More news of Yale people

Kike Calvo

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Appointed

Two faculty members were recently named Sterling Professors, the university’s highest faculty honor. Akiko Iwasaki (left), an expert on the immune response to viral infections who has been active in the fight against COVID-19, has been named Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Gary Tomlinson, a musicologist who studies the relationship of music to human culture, has been named Sterling Professor of Music and of Humanities. Up to 40 active professors can hold Sterling professorships.

Josh Geballe ’97, ’02MBA, joined the university in February as Yale’s first senior associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation. Geballe will oversee the Office of Cooperative Research, which helps turn faculty research into commercial products and services, and also will work with the student-oriented Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking. Geballe worked in private industry for 17 years before becoming chief operating officer for the State of Connecticut in 2020.

Honored

Eight writers have been honored with the 2022 Windham-Campbell Prize, a $165,000 award inaugurated in 2013 and administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This year’s winners in fiction are Tsitsi Dangarembga and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, both of Zimbabwe; in nonfiction, Margo Jefferson (US) and Emmanuel Iduma (Nigeria); in poetry, Wong May (Ireland/Singapore/China) and Zaffar Kunial (UK); and in drama, Winsome Pinnock (UK) and Sharon Bridgforth (US). The recipients will come to campus in September for the Windham-Campbell Festival.

Two Yalies will study at the University of Cambridge as Gates Cambridge Scholars in the fall. Jennifer Miao ’22, a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major at Yale, will pursue a PhD in biological science. Maya Juman ’20, who majored in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, aims for a PhD in biology in Cambridge’s veterinary medicine department.
 
Elijah Anderson, the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies, received the 2021 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the world’s most prestigious award in that field. The prize citation notes that his research in ethnically segregated areas “has considerably improved our understanding of the dynamics of interactions among young men and women that lead to violence, even among good friends.” The prize comes with a cash award of one million kroner—a little over $100,000.

Stepping down

Field hockey coach Pam Stuper and baseball coach John Stuper are both leaving their positions this year after a combined 54 years at Yale. The Stupers met and married while coaching at Yale. Pam Stuper was an assistant coach for eight years before being named head coach in 2005; she is moving on to become executive director of the USA Field Hockey Foundation. John Stuper is retiring after 30 years as head baseball coach. They are the winningest coaches in Yale history in their respective sports.

Remembered

Louis Dupré, a philosopher of religion who taught at Yale from 1973 until his retirement in 1998, died on January 11 at home in his native Belgium. He was 96. Dupré, the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, was called “one of the most significant religious philosophers of the twentieth century” by the Catholic journal Commonweal. He won the William Clyde DeVane Medal in 1996 for his teaching and scholarship.

Sara Suleri Goodyear, Professor Emeritus of English, died in Bellingham, Washington, on March 20. She was 68. Suleri Goodyear, who taught at Yale from 1984 to 2008, was born and raised in Pakistan, which was the subject of her acclaimed 1989 memoir Meatless Days. Her scholarship ranged from Victorian and Romantic poetry to pioneering work in postcolonial literature.