Announcing Office of the Provost Faculty Awardees

Provost Angela Olinto announces award and grant recipients from the Office of the Provost’s award programs, including inaugural Dialogue Across Difference (DxD) grant recipients, to end the 2023-24 academic year.

May 20, 2024

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community,

With the end of the academic year upon us, I am very pleased to recognize many of this year’s recipients of awards and grants from the Office of the Provost’s award programs. The work of these faculty members embodies our shared commitments to advancing research and scholarship, promoting inclusive excellence, and working together in service to the public good. 

I am delighted to announce the 2024 recipients of the Faculty Mentoring Award, the Faculty Service Award, and Junior and Mid-Career Faculty Grants, recognitions awarded annually by the Office of the Provost. In addition, I am excited to share the awardees of the Provost’s Initiative to Support Faculty Cluster HiringSocietal Impact Seed GrantsDialogue Across Difference Grants, Cross Disciplinary Frontiers Courses Awards, and the Bollinger Convenings at the Forum Awards.

2024 Faculty Mentoring Awardees

The Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes senior faculty who have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to developing the careers of tenure-track and mid-career faculty.

Henry P. Monaghan 
Professor of Law
Columbia Law School

Rhiannon Stephens 
Professor of History
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

2024 Faculty Service Awardees

The Faculty Service Award was created to recognize full-time faculty members whose extraordinary and creative voluntary service has contributed significantly to the University’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 

Gita V. Johar
Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business
Columbia Business School 

Elisa Konofagou 
Robert and Margaret Hariri Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Radiology (Physics)
Columbia Engineering

Yamile M. Martí Haidar 
Associate Professor of Professional Practice
Columbia School of Social Work 

Kendall Thomas 
Nash Professor of Law 
Columbia Law School 

Junior and Mid-Career Faculty Grants

These programs offer grant support to further the scholarship of outstanding junior and mid-career faculty who contribute to the diversity goals of the University through their research, teaching, and mentoring activities. The CUIMC Junior Faculty Grant Program offers similar support to faculty at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Fall 2023 Junior Faculty Grants Awardees

Isabel Huacuja Alonso
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
Storied Frequencies: Radio Narratives from South Asia

Natasha C. Johnson
Assistant Professor of Social Work
Psychometrics Development: Understanding Adolescents’ Awareness of Racial Oppression

Erica Lonergan
Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs
Artificial Intelligence and the Implications for International Stability

Naeem Mohaiemen
Associate Professor of Visual Arts 
Artificial Intelligence Photography: Storytelling, Ethics, Machine Learning

Anocha Suwichakornpong
Assistant Professor of Film
FICTION

Bolun Xu
Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering
Integrating Demographic Data to Equitable Energy Infrastructure Access and Electrification Analysis: A New York City Case Study

Spring 2024 Junior Faculty Grants Awardees

Adeyemi Adeleye
Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering
Developing Nanoparticles for Increasing Food Security and Safety

Marco Avella Medina
Howard Levene Assistant Professor of Statistics
User Level Differential Privacy for Longitudinal Data

Santiago Correa
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Advanced Biomaterials for in situ Induction of Tertiary Lymphoid Structures

Bianca Howard
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Developing Socio-Physical Urban Building Energy Models

Tatiana Mocanu
Assistant Professor of Economics
Equity and Efficiency Consequences of Racial Quotas in Hiring

Spring 2024 Mid-Career Faculty Grants Awardees

Shipra Agrawal
Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
On the Long-Term Impact of (Un)fair Pricing

Hiba Bou Akar
Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Sedimentary Urbanization: Displacement, Refugeeness, and the New Geographies of Dead Futures

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs 
Democracy, Citizenship, and the Paperwork State

Michael Slepian
Associate Professor of Business
Everyday Inclusion

Provost’s Initiative to Support Faculty Cluster Hiring

The Provost’s Initiative to Support Fourth Purpose Scholarship aims to accelerate the recruitment of outstanding faculty members who advance the Fourth Purpose of universities—namely, work to bring forward rigorous knowledge and scholarship to societal impact and serve the public good. The following schools received spring 2024 authorizations to pursue faculty hiring: 

Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia School of Journalism
Fourth Purpose Scholarship Initiative

Columbia Climate School
Fourth Purpose Scholarship Initiative

Faculty of Art and Sciences, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences
Fourth Purpose Scholarship Initiative

School of International and Public Affairs
Fourth Purpose Scholarship Initiative

In addition, Columbia’s Department of Psychology was awarded Research Funds to Accelerate STEM Cluster Hiringto support the collaborative research of Professors Dima Amso and Bianca Jones Marlin. Columbia’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Columbia Climate School were also awarded STEM cluster funds to support the collaborative research of Professors Folarin Kolawole and Kristina Douglass.

