More news of Yale people

Lorenzo Fornari

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Appointed

Conductor Elizabeth Askren (left) has been selected as the new director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra. Askren is best known as a conductor of opera: she founded and directed the Transylvanian Opera Academy—Romania’s first opera studio—and is principal guest conductor of the Hawaii Opera Theatre. She is the creator (and cohost with her daughter Lily) of MaestraMagic!, a video program for children about classical music. Askren is the first woman to lead the YSO in its 60-year history.

Niko Pfund is the new director of Yale University Press. Pfund comes to Yale after more than two decades at Oxford University Press, where he was most recently president of the US division and global academic publisher. Before Oxford, he was director and editor in chief of New York University Press. He succeeds John Donatich, who retired in June.

New heads have been appointed for two residential colleges. Michael Koelle, a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, is the new head of Ezra Stiles College, succeeding Alicia Schmidt Camacho. A faculty member since 1996, Koelle studies what goes wrong with molecules and neurons in conditions like drug addiction and depression. Engineering professor W. Mark Saltzman has returned to Jonathan Edwards College, where he was head from 2016 to 2022, for a three-year term, succeeding Paul North. 

Remembered

Michael Roemer, a filmmaker who taught in the School of Art and the American studies program for more than 50 years, died at his home in Townshend, Vermont, on May 20. He was 97 years old. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Roemer studied at Harvard before beginning his career as a film editor, director, and writer best known for the 1969 comedy The Plot Against Harry and the 1964 film Nothing But a Man. He taught at Yale from 1966 to 2017. When he retired, he was celebrated in a tribute from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as “the anchor, guide, and guru to literally generations of young filmmakers searching to find their way and now making their mark around the globe.”

Yale University

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Elected

Alumni elected JaimeTeevan ’98 (left) to a six-year term as a Yale trustee in this spring’s alumni fellow election. Teevan, the chief scientist and technical fellow at Microsoft, has a PhD in computer science and engineering from MIT. At Microsoft, she invented the first personalized search algorithm used by Bing and is now involved in the integration of AI into the company’s products. In 2023, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in AI. Teevan was selected over Robert S. D. Higgins ’85MD; she succeeds Ann Miura-Ko ’98 as an alumni fellow.

Honored

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a professor in the practice of theater and performance studies at Yale since 2021, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama in May for his play Purpose. The Pulitzer jury described the play, which features an upper-middle-class Black family led by a civil rights icon, as “a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.” Jacobs-Jenkins teaches playwriting in Yale College.