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Cornell University

Office of the Assemblies

Spring 2021 Faculty Nominations and Elections Committee Candidate Profiles

Nominations & Elections Committee

  • 3 seats to be filled by members of the University Faculty (including emeriti) for a 3-year term

Ella Diaz, Associate Professor, English and Latina/o Studies (College of Arts and Sciences)

Biography: Ella Maria Diaz is an associate professor of English and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Her book Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History (2017) explores the art, poetry, performance, and political activism of a vanguard Chicano/a art collective founded in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. civil rights era. For this work, Diaz won the 2019 Book Award for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Association (NACCS). Diaz’s second book, published in 2020, is a primer on Chicano artist José Montoya and volume 12 of the UCLA and Chicano Studies Research Center’s A Ver series. Diaz has published in several anthologies as well as articles in English Language Notes (ELN), ASAP/Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Chicana-Latina Studies Journal.   Candidate Statement: I was invited to the position of service by colleagues. I respect faculty senate work. I accepted the invitation. My intellectual interests include 20th century American history and culture; visual studies and cultures, particularly of the U.S. Latinx and Chicana/o diaspora. My courses are heavily cross-listed as I am an interdisciplinary scholar by training (AMST).   Websites of Interest: https://latino.cornell.edu/ella-maria-diaz  

Carla Gomes, Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor, Computer Science (College of Computing and Information Science)

Biography: Carla Gomes is the Ronald and Antonia Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science, with a joint appointment in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Gomes is also the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Edinburgh. Her research is in the area of Artificial Intelligence with a focus on large-scale reasoning, optimization, and machine learning. Gomes has also been deeply immersed in establishing and nurturing the new field of Computational Sustainability.  Computational Sustainability aims to develop computational methods to help solve some of the key challenges concerning environmental, economic, and societal issues in order to help put us on a path towards a sustainable future. Gomes has (co-)authored over 200 publications, which have appeared in venues spanning Nature, Science, and a variety of conferences and journals in AI and Computer Science, including five best paper awards. Her research group has been supported by over $50M in basic research funds. Gomes is the recipient of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Feigenbaum Prize (2021) for “high-impact contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, through innovations in constraint reasoning, optimization, the integration of reasoning and learning, and through founding the field of Computational Sustainability, with impactful applications in ecology, species conservation, environmental sustainability, and materials discovery for energy.” Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).   Candidate Statement: I look forward to contributing to the Nominations and Elections Committee by helping to identify and recommend a diverse pool of highly qualified and proactive candidates for faculty governance positions.   Websites of interest: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/gomes/ https://dyson.cornell.edu/faculty-research/faculty/cpg5/  

Marilyn Migiel, Professor, Romance Studies (College of Arts and Sciences)

Biography: Marilyn Migiel '75 is professor of Romance Studies in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell. Migiel received her A.B. in Medieval Studies (as an independent major) from Cornell University in 1975 and her Ph.D. in Italian Language and Literature from Yale University in 1981. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty in 1987, she taught Italian language and literature at Yale.   Having benefited immensely from her undergraduate study with Cornell faculty who were outstanding teachers and scholars, Migiel is deeply committed to undergraduate education.   While Migiel teaches and works on a wide array of texts and authors from the Italian Middle Ages to the present day, she is known primarily for her feminist readings of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature. Her best-known publication is *A Rhetoric of the “Decameron”* (2003), which received the MLA’s 2004 Howard R. Marraro Prize for outstanding scholarship in Italian. Her book, *The Ethical Dimension of the “Decameron”* (2015) received the MLA's 2016 Howard R. Marraro Prize. Her most recent book, *Veronica Franco in Dialogue*, is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press.   Candidate Statement: As someone who has long been a strong supporter of faculty governance, I look forward to serving on the Nominations and Elections Committee, and to helping to identify a diverse pool of excellent candidates for faculty governance positions.   Websites of interest: https://romancestudies.cornell.edu/marilyn-migiel