The Board of Trustees of Williams College voted to promote 16 faculty to the position of associate professor with tenure. Promotions will take effect July 1, 2025, for Zaid Adhami, Religion; Cecilia Aldarondo, Art; Alice Bradley, Geosciences; Anthony Carrasquillo, Chemistry; Graham Giovanetti, Physics; Kathryn Hart, Chemistry; Mark Hopkins, Computer Science; Anne Jaskot ’08, Astronomy; Catherine Kealhofer, Physics; David Loehlin, Biology; Samuel McCauley, Computer Science; Shaoyang Ning, Statistics; Sophie Saint-Just, French; Pallavi Sen, Art; Shikha Singh, Computer Science; and Matthew Tokeshi, Political Science.
Zaid Adhami, Religion
Zaid Adhami is an interdisciplinary scholar of religion working at the intersections of ethnography, the study of Islam, and the study of religion in the U.S., with attention to issues of colonialism, race, gender and identity. He is the author of Dilemmas of Authenticity: Inside the American Muslim Crisis of Faith (in press, University of North Carolina Press), which explores the pervasive anxieties around a “crisis of faith” in U.S. Muslim communities—both in the experiences of individuals who express doubt and disillusionment in relation to their religious belief, and in broader communal discourses about an “epidemic” of Muslims losing their faith. Adhami’s book is simultaneously an ethnographic account, based on extensive fieldwork in Boston, of Muslim experiences of doubt and questioning, and an analysis of public discourses in which influential networks of American Islam address this crisis of faith. Adhami is also a leader in the field of Islamic studies at the national level, having served in a number of key roles in national professional organizations such as the American Academy of Religion. He has become a sought-after speaker, both at Williams and at other institutions. As a scholar working at the intersection of American religion and Islam, Adhami has taught a diverse set of courses at the college, including “Religion in Everyday Life,” “Islam and Reason,” and “‘You do you!’: The Ethics and Politics of Personal Authenticity,” among many others. He has further enriched the college by organizing numerous events and serving on the Faculty Compensation Committee and the Lecture Committee.
Cecilia Aldarondo, Art
Cecilia Aldarondo is a documentary film director, writer, and producer. Her first feature, Memories of a Penitent Heart, deals with the buried family conflict around her uncle’s 1987 death from AIDS. An exploration triggered by the serendipitous encounter with long-hidden documents such as home movies, photographs, letters and other personal effects, the film functions as a meditation on loss and remembrance in the age of AIDS. Memories of a Penitent Heart premiered with four sold-out screens at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016 before going on to screen internationally at more than 30 additional festivals and winning multiple awards. Her next feature, 2020’s Landfall, is an examination of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the U.S. colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance, looking at the kinship of two storms—one environmental, the other economic—and juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Landfall screened at more than 40 festivals and picked up numerous awards. In conjunction with a screening tour, Aldarondo raised more than $15,000 to uplift the work of 10 frontline initiatives in Puerto Rico engaged in community recovery and mutual aid. Her most recent feature film, You Were My First Boyfriend is an artistically daring coming-of-age story that both explores questions of memory and re-imagines the mythical visual language of the American high school movie. At the college, in addition to teaching introductory and advanced courses on documentary filmmaking, Aldarondo has taught such courses as “Art in Times of Crisis” and “HIV + AIDS in Film and Video.” She has served on a range of advisory boards and review panels, and participated as a mentor in emerging filmmakers mentoring programs.
