Fellows
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Michael O'BrienSchool of MedicineEmail Michael O'Brien |
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Kevin O'ConnorSchool of MedicineDr. Kevin C. O’Connor is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Yale University. He earned a BS in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Tufts Medical School. He took his post-doctoral training in Immunology at Harvard where he also spent several years as an Assistant Professor. His investigative interests are in human translational neuroimmunology, with specific focus on defining the mechanisms by which B-cells affect tissue damage in autoimmunity. To this end, his group is engaged in understanding how B-cell subsets initiate and sustain autoimmunity. His team’s accomplishments include refining the role of Epstein-Barr virus in the multiple sclerosis (MS) brain and further defining the role of autoantibodies in children and adults with MS. They recently identified a network of B-cells that populate the MS central nervous system by trafficking through the cervical lymph nodes. Their current efforts include defining the immunopathology of myasthenia gravis (MG). His group demonstrated that MG antigen-specific T-cells belong to the pro-inflammatory Th17 subset and determined that MG patients harbor defects in B-cell tolerance. Their current focus is on describing the mechanisms of autoantibody production in MG, using high-throughput sequencing, toward the aim of improving therapeutic approaches. Email Kevin O'Connor |
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Vanessa OgleHistoryI am a historian of global Europe from the 18th century to the present, focusing on the history of capitalism, economic history, and empire in global and comparative perspective. While my particular interests lie in Western Europe (Britain, France, Germany, mostly), I conceive of Europe broadly and seek to place European history in the context of its interactions with the wider world. The sprawling nature of capitalism and the world economy require an engagement with non-European history. Similarly, Europe’s imperial and colonial past beyond the geographic boundaries of the continent is an important part of that history. My first book, The Global Transformation of Time: 1870-1950, explored the history of globalization, tracing changing political, economic, and legal regimes of time during an area of intensified interactions between Europe and other world regions. The book follows time in its different manifestations as social and economic clock time and calendar time from Germany, France, and Britain, to British India, the colonial world broadly, the late Ottoman Levant and Egypt, and the League of Nations. I consider this book a reflection on how to conceptualize the movement of goods, people, and ideas in global and international perspective. I published an article related to the book in The American Historical Review in 2013.
I am currently completing a project titled Archipelago Capitalism: A History of the Offshore World, 1920s-1980s. The book reopens the history of twentieth-century political economy and capitialism (in its free-market, neoliberal variety in particular) in Europe and beyond, by pointing to an economic, legal, and political regime of smaller, often enclave-like territories and spaces that thrived on the sidelines of a world otherwise increasingly dominated by nation-states: tax havens, offshore finance, flags of convenience, and free trade zones. At the same time, the book provides the first archivally-based account of how ‘offshore’ came into existence as a sophisticated, far-flung system often beyond the reach of national regulators and governments. The book thus seeks to shed light on the origins of tax avoidance and evasion on a global scale, one of the most pressing current problems with profound implications for the rise of inequality throughout the twentieth century. The project uses a multi-archival approach that combines documents from over 30 national archives, central banks, multilateral institutions, private banks, and oral history interviews in locations such as Australia, Bahamas, Britain, Canada, Cayman Islands, France, Germany, Guernsey, Ireland, Jersey, Luxembourg, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland, and the US. A pilot article based off this work was published in The American Historical Review in December 2017, another one in Past and Present in 2020.
