Penn State's Office of Faculty Affairs has named 10 distinguished professors for 2025. The distinguished professor or distinguished librarian title recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State's Office of Faculty Affairs has named 10 distinguished professors for 2025.
The distinguished professor or distinguished librarian title recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. This special academic title is bestowed upon a limited number of professors who are leaders in their fields of research or creative activity and who have demonstrated significant accomplishments with respect to teaching, research or creative activity, and service.
The University's 2025 distinguished professors are:
Shihui Shen, professor of rail transportation engineering, Penn State Altoona
Shen, who arrived at Penn State Altoona as an associate professor in 2013, studies civil materials and their applications in railroad transportation systems and highway engineering. She recently received a three-year, $6.8 million grant (as co-principal investigator) to develop and transfer affordable technologies to enhance the safety, efficiency, reliability and sustainability of short line and regional railroads. In 2021, she was awarded American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fellow status, an honor held by only 3% of ASCE members. Her acclaim as a scholar in her field has brought significant recognition to the Rail Transportation Engineering program at Penn State Altoona. Read more about Shen here.
Elizabeth “Cassie” Mansfield, professor of art history, College of Arts and Architecture
Described as “one of the most important scholars in the field of 18th- and 19th-century art, internationally,” Mansfield joined Penn State in 2018, and was head of the Department of Art History from 2018 to 2023. Mansfield combines technology and art, transforming how we understand art-making; her work has extended beyond the field of art history and impacted the fields of literature, history and information technology. In her current work on artificial intelligence (AI) and art, for which she received two National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Enhancement grants, Mansfield collaborates with colleagues in meteorology, data science and AI. Read more about Mansfield here.
Charles Youmans, professor of music, College of Arts and Architecture
Youmans is internationally recognized as a leading scholar of both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. His seminal work, “Mahler and Strauss: In Dialogue,” earned acclaim from scholars outside of the field of music and drives international discourse on both composers. He subsequently edited "Mahler in Context" (Cambridge) and contributed all nine chapters on Strauss' tone poems to the “Richard Strauss-Handbuch" (Bärenreiter). Youmans is known for being a dedicated and engaging teacher and mentor, and many of his students have gone on to hold faculty positions at major universities. Read more about Youmans here.
Pierre-Emmanuel Jabin, professor of mathematics, Eberly College of Science
Jabin is an internationally renowned mathematician whose research spans various subfields, including fluid dynamics and mathematical biology, deep learning, and mathematical analysis at the interface of partial differential equations and kinetic theory. One of his most notable achievements is research showing that large numbers of interacting point vortices with random walks behave like a viscous fluid. Jabin’s research has been supported by extensive funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, among other sources, and he has received a number of the top honors in his field, including being an invited speaker at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians. In addition to the numerous contributions to his field, Jabin spearheads efforts to enhance student recruitment in his department. Read more about Jabin here.
Marcos Rigol, professor of physics, Eberly College of Science
Rigol, a professor of physics who joined Penn State as associate professor in 2013, is known worldwide for his work in the field of quantum thermalization and his work has dramatically changed the way people think about quantum dynamics in systems with many particles. He also conducted seminal work on integrable quantum systems, introducing the concept of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Read more about Rigol here.
Karl Zimmerer, professor of geography, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
Arriving at Penn State in 2007, Zimmerer has maintained a prolific research agenda. He is internationally recognized for his research on agriobiodiversity and conservation of natural resources, political ecology and sustainability science, and socio-environmental systems and land us, among other areas. Zimmerer is a fellow (2013) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in fall 2024 he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Zimmerer is noted for his engagement with students, developing a number of undergraduate courses and supporting Penn State Global in its initiative to establish Peru as a Global Excellence Node. His graduate students frequently receive awards and have gone on to conduct important research and policy work of their own.
Zoubeida Ounaies, professor of mechanical engineering, College of Engineering
Ounaies is a prolific researcher whose work focuses on the development of sustainable polymer-based materials with unique mechanical, electrical, magnetic and coupled properties. She has made discoveries that resulted in “expanding the space of available responsive materials from synthetic polymers to hybrid-, bio- and nano-composites.” In recent years, she has transitioned her work toward the next revolution in smart materials — living engineered materials — and she currently directs the Convergence Center for Living Multifunctional Material Systems. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Active Materials and Soft Mechatronics Academic Award.
Suzanna Linn, Liberal Arts Professor of Political Science, College of the Liberal Arts
A leading scholar on time-series analysis of politics, Linn authored what is considered to be a seminal work on incorporating temporal dynamics to quantitative analyses of politics. She has published prolifically, authoring numerous books and articles, and she frequently delivers lectures nationally and internationally. She was named a fellow of the Society for Political Methodology in 2015. Linn also is a dedicated teacher, participates extensively in service activities at Penn State, and has served in multiple leadership roles in organizations within her discipline.
Jeffery Ulmer, professor of sociology and criminology, College of the Liberal Arts
Ulmer’s research focuses on the sociology of criminal punishment, criminological theory, religion and crime, and racial/ethnic inequality and violence rates. He produced two of the first studies to consider how racial and immigrant contexts influence decisions that disadvantage Hispanic individuals with respect to incarceration. He also produced the only empirical study that examines how judges’ sentencing decisions are influenced by their punishment attitudes and moral foundations. Ulmer currently serves as director of Penn State’s Criminal Justice Research Center and has served in leadership roles at the University and in his profession.
Adrian Wanner, Liberal Arts Professor of Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature, College of the Liberal Arts
Wanner is an internationally renowned scholar who has authored four monographs, seven volumes of poetry translations, and numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes. His research focuses on literary relations between Russia and Western Europe. More recently, Wanner draws upon his own multilingual background in his research on the topic of self-translation (when multilingual authors translate their own works into another language). He is regularly invited to give talks at top institutions for Slavic studies, both in the U.S. and internationally.