Alice Bradley, Geosciences
Alice Bradley is an expert in the cryosphere, that is, the frozen parts of the Earth. Her observational approaches are innovative in the ways they incorporate data from satellites, remote monitoring buoys and other sources. Among other topics, she has published papers on dynamics of sea ice and annual cycles of freezing and thawing in the Arctic. Bradley contributes as a scholar and a leader in the system design of the process of observing Arctic phenomena, in work funded by the National Science Foundation, and has contributed to more than a dozen white papers and reports on Arctic observation. Closer to home, Bradley is analyzing more than 200 years of climate data for Williamstown. She is a prolific and effective mentor, with many students sharing co-authorship roles on scientific publications and presenting work at conferences. Bradley has taught at all levels of the Geosciences curriculum, giving majors and non-majors alike an understanding of climate science, and she is known for making complex material accessible to all students, creating fun assignments and giving great lectures. Particularly noteworthy is her course “The Cryosphere,” conceived as a Freeman Foote travel course, which this year took students to Iceland during Winter Study 2025. Her service includes supporting the Environmental Studies Program as well as the Geosciences Department, and she has served on the Science Executive Committee, the Campus Environmental Advisory Committee and is the Nordic Ski team Faculty Affiliate.
Anthony Carrasquillo, Chemistry
Anthony Carrasquillo is an atmospheric environmental chemist. His diverse and innovative research agenda focuses on the transitions organic chemicals make between phases; for example, he studies how volatile organic chemicals oxidize, condense and dissolve into water particles. He has several impactful interconnected research programs that explain key factors for modeling air pollution, and has published his work in highly respected chemistry journals. In newer work, Carrasquillo is collaborating with the Environmental Justice Clinic at Williams to study indoor air pollution in Tallevast, Fla., using a community-centric approach. He has involved dozens of Williams students in his research, in a welcoming, inclusive and productive lab program. In the classroom, Carrasquillo is known as a thoughtful, caring and gifted teacher. He has taught key classes in chemistry, such as “Principles of Modern Chemistry,” “Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics” and “The Environmental Fate of Organic Chemicals,” as well as the “Introduction to Environmental Science” course for the Environmental Studies program. He is a highly effective mentor and role model, especially for students with identities underrepresented in STEM fields. Carrasquillo has been extremely active in service on campus, including extensive service both in the Chemistry department and on the Environmental Studies program Advisory Committee. He has served on college-wide committees such as the Campus Environmental Advisory Committee and the Athletics Committee, and he is the Cross Country and Track teams Faculty Affiliate.
Graham Giovanetti, Physics
Graham Giovanetti is a nuclear and particle physicist. His work particularly focuses on the development of sensitive detectors to search for evidence of dark matter; a challenging endeavor that relies on large scientific collaborations, highly technical equipment and off-site, underground laboratories. Giovanetti’s contributions to his field range from large-scale, international collaborations to student-driven research in his lab at Williams. He has published widely in prestigious physics journals and is viewed as a leader in low-background experimental particle physics. His scholarship has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation as well as by a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement. Giovanetti is a highly successful and enthusiastic teacher at Williams, whether he is introducing first-year students to physics in an introductory mechanics or foundations of modern physics course, or teaching upper-level content in vibrations, waves and optics. A strong theme throughout his teaching and mentoring is his ability to express his love of physics in a clear, relevant, and exciting format. His service includes participation on the Health Professions Committee and the Committee on Educational Affairs. Giovanetti is also the faculty advisor to the Williams Robotics Club and leader of the ScienceBlast! activities for high-school students visiting Williams. In addition to his college service, Giovanetti has also been highly active in service to his research community, including serving on a Department of Energy panel.
Kathryn Hart, Chemistry
Kathryn (Katie) Hart is a biochemist working in the area of protein stability. Her work seeks to understand how specific changes in a protein’s sequence are selected via evolution. She focuses on the protein’s stability–its ability to hold its shape and functionality in the presence of destabilizing influences. She also studies the protein’s fitness–its ability to function in a way that confers reproductive fitness on the organism. Her work has been published in multiple high quality chemistry journals, and includes co-authorship with numerous Williams students. Her scholarship has been funded in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Hart teaches courses at all levels of the chemistry curriculum, and is known for her ability to make chemistry accessible to all students, whether or not they intend to move forward in the field. Students and fellow department members describe her teaching as interactive, inquiry-driven and relevant to real-world issues. Her service includes serving as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion coordinator for the chemistry department, as well as participating in the Science Executive Committee, the Faculty Compensation Committee and the Lecture Committee. Within her discipline, Hart serves on the executive board of BioBuilder Educational Foundation, a non-profit organization that strives to increase interest, understanding and engagement in STEM fields by transforming current bioengineering research into teachable modules. She has served as an Early Career reviewer for the Macromolecular Structure and Function study section at the NIH Center for Scientific Review.
