More news of Yale people

Danell Beede

Appointed: Dawn Osborne-Adams. View full image

Danell Beede

Appointed: Dawn Osborne-Adams. View full image

Elected: Mariko Silver ’99. View full image

Elected: Mariko Silver ’99. View full image

Appointed

Dawn Osborne-Adams begins work on September 1 as the inaugural university ombudsperson, President Maurie McInnis ’96PhD announced in May. Osborne-Adams, an attorney, is an old hand at this new job: she comes to Yale from the University of North Carolina, where she has been university ombudsperson since 2018, and she served in that role at Binghamton University from 2010 to 2014. Every other Ivy university has an ombudsperson; McInnis said the office “would function as a confidential, neutral, independent, and informal resource for members of the Yale community navigating concerns related to their work or studies.” 

Biochemist Ronald Breaker has been appointed to a five-year term as dean of science for Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Breaker, the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, has taught at Yale since 1995 and has chaired two academic departments: molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and molecular biophysics and biochemistry. His research is focused on RNA and DNA; he and his lab proved the existence of messenger RNA elements known as riboswitches. He succeeds Larry Gladney as dean of science.

Three residential colleges will have new heads of college this fall. Jaehong Kim, the Henry P. Becton Sr. Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, succeeds David Evans ’92 as head of Berkeley College. Hwansoo Kim, a professor of religious studies, is the new head of Morse College, succeeding Catherine Panter-Brick. And David Vasseur, a professor and chair in the ecology and evolutionary biology department, succeeds Thomas Near in Saybrook College. 

Honored

Eight writers have been honored with the 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize, a $175,000 award inaugurated in 2013 and administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This year’s winners in fiction are Gwendoline Riley (UK) and Adam Ehrlich Sachs (US); in nonfiction, Kei Miller (Jamaica) and lucy sante (US/Belgium); in drama, Christina Anderson ’11MFA (US) and S. Shakthidharan (Australia/Sri Lanka); and in poetry, Joyelle McSweeney (US) and Karen Solie (Canada). The recipients will come to campus in September to speak at the Windham-Campbell Festival.

Elected

Mariko Silver ’99 was elected by alumni this spring for a six-year term on the Yale Board of Trustees. Silver is president and chief executive of Lincoln Center in New York City. Before that, she served as president of Bennington College, president and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation, and US deputy assistant secretary of homeland security. She holds a PhD in economic geography from UCLA. She succeeds Carlos Moreno ’70.

Remembered

Paul Fleury, an engineer and physicist who was dean of Yale’s faculty of engineering from 2000 to 2007, died on April 30 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He was 86 years old. Fleury spent more than two decades at Bell Labs, where he oversaw the development of optical fiber, before moving into education as dean of engineering at the University of New Mexico from 1996 to 2000. At Yale, he helped lead the revitalization of engineering and the construction of the Malone Engineering Center.