Eric Wilcots, the Dean of the College of Letters & Science, called the event “a celebration of pure fun.” On Tuesday, October 28, a group of 33 L&S faculty members gathered at the Hamel Music Center to acknowledge and celebrate achieving tenure, one of the major milestones in a professor’s career.
Wilcots, the Mary C Jacoby Professor of Astronomy, presided over the ceremony, which saw honored faculty members feted by their department chairs while receiving framed certificates marking their achievement.
“Tenure should not be thought of as a beginning or end, but rather a turning point in a scholar’s life,” Wilcots said in his opening remarks. “That life began when someone or something lit the spark that led each of our tenured faculty members to pursue a path of passionate discovery and knowledge. The granting of tenure recognizes our colleagues as the people to whom we entrust the future of this academic institution.”
Twenty-three L&S faculty members, representing each of the four branches of the College, were granted tenure. Ten addition faculty members who had earned tenure at other institutions before joining UW-Madison, were also honored.
In addition to receiving tenure, Sarah Ensor of the Department of English was awarded the 2025 Phillip R. Certain & Gary D. Sandefur Distinguished Faculty Award. The award, named for two previous Deans of the College of Letters & Science, supports and recognizes outstanding teaching.
We salute the following newly tenured members of the College of Letters & Science faculty:
Reginold Royston, associate professor in the Department of African Cultural Studies, and the Information School
Royston examines technoculture in Ghana and the role of the diaspora in African digital media — in areas such as development, music and artificial intelligence. His work in the digital humanities explores the new media orality of viral dances, and podcasting. He has been doing qualitative research on digital media since 2008, initially inspired by his years as a reporter and graphics editor at National Geographic, Village Voice Media, and Knight Ridder newspapers. His first book, Pan-African Futurism: Ghana and the Paradox of Technology for Development, was published by the University of California Press in 2025.
Darshana Sreedhar Mini, associate professor in the Department of Communication Arts
Mini is the author of Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (UC press, 2024) and co-editor of South Asian Pornographies: Vernacular Formations of the Permissible and Obscene (Routledge, 2024) and The Intellect Handbook of Adult Film & Media (Intellect Books, Forthcoming 2026). Rated A has won awards from the American Institute of Indian Studies, Modern Language Association, and National Communication Association. Her research interests broadly include South and Southeast Asian Media, Feminist Media, Global Media Cultures and Migrant Media. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Communication, Culture & Critique, Film History, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, South Asian Popular Culture and South Asian Film & Media.
Caroline Niziolek, associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Niziolek directs the Brain, Language, and Acoustic Behavior Lab at the Waisman Center. She is additionally a faculty member of the Language Sciences Program and a faculty trainer in the Neuroscience Training Program. Her research investigates how the brain coordinates auditory and motor signals to produce spoken language, combining neuroimaging with the acoustic analysis of speech.
Rahul Chatterjee, associate Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences
Chatterjee’s research focuses on designing technologies that are safer, more private, and more secure for everyday users. Much of his recent work investigates how technology is weaponized in contexts of intimate partner violence and stalking, and how to design interventions that empower survivors. In 2021, he founded the Madison Tech Clinic (MTC), one of the first academic–community partnerships dedicated to helping domestic violence survivors navigate technology-facilitated abuse. Rahul’s research has been recognized with awards. His work has influenced policy discussions on digital abuse and has been featured by The New York Times, Global News, Wisconsin Public Radio, and MIT Technology Review. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Cornell University and his MS at UW–Madison.
Sharon Li, associate professor in the Department of Computer Sciences
Li’s broad research interests are in deep learning and machine learning. Her research focuses on algorithmic and theoretical foundations of reliable machine learning, addressing challenges in both model development and deployment in the open, uncertain world. Previously, she was a postdoc researcher in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. She completed her PhD from Cornell University. She is serving as the Program Chair for ICML 2026. Li was the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2025), NSF CAREER Award (2023), MIT Innovators Under 35 Award (2023), AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2022), Forbes 30under30 in Science (2020), and multiple faculty research awards from Google, Meta, and Amazon. She was named the “Innovator of the Year 2023” by MIT Technology Review. Her works have won the Outstanding Paper Award at NeurIPS 2022 and ICLR 2022.
