At the beginning of each academic year, we welcome and introduce faculty members who are joining the Claremont McKenna College community. Learn about their research and teaching priorities, fields of expertise, academic backgrounds, and accomplishments in these brief biographies and join us in welcoming them to CMC.
New Assistant Professors
Najva Akbari
Najva Akbari joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences in January 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Physics of Living Systems. Her research seeks to illuminate how neural pathways give rise to social behavior. She investigates neonatal brains by leveraging the naturally occurring caregiver-offspring interactions in mimetic poison frogs. Her lab will work to uncover the fundamental principles of neuronal networks using semi-transparent vertebrates, while also developing cutting-edge imaging tools to visualize brain activity deep within living tissue. She earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and Ph.D. in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. She then moved to the department of Biology at Stanford University for her postdoctoral research.
Maya Binyam
Maya Binyam joins the Literature Department in July 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Literature, having come to CMC in fall 2024 as a Visiting Lecturer of Literature. Binyam is the author of the novel Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, New York, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2025 Bard Fiction Prize and a 2025-26 Rome Prize in Literature. She is an advisory editor at The Paris Review, and previously worked as an editor at Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry, and as a lecturer in The New School’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program. Her work has been supported by Blue Mountain Center, Art Omi, and Headlands Center for the Arts, where she received the McLaughlin Children’s Trust Award. She earned her B.A. from Yale University.
Robert Cass
Robert Cass joins the Mathematical Sciences Department as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. His research focuses on number theory and related topics in algebraic geometry and representation theory. He is especially interested in the Langlands program, a vast area of research that seeks to unify mathematical phenomena in the aforementioned fields. Cass earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College, he was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, followed by the University of Michigan.
Rui Cheng
Rui Cheng joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Physics of Climate, Energy, and the Environment. Her research evaluates global ecosystem-climate feedbacks, such as carbon, water, and energy fluxes between land and atmosphere. She uses a fusion of remote sensing techniques and process-based modeling to see the unseeable in our surrounding environment to make real-world impacts. Her research outcomes specifically benefit the regions with limited direct measurements, including the Arctic, tropics, and mountainous regions. She earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Wendy de los Reyes
Wendy de los Reyes joins the Psychological Science Department as an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science and Director of the AMPLIFY Lab (Advocacy, Mentorship, and Participatory research with Latine Immigrant Families and Youth). Her research program adopts a strengths-based approach to examining the development of Latine and immigrant-origin adolescents. She explores three interrelated lines of inquiry: 1) How youth resist structural inequities through supportive mentoring relationships; 2) How adults partner in youth-led social change; and 3) How institutions expand youth voice to address social inequities. Much of her work is contextualized by her identity as an immigrant, a Latina, and a first-generation college student. She migrated to the U.S. from Cuba at age 6 and grew up in a diverse immigrant community in Miami, Florida. She is a native Spanish and English speaker. In her free time, de los Reyes likes to roam around parks with her two sons, dog, and husband.
Joani Etskovitz
Joani Etskovitz joins the Literature Department as an Assistant Professor of Literature. Her research investigates how transatlantic novel fictions shaped debates surrounding education, gender, and women’s rights over the long 18th century. In Etskovitz’s classes, students will encounter authors ranging from Sarah Fielding to Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Brontë, Hannah Crafts, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. As a teacher and researcher, Etskovitz aims to reveal the processes by which popular prose genres for women and children emerged—and how these genres gave rise to still-flourishing literary forms, such as young adult fiction. Etskovitz has published in English Literary History and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, written for Los Angeles Review of Books and Public Books, and curated exhibits for the Bodleian and Houghton Libraries. Both a Marshall and a Beinecke Scholar, she earned her A.B. from Princeton, two Master’s in English and History from the University of Oxford, and her Ph.D. from Harvard.
