Scientific Committee

Kees van der Beek has been appointed Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique, effective as of February 1, 2023. He will report to Dominique Rossin, Provost, and will succeed Benoît Deveaud. He is in charge of defining the strategy and supervising all activities of the Institution’s 23 research laboratories. He is a member of École Polytechnnique’s Executive Committee and Institut Polytechnique de Paris’ Teaching and Research Committee.

Native of the Netherlands and a physicist by profession, Kees van der Beek began his career as a researcher in the United States in 1996 at Argonne National Laboratory. Two years later and back in Europe, he started a second post-doctorate at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) within the Institut de Génie Atomique.

Kees van der Beek continued his career in France from January 1997 at École Polytechnique, as a researcher assigned to Irradiated Solids Laboratory (LSI). From 2002 to 2015, he carried out his research activity in conjunction with teaching at École Polytechnique. In 2009, thanks to his Habilitation to Supervise Research, he obtained the title of Director of Research. He directed LSI from January 2014 until May 2017.

In January 2019, he was assigned to the Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies in Palaiseau. He also joined the CNRS Institute of Physics. In January 2021, he was appointed Assistant to the Scientific Director (ADSR) at the CNRS for the Grenoble-Alpes site.

Simultaneously, Kees became Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) Research Department of the ComUE Université Paris-Saclay from January 2016 to December 2020, then Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) axis of the Graduate School of Physics of the same university in 2021. The same year, he also became Director of Institut Intégratif des Matériaux of Université Paris-Saclay.

Author of nearly 180 publications in international scientific journals, the new Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique was chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of French Physical Society from 2009 to 2013, chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the European Physical Society from 2015 to 2020, and he is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society. It has allowed him to establish numerous European contacts, notably through the Institute of Physics (UK), the Deutsche Physikalischen Gesellschaft (Germany), and the Real Sociedad Española de Física (Spain).

Kees van der Beek graduated from University of Leiden in 1988 and 1992 and holds a Diploma in Experimental Solid-State Physics and a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

Dominique Rossin (X1994) has been appointed Provost of École Polytechnique. Since 2015, Dominique Rossin was Vice-Provost for Education at the School. Since 2019, he has been in charge of the Teaching Committee for the Institut Polytechnique de Paris. Since 2020, he has been the French Dean of the European University EuroteQ.

Dominique Rossin holds a PhD in Computer Science from the École Polytechnique and is a specialist in algorithmics and combinatorics. He led a team at the University of Paris Diderot for seven years before joining the École Polytechnique's Computer Science Laboratory (LIX) in 2010.

He was recruited as a lecturer at l’X in 2003, in the computer science department and has been accredited to supervise research since 2007. Between 2012 and 2014, he joined the Ministry of Higher Education and Research as Deputy Delegate for Research and Technology in charge of the Paris region.

Dominique Rossin has led several major projects for the School: the creation of the Bachelor's program, the creation of the eight Masters of Science and Technology, the development of continuing education and the creation of the Executive Master's program, as well as leading the project to reform the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program. Dominique Rossin has also played a key role in the evolution of teaching practices and the development of e-learning and MOOCs.

Dina Waked holds an S.J.D. (Doctor of Judicial Science) and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, an LL.B. from Cairo University Law School, and a BA in Economics from the American University in Cairo. Her doctoral thesis received the Harvard Law School 2012 John M. Olin Law & Economics Prize.

Before joining the Law School at Sciences Po in 2013, she was teaching at the college of Sciences Po in Paris and Menton, SKEMA Business School – ESC Lille and the American University in Cairo.

She teaches courses on Global Antitrust Law, Comparative Competition Law and Economic Development, Law and Economics, Regulation, International Business Law, and Law in the Middle East.

Her research and publications explore issues linked to competition, development, critical law and economics, and economic growth and distribution in the Global South. Specifically, her work focuses on the intersection between antitrust enforcement and economic development. Her work utilizes econometric tools to evaluate the effectiveness of competition policy and its relationship with growth theory in the Global South. She also works on the history of law and economics to outline the dialectic relationship between these disciplines through the 19th century onwards. 

She has advised a number of governments and international organizations on competition law compliance and the assessment of competition law reforms.

Fields of Expertise: 

• Law and Economics
• Global Competition Law and Antitrust 
• Regulation
• Development 

Carlos J. Alonso is the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities. He came to the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia in fall 2005 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the Edwin B. and Leonore R. Williams Professor of Romance Languages. He specializes in 19th- and 20th-century Latin American intellectual history and cultural production, and in contemporary literary and cultural theory. He is the author of Modernity and Autochthony: The Spanish American Regional Novel (Cambridge UP), and The Burden of Modernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Spanish America (Oxford UP), and editor of Julio Cortázar: New Readings (Cambridge UP). He was also Editor of PMLA—arguably the premier journal of literary criticism and theory—during 2000-03, and edited the Hispanic Review in 2003-06, a period that ushered in changes that led to an award in 2005 for best journal design by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. While at Penn, Prof. Alonso was the recipient of a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university's highest award for pedagogical excellence.

At Columbia he was chair of the department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures from 2005-10, and was Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society for four years. He has taught recently the required graduate seminar on "Literary and Cultural Theory" and the course "Theories of Culture in Latin America." Under his editorship the department's Revista Hispánica Moderna received the 2009 Council of Editors of Learned Journals Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement.
Prof. Alonso became Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in July 2011.

Amy Hungerford, a longtime Yale professor and academic administrator, has been appointed executive vice president for Arts and Sciences and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her appointment begins January 1.

A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, Hungerford comes to Columbia after leading Yale’s humanities division since 2016. In that role, she oversaw a major capital project to create a central hub for humanities on Yale’s campus and efforts to increase cross-school collaborations. 

As head of Columbia’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hungerford will oversee the twenty-eight departments whose members teach students at Columbia College, the School of General Studies, the School of the Arts, the School of Professional Studies, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“Amy’s career has combined notable scholarship and tireless mentoring with a wealth of experience in administering core academic programs,” said President Lee C. Bollinger. “Her oversight of twenty-three humanities departments and programs at Yale has demonstrated a talent for effective stewardship of resources and for the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of the highest-caliber faculty.”

Hungerford succeeds Maya Tolstoy, a marine geophysicist who has served as interim executive vice president for Arts and Sciences since September 2018, when statistics professor David Madigan stepped down after five years in the position.