Shivaram Venkataraman, associate professor in the Department of Computer Sciences
Venkataraman’s research interests are in designing systems and algorithms for large scale data analysis and machine learning. His work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER award, SIGMOD Systems award, Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award, VMWare Early Career Award and multiple SACM Student Choice Professor of the year awards.
Sarah Ensor, associate professor in the Department of English
Ensor’s research and teaching focus on queer theory, the environmental humanities, and American literature. Her first book, Queer Lasting: Ecologies of Care for a Dying World (NYU Press, 2025), asks what contemporary environmental thought’s seemingly necessary emphasis on the future has rendered unthinkable, and looks to queer scenes of futurelessness for grammars of care and continuance that emerge “at the last”: at the end of life, at the end of a family line, at the end of the future itself. Currently, she is at work on a book that considers the specific function of queer pedagogy amidst the climate of extinction attending higher education today. Her commitment to her students was recognized with the 2024 Chancellor’s Inclusive Excellence Teaching Award. Before arriving in Madison, she was Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University and the University of Michigan.
Sarah Ensor is the 2025 Phillip R. Certain & Gary D. Sandefur Distinguished Faculty Award recipient.
Christian Gerardo Andresen, associate professor in the Geography Department
Andresen focuses on Earth system processes with a particular interest in how landscapes are changing under the effects of climate change and how these changes influence land-atmosphere carbon fluxes. He uses a combination of field measurements, drones, and satellites to assess landscape changes over space and time. His research focuses in the Arctic as well as Wisconsin's coastal and forested lands. His current projects encompass understanding the role of vegetation in mitigating soil erosion in Lake Michigan, characterizing and measuring carbon hotspots from permafrost thaw, and quantifying methane emissions from Arctic wetland ponds. He is recipient of the NSF CAREER award and he runs the EarthSense Lab, a team of undergraduate and graduate students. His work not only drives innovation in environmental research but also trains the next generation of scientists to tackle urgent global challenges.
Christopher Zahasky, associate professor in the Department of Geoscience
Prior to coming to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zahasky was a postdoctoral scholar at Imperial College London and Stanford University. He completed his PhD and MSc degrees in Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University and his BS degree in Geology at the University of Minnesota. His research interests aim to understand hydrogeologic processes in geologic systems across length and time scales. His approach is focused on understanding fundamental physics and mechanisms of fluid, colloid, and solute transport by integrating experimental observations with analytical and numerical models. Originally from Black River Falls, Wisconsin, he is committed to the Wisconsin Idea by advancing both fundamental research and its applications to groundwater resources and energy systems in Wisconsin.
Katerina Somers, associate professor in the Department of German, Nordic and Slavic+
Somers, a historical linguist who studies the history of the German language, is the author of two books, From Phonology to Syntax: Pronominal Cliticization in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch and How to Create an Early German Scriptus: The Literization Approach to Historical German Syntax. Katerina has also published articles in numerous journals, including the Journal of Germanic Linguistics, Transactions of the Philological Society, and Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik. She has begun writing her third book, Translation, Prose, and the Literization of German in the Middle Ages, which urges linguists to abandon structural approaches to the study of medieval languages and focus instead on understanding each work as a textual artifact produced in a particular sociocultural setting and for a particular purpose. Katerina is currently a Resident Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities.
Adam Stern, associate professor of German and Jewish Studies, belonging to the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ and the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies
Stern’s first book, Survival: A Theological-Political Genealogy, was published with the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021. Recent articles have appeared in journals such as CR: The New Centennial Review, Modern Intellectual History, and Critical Times. He is currently working on a synthetic genealogy of the Jewish settler.
Gloria McCahon Whiting, E. Gordon Fox Associate Professor of History
Whiting earned her BA at Rice University and her PhD at Harvard University. Here at UW-Madison, she has received numerous awards for her courses on early American history, and her scholarly work has been featured in a variety of journals, including the Journal of American History, the William and Mary Quarterly, and Slavery & Abolition. For the past five years, she has been at work on a public-facing digital humanities project on slavery, liberty, and the American Revolution. She published her first book with the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024. Titled Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England, the book has won four prizes, been short-listed for a fifth, and is a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Award for outstanding book on slavery, freedom, or abolition.
