Advisory Group, and the Global Hubs Advisory Group.

 

Over the past few years, the Cornell community has navigated incredible challenges -- from a world-wide public health crisis to disruptions caused by artificial intelligence to political unrest and outright war. In this context, it's become clear the principle of shared governance is as important as ever. For Cornell to truly achieve the greatest good, input from all stakeholders is needed, and especially from the university faculty. I'd be honored to help contribute to this effort by serving on the nominations and elections committee.

​Professor of Law

 

I am the Jonathan and Ruby Zhu Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, and was its Allan R. Tessler Dean from 2004 to 2014. I have been a member of the Cornell Law School faculty since 1983.
   

I grew up in North Carolina and graduated from Swarthmore College before obtaining a J.D. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan. Before joining the Cornell faculty, I clerked for Judge Phillips on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the United States Supreme Court.
  

 My primary research areas are economic analysis of law and employment law. I have been a Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission's Uniform Restrictive Employment Agreement Act and a Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law. I am an editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, a member of the Society of Empirical Legal Studies and the American Law and Economics Association, and the executive director of the Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell. Among other courses, I have taught Torts, Contracts, Corporations, Discrimination Law, Employment Law, Labor Law, Law and Economics, Restrictive Employment Agreements, and Whistleblower Law.
   

My wife Norma recently retired after 15 years as a lawyer in Cornell's Counsel Office. We have eight children, six of whom graduated from Cornell and the others from Ithaca College and SUNY-Geneseo, giving a usefully different perspective on Cornell.

 

I'm a Cornell lifer. I've seen Cornell up close as a faculty member, administrator, parent, and spouse. I have served on the faculty of the law school for more than 40 years. For ten of those years I was also the Law School Dean. Six of my children graduated from Cornell (and one from Ithaca College and another from SUNY-Geneseo, giving refreshingly different perspectives on Cornell). My wife was a lawyer in Counsel's Office for 15 years. To put it mildly, then, Cornell has been central to my career and my family. I have long relished Cornell's complicated diversity, its decentralized structure, its ethos of any person-any study, and its unique combination of Ivy League gravitas and land-grant mission.
   
I readily agreed when asked if I might stand for election as a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee. It is a way of giving back to a university that has given me so much. My goal would be to encourage faculty members from all parts of this university to participate in the faculty governance that is essential to the long-term health of Cornell.
   

Associate Professor of History and Distinguished Associate Professor of Arts and Sciences

 

Peidong Sun holds the position of Associate Professor of History and is also recognized as the Distinguished Associate Professor of Arts & Sciences, specializing in China and Asia-Pacific Studies. Her primary research focus is on the social and cultural history of China post-1949, with particular attention to the lasting influence of Mao Zedong’s Communist revolutions and Deng Xiaoping’s Capitalist reforms on the generation of Xi Jinping. Professor Sun has published extensively on these topics and has been a part of Cornell's faculty since 2021. She is currently working on three books: "Red Genes: How the Cultural Revolution Has Shaped the Xi Jinping Generation," "A Certain Regard for China: Personal Accounts of French Academics Across Generations" (under contract with Routledge), and "Fashion and Politics in China's Cultural Revolution" (under contract with Bloomsbury). Her commitment to the intellectual growth of the humanities is unwavering and she is excited about the potential opportunity to contribute to this growth through service on the Nominations and Elections Committee of the Faculty Senate.

 

As a dedicated history professor at our esteemed institution, I am honored to be considered for a position on the Nominations and Elections Committee of the Faculty Senate. My commitment to fostering a collaborative and dynamic academic environment aligns with the Committee's crucial role in shaping the future of our university's governance. Drawing upon my experience in academia, where meticulous research, objective analysis, and a deep understanding of complex narratives are fundamental, I am well-equipped to contribute to the Committee's mission of identifying and nominating distinguished candidates for our faculty elections and open committee seats.

 

I am particularly enthusiastic about the opportunity to support the Faculty Senate's mandate for shared governance, a principle that resonates deeply with my belief in the importance of inclusive decision-making and diverse representation in our academic community. With a commitment to dedicating the required time and effort, I am eager to provide the Faculty Senate and the University with my dedicated support. I look forward to the possibility of serving on the Nominations and Elections Committee, contributing to its essential work, and playing a part in guiding our institution towards a bright and inclusive future.

Assistant Professor of Government

 

Alexandra (Alex) Domike Blackman is an Assistant Professor in Cornell University’s Department of Government. In 2019-2020, she was a Post-Doctoral Associate at New York University - Abu Dhabi. Her work focuses on religion and politics, the challenges facing female politicians, and political party development in the Middle East. Alex completed her PhD in Political Science at Stanford University.

 

As a Senator-at-Large, I am committed to advocating for the varied interests and concerns of the Cornell Faculty. I am looking forward to learning about and supporting university governance.

