The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of six faculty members, including two full professors, three associate professors and one assistant professor.

Professor

Thomas Mark Hutchcroft, in mathematics, specializes in probability theory. His appointment is effective Sept. 1, 2026.

Hutchcroft comes to Princeton from the California Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 2021, most recently as the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Mathematics.

Prior to that, he was a senior research associate, a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a junior research fellow at the University of Cambridge from 2017 to 2021.

His research interests include percolation theory, mathematical physics and geometric group theory. Hutchcroft is best known for his work in modeling percolation behavior to understand phase transitions in complex systems known as non-Euclidean geometries. In 2023, he and Caltech Ph.D. candidate Philip Easo proved the mathematical problem known as Schramm's locality conjecture 25 years after its posing.

Hutchcroft is an editor at Duke Mathematical Journal and is on the editorial boards at Probability and Mathematical Physics, Probability Theory and Related Fields, and Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré. His research on percolation theory has received grants from the National Science Foundation.

He is the author of over 60 papers in journals including Inventiones Mathematicae, Journal of the American Mathematical Society, Probability Theory and Related Fields, Duke Mathematical Journal, and the Journal of the European Mathematical Society.

Among his many awards and honors, Hutchcroft is a recipient of the London Mathematical Society’s Whitehead Prize in 2025, the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering in 2024, the European Mathematical Society Prize in 2024, the Journal of Mathematical Physics Young Researcher Award in 2022, and the Rollo Davidson Prize in 2019.

Hutchcroft earned a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and an M.Math and B.A. from the University of Cambridge.

Elena Manresa, in economics, specializes in econometrics. Her appointment became effective July 1.

Manresa comes to Princeton from New York University, where she has taught since 2017, most recently as an associate professor. She began her academic career as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2014 to 2017.

Manresa was also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Chicago in 2017 and Yale University in 2016, as well as a visiting scholar at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2019 and the University of California-Berkeley in 2013.

Her work focuses on topics that include microeconometrics, empirical microeconomics, financial econometrics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and health. Manresa uses panel data analysis and machine learning methods to study differences in characteristics and outcomes within groups, which she has modeled in research on the structure of social interactions and inequalities in employment and health.

She previously served as associate editor of Econometrica and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics from 2022 to 2025, and was program co-chair for the 2024 Society for Economic Dynamics conference in Barcelona.

Manresa is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a 2021 recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, and received the 21st Banco Sabadell Foundation Award for Economic Research in 2022.

Her research has received grants from the National Science Foundation and appeared in numerous journals including Econometrica, the Journal of Econometrics, the Econometrics Journal and the Journal of Financial Economics.

Manresa earned a Ph.D. from the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI) in Madrid and a B.S. from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona.

Associate professor

Bronwyn Bjorkman, in linguistics, specializes in syntax. Her appointment is effective Jan. 16, 2026.

Bjorkman comes to Princeton from Queen’s University, where she has taught since 2015, most recently as an associate professor. From 2011 to 2012, she was a lecturer at Northeastern University.

She earned a B.A. from McGill University and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brenden Lake, in computer science and psychology, specializes in computational cognitive sciences. His appointment became effective Sept. 1.

Lake comes to Princeton from New York University, where he has taught since 2017, most recently as an associate professor.

He earned a B.S. and M.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Matthew Simonton, in classics, specializes in Ancient Greek political history and Greek epigraphy. His appointment became effective Sept. 1.

Simonton comes to Princeton from Arizona State University, where he has taught since 2013, most recently as an associate professor.

He earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Assistant professor

Dane deQuilettes, in electrical and computer engineering, joins the faculty in January 2026. DeQuilettes, who specializes in materials and devices, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington and a B.S. from Pepperdine University. He has served as chief scientific officer of Optigon Inc., beginning in 2021.