Faculty members recognized for outstanding research with new professorships

Fourteen UChicago faculty members—Clifford Ando, Isaam A. Awad, David Awschalom, Omri Ben-Shahar, Philip G. Berger, Matthew Gentzkow, James K. Liao, Elizabeth McNally, Thomas J. Miles, Edward Morrison, Eduardo Peñalver, Christopher R. Shea, Lars Stole and Chad Syverson—have received named professorships, while six faculty members—Marianne Bertrand, T. Conrad Gilliam, Richard Neer, Randal Picker, Eric Posner and Andrei Tokmakoff—have been named Distinguished Service Professors.

Biological Sciences Division

Issam A. Awad, director of Neurovascular Surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine and an expert in the surgical management of neurovascular conditions, such as cerebral aneurysms, cerebrovascular malformations, hemorrhagic stroke and skull base tumors, has been named the John Harper Seeley Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery), Neurology and the Cancer Center. 

An internationally recognized scholar and educator, Awad concentrates his research on vascular biology, genetics and comprehensive outcome analysis in neurovascular disease and stroke. Among his active research are National Institutes of Health-funded investigations into the molecular mechanisms involved in the formation and progression of cerebral cavernous malformation, and its therapeutic modification. 

He has authored several textbooks and published more than 250 scholarly papers on clinical innovations, surgical outcomes and research.

Awad has been elected to some of the most distinguished professional societies. He has served as president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, Chairman of the joint Cerebrovascular Section of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons, among other titles. He is also the founding chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Angioma Alliance, an organization advocating on behalf of patients and families affected by cerebral cavernous malformations.

T. Conrad Gilliam, professor in Human Genetics and dean for Research and Graduate Education in the Biological Sciences Division, has been named the Marjorie I. and Bernard A. Mitchell Distinguished Service Professor.

Gilliam is an authority on the identification and characterization of heritable mutations that affect the nervous system. He studies rare disease mutations and common heritable traits and disorders, such as fear-learning and autism, using mouse models as well as genomic and bioinformatic approaches.

As Dean for Research and Graduate Education, he is responsible for the strategic planning and quality control of research and graduate education throughout the Biological Sciences Division, and ensures that faculty in the division have effective advocacy for their academic missions.

Gilliam is also a senior fellow at the Computation Institute and a Pritzker Fellow with the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

Gilliam came to UChicago in 2004 as chair of Human Genetics. He was previously a professor of Psychiatry and Genetics & Development at Columbia University. He was named director of the Columbia Genome Center in 2000.

James K. Liao, section chief of cardiology, has been named the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine. Liao came to UChicago from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in August 2012.

He studies the processes that regulate blood vessel function and response to injury, with emphasis on the role of lipid-lowering medications in preventing ischemic stroke, coronary artery disease, and heart failure. An Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, Liao has published more than 125 original articles in scientific journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Medicine and Circulation.

He served on editorial boards for the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Circulation Research and others. He lectures internationally on treatment of dyslipidemia, vascular disease, and ischemic stroke.

He is a respected clinician, with a focus on cholesterol management and peripheral vascular disease, and a distinguished teacher. He consistently won Harvard University’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching and has trained more than 60 doctoral students and postdoctoral research fellows, many of whom are now professors at leading institutions.

Elizabeth McNally, director of the Institute for Cardiovascular Research and the Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic, has been named the A. J. Carlson Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics.

McNally studies inherited cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases. Her work on the genetic mechanisms of cardiomyopathies and muscular dystrophies has identified several genes that are important for cardiac and skeletal muscle membrane stability and produced insights into how heart failure and muscle dysfunction occur. Her current research focuses on improving genetic diagnosis and risk assessment, identifying and implementing preventive therapies for heart and muscle disease, and regenerative medicine.

A prominent physician, McNally also directs the Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic, which provides counseling and cardiovascular care for patients and families with inherited cardiovascular disorders. 

She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Circulation and Circulation Research. She served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation from 2011 to 2012, is an active member of the Coalition for Life Science, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. She has been recognized as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and as a Distinguished Clinical Scientist by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

McNally joined the UChicago faculty in 1996.

Christopher R. Shea, section chief of dermatology, has been named the first Eugene J. Van Scott Professor of Dermatology.

Shea is a highly regarded expert in disorders of the skin, hair and nails. He specializes in general dermatology, pigmented skin lesions—including moles and melanoma—cutaneous lymphoma, and dermatopathology.

Shea's research focuses on melanoma, investigating its origins, tumor markers, and treatment. He also investigates the effects of ultraviolet radiation on skin and the pathologic basis of skin diseases.

