Morse Fellows

Morse College is a vibrant community. We would love to count you among us. The Fellows meet a few times per semester at the Head of College’s house, to interact with friends from all parts of the University and from the broader community. Many play the role of Advisor for a student or two. We extend invitations to student functions such as performances and college-wide social events, welcome participation at intramural sports, provide dining privileges in the college at lunch or dinner, all so you can meet with students, faculty and friends. Please join us - we welcome you!

A (8) | B (9) | C (10) | D (5) | E (2) | F (3) | G (7) | H (4) | K (13) | L (5) | M (10) | N (2) | O (2) | P (7) | Q (1) | R (6) | S (16) | T (2) | V (3) | W (6)

Edward A. Dennis

Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, the Graduate Division, and the Chancellor I Endowed Chair at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD)

Biography

Dr. Dennis received his B.A. from Yale University (1963) and was a member of the first class that graduated from Morse College. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School. He received a Doctorate in Medicine (hon) from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and a Doctorate (hon) from the University of Lyon INSA in France. Dr. Dennis started as Assistant Professor at UCSD and served two different times as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Prof. Dennis’ has over 425 publications and his career research focus has been on the structure, function, mechanism, and inhibition of the enzyme phospholipase A2 as well as on signal transduction, inflammation, lipid metabolism, eicosanoid action, metabolic diseases and especially developing the lipidomics field.  He also served as Chair and President of the Keystone Symposia, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lipid Research, and Director of the LIPID MAPS Lipidomics Consortium.
 
Dr. Dennis served as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA) as well as on the Board of Directors of the Yale Alumni Magazine and the Yale Alumni Fund and on the Alumni and Development Affairs Committee of the Yale Corporation. He also served on the University Council (2004-2013) including the Committee on Engineering, the Committee on Technology Transfer, and the Committee on West Campus Development. He was the recipient of the Yale Science and Engineering Association Meritorious Service to Yale Award (2004) and the Yale Medal (2008).

Toni Dorfman

Professor of Theater Studies

Biography

For 23 years Toni Dorfman has taught full-time at Yale. She holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, earned mostly at Carleton College and then at the University of Iowa, and a master of fine arts degree in directing from Columbia University. In 2003 she cofounded the annual Yale Playwrights Festival.  At Yale in addition to teaching classes in acting, directing, and playwriting, she’s taught seminars in revenge tragedy and moral ambiguity, biography and drama, representations of the underworld, “The Deep: Representations of the Sea” (in spring 2022), and early opera. In summer she’s taught Sophocles’ Antigone in the Yale Warrior-Scholar Project helping enlisted veterans prepare for college. In July 2019, at the invitation of the then artistic director of the National Theater of Greece, Stathis Livathinos, in Delphi she led an international workshop for professional actors on performing Greek tragedy. 
 
Since 2009 she has stage-directed nine major productions of 17th-century opera for the Yale Baroque Opera Project, including Cavalli’s Il Giasone, Scipione Affricano, La Didone, and Doriclea (going up in May 2023); Sacrati’s La finta pazza (American premiere); and all three of Monteverdi’s extant operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Orfeo (in May 2022), all in collaboration with musical director Grant Herreid. Her interest in ancient Greek myth, epic, and drama – the inspiration for much early baroque opera – is lifelong. What in particular she loves about early opera is not only the expressive beauty of its music but also its casts of human and divine characters, bringing together two worlds in the same space.  
 
Her own plays, including Rounding Cassiopeia, Family Wolf, Third Wave Fems, One of the Damned Few (with Bud Thorpe), and The King of the Cimbri, have been developed and presented in London, New York, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Haven at Yale Rep and the Long Wharf Theater.    
 
In her twenties she cofounded The Shade Company, a repertory theater on Canal Street and a charter member of what is now the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York.  She’s served on the editorial board of Shakespeare Bulletin and the national board of the University/Resident Theater Association. As an actor she’s played Lady Macbeth, Titania, Helena, Aldonza, Grusha, Dorine, Hesione Hushabye, Pirate Jenny, Kagekiyo’s Daughter, Mother Courage, and Clytemnestra, among scores of other roles; in film she’s played Queen Marie in Ionesco’s Exit the King (1976) and Candace in Edward Columbia’s The Page Burner (2022), with dozens of television commercials in between.
 