Assistant Professor of Biological and Environmental Engineering

 

Dr. Michael Charles (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, an Affiliate Faculty of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and a Faculty Fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. He received his B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) from Cornell University and His M.S. and Ph.D. in CBE from The Ohio State University. As a post-doctoral researcher, he worked at the Newark Earthworks Center at The Ohio State University at Newark studying the history of Land Grant Universities and their relationships to Indigenous Dispossession in North America. His expertise involves developing computational sustainability frameworks that include dynamic ecological models and telling data-driven stories that advocate for underrepresented communities. As a Diné (Navajo) scholar, he’s dedicated to forming mutually respectful partnerships with Indigenous communities. His vision is to combine computational methods with community-centered relationships to translate his research into action.
   
Along with his research, he works with the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change to advocate for Indigenous rights, leadership, and self-determination within UN Climate Negotiations. Michael co-led the first US Indigenous youth delegation to these negotiations in Madrid, Spain. He was honored with a Dreamstarter Grant from Running Strong for American Indian Youth to work on higher education accessibility issues for Navajo high schoolers living on the reservation and was also named a Movement Builders Fellow by the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY). Michael was selected as a Cultural Preservation Ambassador in addressing human trafficking in Native communities and bringing broader awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW). Although his interests and advocacy transcend many disciplines and labels, most of his work is focused on increasing Indigenous representation in academia, policy, and social movements in the pursuit of justice and collective liberation.
   
At Cornell University, the Charles Research Group is particularly interested in the vital role that landscapes can play in addressing complex sustainability challenges and how ecosystem services promote well-being to the human population. The dynamic interactions between these social, ecological and technological elements across space and time continue to provide interesting research challenges in the modeling, simulation, and optimization of such systems.

 

I am committed to building safe and inclusive communities wherever I go and am very aware of what it means to feel vulnerable and invisible through my lived experience as an Indigenous scholar. As a new faculty member, I see this Senator-at-Large opportunity as one to learn about faculty governance and our role in shaping the Cornell community as a place that honors its commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as sustainability. Although I may not bring experience on understanding the inner workings of an institution, I can offer a strong voice in advocating for our Indigenous community on campus, a perspective of Cornell as both a student and faculty member, and a determination to keep Cornell accountable to its mission of "any person, any study".

---

• Azahara Gonzalez

---

• Laura Gunn

Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences and Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management

 

Laura Niemi, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, cross-appointed in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at the SC Johnson College of Business. Before coming to Cornell in 2020, she received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Social Neuroscience from Boston College in 2015, completed an NSF postdoctoral fellowship on the psycholinguistics of morality at Harvard University (2015-2017), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University (2017-2018), and was Assistant Professor of Social Psychology and Global Justice at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (2018-2020). She directs the Applied Moral Psychology Lab at Cornell, where she studies the psychological underpinnings of ethical behavior, judgment, and decision-making using experimental and survey paradigms, large-scale text analysis, psycholinguistics tasks, and neuroscientific approaches. She has published over thirty scientific papers on topics including values, causation, and blame. She is faculty lead of the Minor in Moral Psychology, which includes a community-engaged learning component and coursework options reflecting the breadth of Cornell’s disciplines from the arts and sciences to business and law. She won the Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship in 2022. She is also Director of Leadership Development at the Dyson School, where she is committed to promoting the application of science to ethically relevant issues in the Management and Organizations area.

 

I believe faculty at Cornell do more than facilitate positive learning outcomes for their undergraduate and graduate students. They navigate a changing landscape: changes in students’ expectations, departmental structures, leadership pressures, their field’s priorities -- all while advancing research and advising the academy’s next generation. The voices of faculty navigating these challenges are heard through robust faculty governance, which is the foundation of a vibrant and inclusive academic workplace. I am honored to be nominated and prepared to commit the time and effort to helping foster faculty governance as a Tenure-Track Senator-at-Large.

---

• Alexandra Werth

Associate Professor of Nutritional Science

 

Dr. Julia Finkelstein is Associate Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, College of Human Ecology and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, with joint appointments at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Department of Population Health Sciences, and St. John's Research Institute, St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore, India. She received her Bachelor of Science from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Master of Public Health from Brown University, and Master and Doctor of Science degrees in Epidemiology and Nutrition from Harvard University.
   
Dr. Finkelstein is an epidemiologist with expertise in the design and conduct of randomized trials, cohort studies, and surveillance programs in high-risk obstetric and pediatric populations in resource-limited settings in India, Latin America, and the United States. The Finkelstein Laboratory focuses on the burden and etiology of anemia and maternal and child health outcomes, to develop interventions to improve the health of women and children. Dr. Finkelstein serves as Director of the Maternal and Child Nutrition training program at Cornell, and co-leads the Cochrane Center, Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, and World Health Organization Collaborating Center at Cornell.

