profiles

Prof. Dominic Boyer

Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Dominic Boyer is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.  His current research interests include the anthropology of knowledge, the anthropology of media, and East/West relations in Germany and Europe.  His doctoral research focused on the transition of former East German journalists to life and work in the unified (West) German media system. Several essays based upon this research have recently appeared in journals such as Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography, Ethnos, and Comparative Studies in Society and History. In addition, he is currently editing a special issue for Ethnos entitled, "New Directions in the Anthropology of Knowledge" and conceptualizing a new research project on the production and circulation of knowledge in universities in Germany and the United States.  During 2002-03, thanks to a Faculty Fellowship at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell and a Visiting Professorship at l'EHESS in Paris, he completed a book manuscript on German intellectual culture that is currently under review at the University of Chicago Press, entitled, "Spirit and System: An Anthropology of the Dialectic from Theory to Everyday Knowledge in Modern German Intellectual Culture."

Prof. Kent W. Fuchs

Dean, College of Engineering, Cornell University

Prof. Michael Göring

President, Zeit Foundation, Law, Hamburg

Education and Degrees

Prof. Davydd J. Greenwood

Director, Institute of European Studies, Anthropology, Cornell University

Dr. Ulrich Grothus

Director, DAAD, New York, NY

Prof. Gerhard Haerendel

Vice-President and Dean of Engineering, International University of Bremen

Born in 1935, he received his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in Physics from the University of Munich in 1963. In 1969 he became Fellow (Wissenschaftliches Mitglied) of the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik and in 1972 Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), from which he retired at the end of 2000. In 1987 he was appointed Honorarprofessor at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa in 1988 and at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000. Since 1986 he has been Co-Director of Skinakas Observatory (Crete). From 1982 to 1984 he was Chairman of the Council of the European Incoherent Scatter Radar (EISCAT). Since 1989 he has been Vice President of the International Academy of Astronautics and from 1994 onwards, President of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). In September 2000, he became Vice President and Dean of Engineering and Science at International University Bremen. He has more than 30 years of experience in space research, including the function of P.I. of several international rocket and satellite projects such as PORCUPINE, Colored Bubbles, AMPTE, CRRES, FREJA, and EQUATOR-S. The sounding rocket work pioneered the application of the barium plasma cloud technique to various aspects of plasma and magnetospheric physics, culminating in the creation of artificial comets in 1984 and 1985. Interpretations of satellite data led to the discovery of dayside boundary layers, small-scale reconnection events, high-beta plasma blobs in the magnetosphere and the in-situ confirmation of reconnection. Theoretical work includes motion of plasma clouds, formation of ionospheric irregularities, equatorial spread-F, ambipolar diffusion, diffusion of trapped particles, wave-particle interactions, reconnection, boundary layers, auroral arcs, cometary interactions, origin of spicules, solar flares and gamma-ray production in neutron stars. 

Prof. Peter U. Hohendahl

Director, Institute for German Cultural Studies, Cornell University

Peter U. Hohendahl, Ph.D. 1964, joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1977. He is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German and Comparative Literature and has been the Director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies since 1992. Before coming to Cornell, he taught at Pennsylvania State University and Washington University, St. Louis, where he served as the chair of the Department of German from 1972 to 1977. At Cornell, he chaired the Department of German Studies from 1981 to 1986. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Hamburg, the Free University of Berlin, and Ohio State University. He received fellowships from the Volkswagen Foundation, the Thyssen Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.  He was a fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld, the Zentrum für Literaturforschung in Berlin, and the Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC. In addition, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been the senior editor of the monograph series Probleme der Dichtung since 1986 and served as the editor of the monograph series Modern German Culture and Literature from 1988 to 2000. He joined the editorial board of the journal New German Critique in 1979 and served as a member of the board of Zeitschrift für Germanistik from 1990 to 2003. Among his publications are seven monographs on modern German literature and culture as well as twelve edited and co-edited volumes of literary criticism and cultural history. He has published numerous articles in the areas of literary criticism, cultural history, and intellectual history. More recently, he published several essays on the present state of the humanities and the future of the American university and was the editor of German Studies in the United States: A Historical Handbook (2003), the first comprehensive history of the discipline.

Prof. Dominick C. LaCapra

Former Director, Society for the Humanities,

Cornell University

Prof. Biddy Martin

Provost, Cornell University

Provost Carolyn (Biddy) Martin is the President's first deputy officer and reports to the President as the chief educational officer and chief operating officer of the University. She is responsible for overseeing all academic programs, with the exception of those programs reporting to the provost for medical affairs in New York City. Provost Martin completed her Ph.D. in German Literature in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has been on the faculty at Cornell University since 1984. In 1991, she was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of German Studies with a joint appointment in the Women's Studies Program. She served as Chair of the Department of German Studies from 1994-97, and in 1997 was promoted to full Professor in the Department. She also served as Associate Director of the Women's Studies Program in 1993-94. In 1996, Provost Martin was appointed Sr. Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. Provost Martin was appointed Cornell University's Provost effective July 1, 2000. She has served on several committees for the Institute of German Cultural Studies, Women's Studies and Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Studies. Her publications include Woman and Modernity: The (Life) Styles of Lou Andreas-Salome (1991) and Femininity Played Straight (1996).