A member of the UChicago faculty since 2001, Shea is engaged in the professional training of medical students, dermatology residents, and dermatopathology fellows. Additionally, he serves as director or co-director of many regional, national, and international medical courses. Shea has published more than 170 scientific papers and chapters, and he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, American Journal of Dermatopathology and Journal of Cutaneous Pathology. In 2012, he served as president of the Chicago Dermatological Society.

Shea has been recognized for his clinical skill, dedication to advancing the scientific basis of dermatology and dermatopathology, and devotion to medical education.

Humanities Division

Clifford Ando, an expert of law, religion, and government in the Roman Empire, has been appointed the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor in Classics and the College.

His publications include Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (2000), which received the American Philological Association’s Goodwin Award in 2003; The Matter of the Gods (2008); Law, Language and Empire in the Roman Tradition (2011); and Imperial Rome: the critical century (A.D. 193-284) (2012).

Ando is the editor of two books, Roman Religion (2003) and, with Jörg Rüpke, Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome (2006), as well as a series, Empire and After, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. His current research examines problems of law, administration and cultural change in the Roman Empire.

In August, he received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Prize from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Ando joined the UChicago faculty in 2006. He is co-director of the Center for the Study of Ancient Religions at UChicago.

Richard Neer has been named the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Cinema & Media Studies, and the College.

Neer works at the intersection of aesthetics, archaeology and history, with particular emphasis on the role of phenomenology and theories of style in multiple fields: classical Greek sculpture, neo-Classical French painting, and mid-20th-century cinema. 

His most recent books are The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (2010), published by the University of Chicago Press, and Art and Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, 2500–100 BCE (2011).

His current research topics include ancient concepts of wonder and grace, the theory and history of connoisseurship, the sculpture of Charles Ray, and questions of evidence, criteria, and judgment in films by Terrence Malick, Mizoguchi Kenji and others.

Neer is currently the executive editor of Critical Inquiry, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the best critical thought in the arts and humanities and published by the University of Chicago.

He has received fellowships and awards from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the American Academy in Rome.

Neer joined the UChicago faculty in 1999.

Physical Sciences Division

Andrei Tokmakoff, whose spectroscopic research has advanced the understanding of some key properties of water and the complex, critical role it plays in biological systems, has been appointed the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry.

Previously professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tokmakoff joined the UChicago faculty in January.

Tokmakoff returns to UChicago, having worked here from 1996 to 1998 as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Graham Fleming, a former chemistry professor now at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1995 to 1996, he had been an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Technical University in Munich.

Tokmakoff’s research interests include molecular dynamics and chemical reactions in solution; molecular biophysics; and the development of experimental methods to study short-lived structure and molecular dynamics in liquids, solids, and biological systems. His work also spans the study of water, protein-water interactions, and the dynamics of protein folding and binding.

Tokmakoff’s many honors include the American Physical Society’s Ernest K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, Phi Lambda Upsilon’s National Fresenius Award, the Coblenz Society’s Coblenz Award, and the National Parkinson Foundation’s Richard E. Heikkila Research Scholar award. He also is a fellow of the Optical Society of America.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Philip G. Berger has been named the Wallman Family Professor of Accounting.

Berger’s research and teaching is focused on financial reporting and corporate finance. His research has appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting & Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies.

Berger’s paper “Explicit and Implicit Tax Effects of the R&D Tax Credit” received the AAA Tax Manuscript Award in 1997, while “Managerial Entrenchment and Capital Structure Decisions” earned him the Glucksman Institute Research Prize in 1997, and “Bustup Takeovers of Value-Destroying Diversified Firms” was a Smith Breeden Award Nominee for Best Paper in 1996.

He also has been co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research since 2004, and served on the program committee for the Journal of Accounting Research-Federal Reserve Bank of New York conference in 2012.

Before joining the Chicago Booth faculty, Berger taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the College of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan.

His course specializations include Accounting and Financial Analysis and Topics in Empirical Accounting Research. Additional teaching efforts—including undergraduate, MBA and PhD courses—have focused on financial accounting, financial statement analysis, and empirical accounting research.

Berger has been a Chicago Booth professor since 2002.

Marianne Bertrand, an expert in labor economics, corporate finance, and development economics, has been named the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics.

Some of her widely cited work includes “Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones without Principals Are,” and “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” Her research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review and the Journal of Finance, among others.

Co-director of the Social Enterprise Initiative, Bertrand also serves on the faculty advisory board for the University of Chicago’s Collegium for Culture and Society and the board of directors for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and co-editor of the American Economic Review.

Bertrand has received numerous awards throughout her career. Last year, she received the Brattle Group Prize’s First Prize Paper for “Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases and Payday Borrowing” (with Adair Morse, associate professor of finance at Chicago Booth) and the Society of Labor Economists’ Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Labor Economics; she also was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

At Booth since 2000, Bertrand previously taught economics and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Matthew Gentzkow has been named the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics.