Fall 2023 Societal Impact Seed Grant Awardees

Societal Impact Seed Grants support innovative faculty-led projects that leverage scholarly research for broader societal impact. 

Indigenous and Locally Led Knowledge Co-Production to Understand Environmental Change
Paige West, Director of the Transdisciplinary Graduate Studies Laboratory, Climate School, and Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College
Michael Petriello, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Center for Science and Society
Ajit Subramaniam, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
Pamela Smith, Seth Low Professor of History

Empowering Rates: Towards an Evidence-Based Equity Toolkit for Utility Pricing
Diana Hernández, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Merlin Chowkwanyun, Donald H. Gemson Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Law School, and Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Climate School

Columbia Morningside Park Pond Project (CMP3)
Marco Giometto, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Adrian Brugger, Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Joaquim Goes, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
William Hunnicutt, Senior Staff Associate in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Alexandra Novak, NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Columbia University Water Center

Leveraging Community Voices for Public Safety Policy
Peter Dixon, Associate Professor of Professional Practice, School of Professional Studies
Geraldine Downey, Niven Professor of Humane Letters, Department of Psychology

Spring 2024 Dialogue Across Difference Seed Grant Awardees

Dialogue Across Difference aims to support new spaces for critical conversations by providing frameworks to promote constructive dialogue and convening forums where we can hold difficult conversations with mutual respect. 

Academic Upheaval in a Time of Geopolitical Conflict
V. Page Fortna, Harold Brown Professor of US Foreign and Security Policy, Department of Political Science and Alexander Cooley, Senior Research Scholar, Harriman Institute and Professor of Political Science, Barnard College

Cultivating Civil Discourse Among Student Leaders
Ovita F. Williams, Lecturer in Discipline, School of Social Work; Andrea White, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture, Union Theological Seminary; and Ericka M. Echavarria, Associate Director of Field Education and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work

The Pedagogy of Listening Symposium
Ovita F. Williams, Lecturer in Discipline, School of Social Work; Amy A. Starecheski, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology; Sayantani Dasgupta, Senior Lecturer, School of Professional Studies; and Elisabeth B. Zapol, Lecturer, Department of Sociology

Race and Health Curriculum Expansion: Leveraging Cultural Humility in Dialogue
Catherine McManus, Assistant Professor of Surgery at CUMC and Angel Rosario, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Surgery

Opinion Essay Write-in
Susan Mendelsohn, Senior Lecturer, Department of English and Comparative Literature and Aaron Ritzenberg, Senior Lecturer, Department of English and Comparative Literature

The Way Out
Peter T. Coleman, Lecturer, School of Professional Studies and Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College

Skill-Building Workshops - Interview Techniques for Intercultural Communications
Eugenia McGill, Senior Lecturer, School of International and Public Affairs; Michael Nutter, David N. Dinkins Professor of Professional Practice, School of International and Public Affairs; Tsuya Yee, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs; Michael Littlejohn, Assistant Dean for Student Life, School of International and Public Affairs and Andrew Heinrich, Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs

Cross-Disciplinary Frontiers Courses at Columbia

Some of Columbia’s most high-impact scholarship emerges when different schools and disciplines collaborate in the classroom. Now in their second year, Columbia Cross-Disciplinary Frontiers Courses awards support faculty from across the University to co-teach courses that bring distinct disciplines together in the classroom and create interdisciplinary opportunities for students.

Persuasion at Scale
Christopher Wiggins, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Systems Biology; and Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Power, Justice, Praxis: Listening Across Difference
Amy Starecheski, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology; and Sayantani Dasgupta, Senior Lecturer, School of Professional Studies

Bollinger Convenings at the Forum at Columbia University 

In honor of President Emeritus Lee C. Bollinger, the Bollinger Convenings highlight Columbia’s commitment to its Fourth Purpose by showcasing innovative initiatives that create societal impact and advance human welfare. 

Food for Humanity: Unlocking the Potential of Universities to End Hunger and Malnutrition Glenn Denning, Professor of Professional Practice, School of International and Public Affairs; and Jessica Fanzo, Professor of Climate; Interim Director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society

Power Uptown: Tackling Energy Insecurity in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx
Diana Hernandez, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences; and Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Law School and Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Climate School; Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Saving Journalism
Anya Schiffrin, Senior Lecturer, School of International and Public Affairs; and Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor

It is a pleasure to recognize the incredible work happening on this campus. From advancing research and discovery to mentoring the next generation of scholars to broadening the diversity of our talent pool and collaborating to create societal impact, all those who make this important work possible deserve our acknowledgement and gratitude. Please join me in congratulating the recipients of these grants and thanking them for their contributions to Columbia and to the world beyond our campus.

All best wishes,

Angela V. Olinto
Provost
Professor of Astronomy and of Physics