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Office of the Provost names 2024-25 Academic Leadership Program Fellows

September 1, 2024

Northwestern’s Office of the Provost has named five Academic Leadership Program (ALP) Fellows for the 2024-25 academic year.

This year’s fellows are Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano, Elizabeth Tipton and Ivy Wilson from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences; Elizabeth Gerber from the McCormick School of Engineering; and Megan Roberts from the School of Communication.

ALP is an intensive year-long program that develops the leadership and managerial skills of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional ability and academic promise. Nominated by deans and selected by Provost Kathleen Hagerty, ALP Fellows attend in-person conferences at alternating Big Ten institutions and participate in on-campus activities at their home institution.

 

Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano smiles into the camera.Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano

Figueroa-Feliciano is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and serves as an Associate Vice President of Research at Northwestern. After completing his graduate studies at Stanford, he worked as a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and as an Associate Professor at MIT before joining Northwestern in 2015. 

His pioneering research lies at the convergence of particle physics and quantum computing. Utilizing advanced techniques from both fields, he develops innovative quantum-based sensors for particle physics and optimizes qubits for sensing and computing applications. His past and current research includes studying Supernova Remnants with the NASA Micro-X Rocket, searching for dark matter with the SuperCDMS experiment, investigating new neutrino properties at nuclear reactors with the Ricochet experiment, and developing quantum sensors for dark matter applications under the DOE-funded Quantum Science Center. 

Figueroa-Feliciano's work has earned him various awards, including the NSF CAREER Award and the Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellowship. He has held prominent roles as spokesperson and executive committee member for several international experiments and maintains a Joint Appointment in the Particle Physics Division at Fermilab. 

Elizabeth Gerber smiles into the camera.Elizabeth Gerber

Gerber helps organizations design and implement new technologies to effectively collaborate. She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies enable new ways to share and create new information with diverse stakeholders to solve complex problems; how the new sources of information change how people work and how the shifts in the way people work changes the role of the organization. Her work cuts across management, computer science, and design, is generously supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Heath, and industry.  Her research is informed by her formal training in design, innovation, and management science at Dartmouth College and Stanford University where she helped develop the Business and Design Initiative at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Her work has been featured in outlets including NPR, ABC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review and Wired.   

Gerber is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, founding co-Director of the Center for Human Computer Interaction + Design, and founder of Design for America, an award winning network preparing the next generation of community focused innovators, Founding Associate Editor of Transactions in Social Computing, and producer of the Technical Difficulties Podcast, a podcast centering female leaders in technology.  

She has received numerous awarded for her scholarship and teaching including the ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award, Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Excellence Award, Beckman Trust Award, the IEEE’s Teaching Excellence Award and Northwestern’s Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. 

Megan Roberts smiles into the camera.Megan Roberts

Roberts is a professor and associate chair for the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Roberts has been at Northwestern since 2013, when she started her first faculty position as an assistant professor. Roberts earned a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester, an MS in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Emerson College, and a PhD in Education and Human Development from Vanderbilt University.  

Prior to obtaining her PhD, she practiced as a speech-language pathologist specializing in young children with developmental delays. Her current research focuses on improving access to effective early intervention for toddlers with developmental delays (e.g., autism, hearing loss). This clinically based line of research examines new ways of identifying autism and different variations of caregiver-mediated communication interventions tailored specifically for different populations of children. Her research has been funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the Institute of Education Sciences. 

Elizabeth Tipton smiles into the camera.Elizabeth Tipton

Tipton is a Professor of Statistics and Data Science in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research and holds a courtesy appointment in School of Education and Social Policy. She joined the faculty in 2018, after holding a faculty position at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Tipton is the co-Director of the Statistics for Evidence Based Policy and Practice Center. Her research focuses on the development of methods in three broad areas: the generation of new evidence using randomized trials and quasi-experiments; the synthesis of evidence across studies for use in clearinghouses and via meta-analysis; and the translation of evidence to decision makers via data visualization and knowledge mobilization approaches. She often collaborates with researchers in education, psychology and medicine. 

Tipton is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). She is the incoming Chair of the Social Statistics Section of the ASA and the incoming President of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. She earned her PhD in Statistics from Northwestern University, an MA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a BA in Mathematics from Transylvania University (in Kentucky).  

Ivy Wilson smiles into the camera.Ivy Wilson

Wilson is Associate Professor of English and teaches courses broadly at the intersection of literature and modern and contemporary art. His specific research interests focus on the comparative literatures of the Black diaspora and U.S. literary studies with a particular emphasis on African American culture. The author or editor of five books, including Specters of Democracy (Oxford UP), he was awarded the Darwin T. Turner Award in 2022 for career excellence and contributions to the study of African American literature.  
 
At Northwestern he has served on the executive council for the Program in African Studies, the faculty advisory council for the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, and the administrative board of The Graduate School. He also served two terms as director of the Program in American Studies and is currently director of the university-wide Black Arts Consortium, where he has formalized relationships with the Chicago Humanities Festival and Museum of Contemporary Art, among other partnerships.
 
He has been invited to give lectures or talks at important museums in North America, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Guggenheim and the Studio Museum of Harlem. His work has been supported by the Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, National Humanities Center, and SSRC. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002.