Meet Our Faculty
In this section, we showcase just a few of our many outstanding faculty members.
ENGINEERING
Joan Brennecke, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Joan Brennecke, the Keating-Crawford Professor of Notre Dame’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is widely recognized as a pioneer in the application of spectroscopic techniques to study solvation and reactions in supercritical fluids and liquid mixtures, and for her innovative use of supercritical fluids and ionic liquids in environmentally benign chemical processing. The former chairman of Princeton’s Department of Chemical Engineering has characterized her as “not only good; she is the best experimental thermodynamicist in her age group.” The University conferred its highest award in graduate education, the James A. Burns, C.S.C., Award, on Prof. Brennecke in 2006 for the close attention she gives to the development of her many graduate students—all while maintaining tremendous research productivity—as well as her leadership in interdisciplinary projects across the Colleges of Science and Engineering. Read more
Stephen Silliman, Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences
Prof. Stephen Silliman of the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences has published extensively in the area of the science and engineering of groundwater as a source of drinking water in both developed and developing countries. He has been honored both for his teaching and his work involving water-quality issues in Benin (West Africa) and Haiti. In Benin, he and his students collaborate with professional colleagues from academia, government, and a private NGO to develop strategies for monitoring and protecting the quality of Benin groundwater. Most recently, this work has involved development of strategies to work with local populations in measuring changes in the quality of the water they derive from local groundwater wells. This type of population-based measurement and protection has the potential to contribute to management of water resources in rural regions throughout Africa. Read more at the departmental website or at Prof. Silliman’s website
HUMANITIES
Michael “Mic” Detlefsen
Prof. Michael “Mic” Detlefsen of the Philosophy Department is co-editor with Professor of Mathematics Peter Cholak of the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. Detlefsen is a specialist in logic and the history and philosophy of mathematics. His particular interest is understanding mathematicians’ practice of devising instruments to help them solve problems and prove theorems. Detlefsen was honored last year by his selection as one of just three scholars worldwide to be named to a senior Chaire d’Excellence by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under a program designed to attract world-class researchers and scholars to France.
Sabine MacCormack, History and Classics
Sabine MacCormack, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor of Arts and Letters, holds joint appointments in History and Classics, and is a faculty fellow in Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. She is internationally renowned as a historian of the Roman Empire, late antiquity, and the early modern Spanish world, with a special interest in the peoples and cultures of the Andes. Prof. MacCormack was one of the first to receive a $1.5 million Distinguished Achievement Award for scholars in the humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and has been in the news of late for her prize-winning book On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru. Read more
Cyril O’Regan, Theology
Cyril O’Regan, the Huisking Professor of Theology, specializes in systematic and historical theology. He has specific interests in the intersection of continental philosophy and theology, religion and literature, mystical theology, and postmodern thought. Prof. O’Regan has written The Heterodox Hegel, Gnostic Return in Modernity, and Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative. He has published numerous articles on such topics as the nature of tradition, negative theology, the sources of Hegel’s thought and Hegel as a theological source, and on figures such as John Henry Newman and the 20th- century Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, about whom he is currently preparing two volumes for publication. In Summer 2007, Prof. O’Regan taught a popular workshop to graduate students titled Teaching at a Catholic University.
Read moreSCIENCE
Julia Knight, Mathematics
Julia Knight, the Charles L. Huisking Professor of Mathematics at Notre Dame, was honored in 2007 with receipt of the Graduate School’s highest honor, the James A. Burns, C.S.C., Award, for her excellence in educating and mentoring graduate students as well as her numerous contributions to the field of logic. Prof. Knight has served as director of graduate studies in her department since 2003. While she has mentored students in many specialties, under her leadership, the logic group in the Department of Mathematics was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Research Training grant. Read more
Mary Ann McDowell, Biological Sciences
The research interest of Professor of Biological Sciences Mary Ann McDowell is the immunobiology of infectious disease. She and colleagues in the Institute for Tropical Disease Research and Training are collaborating to create a vaccine to combat the spread of leishmaniasis disease, which is responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality in developing countries as well as a slowing of economic and social development. Prof. McDowell’s research group, which includes several graduate students, is currently focused on the immunology of two intriguing groups of pathogens, the genre Leishmania and Plasmodium. Read more
SOCIAL SCIENCE
E. Mark Cummings, Psychology
E. Mark Cummings, Professor and Notre Dame Chair in Psychology, is a leader in the field of developmental psychology, particularly in regard to family processes and children’s socio-emotional development. A prolific researcher, he is the author of 188 articles—many in the most prestigious journals in the field—and his work is widely cited. Prof. Cummings is currently directing $8.3 million in sponsored research. One of his many strengths is his ability to consistently involve his graduate students (33 over his career) in every aspect of the research process—from developing longitudinal studies to actual research to involvement in research publications and presentations. For this, he received the Graduate School’s highest honor, the James A. Burns, C.S.C. Award, in 2008. Read More
Nelson Mark, Economics and Econometrics
Nelson Mark is the DeCrane Professor of International Economics at the University of Notre Dame and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests are in the areas of international macroeconomics, exchange-rate economics, and applied time-series econometrics. Prof.Mark has published numerous articles in top-tier journals and is the author of the graduate text International Macroeconomics and Finance: Theory and Econometric Methods. He is an associate editor of several journals, including the Journal of International Economics, International Journal of Finance and Economics, and Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. He is ranked 670th for publications and 186th for citations in Tom Coupe’s study of the top 1,000 economists of the last decade. Read more
