Fellows

Maria Eugenia Panero

M. E. Panero is currently the Assistant Director of Academic Affairs with the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program in the Yale School of Medicine. At seven-years-old, she immigrated from Argentina to the United States with her family, and is especially excited to work with first-generation and Latine students. At Yale since 2018, she previously served as the STEM Program Manager of the Yale Young Global Scholars, as well as a Research Associate in the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Boston College, with a Certificate in College Teaching. Her studies explored the psychological effects of entering fictional worlds – through reading fiction, acting on stage, or watching a performance. Having also worked as an actor and singer, she is fascinated by what people gain from and experience when engaging in make-believe. Her research has been federally recognized and featured in major news outlets, such as CNN, Time Magazine, and The Atlantic. In her free time, M. E. enjoys spending time with friends and family, dog sitting, and volunteering at animal shelters. 

Michael Pastor

Michael Pastor is the Director of the James Tricarico Jr. Institute for the Business of Law and In-House Counsel and Co-Director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School. He is also a Professor from Practice at the school and faculty advisor to the Latino Law Students Association, the Privacy Law Association, and the Employment and Labor Law Students Association.

Pastor previously served as the General Counsel of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (“DoITT”) and the New York City Cyber Command. In those roles, he handled and oversaw all technology law matters for New York City, including those related to cybersecurity and technology procurement. He was also the Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs and Franchises at DoITT, where he acted as the City’s lead executive on the City’s relationships with major telecommunications providers, including overseeing the LinkNYC program and initiatives tied to the roll-out of 5G wireless networks in the City.

Prior to these roles, Pastor spent nearly ten years in senior roles at the New York City Law Department in the Legal Counsel Division, where he advised on local legislation and regulations, and the Appeals Division, where he argued appeals in State and federal courts in New York. In the latter role, he successfully litigated before the New York Court of Appeals in defense of the City’s land use approvals for the development and modernization of the New York University campus in Greenwich Village. 

Pastor also served as the First Deputy Criminal Justice Coordinator for New York City in the Office of the Mayor. He began his legal practice as a litigation associate at the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, after concluding a law clerkship in federal district court in Maryland.

Pastor serves on the Board of Directors of the Hudson River Park Trust, Start Small Think Big, and the Judge Alexander Williams Jr. Center for Education, Justice, and Ethics at the University of Maryland.

He is a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, and the New York State Bar Association, where he serves on the Cybersecurity Subcommittee of the Committee on Technology.

Pastor holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A. from Yale University.

James Perlotto

Yale 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 !

Ruzica Piskac

Ruzica 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.
Prior to joining Yale, Ruzica was an independent research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) in Germany (January 2012-August 2013). Ruzica did her graduate studies at EPFL, Switzerland (2007-2011), where she worked under the supervision of Viktor Kuncak. She was awarded the Patrick Denantes Memorial Prize for her PhD dissertation. She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science, obtained from the University of Saarland (supervised by Harald Ganzinger at Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science) in Saarbruecken, Germany, a Master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

Katerina Politi

Katerina 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.

Mary Jane Potter

Innovare 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.