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Thirteen faculty members are awarded tenure

The Executive Committee has approved permanent tenure for 13 faculty members, effective July 1, 1995, as follows:

George Apostolakis, newly appointed professor of nuclear engineering in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Dr. Apostolakis received the Diploma in electrical engineering from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece, in 1969 and both the MS (1970) in engineering science and PhD (1973) in engineering science and applied mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Apostolakis became an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1974, associate professor in 1979 and professor in 1983. An expert in reliability and risk assessment of engineering systems, Professor Apostolakis's research activities will focus on areas of risk assessment and management for environmental remediation and nuclear waste disposal, probabilistic risk assessments for nuclear power plants, and organizational factors in engineering systems performance.

Srinivas Devadas, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Devadas received the BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1985, and both the MS (1986) and PhD (1988) from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in 1989, was Analog Devices Career Development Assistant Professor in 1989-91 and was promoted to associate professor in 1992. Professor Devadas is an expert in computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems. He has made contributions to testing, synthesis and low-power computing. His work has provided circuit and system designers with tools for the design of circuits with extremely high levels of quality assurance. His advances have been incorporated into commercial VLSI CAD software.

Deborah Fitzgerald, associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology and Society. A 1978 graduate of Iowa State University, Dr. Fitzgerald completed her studies at the University of Pennsylvania where she received the MA in 1981 and PhD in 1985, both in the history and sociology of science. From 1985-88 she was an assistant professor and head tutor at Harvard. She came to MIT in 1988 as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor and named to the Class of 1956 Career Development Professorship in 1992. Her major research interest lies in the rise of science-based agriculture. Her 1990 book, The Business of Breeding, tracing the development of hybrid corn, is regarded as a basic work on the rise of modern agriculture and agribusiness. She is at work on a new book that looks at agriculture more generally as a mass-production enterprise and is expected to redefine the field of agricultural history.

Karen K. Gleason, associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Gleason received both the SB and SM in chemical engineering from MIT in 1982 and the PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987. She became an assistant professor at MIT in 1987 and associate professor in 1993. She has received Young Investigator awards from both the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation. Professor Gleason does teaching and research in the area of applied physical chemistry. She has established herself as an international leader in the development of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and its application to important problems in the microscopic characterization of solid-state materials. She develops applied NMR spectroscopy and chemical engineering fundamentals to characterize the chemistry and microscopic defects in solid-state materials and to link these properties to processing conditions.

Alan D. Grossman, associate professor of biology in the Department of Biology. Dr. Grossman received the BA degree in biochemistry from Brown University in 1979 and the PhD in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin in 1984. In 1985-88, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology at Harvard University. He became an assistant professor of biology at MIT in 1988 and associate professor in 1992. Professor Grossman has made fundamental contributions in the area of cell-cell communication, intracellular signal transduction and development. His research has focused on the organism Bacillus subtilis, including studies on development of dormant spores in response to nutrient deprivation and development of genetic competence to take up DNA.

Rebecca M. Henderson, associate professor of strategic management in the Sloan School of Management. Dr. Henderson received the SB degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1981 and the PhD in business economics from Harvard University in 1988, the year she joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 1993. With her engineering background, Professor Henderson is regarded as having an excellent instinct for interesting problems. Her principal areas of research are technological strategy, product and process development, the economics of technical change and the failure of established firms in the face of major technological shifts. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals and is currently co-editor of The Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and the Economics of Innovation & New Technology.

Leslie A. Kolodziejski, Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Kolodziejski received all three of her degrees from Purdue University: the BS in 1983, MS in 1984 and PhD in 1986. She was an assistant professor at Purdue in 1986-88 and became an assistant professor at MIT in 1988. She was named Karl R. Van Tassel Career Development Assistant Professor in 1991 and Associate Professor in 1992 before appointment to her present professorship in 1993. Professor Kolodziejski came to MIT with an international reputation for her work on the growth and characterization of II-VI semiconductors. At MIT she has established a unique facility for the epitaxial growth of II-VI and III-V semiconductor structures in a common, ultra-high vacuum system.