Gentzkow’s research focuses on empirical industrial organization and political economy, with an emphasis on media industries.  His recent research has included “The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration” (with Bart Bronnenberg, of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, and Jean-Pierre Dubé, Sigmund E. Edelstone Professor of Marketing at Chicago Booth), published in the American Economic Review, “The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on the Electoral Politics” (with Jesse M. Shapiro, professor of economics at Chicago Booth, and Michael Sinkinson of the Wharton School), published in the American Economic Review, and “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Newspapers” (with Jesse M. Shapiro, professor of economics at Chicago Booth), published in Econometrica.

Gentzkow started teaching at Booth in 2004, and has won a Faculty Excellence Award for teaching. Additionally, Gentzkow received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2009, and a National Science Foundation grant. He is a research associate in Industrial Organization and Political Economy, at the National Bureau of Economic Research; an associate editor at the RAND Journal of Economics; an editor at the Journal of Economic Literature; and at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Lars Stole, expert in strategic pricing, incentives theory, industrial economics and game theory, has been named the David W. Johnson Professor of Economics.

He has received many research prizes, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship and an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics from the Harvard Law School.

Stole’s recent research includes  “Representing equilibrium aggregates in aggregate games” (with David Martimort of the Paris School of Economics), published in the journal of Games and Economic Behavior, “Market Participation in Delegated and Intrinsic Common Agency Games” (with David Martimort), published in the RAND Journal of Economics, “Selecting Equilibria in Common Agency Games” (with David Martimort), published in the Journal of Economic Theory and “Price Discrimination in Competitive Environments,” published in the Handbook of Industrial Organizations.

Stole, who has taught at Booth since 1991, is co-director of the Initiative on Applied Theory and a research fellow at CESifo, a research group made up of the Center for Economic Studies, the Ifo Institute, and the Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research.

Chad Syverson has been named the J. Baum Harris Professor of Economics.

Syverson, who joined the Booth faculty in 2008, studies the interactions of firm structure, market structure, and productivity, and teaches Advanced Industrial Organization and Competitive Strategy.

His research has earned significant support from the National Science Foundation. Recent publications include “Indirect Costs of Financial Distress in Durable Goods Industries: The Case of Auto Manufacturers,” forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies; “What Determines Productivity?” published in the Journal of Economic Literature; and “Network Structure of Production,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Syverson also wrote Microeconomics, a textbook, with Austan Goolsbee, the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, and Steven Levitt, the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economicsat at UChicago.

Syverson, who is a member of the American Economic Association, is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Management Science, the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Industrial Economics, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

David Awschalom, one of the world’s top research scientists in spintronics and quantum information science, has been named a Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering. His expertise involves understanding and manipulating the spin of electrons and nuclei for advanced computing, medical imaging, encryption, and other technologies.

He joins the UChicago faculty from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Peter J. Clarke Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directed the California NanoSystems Institute and the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.

Among his numerous honors, Awschalom is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. His other awards include the American Physical Society’s Oliver Buckley Prize, the European Physical Society’s Europhysics Prize, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the Materials Research Society’s Turnbull Award, and, from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the International Magnetism Prize and the Néel Medal.

Awschalom holds several patents, including one in quantum computing, an experimental computer technology that would greatly outperform modern digital computers.

University of Chicago Law School

Omri Ben-Shahar, the Kearney Director of the University of Chicago’s Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, and an editor of the Journal of Legal Studies, has been named the Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law.

Ben-Shahar writes in the fields of contract law and consumer law. He teaches Contracts, Sales, Insurance Law, Consumer Law, eCommerce, Law and Economics, and Game Theory and the Law. He is the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of Consumer Contracts.

Under Ben-Shahar’s leadership, the Coase-Sandor Institute, founded in 2011, has expanded the reach and influence of Chicago’s law and economics scholarship in the United States and broadened its impact throughout the world.

His recent publications include “Reversible Rewards,” published in the American Law and Economics Review (2013); “Damages for Unlicensed Use,” published in the University of Chicago Law Review (2011); “Fixing Unfair Contracts,” published in the Stanford Law Review (2012); and “The Failure of Mandated Disclosure,” published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2011).

Before coming to Chicago in 2008, he was the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Michigan. Prior to that, Ben-Shahar taught at Tel-Aviv University, was a member of Israel's Antitrust Court, and clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel.

Thomas J. Miles, a scholar of criminal law and judicial behavior, has been named the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics.

His most recent articles on criminal law are a study of judicial review of Title III wiretaps, entitled “Racial Disparities in Wiretap Applications before Federal Judges,” Journal of Legal Studies (forthcoming 2013), and a study of the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities, entitled “Policing Immigration,” University of Chicago Law Review (forthcoming 2013).

