Ten Trinity Faculty Awarded Named Professorships

Ten faculty in Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences have been awarded named professorships, effective July 1. 

These endowed professorships recognize faculty who exemplify leadership and excellence in scholarship and research. The recipients are outstanding educators, mentors, and researchers whose contributions are vital to the College of Arts & Sciences and its academic community. 

“Named professorships recognize faculty whose scholarship, teaching and leadership have made exceptional contributions to their disciplines and to our academic community,” said Trinity College Dean Gary Bennett. “These honors reflect Trinity’s enduring commitment to faculty excellence, and we are proud to celebrate colleagues whose work continues to advance knowledge and inspire the next generation of scholars and students.”

Named Professorships

Bocar Ba, Kathleen Kaylor and G. Richard Wagoner, Jr. Assistant Professor of Economics, studies the intersection of crime and labor economics. Using large administrative datasets and econometric methods, he studies issues such as police union contracts, disciplinary systems, and accountability structures within police departments. His research aims to better understand how institutional rules influence officer behavior and how policy changes can improve transparency and public safety.  

Kate Driscoll, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Romance Studies, focuses on early modern Italian literature, especially epic poetry, women’s writing, and opera. She studies how writers, artists, and patrons formed literary communities, how authors connected with their readers and audiences, and how stories moved across different forms, including music and performance.  

Brandon Fain, Cue Family Associate Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, studies the intersection of computer science, operations research, and public policy. He develops methods to help institutions make decisions about resource allocation, rankings, and matching systems in ways that are both mathematically sound and socially responsible. 

Kimberly Hassel, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, examines digital culture, youth culture and identity in Japan and its diasporas. Her research examines how social media and smartphones shape social life and selfexpression, particularly among young people in Japan before and during the COVID19 pandemic. She also studies AfroJapanese experiences, mixedrace identity and transnational Black digital networks connecting Japan with communities such as Black Americans and Dominicans. 

Ivan Moreno-Hernandez, EBERTS Family Assistant Professor of Chemistry runs a lab that studies electrochemical materials used in renewable energy technologies. They use advanced microscopy, especially liquid cell transmission electron microscopy, to observe how materials change and behave during chemical reactions in real time at the nanoscale. By combining imaging, materials synthesis, and analytical techniques, the group investigates how a material’s structure at the nanoscale affects its performance in energy systems. 

Kristin Stephens-Martinez, Lyle Family Associate Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, researches the intersection of education and computer science, with a focus on analyzing data from largeenrollment courses. She examines how computer science classes can scale to serve more students while maintaining instructional quality. Her work analyzes data from course tools to generate interpretable insights that inform teaching practices and learning interventions. 

Raffaella Taylor-Seymour, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, is an anthropologist and historian of religion whose work examines religious change in Zimbabwe in relation to gender, sexuality and the environment. Her research explores how colonial ideas about religion reshaped social relationships and landscapes, and how people continue to challenge those legacies today. Her first book project, Ancestral Intimacies: Queerness, Relations, and Religion in Zimbabwe, explores these themes. 

Yun Emily Wang, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Music, is an ethnographer of sound and music whose work draws on sound studies, diaspora studies, and queer and feminist theory. Her research explores how social differences shape the ways people experience sound and listening. Her current book project examines everyday listening practices among Chinesespeaking immigrants in Canada, focusing on themes such as queer diaspora, aging and care, and intimacy.  

Danfeng Zhang, Cue Family Associate Professor of Computer Science, research focuses on computer systems, particularly cloud computing and distributed systems. He studies how large‑scale computing infrastructure, such as data centers and cloud platforms, can be made faster, more efficient and more reliable. His work often examines how software systems interact with modern hardware, including memory and storage systems, to improve performance for data‑intensive applications such as machine learning and large online services. His research aims to make large computing systems run more efficiently at scale. 

Danyang Zhuo, Hamelsky Family Assistant Professor of Computer Science, studies computer systems for machine learning and large‑scale data processing. His research focuses on improving the performance and efficiency of the infrastructure that supports modern AI and data‑intensive applications. His research develops systems and tools that help machine learning workloads run faster and use computing resources more efficiently in data centers and cloud environments.