2024-2025 College Advisers

Lincoln Caplan

Lecturer, Yale Law School

I am delighted to continue as a freshman adviser, as I have been for the past 15 years, and to be a visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School, where I was on the faculty as a journalist from 1998 to 2006. I am also a member of the editorial board of The American Scholar, for which I write regularly, and a contributor of journalism to other publications. In addition, I am Davenport’s writing tutor and look forward to working with D-port students and students in other colleges. 

Ned Cooke

Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts in the Department of the History of Art

Professor Cooke focuses upon American material culture and decorative arts. His books include Making Furniture in Pre-industrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut (Johns Hopkins Press, 1996) and Inventing Boston: Design, Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World, 1680–1720 (Yale University Press, 2019), both of which focus upon the context of craftsman-client relations in colonial North America. He has also written extensively on modern craft, historicizing and explicating more recent forms of production.

At Yale, Cooke teaches lecture courses on American material culture from the fifteenth century to the present as well as an introductory course on global decorative arts and offers seminars on a variety of topics including material culture theory, material literacy, the American interior, American furniture, and modern craft. He has also taught seminars on craft and design in India and in Australia.

He served as the Chair of the department from 2000 to 2006 and from 2012 to 2016. Since his arrival at Yale in 1992, he served as Director of the Yale Center for the Study of American Art and Material Culture, a group of interested Yale faculty, graduate students, and museum professionals who meet weekly during the semester for presentations on the theme of that academic year. 

Michael Farina

Deborah Fried

Eric Friede 

Basie Gitlin 

Director of Development, Yale University Library and Yale Collections

A long-term Yalie and proud D’porter, I grew up outside New Haven and attended Choate Rosemary Hall before coming to Yale College, graduating with a B.A. in history in 2010. I was active in Davenport, serving as a FroCo, manager of the Davenport-Pierson Press, co-captain of IM squash, and lead organizer of the Mellon Forum. I then pursued an M.Phil. in early modern history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before returning to work in fundraising at Yale more than a decade ago. These days, I lead development efforts for Yale’s libraries, as well as some related areas such as Yale University Press and the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Elsewhere at Yale, I also serve as Librarian of the Elizabethan Club and Co-Chair of the Adrian Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prize Committee. In my spare time, I enjoy collecting books and manuscripts, rowing and playing squash, traveling, honing my cocktail-making skills, and of course being a part of the Davenport community!

Jay Gitlin

Lecturer; Associate Director of Howard R. Lamar Center on the Study of Frontiers and Borders

I am a proud member of the Class of 1971—the first Yale class with women and the next-to-last class required to wear a coat and tie for dinner in the dining hall. I majored in history and have always been interested in cities and urban life, which explains why I wound up specializing in the fur trade, the frontier, and the French experience in North America. I am from New York (Long Island: Mets and Jets fan) and joined the musicians’ union at the age of 12.  I love used bookstores and am writing a book on the “Rise and Fall of Modern Shopping.” I have a degree from the Yale School of Music as a percussionist, but mostly play piano in the Bales-Gitlin Band with my wife, Ginny Bales. Our son Basie (Davenport 2010) was a freshman counselor and has recently returned from Cambridge with an M.Phil. in Early Modern History.  A cold glass of milk and chocolate thin mints (any variety of dark chocolate) will bring an instant smile to my face, in case one is not already firmly planted there. 

Karin Gosselink 

Nilay Hazari 

Lisa Kereszi 

Kate Krier  

Assistant Dean for the Arts, Director of Production

I discovered theater when I played the dormouse (a silent role) in my elementary school production of Alice and Wonderland.  By high school, I had discovered that being backstage was more fun than being onstage and I have been working there ever since.  I was born in Connecticut, but grew up in Florida, and eventually found my way back for college (Wesleyan) and then again for grad school (Yale School of Drama).  At Yale, I oversee Undergraduate Production (the office that supports all undergraduate theater, dance, opera, and comedy), the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, and the Yale Ensembles (Bands, Glee Club and Yale Symphony Orchestra). Outside of Yale, I love cooking/eating, gardening, and reading, and I volunteer at a cat rescue organization in North Branford.

Smita Krishnaswamy

Bluma Lesch 

Assistant Professor of Genetics

luma (Bibi) Lesch works on the genetics and epigenetics of reproduction and development, with a special interest in the evolution of epigenetic and chromatin states in mammals. Understanding the evolution of gene regulation in gametes requires integrating information across a wide range of biological scales, from the regulation of molecules to the development of individuals to the evolution of species. Dr. Lesch’s work brings together these divergent approaches to thinking about biology.

Dr. Lesch earned her B.S. from Yale University in 2003. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2010 from Rockefeller University and her M.D. in 2011 from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA, from 2011-2017, where she was awarded an NIH Kirschstein postdoctoral fellowship and also named a Hope Funds for Cancer Research postdoctoral fellow. She received a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists in 2015, and returned to New Haven to join the Yale faculty in 2017.