His work on judicial behavior includes “The Law’s Delay: A Test of the Mechanisms of Judicial Peer Effects,” published in the Journal of Legal Analysis (2012), on the legality of poker: “Is Texas Hold ‘Em a Game of Chance? A Legal and Economic Analysis,” published in the Georgetown Law Journal (forthcoming 2013), and “The Role of Skill vs. Luck: Evidence from the World Series of Poker,” published in the Journal of Sports Economics (forthcoming 2013). 

Miles currently teaches first-year criminal law, federal criminal law and securities regulation. He has previously taught tort law, economic analysis of law, and empirical law and economics. In 2009, he received the Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence. Miles received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, and a JD from Harvard Law School. 

Miles previously worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and was a law clerk to the Hon. Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He joined the Law School faculty in 2004 as the Olin Fellow in Law & Economics, and in 2005, he became an assistant professor of law. Miles also has served as a co-editor of the Journal of Legal Studies since 2005.

Edward Morrison, a leading scholar on consumer and corporate insolvency, has been named the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law.

Morrison’s current work includes a project testing the causal impact of unexpected health expenditures on bankruptcy filing rates and a series of papers exploring the determinants of homeowner mortgage default decisions. The latter papers have included several policy proposals for addressing the housing crisis in the United States. In 2009, Morrison described one of these in testimony before the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives.

Additional scholarship addresses topics such as the effects of creditor conflict on corporate bankruptcy outcomes, the regulation of financial derivatives in bankruptcy, the intersection between bankruptcy law and regulation of systemic market risk, and the dynamics of small business bankruptcy. 

Morrison teaches classes on bankruptcy, contracts, corporate finance, and empirical law and economics.

In 2012, Morrison received the John Wesley Steen Law Review Writing Prize from the American Bankruptcy Institute. In 2009, he was awarded the Par Excellence Award by the University of Utah Alumni Association.

Morrison joined the Law School in 2012, after a decade of teaching at Columbia Law School, where he was the Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law and Economics. He holds three degrees from UChicago, having earned a master’s and PhD in economics (in 1997 and 2003) and his JD in 2000. 

Eduardo Peñalver, a nationally renowned property law expert, has been named the John P. Wilson Professor of Law.

Peñalver’s scholarship focuses on property and land use, as well as law and religion. His work explores the way in which the law mediates the interests of individuals and communities.  

His writing on property has appeared in numerous leading law journals. His 2010 book, Property Outlaws, explores the vital role of disobedience within the evolution of property law. It discusses squatting on the American frontier, the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, and file-sharing as examples of widespread (though not always coordinated), unlawful behavior that push the law of property to change in productive ways. 

His most recent book, An Introduction to Property Theory (co-authored with Gregory Alexander), surveys the theories of property that have been most influential on American thinking and advocates for an approach based on human flourishing.

Peñalver joined the UChicago faculty in 2013. He previously taught at Cornell Law School (2006-12) and Fordham Law School (2003-06). He also has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale law schools.

Upon earning his law degree at Yale, he clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and at the Supreme Court for Justice John Paul Stevens. 

Randal Picker, a legal scholar who studies issues of antitrust, copyright, and network industries, has been named the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

Also a Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, Picker's primary areas of interest are the laws relating to intellectual property, competition policy and regulated industries, and applications of game theory and agent-based computer simulations to the law. He is the co-author of Game Theory and the Law.

A Law School faculty member since 1989, he currently teaches classes in antitrust, network industries, and secured transactions. He also regularly teaches bankruptcy and corporate reorganizations. Picker served as associate dean of the Law School from 1994 to 1996.

A member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and a reporter for the Conference's Bankruptcy Code Review Project, Picker is also a commissioner to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and serves as a member of the drafting committee to revise Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code.

Picker earned both an AB and AM in economics from the University of Chicago and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate. He also was a Friedman Fellow. Thereafter, he attended the Law School and graduated in 1985 cum laude. He is a member of the Order of the Coif. While at the Law School, Picker was an associate editor of the Law Review.

After graduation, Picker clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then spent three years with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, where he worked in the areas of debt restructuring and corporate reorganizations in bankruptcy.

Eric Posner has been named the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

Posner writes about a range of legal topics, including international law, constitutional law, contract law and financial regulation. His recent books include The Limits of International Law  (2005, with Jack Goldsmith); Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts (2007, with Adrian Vermeule); Climate Change Justice (2010, with David Weisbach); The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic (2011, with Adrian Vermeule); and Economic Foundations of International Law (2013, with Alan Sykes).

Posner received his JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.