She is married to Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis. They live in East Rock with a pollination garden, designed by Eliza Shaw Valk, her daughter, in front for butterflies and bees.

Offers assistance in:

Academic advising for first-year students

Contact Information:

toni.dorfman@yale.edu

Wayne Escoffery

Lecturer, Yale School of Music & Director of Jazz Ensembles

Biography

2014 & 2020 Downbeat Critics Poll Winner and Grammy Award winning tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery is one of the Jazz world’s most talented rising stars and in-demand sidemen. Since 2006 he has been mostly associated with trumpet master Tom Harrell after securing one of the most coveted gigs in jazz: a frontline position in Harrell’s working quintet.
 
For the past decade, Escoffery has toured the globe with the trumpeter, recorded seven CDs with The Tom Harrell Quintet and co-produced four of those releases. He has also been a member of The Mingus Dynasty, Big Band and Orchestra since 2000 and has made several recordings with the group. He has since become one of the musical directors of the group. Over the years he has recorded and performed internationally with the who’s who in Jazz including Ron Carter, Ben Riley, Abdulah Ibrahim, Eric Reed, Carl Allen, Al Foster, Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Rufus Reid, Wallace Roney, and Herbie Hancock just to name a few. Escoffery leads his own groups which tour internationally and has made several highly acclaimed studio recordings with said groups. His current working quartet features pianist David Kikoski, bassist Ugonna Okegwo, and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. The group has released several albums, the latest being “Like Minds” on the Smoke Sessions Records label. Escoffery is also a founding member of a collaborative group called Black Art Jazz Collective which is comprised of fellow rising star musicians of his generation and is dedicated to celebrating African American Icons through originally composed music.
 

Andrew Esposito

General Surgery Resident, Yale School of Medicine

Biography

I am originally from Ledyard, CT which is an hour up I-95N in south eastern Connecticut. I graduated from Yale University in 2012 with a B.S. in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and was actively involved in the Morse Community as the manager of the Morsel.  I was a member of the Cross Country and Track teams as a middle distance runner. After graduating I worked for a year as a medical assistant for an ENT in Stamford, CT before participating in the Advanced Core in Medical Science Post-Baccalaureate Program (ACMS) at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (LKSOM) at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. I matriculated to LKSOM in 2014 and was heavily involved with the student government as President of the Class of 2018 for all four years. During medical school, my research focused on Breast and Colon Cancer and I participated in the U.S. Navy Health Professions Scholarship Program. I graduated from LKSOM in May 2018 with an M.D. and as a Lieutenant (now inactive reserves) in the U.S. Navy. I began general surgery residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in June of 2018 with plans to become a Surgical Oncologist following my military commitment. 

Interests:

Medical and Surgical Education, Surgical Oncology, Wood working, Hiking and camping

Offers assistance in:

Academic advising for first-year students, Advising and mentoring for upperclassmen, Career advising, Connecting students to internships or other opportunities
Advice and mentoring for those interested in medical school and/or military scholarships

Contact Information:

andrew.c.esposito@gmail.com

Joel Flynn

Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics

Biography

Joel Flynn will join the Economics Department at Yale as an Assistant Professor on July 1, 2024 after completing a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Cowles Foundation at Yale. His research is in macroeconomics and economic theory, with an emphasis on behavioral macroeconomics and mechanism design. He has recently studied how viral economic narratives may cause macroeconomic boom-bust cycles and how cyclical attention to the macroeconomy generates macroeconomic volatility. His mechanism design research has focused on the optimal design of two-sided matching markets and optimal contracting when contracts are incomplete. His research has appeared in the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Studies. He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT and his B.A. in economics from the University of Cambridge (King’s College).

Website: joelflynn.com

Offers assistance in:

Academic advising for first-year students, Advising and mentoring for upperclassmen

Contact Information:

joel.flynn@yale.edu

Francine Foss

Professor of Medicine

Biography

Dr. Francine Foss, Professor of Medicine in the Section of Medical Oncology at the Yale Cancer Center, is an internationally recognized clinician and clinical researcher with expertise in adult lymphomas and in stem cell transplantation. She has developed and tested therapies that have been used to treat thousands of cancer patients, and her research has substantially impacted the field of stem cell research, benefiting patients at Yale and around the world. In her previous position at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston, she designed, initiated and directed multi-center national clinical trials that led to FDA approval of several novel therapies for lymphomas.