Prof. Karl Ulrich Mayer

Karl Urich Mayer recently joined the Sociology Department at Yale University. Until June 2005 he retains his post as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, heading the Center for Sociology and the Study of the Life Course. He was born in Eybach, Germany and received his training in Sociology at the University of Tübingen, Gonzaga University (BA, 1966), Fordham University (M.A., 1967), the University of Constance (1973), and the University of Mannheim (1977). Prior to his arrival at the Max Planck Institute in 1983, he held positions on the faculty at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Mannheim, as Program and Executive Director of the National Survey Research Center, as Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, as Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and as Fellow of the Center for the Advancement of the Behavioral Sciences. Together with J. Goldthorpe and S. Ringen, Mayer founded the European Sociological Review and was its first main editor. Dr. Mayer also served as Section Editor of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences which was published in 2001. He is currently co-editor of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Among his many awards and honors, he is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Natural Sciences (Leopoldina) and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Founding Member of the European Academy of Sociology, a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course in 1999. Mayer's Research is in the areas of social stratification and mobility, sociology of aging and the life course, social demography, occupational structures and labor market processes, and methods of survey research.

Prof. Arnim H. Meyburg

College of Engineering, Cornell University

Arnim H. Meyburg, Ph.D., has been a faculty member of Cornell University since 1969. He is a Professor of Transportation Engineering and Planning.   He has many years of experience in research, teaching, and consultation, as well as in conducting, managing, and administering successful research efforts.  He has been the Director of the NYSDOT-sponsored Transportation Infrastructure Research Consortium (TIRC), a consortium of ten universities and two research labs, since its inception in 1996. At Cornell, he was Director (Department Head) of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1988 to 1998 and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Engineering from 1980 to 1985. He held visiting professorships at the University of California, Irvine, the Technical Universities of Munich and Braunschweig, Germany, and at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was consultant to various U.S. and foreign governmental and private agencies. Among his major awards are a Humboldt-Foundation Fellowship (Germany, 1978/79), the U.S. Senior Scientist Award (Humboldt-Prize), 1984; a Fulbright Senior Lecturing Award for Brazil, 1984; Professor-of-the-Year, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (1984, 1994, 1997.);  Daniel M. Lazar ’29 Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Engineering  (1999 and 2002). He is the co-author of 4 books, the co-editor of 4 books, and author of one monograph (in German) on various transportation engineering and planning topics. He published numerous papers and contributed 9 book chapters. His major research interests are travel demand modeling, transportation survey methodologies, freight transportation, urban and regional transportation planning, transportation-communications trade-offs, transportation and the environment. 

Prof. Jürgen Mlynek

Jürgen Mlynek has been President of the Humboldt University of Berlin since 2000. He completed his doctoral degree in 1979 and his Habilitation in 1984 at the University of Hanover. Since 1976 he has held numerous international posts, including: Researcher at the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose, California (1982); Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (1986-90); and Full Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Constance (1990-2000). With research specializations in experimental quantum physics, atomic physics and surface physics, he has published over 200 scientific papers and currently holds ten patents on his research. Mlynek is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, among them: the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG, 1992); the Max Born Prize and Medal of the Institute of Physics and the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (1996); Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London (1999); full membership in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (2000); and the Urania Medal (2003). He serves on numerous scholarly committees and board, including: the Selection Committee for Senior Research Awards at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (since 1996); the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology (since 2003); Conseil D’Administration of the Ecole Normale Superieure (since 2002); and the Vice-President of the German Research Foundation (1996-2001).

Prof. Alison G. Power

Dean of the Graduate School, Cornell University, and Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University 

Alison G. Power is Dean of the Graduate School and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University.  She received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington in 1985.  Her research focuses on biodiversity conservation in managed ecosystems, interactions between agricultural and natural ecosystems, agroecology, the ecology and evolution of plant pathogens, and tropical ecology.  She serves as Vice-President for Public Affairs for the Ecological Society of America and as the Presidential University Fellow of the Nature Conservancy. She also serves on the Committee on California Agricultural Research Priorities of the National Research Council and the Oversight Committee of the Collaborative Crop Research Program of the McKnight Foundation. She has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of  the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis; the Committee on Sustainable Agriculture and Environment in the Humid Tropics of the National Research Council; the Executive Committee of the Organization for Tropical Studies, EPA’s Scientific Advisory Panel on Transgenic Bt Crops, and the Technical Committee of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management CRSP of the U.S.Agency for International Development. 