Mark Hopkins, Computer Science
Mark Hopkins is a computer scientist who studies machine learning, knowledge representation and uncertain reasoning, particularly as applied to natural language tasks. Hopkins came to Williams after a decade in the private sector and teaching at Reed College, during which time he produced highly influential publications in syntax-based machine translation. He has more recently developed projects around the study of “low-resource languages”–languages that, while central to the lives of many people, lack the large amount of online text that would allow them to be used with most translation algorithms. He is also studying how artificial languages (like “testperanto,” his own creation) can be used to open the black box of language learning algorithms. He has involved students deeply and broadly in his work, giving them the opportunity to contribute to publications at the highest levels of computer science research and to solve meaningful problems. As a teacher, Hopkins is known for combining meticulous preparation with an almost comedic presentation style, as well as being extremely supportive of student learning. In addition to service to his broader professional community by way of conference program committees, closer to home, Hopkins has spoken about ChatGPT at numerous panels and events on campus and in the community and has served on the Honorary Degrees Committee.
Anne Jaskot ’08, Astronomy
Anne Jaskot is an observational astronomer focusing on questions related to the formation and evolution of galaxies. She uses satellite-based telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope to study the reionization properties of nearby and early galaxies. Her scholarship can be found in leading journals in her field, and includes co-authorship with many Williams students. Jaskot also serves as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on more than 20 observing programs. She teaches courses at all levels of the Astronomy curriculum, from “Introduction to Astrophysics” to “Unsolved Problems in Galaxy Evolution.” She is described by students and fellow faculty as thoughtful, passionate, and expansive in her approach to astronomy education. Her service includes ongoing participation in the outreach efforts of the Hopkins Observatory, as well as serving on the Lecture Committee, Inclusive Roundtable discussions and the Science Executive Committee. Jaskot also serves her discipline in a wide variety of roles, including as the Williams representative for the Massachusetts Space Grant Program and the Apache Point Observatory, and via her membership in the NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory Science Sub-Group.
Catherine Kealhofer, Physics
Catherine Kealhofer is a physicist who studies ultrafast processes in condensed matter. She seeks to understand microscopic processes in materials by shining ultrafast electron pulses on those materials and studying how they diffract. To this end, she has constructed an ultrafast electron diffraction apparatus at Williams, the first at a small college. Constructing this device has been painstaking and meticulous work, and Kealhofer has involved Williams students at every step of the process. She and her students published work on a new and more accurate model of how the angles at which electrons diffuse from a tungsten nanotip are influenced by factors such as the wavelength of the laser used. Kealhofer received a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement in 2020, which also supported her development of innovative assignments for her modern physics courses. She is known as an exceptionally effective mentor of research students and a highly dedicated and effective teacher. Her classes include “Sound, Light, and Perception” (catering to non-majors), classes in modern physics, “Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism,” and the “Applications of Quantum Mechanics” tutorial. Kealhofer cultivates a welcoming and inclusive classroom atmosphere that gets students excited about the material; her students report working hard and having rewarding experiences. Catherine has served on the Faculty Compensation Committee, the Committee on Diversity and Community, and the Standing Grievance Panel at Williams, and has contributed to initiatives across the physics profession to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
David Loehlin, Biology
David Loehlin is a geneticist who studies fundamental questions at the interface of gene expression and evolution. His primary focus is understanding the expression consequences of tandem gene duplication, in which a mutation that duplicates a segment of DNA results in two copies of a gene, one next to the other. These genes are important to our understanding of disease and of evolution. His scholarship has been published in a variety of respected journals, and includes multiple Williams students as co-authors. His work has been supported by a competitive R15 grant from the National Institutes of Health, as well as by a Hellman Fellowship. Loehlin teaches a variety of courses on genetics that range from introductory to highly specialized topics such as “RNA Worlds,” “Genomes: Structure, Function, and Evolution,” and “Evolutionary Genetics.” His colleagues and students praise his attention to course design, class organization and his enthusiasm in class. Loehlin’s service includes participating on the Honor and Discipline Committee, the Winter Study committee and the Standing Grievance Panel. Within Division III, he has served on the Divisional Research Funding Committee and on the BIMO (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) and BiGP (Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Proteomics) program advisory committees.