Jauhara Ferguson
Jauhara Ferguson joins the Religious Studies Department as an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies: African American Religions. Her research examines the intersections of religion, race, and immigration within Black communities. Her interests lie in understanding how the religious lives of Black people influence Black experiences and identity formation. She has contributed to many projects examining issues related to religion and race, including religious discrimination, hate crimes, policing, and health. Her current book project explores the extent to which U.S. Black Muslims consider Islam in their search for marriage partners, and how the process of marriage further develops Black and Muslim identities in the context of the Muslim American community and the broader United States. Ferguson completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at Rice University and her B.A. in International Studies and Religious Studies at Spelman College.
Emily Ho
Emily Ho joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Developmental Biology. Her research investigates how cells in the early embryo communicate with each other to coordinate the complex task of building a body. Using a toolbox of light-activated proteins (optogenetics), novel fluorescent biosensors, and genome editing, she explores how cells make quantitative measurements about the signals they receive and then use those measurements to make decisions about their fate. She is also interested in how these decisions go wrong in developmental diseases and in cancers. She earned a B.A. from Carleton College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. She performed her postdoctoral fellowship work at Princeton University.
Pranav Khandelwal
Pranav Khandelwal joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Physics of Living Systems. He investigates how animals move through complex natural environments by integrating biomechanics, ecology, and machine learning. His approach combines in-field recordings of animal movement using cameras and drones with robo-physical models and numerical simulations to replicate and understand the observed movement. Khandelwal’s work addresses fundamental questions in animal movement while advancing applications in conservation biology and bio-inspired robotics. In addition to his research, he develops software tools that support biomechanics research and undergraduate learning. He earned his integrated B.S.-M.S. in Physics with a Biology minor from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (Thiruvananthapuram) and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the University of Stuttgart, and Virginia Tech.
Avaneesh Narla
Avaneesh Narla joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences in January 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Physics of Living Systems. His research investigates how organisms, ranging from bacteria to social insects, come together to perform coordinated actions in large collectives. Synthesizing both experimental methods and theoretical frameworks, he explores how organisms generate signals that allow them to rapidly communicate at long distances and then make behavioral decisions that provide ecological benefits. He earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He conducted his postdoctoral fellowship work at Stanford University as a Stanford Science Fellow.
Jonathan Raberg
Jonathan Raberg joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences in January 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Chemistry of Climate, Energy, and the Environment. His research seeks to reconstruct climate and environmental change in Earth’s geologic past to better understand contemporary environmental challenges. He employs a variety of techniques, including liquid and gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and infrared spectroscopy, to examine molecular fossils preserved in lake sediment archives. His work has traditionally focused on the planet’s cold regions, where he has examined the greening of the Canadian Arctic, ocean circulation around Iceland, and drought in the Rocky Mountains. He earned a B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College, an M.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and Ph.D.s in Geology and Earth Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Iceland. He performed postdoctoral research at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder and the University of Wyoming.
Eric Schuppe
Eric Schuppe joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences in January 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Neuroscience. His research investigates how neural circuits shape both vocal and non-vocal communication, focusing on how social experiences and genetic variation drive differences in the signals that support social interactions. To accomplish this, his lab will employ a synergistic combination of behavioral, neurophysiological, and emerging molecular biology tools to advance our understanding of the precise mechanisms that underlie individual and species differences in communication strategies. This work is important for understanding the neuro-motor mechanisms that maintain the diversity of complex phenotypes present in natural and disease-state populations. He earned a B.A. from Austin College and a Ph.D. from Wake Forest University. He performed his postdoctoral fellowship work at Cornell University and later at the University of California, San Francisco.
Weiliang Tan
Weiliang Tan joins the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance in July 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Economics. A trade and spatial economist, he uses high geographical resolution data and quantitative spatial models to study the geography of innovation and entrepreneurship. He earned his B.A. from Yale-NUS College and his Ph.D. from Cornell University, and was an IvyPlus Exchange Scholar at Yale University. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. A former EnviroLab participant during his undergraduate years, he looks forward to joining the vibrant liberal arts community at Claremont McKenna College.
