Four junior faculty honored for their interdisciplinary teaching

Yale College Dean Marvin Chun will host a dinner on Dec. 2 to honor the recipients of the annual Poorvu Family Fund for Academic Innovation, created to recognize excellence in teaching. This year’s recipients are Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Rohit De, Adriane Steinacker, and Stefan Steinerberger.

Arielle Baskin-Sommers

Baskin-Sommers is an assistant professor of psychology. Her work focuses on identifying and specifying the cognitive, emotional, and environmental mechanisms that contribute to antisocial behavior. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, and sociology, she develops novel experimental tasks, assessments, and intervention strategies that consider mechanistic differences across individuals engaging in similar antisocial behaviors. She teaches “The Criminal Mind,” “Research Methods in Clinical Psychology,” “Etiology and Treatment of Addictions,” and “History & Systems.” 

Rohit De

De is an associate professor of history and, at the Yale Law School, an associate research scholar. He focuses on the legal history of the Indian subcontinent and the common law world. In recent years, his research has expanded to include transnational legal geographies of commerce, migration, and rights across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. His courses include “India and Pakistan Since 1947,” “British Raj, Indian Nation,” “Lawyers as Rebels,” and “Mobile South Asians and the Global Legal Order.”

Adriane Steinacker

Steinacker is a senior lecturer in the physics department. She is an astrophysicist whose published work spans space physics and the theory of planetary systems formation. In her teaching career, her courses have included the history of astronomy, solar system dynamics, and astrobiology, as well as the core physics sequence she currently teaches at Yale, which introduces students to Newtonian mechanics, gravitation, waves, and electromagnetism.

Stefan Steinerberger

Steinerberger is an assistant professor of mathematics. His course in “Mathematical Analysis,” an advanced form of calculus, engages students with questions about mathematical equations, the usefulness of modern applications, and phenomena related to mathematical regularity and irregularity. He has published collaborations with statisticians, economists, and one psychologist, and he has taught 15 classes, among them “Math of Data Science,” which he is teaching currently.

Given to outstanding junior faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in teaching in interdisciplinary undergraduate programs, the Poorvu Award enables them to dedicate the summer to research essential to their development as scholars and teachers.