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, associate professor in the Department of History
Meléndez-Badillo is a historian of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Puerto Rico: A National History (Princeton University Press, 2024). He is also the author of The Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2021) and Voces libertarias: Orígenes del anarquismo en Puerto Rico (Secret Sailor Books, 2013). He is also the co-editor of Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies, forthcoming with Duke University Press in 2026. Alongside Professor Aurora Santiago Ortiz, he received a three-million dollar Mellon Grant to create the Puerto Rican Studies Hub on campus.
Katie Drerup, associate professor, Department of Integrative Biology
Drerup earned both her undergraduate and master's degrees at Bowling Green State University, followed by a PhD in Neuroscience at Northwestern University in 2009. She then moved to Oregon Health and Science University for her post-doctoral training where she began her work on neuronal cell biology. Following her postdoctoral work, Katie established her independent lab at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a part of the NIH intramural research program. In 2021, Katie moved her lab to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research group investigates fundamental questions in neuronal cell biology to better understand how to first form and then maintain a functional nervous system.
Jose Israel Rodriguez, associate professor, Department of Mathematics
Rodriguez began his tenure-track position at UW-Madison and was awarded the Nellie McKay Fellowship in Fall 2020. Prior to his time at Madison, he had an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame and was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he became a McNair Scholar. After earning a BS in pure math, he began the PhD program at University of California, Berkeley. There he was awarded a Chancellor's Fellowship. His doctoral research focused on applied algebraic geometry, including the use of Dixon determinants for spherical parallel mechanisms and computational algebra for maximum likelihood estimation. Jose’s research continues to make contributions to algebraic geometry and its applications. This is supported by the Sloan Foundation, WARF, and the NSF.
Jean Laurenz, associate professor of trumpet, Mead Witter School of Music
Laurenz is an eclectic musician who loves variety and collaboration. She has enjoyed appearances with Adele, Kanye West, and Yo-Yo Ma. Her favorite genre is chamber music, and she has recorded with Seraph Brass, The Knights, and with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Jean is also a stage performer and vocalist who curates multi-layered interdisciplinary performances which combine music, theater, and sensory arts. She recently developed an award winning musical film and multi-media work, DESCENDED. Jean holds degrees in trumpet performance and choral education from Yale University and Northwestern University, respectively. She is a passionate educator and has loved working as a teaching artist. Her work with Handel & Haydn Society and Carnegie Hall has connected her to students and community groups in Boston, Chicago, and New York City. Jean has curated children’s shows for both Carnegie Hall and the Boston Symphony, and she was a fellow with META (Music Educators and Teaching Artist).
Alicia Lee, associate professor of clarinet in the Mead Witter School of Music
Prior to her appointment at UW-Madison, Lee was a resident of New York City for over a decade where she performed and toured regularly as a freelance musician. Lee is a founding member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. Founded on the principles established during their time as fellows in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect program, Decoda's pursuits place equal emphasis on artistry and community engagement. She is also a member of the composer/performer collective, NOW Ensemble with whom she has premiered dozens of new works written for the ensemble. She has performed at the Marlboro, Lucerne, Spoleto, Yellow Barn, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals. Lee has held positions with the Santa Barbara Symphony and the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway. She holds degrees from Columbia University, the University of Southern California, and The Colburn School.
Ke Fang, associate professor, Department of Physics
Fang joined UW-Madison and the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center in 2021. Before that she was a NASA Einstein Fellow at Stanford University and a Joint Space-science Institute Fellow at University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2015. Her research focuses on exploring the universe through its most energetic messengers, including high-energy neutrinos, gamma rays, and ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. She works on both the analysis of observational data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory, and on theoretical modeling of astroparticle sources using numerical simulations. She has received several prestigious honors, including the Shakti Duggal Award for early career contributions in cosmic ray physics, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Sloan Research Fellowship.
Edna Ely-Ledesma, associate professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture
Ely-Ledesma, the Director of the Kaufman Lab for the Study and Design of Food Systems and Marketplaces, holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Science from Texas A&M University, Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and Bachelor of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University. She is a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow. The corpus of her research, teaching, and mentoring focuses on understanding the development of the smart, green, and just 21st century city, in particular, the cultural landscapes of immigrant populations, micro-economies, and their development of a new understanding of city place. Her work seeks to bridge the gap between communities and city governments to help define the design agency of Latinos, a traditionally under-represented group.