Samuel McCauley, Computer Science
Samuel (Sam) McCauley is a computer scientist working in the area of algorithms and data structures. His work focuses on problems that fit squarely within the subfield of theoretical computer science, with the added bonus that he produces algorithms and data structures that are practical and designed to solve real-world problems. McCauley’s work has been published in a number of significant computer science outlets, and includes multiple co-authorships with Williams students. His scholarship has been funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). McCauley teaches a variety of courses, including those focused on introductory data structures and programming as well as specialized topics on algorithms and algorithmic design. His colleagues and students describe him as a thoughtful instructor with both theoretical and practical expertise who cares deeply about the success of his students. His service to the college includes serving on the Science Executive Committee, the Honorary Degrees Advising Committee and the Information Technology Committee. Beyond Williams, McCauley has served on several program committees and an NSF review panel.
Shaoyang Ning, Statistics
Shaoyang Ning is a statistician who develops and deploys techniques for integrating and analyzing varied forms of “big data” that come from different sources and have different characteristics, often to study human health. Much of his early work used computational biology methods to study cancer and pharmaceuticals. More recently, Ning has focused on the use of internet search data to study the spread of COVID-19, flu, and HIV/AIDS as well as to better understand trends in unemployment, publishing in high profile journals in statistics as well as journals that reach broader scientific audiences. He also has exciting new projects on social justice and causal inference. Ning’s rigorous methodologies help shed light on issues of pressing human importance, often delivering answers more quickly than traditional approaches. He has taught at all levels of the statistics curriculum, from “Elementary Statistics” to “Bayesian Statistics.” His courses feature thoughtful course design that is responsive to student needs. Ning uses varied modes of instruction to keep engagement high and ensure that all students feel supported while they learn valuable skills and new ways of thinking. He has contributed to the Williams community by serving on the Honor and Discipline Committee and the Committee on Educational Affairs. In addition, he is collaborating on the Access in Athletics project to study athletic recruitment at Williams.
Sophie Saint-Just, French
Sophie Saint-Just is a scholar of Francophone and Creolophone Caribbean film and literature. Her scholarship draws on a range of theoretical approaches, including cultural theory, postcolonial theory and migration, Caribbean diaspora and film studies to examine the work of such Haitian and French Caribbean filmmakers as Euzhan Palcy, Fabienne and Véronique Kanor, Guy Deslauriers, Marie-Claude Pernelle, and Raoul Peck. She has recently completed a book manuscript titled Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres: A Landmark Martinican Film, which constitutes the first book-length student of the only French Caribbean film to achieve both national and international success. Saint-Just’s work includes not only a close analysis of the film, but also extensive archival research and personal interviews (including with Palcy herself). Sophie has also co-edited a volume titled Raoul Peck: Power, Politics and the Cinematic Imagination (Lexington Books, 2015), in addition to publishing a range of other scholarly articles and reviews. Saint-Just’s teaching at Williams has focused on French language, literature and film. In addition to teaching language at every level, she has offered such courses as “The Outsider in French and Francophone Film Adaptations of Literary Texts,” “Black France/La France noire” and “Haitian and French Caribbean Literatures and Films,” among others. These courses have brought unprecedented diversity to the college’s French and Francophone curriculum through the media, geographies and topics they cover. Saint-Just has further enriched the college by serving on the Committee on Diversity and Community and bringing in numerous visiting scholars, authors and filmmakers.
