Wellesley College Announces Tenure for Seven Faculty Members

Wellesley College is pleased to announce that seven faculty members have been awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor by the Board of Trustees, effective in the 2022-23 academic year, based upon their leading research and scholarship, dedication to teaching, and their many contributions to the Wellesley community.   

Ama Baafra Abeberese, economics

Ama Baafra Abeberese ’04 is an economist whose research centers on analyzing the behavior of firms in developing countries. She studies the constraints firms in developing economies face and their responses to those constraints, including the impact of electricity outages and pricing on firm investment behavior, technology choices, and productivity, as well as on how access to imported inputs can affect how firms participate in export markets. 

Abeberese teaches classes on international trade theory, development economics, and the principles of macroeconomics. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University, where she is a fellow at the Center for Development Economics and Policy. She is also a research affiliate at the International Growth Centre. 

Louise Darling, biological sciences

Louise Darling is a biologist whose interdisciplinary research examines interactions with and transport and communication across the plasma membrane in cellular systems, including the actions of antimicrobial peptides, ion channels, and transport proteins. In the lab, she leverages her expertise and experience in bioengineering, cell biology, and quantitative fluorescence microscopy with project outcomes relating to regenerative medicine, rational design of peptides, and creative microscopy and analyses, with the goal of developing improved therapeutic approaches for a variety of human diseases and conditions. She has involved several Wellesley students as co-authors on publications in these areas.  

Darling earned her Ph.D. from Rice University. She serves on the advisory committee for Wellesley’s Biochemistry Program and on the Engineering Studies advisory board.

K.E. Goldschmitt, music

K.E. Goldschmitt teaches courses that explore a range of music styles, including global music, jazz, and pop music. Their research focuses on the role music plays in audiovisual media, including film, television, advertising, and video games. Their first book, Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries, examines the moments of popular breakthrough for Brazilian music among English speakers in the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on the late 1950s through the late 2010s. It covers genres such as bossa nova, cool jazz, easy listening, jazz fusion, world music, and hip-hop.  

Goldschmitt earned their Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles.

John Goss, biological sciences

John Goss is a cell biologist who studies regulatory mechanisms of conserved, essential cellular processes in eukaryotic cells. His research focuses on the control of cell division by a collection of proteins that comprise “node” structures, which serve as cellular signaling hubs in the medial cortex of the cell during interphase and early mitosis. In his lab, using a combination of cell microscopy, genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry, Goss works to identify and characterize the components that make up these signaling nodes, to better understand how they regulate cell division, and he regularly involves students in publications and professional presentations.  

Goss' teaching includes lecture and laboratory sections of introductory cellular and molecular biology, as well as cell biology. He recently designed an upper-level seminar that explores the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms of a variety of human diseases, and how our understanding of cell and molecular biology can help shape their treatment. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.

Jaclyn Hatala Matthes, biological sciences

Jaclyn Hatala Matthes’s research concerns feedbacks between the ecosystem processes, climactic change, and land-use change. Her work is focused on examining the controls on greenhouse gas fluxes from natural, agricultural, and restored ecosystems, and interpreting feedbacks between ecological dynamics, disturbances, and long-term ecosystem carbon sequestration. In her courses, Hatala Matthes examines ecosystem ecology and the close connections between Earth’s organisms and their physical environment. She teaches introductory organismal biology, ecology, and ecosystem ecology. 

Hatala Matthes is an advisory faculty member within the Environmental Studies Department. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Eni Mustafaraj, computer science

Eni Mustafaraj is a data scientist who studies web-based sociotechnical systems. Her research explores novel methods of collecting and analyzing the digital traces users generate while interacting with such systems. Currently, Mustafaraj is studying what criteria users apply to assess the credibility of online sources. From 2008 to 2014, Mustafaraj co-led a project examining how rumors and other kinds of information spread in online social networks, which ultimately led to the creation of TwitterTrails, an online tool that helped track the origin and spread of false or true information. 

Mustafaraj teaches courses in computer programming and problem solving; data, analytics, and visualization; data and text mining on the web; and artificial intelligence. She earned her Ph.D. from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany.   

Mathew Tantama, chemistry

Mathew Tantama’s research focuses on the aberrant signaling, oxidative stress, and metabolic stress that occur in the brain, and on developing new technology to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and immune responses in models of Parkinson’s disease and brain injury. In the lab, Tantama uses protein engineering techniques to develop new fluorescent protein-based sensors that can be used with live-cell microscopy to visualize and quantify cellular physiology. He has published widely in top scholarly journals, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Nature Communications.  

Tantama earned his Ph.D. from MIT.