Dr. Foss is a world expert in T-cell lymphomas. She has pioneered several novel therapies for T-cell lymphomas and has been a leader in many national studies. She developed and initiated the first national registry for T-cell lymphomas in the United States and is a founder and co-chairman of the T-Cell Forum, the preeminent international T-cell lymphoma research meeting. She is a co-founder of the United States Cutaneous Lymphoma Consortium and currently serves as its President. In addition, Dr. Foss was one of the early developers and hosts of the Yale Cancer Answers, a weekly program on Connecticut National Public Radio.

Interests:

Dr. Foss is a world traveler, community gardener and foodie.

Offers assistance in:

Career advising
in medicine, careers in science, work-family balance.

Contact Information:

francine.foss@yale.edu

Jeff Fuller

Musician, Composer, Educator

Biography

Jeff Fuller graduated from Yale College (’67) and received his master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music (’69). Since 1995, he has taught Jazz Composition and led two jazz ensembles at ACES-Educational Center for the Arts, New Haven. He teaches privately and leads the Premier Jazz Ensemble of the Neighborhood Music School, and has long been an integral part of the Connecticut, New York and international jazz scenes. Mr. Fuller has played with jazz masters from all styles and eras and has led ensembles in many jazz venues. He composes and arranges for the acclaimed salsa group, Irazú, and is co-leader of the popular New Haven-based group Sambeleza. He has received commissions from both the New Haven and the Hartford Symphony Orchestras and has twice received project grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. 

Interests:

Mr. Fuller is well-versed and active in aviation, sports, cycling, basketball, nature, and the business of music.

Offers assistance in:

Career advising

Contact Information:

jefffuller@snet.net

Joan Gaylord

Writer

Biography

Joan Gaylord (BA, American Studies) is a writer, editor, and photographer whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh Magazine, and The Christian Science Monitor, where she regularly writes book reviews. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the environmental organization founded by Pete Seeger.

The Alumni Advisor for the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective, she is immersed in the New York City jazz scene. Loren Schoenberg, the founding director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, has referred to Joan as “one of the movers and shakers on the scene today.”

Interests:

In her early 20s, after a conversation with her hero, Gordon Parks, Joan made a conscious decision to develop her broad range of talents rather than focus on only one field. As a result, her professional pursuits have included working as a fulltime calligrapher, a teacher at a high school within a psychiatric hospital, a registered NYS lobbyist, as well as a certified ski instructor.  

Offers assistance in:

Advising and mentoring for upperclassmen

Contact Information:

gaylordjm@gmail.com

Alan Gerber

Director of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, of Economics and of Public Health

Biography

Alan Gerber is Sterling Professor of Political Science, director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and professor of economics and of and statistics and data science at Yale University. He also has affiliations in the Yale School of Public Health and the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Previously he was appointed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences divisional director for the social sciences and became the inaugural FAS dean of social science, serving in this role from 2014 to 2021.

Full bio on ISPS page: https://isps.yale.edu/team/alan-gerber

Department page: http://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/alan-gerber

Offers assistance in:

Advising and mentoring for upperclassmen

Contact Information:

alan.gerber@yale.edu

Soheil Ghili

Assistant Professor of Marketing; Morse Resident Fellow

Biography

Soheil Ghili is an assistant professor at Yale School of Management (SOM). At SOM, Soheil teaches Pricing Strategy to MBA students and advises Ph.D. students in the field of quantitative marketing. Though his class is designated as a graduate level course, often students from Yale College, especially those majoring in Economics, enroll in the class. Another aspect of Soheil’s job at SOM is conducting research. Like his teaching, Soheil’s research is focused on pricing. He combines tools from Microeconomics and Game Theory with those from Econometrics and Statistics to help firms address complex pricing questions, leading to higher profitability on the one hand, and improve consumer and social “welfare” on the other.

Before joining Yale, Soheil lived in Evanston Illinois where he got his Ph.D. in Economics and Strategy from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. And before that, he lived and studied in Iran where he earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an MBA.

Interests:

Soheil is an amateur biker, runner, and piano player. He listens to music from around the world and loves animals!