Pallavi Sen, Art
Pallavi Sen is an artist working in a broad range of media, from painting, prints and textiles, to video, landscapes and gardens. Her project Experimental Greens has included not only paintings and photographs, but living installations. Working together with students and staff at the college, Sen transformed the outdoor space on Prospect Hill, behind the Spencer Art Building, into a wildflower meadow that has become a lively hub of activity for plants, people and animals. It also serves as a pedagogical space that students and faculty use for observation, drawing and photography. Another iteration of Experimental Greens was part of the 2023 exhibit Human Ecology: Eight Positions at the Clark Art Institute’s Lunder Center. Titled Trellis Composition, it focused on vining plants adapted to extreme heat and their interactions with fences and trellises. The installation drew visitors into a space almost overwhelmed with life; it both reinforced and questioned the relationship between humanity and cultivated flora. Sen has exhibited other works in galleries in Massachusetts, Mexico City, Bombay and New Orleans, among other locations. She has recently served as the Dean of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. At the college, Sen has taught courses ranging from “Drawing Dreaming” and “Multiples! An Introduction to Printmaking” to “Linocuts!” and “Quilty!” She has entirely redesigned the college’s print shop to move away from toxic materials and created a new natural dyes lab. She has also served on numerous committees, including the Campus Environmental Advisory Committee and the Faculty Steering Committee.
Shikha Singh, Computer Science
Shikha Singh is a theoretical computer scientist focusing on algorithms and data structures. She is particularly interested in analyzing the applicability and versatility of existing models used to solve algorithmic problems, and asking whether they can be adapted–using practical insights–to develop simpler and faster algorithms. Singh’s work has been disseminated in a variety of field-relevant outlets, including at the Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems and the European Symposium on Algorithms. Multiple Williams students have served as co-authors on this work, some of which has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Singh’s teaching includes “Introductory Computer Science,” as well as upper-level courses on algorithm design and analysis, and algorithmic game theory. Colleagues and students appreciate Singh’s ability to inspire students’ curiosity and passion by infusing her courses with real world applications and discussions of her research. Singh’s service to the college includes advising both Women in CS (WiCS) and Underrepresented Identities in CS (UnICS), and serving on the Committee on Community and Diversity as well as the Science Executive Committee. Beyond Williams, Singh has served on the program committees for numerous flagship conferences in her field.
Matthew Tokeshi, Political Science
Matthew (Matt) Tokeshi studies American politics, with a focus on how racial attitudes play into public opinion and voting. Tokeshi’s most significant work to date is Campaigning While Black: Black Candidates, White Majorities, and the Quest for Political Office (Columbia University Press, 2023), which asks, why do Black Americans so rarely attain the highest elected offices in the United States, and how can Black candidates effectively respond to racialized campaign attacks? Tokeshi’s focus in the book is campaigns for senator and governor, and he deploys an impressive array of techniques in this research, including statistical analysis of polling data, content analysis of news articles, surveys and experiments. He shows that racial prejudice affects elections, that racial stereotypes are often deployed in campaigns against Black candidates and, importantly, that Black candidates can neutralize racialized campaign attacks with well-engineered responses. Tokeshi’s latest research program investigates the racial politics of Asian Americans. He is an effective and respected instructor praised for his thoughtful selection of topics and material in a variety of courses, including “Power, Politics, and Democracy in America,” “Racial and Ethnic Politics in America,” “Political Psychology” and “Immigration Politics in the U.S.” Tokeshi has served the Williams community in many ways, including through the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid and the Faculty Compensation Committee.
Published January 29, 2025