Revel Sims, associate professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture and the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program
Sims obtained his PhD in 2014 from the Department of Urban Planning at University of California Los Angeles. His dissertation, “It Was Like Dancing on a Grave”: Eviction and Displacement in Los Angeles 1994 to 1999, is an analysis of displacement during the pivotal decade of the 1990s that employs a spatial analysis of over 70,000 eviction cases. The findings exposed four distinct concentrations of displacement in Los Angeles during the period and provide a basis for the argument that while everyday displacement can form a major part of urban experience bringing together systems of racialization, tenure, and finance, displacement remains generally under-analyzed within urban theory, research, and policy.
Adeline Lo, associate professor, Department of Political Science
Lo researches the factors that motivate or mitigate conflict between groups, with an eye towards investigating migrant inclusionary politics. Her research has led her to work with and construct tools for observational, text, experimental and network data. She also designs statistical tools for inference, prediction and measurement for applied social science data. Recently, she has been working on a larger project dedicated to understanding how modern media, especially television news, represents refugee stories, and how these representations can influence native inclusionary politics. She is also working on statistical techniques that can be adapted to image and video news. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, Political Analysis and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She currently serves as an Associate Editor to the journal Political Analysis.
Jooyoung Kong, associate professor, Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work
Kong’s research takes a life course approach to examining the long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences on later-life outcomes, including health, intergenerational caregiving, and elder abuse victimization. She currently employs mixed methods to examine how childhood trauma shapes adult children’s caregiving for aging parents. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and published in leading journals such as The Journals of Gerontology: Series B and Journal of Marriage and Family. She also contributes to the fields of trauma and gerontological social work through editorial board service and professional engagement.
Vivak Patel, associate professor, Department of Statistics
Patel received his PhD in statistics from the University of Chicago, following earlier studies that included a BS in Physics from Rutgers University and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the intersection of computing and uncertainty: he develops computational methods that leverage uncertainty to speed up calculations in statistics and data science; and he develops methods that are tractable for computational problems in statistics and data science with inherent uncertainty. Vivak's service work focuses on creating pipelines for advancing the statistics and data science workforce and advancing the nation's cyberinfrastructure to enable large-scale science and engineering.
2025 Honored Faculty Previously Tenured Elsewhere:
Andrea Lopez Lang, associate professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Lopez Lang’s research focuses on understanding the drivers of predictability and variability in extreme weather events. She leads a group working on problems at the intersection of foundational and applied research in atmospheric dynamics. Her expertise has led to leadership roles, including serving as a board member of the National Academies Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate, as a Councilor of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and as chair of the AMS Board on Enterprise Economic Development. Beyond research, she is dedicated to bridging the gap between student academic experiences and career opportunities for atmospheric scientists. She organized the NSF-sponsored "Mind the Gap" Workshops, which bring together leaders from academia and the private sector to address the challenges of educating the next generation of atmospheric scientists for careers in industry.
Jodi Schneider, associate professor, Information School
Schneider’s long-term research goal is to ensure that public policy decisions can apply the best available scientific evidence. Information quality is a particular focus of Dr. Schneider's research, using methods from argumentation theory, data science, and semantic web technologies. Her Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded project Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science led to a new industry information standard for communicating retractions of research. Her work has also been funded by the NIH, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the European Commission, Science Foundation Ireland, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and an NSF CAREER award. Currently she serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus committee on Corrections and Retractions: Upgrading the Scientific Record.
Jason Delborne, associate professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs
Delborne is an interdisciplinary social scientist who focuses on the governance of emerging biotechnologies for conservation. He joined the La Follette School of Public Affairs in January 2025 after completing a year-long AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship in Washington, DC at the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. Jason began his academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison (2006-08), followed by faculty appointments at Colorado School of Mines (2008-13) and North Carolina State University (2013-2024). At UW-Madison he joined the Steering Committee for the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and was recently appointed Director of Graduate Programs at La Follette.
