Pomona College welcomes 15 new faculty to tenure-track and tenured positions this fall. Six taught at the College previously, including an alumna. The other nine are newcomers.
Mark Andrejevic, professor of media studies, returns to Pomona after a five-year hiatus. He researches and writes about digital media technology, surveillance and their impact on democracy. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Yuki Arita, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a linguist, she conducts conversation analysis, investigating the systematicity of social interaction in Japanese.
Jordan Daniels, assistant professor of environmental analysis, was a visiting lecturer at Pomona from 2021-22 and joined Pomona as visiting assistant professor of philosophy in 2023. She works at the intersection of environmental philosophy, critical theory, and feminist thought. She earned her Ph.D. from Emory University.
Olivia Lafferty, assistant professor of English, received a Ph.D. from Brown University and studies contemporary transpacific literatures and visual cultures. She examines the circuits of U.S. and Spanish colonialism and the sensorial and affective attunements of transpacific subjects.
Clint Moore, assistant professor of physical education, is in his first year as head coach of the Sagehens’ men’s soccer team. He previously spent eight seasons as assistant coach at Colorado School of Mines, helping the Orediggers to an 86-41-21 record with five NCAA Tournament appearances. He earned a master’s from Illinois State University.
Sarah E. Noll ’13, assistant professor of chemistry, holds bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and German studies from Pomona College, an MPhil in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford. She was a visiting assistant professor at Pomona from 2021-23, a research associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a visiting assistant professor at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Her research focuses on the development of ambient ionization mass spectrometry methods, alongside more traditional techniques, to characterize biomaterials used in cultural heritage.
Leila Safavi, assistant professor of economics and public policy, completed her Ph.D. in agricultural & resources economics at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on energy and environmental markets—particularly on electricity and natural gas regulation, pricing in competitive and non-competitive markets, and the economic and business impacts of environmental policy and legal frameworks.
Kelsey Sasaki, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, studies the mental mechanisms involved in our comprehension of linguistic meaning. She also does community-engaged linguistic fieldwork. Before joining Pomona College, she was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford. She earned her Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz.
Samuel Thomas, an assistant professor of computer science, received his Ph.D. from Brown University. His research studies secure computer hardware and focuses on building and optimizing systems to study these architectures.
Jody Valentine, assistant professor of classics, joined Pomona in 2017 as a visiting assistant professor. She is especially interested in how study of the past enriches our understanding of the present and is currently researching contemporary artists who reimagine and reinvent ancient materials in new, discordant, and even oppositional ways. This project will culminate in an exhibit at the Pomona College Benton Museum of Art.
Zala Volcic, associate professor of media studies, returns to Pomona after six years of teaching in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on media and nationalism. She has published, taught and lectured widely on media education, transitional justice, gender and civic disposition.
Ania Vu, assistant professor of music, writes music that explores the interplay between language, time, and the sounds of nature; she often writes poems in Polish and English to inform her musical process. As a pianist, she performs music from both the standard and contemporary repertoire, and she received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Pennsylvania.
Daniel Watling, assistant professor of religious studies, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Pomona as a visiting assistant professor in 2023, Watling was a visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College. He specializes in Islamic philosophy and theology, with a particular focus on medieval Iberia and North Africa.
Yuqing Zhu, assistant professor of neuroscience, received a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from the University of Chicago. Before joining Pomona as a visiting assistant professor in 2023, Zhu was a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She builds AI models inspired by brains to discover new ways to make AI more energy efficient and better understand what makes real brains so computationally adept.
Michael Zlatin, assistant professor of computer science, earned his Ph.D. in algorithms, combinatorics and optimization at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. His research goal is to design improved algorithms for fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization and decision sciences.