Michael Leja, newly appointed associate professor in the Department of Architecture. Dr. Leja received the BA degree in the history of art from Swarthmore College in 1974, the MA from Tufts University in 1979, and the MA (1983) and PhD (1988) in fine arts from Harvard University. He was curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 1976-78 and at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in 1979-81. He was a lecturer at MIT in 1984-85, assistant professor at Northwestern University in 1988-94 and asssociate professor there since 1994. Professor Leja is an art historian whose major work has been about abstract expressionism and whose larger interest is in questions about modernity in culture at large. He is a bridge figure between historians of American art and the historians, critics and theoreticians of contemporary art worldwide. His recent book, Reframing Abstract Expressionism, has been credited with reinvigorating the study of abstract expressionism.

Richard Milner, associate professor in the Department of Physics. Dr. Milner received both the BSc (1978) and MSc (1979) degrees in physics from University College, Cork, Ireland, and the PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1984. He was a research fellow and later a senior research fellow at Caltech from 1985 to 1988, when he joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1993. Professor Milner is an experimental physicist who works in the domain of phenomena bridging what were historically particle physics and nuclear physics. He is one of the world's leading experts in the application of polarized internal target technology to the study of the influence of spin variables upon fundamental phenomena. He leads a broad program of experiments exploiting his expertise with particular focus on the fundamental problem of the spin structure of the neutron and the proton.

Alexander H. Slocum, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Slocum received all three degrees from MIT: the SB in 1982, SM in 1983 and PhD in 1985, when he joined the Department of Civil Engineering as assistant professor. In 1989 he took a leave of absence to become visiting professor at the Cranfield Institute of Technology in England. Upon returning he resigned his faculty position to work as a consultant. In 1991 he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1992. Professor Slocum is a world renowned machine designer, engineer and scholar in the field of precision engineering, a subfield of manufacturing and design. In addition, he was a Presidential Young Investigator. He has two dozen patents and has received two R&D 100 awards for the most technologicaly significant new products in 1994 and 1995. He leads the department's program in precision engineering and is the author of the only widely accepted textbook on precision machine design.

Stephen Van Evera, promoted to associate professor in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Van Evera received the BA degree in government from Harvard University in 1970 and both the MA and PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1984. He taught political science at Tufts University and Princeton University before joining the MIT faculty as assistant professor in 1990. From 1984 to 1987 he was managing editor of International Security. A scholar in international relations, Professor Van Evera's major fields of research have been the causes and control of war, American national security policy and American foreign policy. Volume 1 of his book Causes of War will soon appear and has already been acclaimed as a landmark in the field. In the book, he offers new theories and new evidence to address two ancient questions: why do states go to war, and how can war be prevented?

Andrew J. Whittle, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Whittle received the BSc degree from London University's Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1981 and the ScD from MIT in 1987. He worked as a civil engineer for British Rail from 1977-1982, and was a postdoctoral research associate at MIT from 1987-1988. He became an assistant professor in 1988 and associate professor in 1993. Professor Whittle focuses on the development of constitutive models for soils and their application for solving practical geotechnical problems. His research has enabled the oil industry to improve the designs of pile foundations for deepwater offshore structures. He is currently working on methods for predicting and controlling ground movements associated with deep excavations in clay, which are relevant to projects such as the construction of Boston's new central artery.

Maria T. Zuber, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Dr. Zuber received the BA degree in astrophysics and geology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, and both the ScM (1983) and PhD (1986) in geophysics from Brown University. She was a geophysicist in the Geodynamics Branch of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in 1986-1992. All her previous teaching experience was at Johns Hopkins University. She was visiting assistant professor of geophysics in 1990, associate research professor of geophysics in 1991-92, and since 1993, the Second Decade Society Associate Professor of Geophysics. Professor Zuber is a geophysicist and planetary scientist who has made fundamental contributions in mapping the topography of the Moon and in understanding the mechanics of crustal and lithospheric deformation on Venus, Mars, Earth and Ganymede. She also has made major contributions to the design and implementation of several NASA missions, including the Clementine mission to the Moon. She has received several NASA awards, has served on numerous national committees, and is currently on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 4, 1995.

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