Calvin TerBeek
Calvin TerBeek joins the Government Department as an Assistant Professor of Government. His research focuses on polarization, political parties and political ideology, and public law. Specifically, his main research project shows how polarization developed over the past century, as liberals and conservatives cleaved on the Constitution and control over the institutions of the “Establishment.” The implications of this research are that the received story of asymmetric polarization, focused on our two major political parties and roll call votes in Congress, is incomplete both temporally and in institutional breadth. He is working on a (co-authored) second book manuscript on legal liberal and progressive groups and why they’re ineffectual vis-a-vis conservative legal groups. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a J.D. from the Tulane University School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Daniel Velásquez
Daniel Velásquez joins the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance as an Assistant Professor of Economics. Velásquez is an urban and trade economist who studies how the costs of moving people and goods shape where jobs and households locate. His recent work shows that U.S. highways fueled suburban growth not only by easing commutes but by lowering shipping costs across regions. He also investigates path dependence, that is, how temporary shocks, such as WWII spending, can help places escape poverty traps. Broader projects connect geography to family structure and gender norms. His work integrates quantitative spatial models with rich data construction and analysis. Velásquez earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.
R. Teal Witter
R. Teal Witter joins the Mathematical Sciences Department as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. Teal's recent research explores randomized algorithms for problems in explainable AI and generative AI. More broadly, he is interested in leveraging ideas from theoretical computer science and machine learning to design provably efficient algorithms. Teal earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University and his B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Middlebury College.
Steven Zhou
Steven Zhou joins the Psychological Science Department as an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science. His research and teaching focus on quantitative methods and data science applied to organizational phenomena such as leadership, personality, and career development. He uses methods ranging from traditional multivariate statistics to natural language processing (NLP) and AI, with an eye toward producing research with real-world impact for everyday leaders, managers, and employees. Zhou earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from George Mason University with a certificate in Computational Social Sciences. He has previous industry work experience in HR, nonprofit management, and institutional data analytics.
New Full-Time Visiting Faculty
Sehun Jeong
Sehun Jeong joins the Mathematical Sciences Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics. Jeong's areas of expertise include algebraic and geometric number theory, in emphasis of lattice theory and theory of height functions. His recent research is specifically interested in obtaining a bound for small-norm lattice points or small-height primitive elements of number fields with avoidance condition. Jeong earned his B.S. from the University of California, Irvine, his M.S. from California State University, Long Beach, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University. Jeong is eager to engage with all students and inspire a love for mathematics.
Susan McWilliams Barndt
Susan McWilliams Barndt joins the Government Department as a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow. McWilliams is a political theorist whose areas of interest include the history of political thought, American political thought, politics and literature, liberal arts education, and civic education. McWilliams has written and edited several books, including Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory (2014), A Political Companion to James Baldwin (2017), and The American Road Trip and American Political Thought (2018). Her writing has appeared in both scholarly and popular journals, and she is a regular media commentator on American politics for outlets such as Business Insider, KPCC’s AirTalk, LiveNOW From FOX, The Los Angeles Times, Ms. Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, Newsweek, Pacifica Radio, Politico, the Tavis Smiley Show, and “Today in LA” on KNBC. McWilliams has received accolades, including the Graves Award in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the Jack Miller Center’s Teaching Excellence Award in Higher Education. For the last two decades, McWilliams has taught at Pomona College, where she won the Wig Distinguished Award for Excellence in Teaching four times. She has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University and a B.A. in Political Science and Russian from Amherst College.
Erica Moscarello
Erica Moscarello joins the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Integrated Sciences: Chemistry. In graduate school, her research focused on investigating the energy storage applications and thermal conductivities of covalent organic frameworks (COFs), a class of crystalline, porous, organic polymers. Her teaching interests include both general and organic chemistry. Moscarello earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Rowan University and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from The Ohio State University.
