Haverford College Welcomes Six New Faculty Members

Amy Cooke joins the Biology Department as an assistant professor. She completed her B.S. in biochemistry at the University of Oregon and earned a Ph.D. from the Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She performed postdoctoral research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, then returned to the University of Wisconsin as a staff scientist before joining the Haverford faculty. Cooke’s work focuses on how RNA-binding proteins control gene expression post-transcriptionally to dictate and/or respond to physiological processes, and how these are altered in disease states. Along with mentoring senior research, she will teach the Bio300 Superlab course and introductory Bio201. 

Clyde A. Daly Jr. joins the Chemistry Department as an assistant professor. Daly received his B.S. from Gordon College and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame.  He comes to Haverford from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology.  Daly is a computational chemist whose research interests encompass vibrational spectroscopy, developing and understanding materials for carbon capture, and machine learning techniques applied to properties and toxicity of materials.

The Department of Computer Science welcomes Alvin Grissom ll as an assistant professor.  Grissom does research in computational linguistics and machine learning. He has done work on using machine learning for simultaneous interpretation, examining problems in machine learning models, Japanese language processing, computational social science, and digital liberal arts.  He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 2017 from the University of Colorado Boulder and comes to Haverford from Ursinus College, where he was an assistant professor for three years.

Sarah-Jane Koulen has joined the Haverford faculty as an assistant professor of peace, justice, and human rights. Koulen earned her bachelor’s degree at University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, the Netherlands, and then pursued a law degree at SOAS University of London. She worked for several years with NGOs involved with humanitarian assistance and international criminal law in The Hague. She then went on to pursue a master’s degree at Radboud University’s Centre for International Development Issues in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and came to the United States to pursue doctoral studies in anthropology at Princeton University. She is currently completing her dissertation, which explores the development of international criminal law, competing understandings of justice, and the dynamics through which law may both replicate and address patterns of racial, gender, and economic disparity. Koulen’s academic background and experience will enable her to teach courses in human rights, international criminal law, anthropology, and critical race theory, among other areas. 

The Spanish Department welcomes Luis Rodríguez-Rincón as an assistant professor. He comes to Haverford from Kenyon College, where he was a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation Fellow. He finished his Ph.D. in comparative literature at Stanford University in January 2020 with a dissertation on Garcilaso de la Vega, Luís de Camões, Edmund Spenser, and Miguel de Cervantes. His research and teaching focus on medieval to early modern Spanish literature and culture from a transatlantic and interdisciplinary perspective. This year, he will be teaching introductory and intermediate Spanish, as well as courses on Cervantes, and a survey of medieval to early modern Spanish literature.

Ava Shirazi comes to Haverford as an assistant professor of classics after three years as a Perkins-Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows.  She was born in Tehran, Iran, and immigrated to Canada, where she earned her B.A. in classics and English at the University of Toronto. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in classics, language, and literature from Stanford University. Shirazi works primarily on Greek literature and cultural history with interdisciplinary interests in material culture and the intellectual history of aesthetics, and has a background in directing, producing, and translating for the stage.  Her courses this year will include an upper level Greek seminar, “Poetics and Poiesis: Philosophy, Performance, and the Crafts,” and a course titled “Creating Classics: A Visual Workshop on Pasolini and Greek Drama,” which she will team-teach with a Bryn Mawr College professor.