 

I am honored to be nominated and to have an opportunity to stand for election for a position on the University Faculty Committee. I have served as a Senator for our division and college since joining the Cornell faculty in 2014. A central part of my work is the synthesis and translation of evidence to policy and practice - working across disciplines, institutions, and countries, to ensure that all voices are heard, and build upon common ground to inform policy and practice. I have a strong commitment to shared governance, and to raising the voice of the faculty to the university leadership and to working collaboratively across disciplines and perspectives to build consensus. I would be honored to serve our faculty on the University Faculty Committee.

Professor of School of Operations Research and Information Engineering

 

Professor Lewis joined Cornell's School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE) as an Associate Professor after spending six years on the faculty at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on dynamic decision-making most often modeled as a Markov decision process. Dynamic control of queues is his most prominent area of focus, but he has also considered transportation, wireless communications, and inventory control in his research.

 

In 2011, Professor Lewis was promoted to full professor and in 2015 he was appointed Associate Dean for Diversity and Faculty Development in the College of Engineering. He was promoted to Senior Associate Dean in 2017. In 2019, Mark began his current role as the Director of the School of ORIE, ended his term as associate dean in January of 2020, and will step down from his directorship in July 2024. He is the recipient of several awards including an honorable mention for the Dantzig Dissertation Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (from the National Science Foundation), the Sloan Foundation mentor of the year and the Zellman Warhaft Commitment to Diversity Faculty Award. In 2019, he was a Black History Month Honoree of Mathematically Gifted & Black. Professor Lewis was elected as the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering and was inducted as an INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Fellow, both in 2021. He was also the recipient of the William H. Kadel Alumni Medal for Outstanding Career Achievement from Eckerd College in 2023.
   
In 2018, at the request of the Provost, Professor Lewis chaired a university-wide committee on Faculty Diversity. The recommendations provided in the report serve as the model for some of the current offerings of the Office for Faculty Development and Diversity.

 

In my time as the (Senior) Associate Dean for Diversity and Faculty Development, I have reviewed more than 85 tenure and promotion cases. I served as the Director of the School of ORIE through the pandemic and a (local) financial crisis. In addition, I have served the university on a wide range of committees including chairing the Committee on Faculty Diversity and being a member of the Working Group F (to consider diversity training for faculty) and the Public Safety Advisory Committee (to review campus security policies), the University Faculty Committee (2021-24) and the Presidential Task Force for Undergraduate Admissions. Each of these have been broadening experiences that I believe provide me a perspective that will be invaluable in continuing to serve on this committee.

Professor of Physics and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

 

I am a Professor of Physics and MAE, currently serving as a faculty senator. I work at the interface between physics, applied mathematics, engineering, and neural science. I build new mathematical models, computational methods, and behavioral experiments to understand the physics and evolution of insect flight.

 

I will strive to make sound judgement on the complex university affairs and look for ways to improve the university through increased faculty engagement.

Professor of Engineering

 

José Martínez is the Lee Teng-hui Professor and current Senior Associate Dean for Diversity & Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering. He is a member of the graduate fields of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Systems Engineering. His research focuses on the design of novel microprocessor architectures and computer systems based on them. He is or has been co-PI and member of the executive leadership of three large-scale ($25M+) research centers.
   

José is a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has received multiple research awards over the years, among them two IEEE Micro Top Picks papers, an HPCA Best Paper Award, MICRO and HPCA Best Paper nominations, an NSF CAREER Award, two IBM and two Qualcomm Faculty Awards, and a Distinguished Educator Award by the University of Illinois’ Computer Science Department (his graduate alma mater).
   

On the teaching side, he has been recognized with two Kenneth A. Goldman ’71 and one Dorothy and Fred Chau MS’74 College of Engineering teaching awards, a Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Teaching Excellence in ECE, thrice as the most influential college educator of a Merrill Presidential Scholar (Andrew Tibbits ’07, Gulnar Mirza ’16, and Angela Jin ’21), and as the 2011 Tau Beta Pi Professor of the Year in the College of Engineering.

 

The UFC is a key pillar of our shared governance model, where leaders are, first and foremost, servants of the university’s constituencies. In my 20+ years on the faculty, I've had the privilege to lead in various capacities. Whether as chair of multiple faculty searches, co-PI of several major research centers, associate director of my department, or most recently as senior associate dean in the College of Engineering, I have found that the best and most durable outcomes often result from efforts with meaningful faculty involvement. My past experience as a faculty member of the University Financial Policies Committee also informs my view that a healthy dialogue between faculty and university leadership is both necessary and productive. As a UFC member, I would endeavor to contribute to the faculty perspective when engaging our university leaders, so that they may serve us effectively.

Professor of Economics