Reina Maruyama

​Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Professor Reina Maruyama is exploring new physics in nuclear and particle astrophysics, in particular, in dark matter and neutrinos. Her group is carrying out direct detection of dark matter experiments in terrestrial-based detectors and searches for neutrinoless double beta decay. The current experiments include COSINE-100 located at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory in South Korea, DM-Ice, and IceCube located at the South Pole, and CUORE, located at Gran Sasso, Italy.

Kelly McLaughlin

Srinivas Muvvala 

Dr. Muvvala is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Program Director for the Addiction Psychiatry Residency at the Yale School of Medicine. He is the Medical Director of the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (SATU) at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. His research and clinical interests are in investigating and disseminating optimal therapies for the treatment of opioid, tobacco and alcohol use disorders and in providing comprehensive treatment for individuals with co-occuring addiction and psychiatric disorders.

Rob Nelson

Robert Lehman Professor Emeritus in the History of Art

Originally from Texas, Rob Nelson is an emeritus professor of History of Art with a specialty in the Middle Ages.  Currently he is writing a book about the long history of a particular illustrated medieval manuscript from its creation in medieval Constantinople to the present with chapters about Renaissance Rome and Florence and the Italian Enlightenment.  In collegeHe went through five or six majors, because everything seemed so fascinating, and he still enjoys learning about the wide interests of Yale students, especially those fields in which he could not major.

Patrick O’Connor 

Margaret Olin 

Adam Ployd

Kailasnath Purushothaman

Mary Beth Raycraft Guzman

Elise Riley

Martha Schall

Albert Sinusas 

Professor of Medicine (Section of Cardiovascular Medicine) and Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale University School of Medicine, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, and Director of the Yale Translational Research Imaging Center (Y-TRIC), and Director of Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging at Yale New Haven Hospital. He received a BS degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MD degree at University of Vermont, College of Medicine, and completed training in internal medicine at the University of Oklahoma, and training in cardiology and nuclear cardiology at the University of Virginia. He joined the faculty at Yale University School of Medicine in 1990 where he has remained. Dr. Sinusas has served as a standing member of the Clinical and Integrated Cardiovascular Sciences (CICS), and standing member and chair of Medical Imaging (MEDI), and Clinical Translational Imaging Sciences (CTIS) study sections of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Sinusas has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Cardiovascular Council (CVC), Molecular Imaging Center of Excellence (MICoE), and Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation (CMIIT) of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), and Board of Directors of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology. He was the 2008 recipient of the SNMMI Hermann Blumgart Award. His research is directed at development, validation and application of non-invasive cardiovascular imaging approaches for the assessment of cardiovascular pathophysiology, including the targeted molecular assessment of myocardial ischemic injury, angiogenesis, arteriogenesis, and post–infarction atrial and ventricular remodeling, and peripheral artery disease. The investigation of these biological processes involves, ex vivo and in vivo imaging in animal models of cardiovascular disease and humans. This translational research employs the 3–D modalities of X-ray computed tomography (CT) and fluoroscopy, SPECT/CT, PET/CT, echocardiography, and MR imaging in an animal physiology laboratory and clinical environment. Dr. Sinusas is the principal investigator of several NIH grants involving multi-modality cardiovascular imaging, and directs a NIH funded T32 grant providing training in multi-modality molecular and translational cardiovascular imaging. He is the author of over 250 peer reviewed publications and invited reviews related to cardiovascular imaging, and co-edited a textbook entitled Cardiovascular Molecular Imaging published in 2007 and Hybrid Imaging in Cardiovascular Medicine in 2018.

Candace Skorupa

Sr Lector French; Lector Comparative Lit

Candace Skorupa loves to teach first-year students of French in FREN 110, 120, and 121, as well as advanced students in FREN 150 and 151.  In the department of Comparative Literature, she is the Senior Essay Coordinator and guides the seniors through their senior essay projects.  She has been a lector at Yale since 2005.

She received her Ph.D. (2000), M.Phil. (1996), and B.A. (1992) in Comparative Literature from Yale University.   Her dissertation, “Music and Letters: Correspondances of Notes and Narrative from Berlioz to Proust,” was directed by Peter Brooks. 

She has taught French at Harvard University (1999-2002) and at Smith College (2002-2005), and she taught English at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Lyon, France, with the Fulbright program (1992-93). 

Vinod Srihari 

Jason Strong  

Associate Athletic Director, Compliance at the Yale Athletic Department

Jason Strong oversees of the Athletics Compliance Office, education and monitoring, amateurism, recruiting processes, and waiver requests of Ivy League and NCAA regulations.

Strong has sport oversight over Yale’s gymnastics, rowing and squash programs and serves as a member of Yale Athletics’ Education & Workshops Committee.

Prior to Yale, Strong served as the assistant athletic director for compliance at Oregon State University from 2014-2018. His responsibilities at OSU included education and monitoring, personnel, amateurism, recruiting processes, playing and practice season schedules, and writing waiver requests at both the Pac-12 Conference and NCAA levels.

Strong spent four years as the director of compliance at Boston University of the Patriot League from 2010-2014.  While at Boston University, Strong helped the Terriers’ transition from the America East Conference to the Patriot League. He was responsible for all NCAA and league compliance interpretations.

Nicholas Wantsala

John Witt