Amber Wichowsky, associate professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs
Wichowsky holds the Leadership Wisconsin Endowed Chair for the Division of Extension. Her research explores how individuals and communities engage contentious and complex public issues and the social and institutional contexts that shape their civic engagement. She is the co-author of The Economic Other: Inequality in the American Political Imagination, which received the Juliette and Alexander L. George Outstanding Political Psychology Book Award from the International Society of Political Psychology in 2021. Professor Wichowsky currently serves on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review, on the advisory board of American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER), and on the academic advisory board for CivicPulse. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University’s Center for the Study of American Politics.
Edward Klorman, associate professor of music theory, Mead Witter School of Music
Klorman is a violist and scholar active at the intersection of music analysis, historical musicology, and music performance. His first book, Mozart’s Music of Friends: Social Interplay in the Chamber Works, explores metaphors of sociability and "conversation" in the performance of Mozart's chamber music. It received major awards from ASCAP, the Mozart Society of America, and the Society for Music Theory. His second book, Bach: The Cello Suites (Cambridge, 2025) explores how the composer's six suites for unaccompanied cello—once dismissed as historical curiosities— have come to occupy such a prominent place in both concert life and popular culture. Edward Klorman has published and lectured widely at conservatories, universities, and music festivals across North America, Europe, and Asia. An accomplished violist, he has performed as guest artist with the Borromeo, Orion, and Ying Quartets and on baroque viola with Arion Orchestre Baroque and the Berkshire Bach Society.
Dan Hooper, associate professor, Department of Physics
Hooper is a particle astrophysicist and cosmologist, specializing in the areas of dark matter, neutrino astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy, and cosmic ray physics. He is the author of several books, including Dark Cosmos: In Search of our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy (2006), Nature’s Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unifi ed Theory of Matter and Force (2008), At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds (2019), and Particle Cosmology and Astrophysics (2024). He also co-hosts the podcast "Why This Universe?" In September of 2024, he became the director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center.
Britton Plourde, associate professor, Department of Physics
Plourde received a PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2000 studying vortex dynamics in superconductors. From 2000 to 2004, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked on experiments with superconducting flux qubits. He was on the faculty at Syracuse University since 2005 where he established a low-temperature research lab investigating various aspects of superconducting circuits for quantum information processing. Plourde joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2024 and started working with Qolab, a Madison-based quantum computing startup company. Some of his key contributions to the field include investigations of decoherence mechanisms and mitigation techniques for improved qubit performance and development of tools for scalable qubit control and readout. He is a Fellow of IEEE and the American Physical Society, and he received a CAREER award from the NSF and an IBM Faculty Award.
Matt Pietryka, Carmella P. and George C. Edwards Associate Professor in American Politics, Department of Political Science
Prior to his arrival at UW-Madison, Pietryka received his PhD from the University of California, Davis and then spent eleven years on the faculty at Florida State University. His research focuses on political behavior in the United States, examining how people’s political choices are influenced by their friends, family, coworkers, and other acquaintances. His work has been recognized with awards for the best articles published in The American Political Science Review in 2017 and Political Research Quarterly in 2022. And he received Florida State's University Award for Innovation in Teaching in 2022.
Kathryn Howell, professor, Department of Psychology
Dr. Howell’s program of research centers on the health and well-being of children and families. She assesses individual, relational, and community factors that enhance resilience or reduce psychopathology following exposure to traumatic events. Dr. Howell has developed a research specialization in empirically supported interventions to promote well-being among children and families exposed to trauma. Her research has garnered substantial attention from funding agencies, including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Dr. Howell has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. She recently became a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and is the previous chair of the APA Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. Dr. Howell is a licensed psychologist in Wisconsin and Tennessee.
Debdeep Pati, associate professor, Department of Statistics
Pati received his PhD in Statistics from Duke University in 2012, prior to being on the faculty at Florida State from 2012-2017, at Texas A&M from 2017-2024 and at UW-Madison from 2024 onwards. His research focuses on understanding statistical and computational trade-off for probabilistic inference in complex models. His research received the JASA reproducibility award in 2023 and he was the recipient of the Young Researcher Award from the International Indian Statistical Association in 2017 and obtained an honorable mention for Leonard J. Savage award for best Bayesian dissertation in the theory and methods section in 2013.