Levi Watts
Levi Watts joins the Government Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Government. Watts is a scholar of American politics and constitutional development. His research focuses on the intersection of state constitutions, judicial politics, and policy outcomes, particularly in the areas of education and reproductive rights. His dissertation, State Constitutional Development and State Policy Outcomes: Do Echoes of the Past Persist in the Area of Education and Reproductive Rights?, explores how state constitutional histories shape the trajectory of rights expansion. Beyond academia, Watts enjoys listening to vinyl records, attending baseball games (go Red Sox and Padres!), playing the guitar, tinkering with old cars and radios, and spending time with his cats Alzebub, Marta, Sterling, and Eugene.
Chungmin Yoon
Chungmin Yoon joins the Modern Languages and Literatures Department as a Visiting Instructor of Korean. She’s a passionate Korean language teacher who has worked with non-native speakers in a variety of settings, including UCLA. She holds a master’s degree in International Education from NYU and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Education at UCLA. Her teaching focuses on helping students build communication skills through engaging, student-centered lessons that use authentic Korean media and real-life contexts. Yoon also conducts research on Global Citizenship Education (GCED), exploring how youth in underrepresented communities engage with global issues and the philosophy of Ubuntu for her Ph.D. dissertation. When she’s not teaching or researching, she enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, outdoor activities, and connecting with her students.
New Part-Time Visiting Faculty
Makela Brizuela
Makela Brizuela joins the Modern Languages and Literatures Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish, bringing extensive experience in culturally integrated Spanish teaching, inclusive pedagogy, and heritage language instruction. Her innovative curriculum incorporates Argentine tango and embodied movement to foster intercultural competence and experiential learning. This year, she will teach a pedagogy course for Foreign Language Residents at The Claremont Colleges, providing a foundation in second language acquisition, proficiency assessment, syllabus design, and strategies for leading effective conversation classes. An ACTFL-certified OPI tester, she has broad and specialized expertise in language proficiency assessment, which informs her research on pedagogy, second language acquisition, and the intersection of language, identity, and the arts. She recently led a year-long, grant-funded professional development initiative at Pitzer College and across the 5Cs, focused on inclusive language, Indigenous curriculum integration, and intercultural objectives. She holds a Ph.D. in General Linguistics from the University of Southern California and has presented her work nationally and internationally.
Richard Johnson ’01
Richard Johnson ’01 joins the Government Department as a Visiting Lecturer of Government in the Washington Program. Johnson previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Policy, where he led U.S. efforts on nuclear deterrence and WMD threat reduction. He has held key roles at the National Security Council, as Director for Nonproliferation, and at the U.S. Department of State, including as Acting Deputy Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation. Johnson has also worked extensively on North Korean nuclear issues throughout his career, and he served as a disablement monitor at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility. His academic and policy interests include arms control and disarmament, nuclear strategy and deterrence, nonproliferation, chemical and biological defense, and the implications of emerging technologies for international security. Johnson earned his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College, where he graduated as valedictorian, and he holds a Master in Public Affairs from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Belinda Huijuan Tang
Belinda Huijuan Tang joins the Literature Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature. A novelist from San Jose, Calif., she is the author of A Map for the Missing, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and one of NPR’s best books of 2022. She holds degrees from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Stanford University, and Peking University in Beijing. Her fiction has received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the Michener Copernicus Fellowship, and support from the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Institute and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Chris Vanover ’02
Chris Vanover ’02 joins the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance as a Visiting Lecturer of Economics (Accounting). Chris is a CPA, entrepreneur, and educator with nearly 25 years of experience in accounting, auditing, and regulation. He is the founder and president of CPAClub, an accounting and advisory firm recently recognized as the CalCPA Firm of the Year for its innovation and impact. His prior roles include serving as an audit partner at a Top 40 firm, a technical advisor at the PCAOB, and spending 13 years at PwC—four of them as a Chief Auditor within its National Quality Organization. Twice named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today, Vanover has also taught accounting and auditing as an adjunct professor at several local universities. He is excited to return to his alma mater, Claremont McKenna College, where he earned a B.A. in Economics-Accounting and Legal Studies before completing his Master of Accounting at the University of Southern California.