Prof. Richard A. Proctor

Medical Microbiology, University of Wisconsin, President, AvHAA

Richard A. Proctor, MD, board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Medical Microbiology (University of Wisconsin).  Medical training: MD from University of Michigan (1970), Internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, three years with the US Army Walter Reed Medical Research Unit (1971-74), Residency in Internal Medicine at Georgetown University (1974-76), and Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Wisconsin. The recipient of multiple grants, Dr. Proctor has interests in the pathogenesis of bacterial infections and emerging pathogens.  He has made contributions in the fields of endotoxin activation of macrophages, septic shock, bacterial adhesion, S aureus pathogenesis, and antibiotic resistance with 140 journal articles, 25 book chapters, 12 editorials, and 130 abstracts. Proctor is active on both academic and clinical societies with service on the Editorial Boards of Infection and Immunity, the Journal of Endotoxin Research, and Critical Care Medicine; President of the Alexander von Humboldt Society of America (previous Counselor, Chapter President of the Wisconsin Chapter, and Secretary-Treasurer of the National Society); Member of the Finance Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA); Founding Member, past Treasurer, and Counselor of the International Endotoxin Society; Fellow of the IDSA; member of the American College of Physicians, American Society of Microbiology, and American Federation of Clinical Research; and founder and past President of the Wisconsin Chapter of the IDSA. Proctor received the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished Research Professor Award (Professorship in Münster, Germany).

Prof. Hunter Rawlings

President Emeritus, Cornell University

Dr. Dirk Schumann

Deputy Director, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC

Dirk Schumann has been Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., since 2002. After studying History and Political Science in Munich, Freiburg, and Boulder, CO (on a Fulbright grant), he received his Ph.D. in 1990 at the University of Munich. From 1990 to 1996 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Bielefeld, where he completed his Habilitation in 1999. From 1999 to 2002 he taught as Visiting DAAD Professor at Emory University. His first book, Bayerns Unternehmer in Gesellschaft und Staat, 1834 - 1914. Fallstudien zu Herkunft und Familie, politischer Partizipation und staatlichen Auszeichnungen was published in 1992. His Habilitation thesis appeared as a book in 2001 under the title Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik. Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (an English translation is in preparation). He is the co-editor (with Richard Bessel) of Life after Death. Violence, Normality and the Construction of Postwar Europe (Cambridge 2003) and (with Andreas Wirsching) of Violence and Society after the First World War (first issue of Journal of Modern European History, Munich 2003). His research focuses on the social, cultural, and political history of Germany in the 19^th and 20^th century in a comparative international perspective. He is particularly interested in the causes of violence and the effects it has on society. He is currently working on a project on childrearing, education, and discipline in West Germany and the U.S. from 1945 to the early 1970s.

Karsten D. Voigt has been Coordinator of German-American Cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry since 1999. From 1969 to 1976, he was a member of the Board of Directors and Deputy Director of the Hochschule of Frankfurt. In 1976, he became a member of the Bundestag representing the SPD. During his tenure (until 1998), he held numerous parliamentary and party posts, including: member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense committees of the Bundestag (1976-98); Foreign-policy Spokesman of the parliamentary group of the SPD (1983-98); member of the Executive Committee of the SPD (1984-95); member of the Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Parties of the European Union (1985-94); Chairman of the German-Russian Parliamentarians’ Group (1992-98). In addition, he has been active in NATO, holding various posts including the Chairmanship (1989-93), Vice-Presidency (1992-94) and Presidency (1994-96) of the Defense and Security Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO. He is a member, among others, of the Board of Trustees of the Atlantik-Brücke e.V.; the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute, Berlin; the Board of Trustees of the Checkpoint Charlie Foundation; and the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Center for Transatlantic Security and Military Affairs of the University of Potsdam.

Prof. Eicke R. Weber

Material Science, UC Berkeley, President Emeritus, AvHAA

Eicke R. Weber received his M.S., his Dr.rer.nat. degree and his Habilitation with venia legendi in Physics from the University of Cologne, Germany. After postdoctoral research stays in Albany, NY, and Lund, Sweden, he joined in 1983 the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is now a Professor of Materials Science and the Chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. He received an IBM Faculty Development Award in 1984, a DOE outstanding performance award and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1994, and was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2002. He was appointed as visiting Professor of Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan in 1990, of Kyoto University, Japan in 2000, and received a Zhu KheZhen lectureship of Zeijang University, Hangzhou, China in 2003. He served as founding president of the Berkeley chapter of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America (AvHAA) in 1996 and subsequently as Vice President and President of this Association. In 2003 he was elected founding president of the German Scholars Organization (GSO).  His research interests  are focused on the materials science of electronic materials, especially semiconductors, including silicon for microelectronic and photovoltaic applications and III/V semiconductor materials for high-speed and optoelectronic applications. He is author or co-author of more then 500 publications, was asked to give 52 invited talks at international conferences, is editor or co-editor of six books and is co-editor of the book series “Semiconductors and Semimetals” (Academic Press).