Welcome to our vibrant and and intellectually diverse Asian Americans and STEM team! Our dynamic group cross-disciplinarily comprises of three faculty members (Profs. Mary Lui, American Studies, and History; Reina Maruyama, Physics; and Theodore Kim, Computer Science), a lecturer (Dr. Rona Ramos, Physics), and two Postdoc Associates (Dr. Eun-Joo Ahn, Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; and Dr. Yoehan Oh, Computer Science). Together, we form a close-knit, cross-division community that thrives on the pursuit of knowledge, the cross-pollination exchange of ideas, and better-informed public conversations about Asian American lives and the fields of STEM.
Professor Mary Ting Yi Lui
Professor Mary Ting Yi Lui is Professor of American Studies and History. She also serves as the Head of Timothy Dwight College. Her primary research interests include: Asian American history, urban history, women and gender studies, and public history. She is the author of The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Princeton University Press, 2005), the 2007 co-winner of the best book prize for history from the Association of Asian American Studies. She is currently working on a new book titled, Making Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Citizenship in Cold War America at Home and Abroad, that examines the history of Asian Americans and U.S. Cultural Diplomacy in Asia in the early years of the Cold War.
See more at Professor Lui’s profile page in American Studies program.
Professor Reina Maruyama
Professor Reina Maruyama is an experimental particle/atomic/nuclear physicist. She is exploring new physics in nuclear and particle astrophysics, in particular, in dark matter and neutrinos. Her group is carrying out experiments in direct detection of dark matter with terrestrial-based detectors for both axions and WIMPs and searches for neutrinoless double beta decay. The current experiments include COSINE-100, DM-Ice, IceCube, CUORE, and HAYSTAC.
See more at Professor Maruyama’s profile page in Physics Department.
Professor Theodore “Ted” Kim
Professor Theodore “Ted” Kim co-leads the Yale Computer Graphics Group, alongside professors Julie Dorsey and Holly Rushmeier. Kim researches topics in physics-based simulation, including fire, water, and humans. His work has appeared in over two dozen movies and received a 2012 SciTech Oscar. Previously, Kim was a senior research scientist at Pixar Research, where he received screen credits in Cars 3, Coco, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. His first work appeared on screen for the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
See more at Professor Kim’s personal website.
Dr. Rona Ramos
Dr. Rona Ramos is a Lecturer and the graduate program coordinator (Ph.D. 2010, Yale University) in Physics. In both her roles, she focuses on the unique and human experiences of those who learn or do physics. She has taught several introductory physics courses infused with inclusive teaching practices that open access to a broader range of students with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Currently, she teaches the undergraduate course Being Human in STEM, which explores issues of equity in STEM and empowers students to engage in projects that directly impact the Yale STEM community.
See more at Dr. Ramos’s profile page in Physics Department.
Dr. Eun-Joo Ahn
Dr. Eun-Joo Ahn is a historian of science (Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara, 2023). Her postdoctoral project will examine the sociocultural role of Korean and Korean American scientists during the twentieth century in transnational contexts. Her dissertation project examined how astronomers of Mount Wilson Observatory interacted with the natural and socio-economic environment of Southern California during the early twentieth century. She was previously a particle astrophysicist who worked on the composition and hadronic interaction of ultra high energy cosmic rays and holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Yoehan Oh
Dr. Yoehan Oh (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, Yale University. He is an interdisciplinary researcher (Ph.D. 2023, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) whose work draws from Science and Technology Studies, history of computing, critical platform studies, and Asian and Asian diaspora studies. His dissertation research project exmained the unlikely trajectories in which a South Korean Internet and platform company survived sociotechnical challenges and expanded its technical influences in the translocal contexts. His postdoctoral research examines a history of Asian American computer scientists and entrepreneurs, Asian immigrant high-tech workers, and Asian venture capitalists, centering the object-oriented and object/relational database management systems.
See more at Dr. Oh’s personal website.