![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/Donaldson-Matasci-Matina-03-3.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nMatina Donaldson-Matasci<\/strong>, a faculty member since 2014, focuses her research on collective behavior in social insects, particularly communication in honey bees and defense mechanisms in ants. At the HMC Bee Lab, she and her team of student scientists study how these colonies coordinate complex group behaviors. Recent projects in the lab include field experiments on honey bee foraging, utilizing drones and computer vision to map the local floral landscape, and conducting a mix of laboratory experiments and simulations to analyze the transportation networks of arboreal ants. Last year, the lab’s NSF-funded research investigating wood ants and their intricate networks was featured in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a project completed in collaboration with S\u00e1ndor Piross of the Hungarian Ecological Research Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ambereen Dadabhoy<\/strong>, professor of literature since 2018, focuses both her teaching and research on the role of identity and difference in literature. She offers courses in Shakespeare and early modern English literature, first-year writing seminars and genre electives, and she teaches the Shakespeare class that culminates in a production of a play. She is the author of Anti-Racist Shakespeare<\/em> and Shakespeare Through Islamic Worlds, <\/em>which, received a Jerome Singerman First Book Award honorable mention from the Shakespeare Association of America. She is a member of the Modern Language Association, the Shakespeare Association of America and the Renaissance Society of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Erin Talvitie<\/strong>, professor of computer science, specializes in applying machine learning to the field of artificial intelligence, working toward the creation of artificial autonomous agents that can learn to act flexibly and competently in unknown environments. A faculty member since 2019, Talvitie approaches these complex questions by utilizing advanced tools within machine learning and artificial intelligence, focusing especially on the study of reinforcement learning. In 2016, she received an NSF CAREER grant, which funded work studying model-based reinforcement learning, specifically in settings where a given model is insufficient to capture the true, real-time dynamics of the environment. Prior to Harvey Mudd, Talvitie was a founding member of the department of computer science at Franklin & Marshall College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sarah Kavassalis<\/strong>, assistant professor of climate and chemistry, leads the FICUS Lab, where she investigates the fundamental chemistry that shapes air quality and climate, with a specific focus on connecting high-resolution measurements to advanced computational modeling. In addition to hands-on fieldwork, students in her lab address complex questions regarding chemical kinetics and atmospheric modeling while engaging with modern approaches to data analysis and machine learning<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynn Kirabo<\/strong>, Maria M. Klawe Assistant Professor of Climate and Computer Science, investigates the future of accessible early warning systems by centering the lived experiences of disabled people. Appointed as a joint faculty member in the computer science department and the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment, she focuses on designing practical frameworks that policymakers can leverage to fundamentally reshape and improve community resilience to disaster events. She leads the CACTI Lab, a research group that concentrates on four core areas: human-centered design, disability, mobility technologies and climate change interventions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustees approved faculty promotions and appointments, effective July 1. Promotion to full professor Matina […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":15450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,11,14,967,638,19],"class_list":["post-15443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-chemistry","category-computer-science","category-faculty","category-general-feed","category-hixon-center","category-hsa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15443"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15458,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15443\/revisions\/15458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/Dadabhoy-Ambereen-01.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/Talvitie-Erin-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nReappointment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/Sarah-Kavassalis-400.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/Lynn-Kirabo-314.jpg\")
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