The distinction of CMC’s world-class faculty can be witnessed in the wealth of outstanding accomplishments and awards in their fields. Whether for inspired teaching, original research, prestigious leadership roles, or other exceptional teacher-scholar work, their public recognition showcases the dedication, creativity, and expertise that define CMC’s intellectual vitality and academic excellence.
We invite you to learn about the impressive accomplishments of CMC’s distinguished faculty below.
To view the previous academic year’s faculty achievements, click here for a comprehensive list of CMC Faculty Publications and Grants, as well as the 2024-25 CMC Faculty Award Winners.
We encourage faculty to tell us about your significant accomplishments. Notify CMC’s Strategic Communications & Marketing team about your grant awards, research achievements, notable publications and talks, exhibitions and conferences, major media mentions, or any other notable achievement.
Fall 2025
Spring 2025
Fall 2024
Rima Basu
Philosophy Professor Rima Basu was selected to participate in a 2024 NEH Summer Institute on moral psychology held at Cornell University. The summer institutes are designed to bring together faculty from across the nation to deepen their understanding of significant topics in the humanities to enrich their capacity for effective scholarship and teaching.
Jordan Branch
Government Professor Jordan Branch was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Dangers and Opportunities of Technology program. He is among only 13% of applicants who were selected for support this year. He will use the award to complete work on a new book on “Virtual Territories: War and the State in a Digital Age.”
Lisa Cody
Professor Lisa Cody has been awarded the 2024 James L. Clifford Prize by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). The Clifford Prize is awarded annually to an article that "presents an outstanding study of some aspect of eighteenth-century culture, interesting to any eighteenth-century specialist, regardless of discipline." Cody, an Associate Professor of History at CMC, earned the distinction for, 'Marriage is No Protection for Crime': Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England, published in the Journal of British Studies, 61.
Mark Costanzo
Prof. Mark Costanzo has been elected President of the Western Psychological Association (WPA). Costanzo, a psychological science professor, will serve a three-year term as President-Elect in 2024, President in 2025, and Past-President in 2026. WPA was founded more than a century ago and represents California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, and Hawaii. WPA facilitates the exchange of ideas between psychological researchers, mentors, and students interested in psychological science and practice.
Daniel Firoozi
Economics Professor Daniel Firoozi and collaborators received a grant from the Ascendium Research Group, Inc. to conduct a study of noncredit workforce training programs and the impact such programs have on the job market.
Jeff Flory
Economics Professor Jeff Flory and several collaborators have received a new grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct research exploring the impact of remote work on diversity.
Minju Kim
Professor of Korean Minju Kim has been named president of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics. As its 25th president, Kim is the first president from a liberal arts college. The International Circle of Korean Linguistics is the most prestigious international scholarly association of Korean linguistics, bringing together fields as diverse as pragmatics, phonology, and formal linguistics.
Lisa Koch
International Relations Professor Lisa Koch’s book Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs (Oxford University Press 2023) has been named winner of the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award for 2023.
Nita Kumar
Professor Emeritus Nita Kumar was named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation received nearly 3,000 applications this year and only about 6% of applicants received the honor. As a Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Kumar will combine archival, oral history, and ethnographic research to craft a century-long social history of the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh through a gendered lens, the life of a woman called Suniti.
Esther Chung-Kim
Religious Studies Professor Esther Chung-Kim was awarded a 2024 National Library of Medicine (NLM) Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine for her research project, “Democratization of Medicine—Access to Health Care in Early Modern Europe.”
Sharda Umanath
Prof. Sharda Umanath was awarded the 2023 Mentorship Award in Aging winner by the American Psychological Association’s Division 20 – Adult Development and Aging. She was selected in part thanks to the efforts of eight former CMC and Scripps students led by Madeline Valdez ’21. Umanath also received an Honorable Mention for the J. Don Read Early Career Award from the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
Branwen Williams
Prof. Branwen Williams was awarded the National Science Foundation’s Mid-Career Advancement Award. This is the second year of a new NSF program that supports mid-career faculty. The distinction will enable Williams to launch her research program at CMC’s new Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences. It will also connect the Roberts Environmental Center, which Williams directs, with collaborators at UC Irvine to learn new techniques that will further enhance our understanding of climate science.