Email Vanessa Ogle |
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Michelle Pagliaro-HaywoodChiropractic PhysicianChiropractic Physician Exercise Strength and Conditioning Specialist Certified Chiropractic Sports Medicine Specialist Adjunct Clinical Professor, University of Bridgeport |
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Priya PandaElectrical EngineeringPriya’s research interests lie in Neuromorphic Computing: spanning energy-efficient design methodologies for deep learning networks, novel supervised/unsupervised learning algorithms for spiking neural networks and developing neural architectures for new computing scenarios (such as lifelong learning, generative models, stochastic networks, adversarial attacks etc.). Her goal is to empower energy-aware and energy-efficient machine intelligence through algorithm-hardware co-design while being secure to adversarial scenarios and catering to the resource constraints of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Email Priya Panda |
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Kenneth PankoHigher Education TechnologyHigher education technology leader with a focus on academic innovation and service excellence. Provides vision and strategic direction on the transformative role technology plays in rethinking undergraduate and graduate education for the 21st century. Champions diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. |
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Barbara PearceReal Estate/LawBarbara Pearce joined Connecticut Hospice in January 2019 as interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Ms. Pearce is currently CEO of Pearce Real Estate and is taking a sabbatical from Pearce Real Estate to devote her time to Connecticut Hospice. She holds JD and MBA degrees, and practiced mergers and acquisitions law before joining Pearce Real Estate, assuming the Presidency in 1986. Ms. Pearce has been actively involved as a community leader in Connecticut and Greater New Haven, chairing many state and local boards, including Hospital of Saint Raphael, CBIA, Long Wharf Theatre; United Way of Greater New Haven; the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven; Artspace; and Saint Martin de Porres Academy. Additionally, she was the founder of the Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee. |
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James PerlottoYale College graduate, class of 1978 (Ezra Stiles!), Fellow in Trumbull since 1988, including Resident Fellow/ Executive Fellow 1990 - 1993. Graduate of Boston University School of Medicine 1982, and University of Minnesota residency in Family Medicine and Community Health. After a three year service in the National Health Service Corps, returned to Yale as the Chief of Student Medicine and Athletic Medicine at Yale Health Services for 25 years, overseeing the care of all of Yale’s students. Special areas include GLBTQ health, HIV/ AIDS care , and Sports Medicine. Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and member of the Yale Med Admissions Committee for over 28 years now. Also currently on the Board of Advisers of the Yale Drama School’s Summer Cabaret. Retired from Yale in 2013 but still love being a Fellow of Trumbull. Also teaching college courses and career advising at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida part time. Married to Tom Masse, former Deputy Dean of Yale School of Music and former Associate Provost for the Arts at Yale; and now Dean of the School of Music at Stetson University. We have a lively West Highland White Terrier named “Stella”. Enjoy travel, art history, painting and photography, music, literature and Baseball ! |
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John PersingEmeritus SurgeryJohn A. Persing is a doubly Board Certified Plastic Surgeon and Neurological Surgeon. He is passionate about improving the quality of life of children born with craniofacial defects and individuals affected by cancer, trauma, deformities, and aesthetic concerns. He believes that all people deserve a chance at a better life, regardless of economic and world boundaries. Dr. Persing earned his medical degree from the University of Vermont in 1974. He has been President of the Plastic Surgery Foundation, the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons, the Association of Academic Chairmen of Plastic Surgery, the American Association of Pediatric Plastic Surgeons, among others, and served as Chair of the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He is past President of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, and received the Clinician of the Year Award in 2010, as well as the James Barrett Brown award for the best journal article published in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery in 2015. Dr. Persing has a focus on improving the quality of patients’ lives regardless of whether this is a cosmetic or reconstructive concern. His clinical interests are craniofacial deformities, vascular malformations, and cosmetic surgery of the face and body. Connecticut Magazine named Dr. Persing among the best in the state in its annual “Top Doctors” issue in the 2016 edition, along with America’s Best Doctors (Castle-Connolly) and Who’s Who in Medicine. |
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Ruzica PiskacComputer ScienceRuzica Piskac is an assistant professor (tenure-track) at Yale, Computer Science Department. Her research interests span the areas of programming languages, software verification, automated reasoning, and code synthesis. A common thread in Ruzica’s research is improving software reliability and trustworthiness using formal techniques. |
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Thomas PoggePhilosophyThomas Winfried Menko Pogge (/ˈpɒɡi/; born 13 August 1953) is a German philosopher and is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. In addition to his Yale appointment, he is the Research Director of the Centre for the Study of the Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire’s Centre for Professional Ethics. Pogge is also an editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. |
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Katerina PolitiCancer CenterKaterina Politi studied Biology at the University of Pavia in Italy. She then moved to New York, where she obtained her PhD in Genetics and Development working with Argiris Efstratiadis at Columbia University. Following graduate school, she joined Harold Varmus’s lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and began her work on the molecular basis of lung cancer. She continues this work at Yale as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and the Yale Cancer Center. |
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Frederick PolnerAttorney, Former Associate Head of CollegeAttorney Frederick Polner, J.D. is the former Associate Master of Trumbull College. He is an attorney specializing in communications law, academic publishing, internet, and copyright issues. He is a sailor and skier, loves jazz and plays the drums. In Trumbull Frederick serves as a first year adviser for some of the students interested in the legal field. Email Frederick Polner |
