Giving thanks

Photo by Mary ButkusMore than 150 people attended a Thanksgiving dinner at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

Introducing new faculty members

The following are among the new faculty members at the University. Others will be introduced periodically in this space. Robert E. Blankenship, Ph.D., joins the departments of Biology and Chemistry in Arts & Sciences as professor. He earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s from Nebraska Wesleyan University. Blankenship spent the past 21 years at Arizona State University and was chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 2002-06. His research interests center on the molecular mechanisms of energy storage in photosynthesis. Blankenship and his group investigate this process using an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes studying the complete range of types of organisms that do photosynthesis, with the goal of discovering the essential aspects of how light energy is stored, as well as elucidating the origin and early evolutionary development of photosynthesis. Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., joins the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. He earned a doctorate in 2006 from Harvard University and a bachelor’s (with highest honors) from Pennsylvania State University in 1999. Herman is interested in linking functional morphology to ecology, and his research uses a combination of modeling and experimental approaches to test hypotheses linking limb design, locomotor performance (especially locomotor energetics) and ranging ecology. He is participating in ongoing excavations at the lower Paleolithic site of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia, where fossils dated to 1.8 million years provide evidence of the earliest human ancestors outside of Africa. Alicia Walker, Ph.D., joins the Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor of medieval art and architecture. She earned a doctorate and master’s from Harvard University and a bachelor’s from Bryn Mawr College. From 2004-06, she was a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art and Architectural History at Columbia University. At WUSTL, Walker will teach courses about Byzantine, medieval Islamic and Western medieval art. Her primary fields of research include cross-cultural artistic interaction in the medieval world from the ninth-13th centuries and gender issues in the art and material culture of Byzantium. She recently completed articles on the material and intellectual culture of divination in medieval Byzantium and the expression of romance culture in works of middle Byzantine courtly art. She is working on a book-length study of Islamic impact on middle Byzantine imperial imagery and is co-editing a volume of essays titled “Negotiating the Secular in Medieval Art.”
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