Lisa Cody
Prof. Lisa Cody was honored by the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies for best article, “Marriage is No Protection for Crime”: Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England.” Cody is a cultural historian of Britain and Northern Europe. Her teaching specializes in the history of the human body, including abortion, reproduction, sexuality, gender, and violence across the Atlantic and Northern European worlds.
David Day
Prof. David Day was invited to join the inaugural National Advisory Committee for the Carnegie Elective Classification for Leadership for Public Purpose. As a committee member, his key responsibilities are to act as ambassador, and advise on framework revisions, the review process and reviewer qualifications, and policies and programming as requested.
Stacey Doan
Prof. Stacey Doan was recently awarded two major grants to support her research on resilience in youth, including $250,000 from the Ho Foundation and 3.5 million from the National Institute of Mental Health. Project PRISM will support Claremont College students in testing and evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience intervention in local high schools, aiding CMC to apply its principles of responsible leadership and community engagement. The project will impact hundreds of adolescents in the LA and San Bernardino communities.
Ran Libeskind-Hadas
Prof. Ran Libeskind-Hadas has been elected vice chair of the Computing Research Association, which represents the computer science research community in North America, and more than 250 universities, colleges, industrial research labs, and other organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Libeskind-Hadas, who is the inaugural chair for the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences, is the first faculty member from an undergraduate institution to serve on the executive council of the board.
Esther Chung-Kim
Prof. Esther Chung-Kim has been elected as the incoming President of the American Society of Church History, the oldest academic society in the field of religion. Chung-Kim is chair of the Religious Studies Department, and specializes in the history of world Christianity, including the European Reformations. Her research examines religious conflict, history of poverty, and the impact of religion on politics, economics, and society. Her vision for the Society and higher education is to promote scholarship and teaching that moves the conversation from "what we know best" to "what do others need to learn?"
Amy Kind
Prof. Amy Kind was recently elected to a three-year leadership term of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA). The APA promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy. Kind will be serving one year as vice-president, one year as president, and one year as past-president.
Jeho Park
Prof. Jeho Park been elected as the Vice President of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) for the 52nd term (2023-2024). The KSEA is one of the largest and oldest professional societies outside South Korea. Its mission is to provide and promote international cooperation, career development, and community service in science, technology, and entrepreneurship.
Sharda Umanath
Prof. Sharda Umanath is a recipient of the Psychonomic Society 2023 Early Career Award. The Psychonomic Society, the preeminent society for the experimental study of cognition, confers scientific awards each year upon young scientists who have made excellent research contributions to the field of cognitive psychology early in their careers. She is the first awardee from a small liberal arts college in the history of the award.
Chelsea Wang
Prof. Chelsea Wang, a historian of late imperial China, won a prestigious early career fellowship through the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in China Studies. This grant will enable Wang to complete her first book, “Logistics of Empire: Governance and Spatial Friction in Ming China, 1368-1644.” Through this work, Wang hopes to answer longstanding questions about the seemingly counterintuitive bureaucratic practices of this vast and powerful imperial dynasty.
Minxin Pei
The Smith Richardson Foundation awarded a grant to Prof. Minxin Pei to support his research.
Ahona Panda
Prof. Ahona Panda, assistant professor of History, received the Sardar Patel Dissertation Award, a national prize for the best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India - social sciences, humanities, education and fine arts by the Center for India and South Asia at UCLA.
Emily Pears
Prof. Emily Pears’ book, “Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History” was awarded Best in American Political Thought from the American Political Science Association. Her book investigates "efforts by the founding generation's leadership to construct and strengthen political attachments in and among the citizens of the new republic.