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Mary Jane PotterBusiness in AfricaInnovare Advisors, LLC is an alternative investment advisory and management firm financing medium scale agricultural value chain companies, starting in emerging markets including Africa. Innovare finances companies commercially to increase the food supplies in Africa and beyond, and economic development impact to the communities they serve. |
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Leslie PowellLeslie Powell is Associate Director of International Security Studies at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Prior to this, she was with the Yale Office of International Affairs, the Yale World Fellows Program, and Eurasia Group. Leslie has a PhD in Political Science and an undergraduate degree in Russian Studies. Email Leslie Powell |
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Sara PowellBeinecke Rare Book & Manuscript LibrarySara Powell is Research Librarian at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, where she supervises the provision of reference services and serves as curatorial liaison to Beinecke research fellows. Sara holds an MS in Library & Information Science (Archives Management) from Simmons University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York. She has previously worked at Swarthmore College Libraries and the MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Email Sara Powell |
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Mary Beth RadiganRetiredEmail Mary Beth Radigan |
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Ayesha RamachandranComparative LiteratureAyesha Ramachandran is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and an affiliate of the Programs in Renaissance Studies and the History of Science and Medicine. She received her BA from Smith College and her PhD from Yale in Renaissance Studies, and is a former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. A literary and cultural historian of early modern Europe, she pursues interdisciplinary research on literature, philosophy, cartography, visual culture and the history of science, focusing on the long histories of globalization and modernity. Her first prizewinning book, The Worldmakers (University of Chicago Press, 2015) provides a cultural and intellectual history of “the world,” showing how it emerged as a cultural keyword in early modernity. She has written on major authors of the European Renaissance (Petrarch, Montaigne, Tasso, Spenser, Milton), on postcolonial drama, and on the histories of religious fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism. She is a co-editor of Spenser Studies and has co-edited several special issues of scholarly journals on topics ranging from humanism and posthumanism, macrocosmic Shakespeare, Renaissance aesthetics and history, and imagining global early modernity. Her current projects range from new research on early modern South Asia to comparative philology, cartography and lyric studies. She is currently working on two very different book projects – one on lyric poetry, tentatively entitled, Lyric Thinking: Towards a Global Poetics, and a hybrid memoir-cum-cultural history of officers and their families in the Indian Army, tentatively entitled, My Grandfather’s Army: Narratives of Nation-Building in Modern India. Email Ayesha Ramachandran |
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Megan RanneyPublic Health Brown UniversityDr. Megan L. Ranney is an emergency physician, researcher, and national advocate for innovative approaches to public health. She joined Yale in July 2023 as the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health and C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Public Health. Dr. Ranney’s research focuses on developing, testing, and disseminating digital health interventions to prevent violence and related behavioral health problems, as well as on COVID-related risk reduction. She has held multiple national leadership roles, including Co-Founder and Senior Strategic Advisor for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM) at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit committed to ending the gun violence epidemic through a non-partisan public health approach, and Co-Founder of GetUsPPE, a start-up nonprofit that delivered donated personal protective equipment to those who needed it most. She is a Fellow of the fifth class of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for the National Opioid Abatement Trust. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She has received numerous awards for technology innovation, public health, and research, including Rhode Island “Woman of the Year” and the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Policy Pioneer Award. A leading public voice on urgent topics in health and medicine, she offers expert analysis through testimony to Congress and guidance for non-governmental organizations. She is a frequent media commentator and author of op-eds for outlets that include the BBC, CNN, The Atlantic, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Prior to arriving at Yale, Dr. Ranney served as Deputy Dean at the Brown University School of Public Health; the Warren Alpert Endowed Professor of Emergency Medicine at Alpert Medical School of Brown University; and the Founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health. She remains an adjunct faculty member at Brown University. Dr. Ranney earned her bachelor’s degree in history of science, graduating summa cum laude, from Harvard University; her medical doctorate, graduating Alpha Omega Alpha, from Columbia University; and her master’s degree in public health from Brown University. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine and a fellowship in Injury Prevention Research at Brown University. She was previously a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire. Email Megan Ranney |
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Yusuf RansomePublic HealthDr. Ransome’s research investigates how social, economic, and cultural determinants influence racial/ethnic- and geography-related disparities in HIV care continuum indicators and alcohol use disorders. Two broad determinants of interest are a) social capital & cohesion, and b) religion, faith, and spirituality. Dr. Ransome currently has a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to study the direct association and underlying mechanisms between social capital and cohesion on HIV care continuum outcomes in the United States. Some methodological approaches Dr. Ransome uses in his research program include survey data analysis, multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, spatial epidemiology, and geographic information systems. Email Yusuf Ransome |