New faculty at Northeastern welcomed by university president
Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun welcomed new faculty members in Boston ahead of the fall 2026 semester.
An entrepreneur who helped launch a super app in Southeast Asia. A molecular geneticist who was trained around the world, including mentorship from two Nobel laureates. An ecology and evolutionary biology researcher who studied how urbanization affects the wood frogs in New England.
While they have different disciplines, they share – at least – one thing in common: these professionals are among the newest cohort of over 100 faculty hires at Northeastern University.
Enjoying bubbles and bites, a mix of these educators, deans and representatives from the Office of the Provost joined President Joseph E. Aoun in a welcome reception on the Boston campus.
“You’re joining a university that is extremely differentiated and setting its own goals, its own vision and also its impact about the future,” Aoun told the gathering Thursday. “I find it extremely exciting to be in an environment like ours that is extremely receptive to change, and shaping change, more importantly.”
He challenged the faculty to work together and take advantage of the ample opportunities offered across the 14 campuses of Northeastern’s global university system. He urged them to keep humans at the center in the age of AI.
“The expectation is that you are shaping the future here,” Aoun said.
Amid the buzz of conversations ahead of the new academic year, Emery Trahan, interim dean of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, introduced Aoun to Nina Teng. At Northeastern, Teng will be an assistant teaching professor of entrepreneurship and innovation in the business school and serve as the academic director of IDEA, the student-led venture accelerator. Trahan described her as an “entrepreneurship guru.”
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The university president inquired about where she worked prior to joining Northeastern, her studies and her entrepreneurial background.
Teng explained that she came from the MIT Sloan School of Management and recently completed two Ph.D.s – one in 2025 at the University of Oxford in transport studies, and another this year at the London Business School in strategy and entrepreneurship.
Before that, she had joined at the ground floor of what would become Southeast Asia’s top rideshare, food delivery and financial services superapp called Grab. Here, Teng built the venture’s public affairs division that helped transform transit regulations in Vietnam and the Philippines, she said.
“I’m really interested in experiential learning and the big focus on the bridge between the classroom and real-world experience,” she added.
Chrissa Kioussi traded tall trees for an urban environment. She spent 24 years working at Oregon State University, last as the chair of pharmaceutical sciences. Her academic career training as a molecular geneticist has allowed her to study all over the world, she said – from her home country of Greece to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UC San Diego.
While Kioussi longs for the greenery of the Pacific Northwest, she’s excited by the move to Boston with its classical music offerings, variety of cultures and just seeing people walking the city streets. At Northeastern, she’s looking forward to using her research experience to shape the school as an administrator.
“One of the reasons I came to Northeastern is the strong connection with industry,” she said. She’s of the view that academia needs to emerge from its bubble and collaborate more with the public. “I think Northeastern is doing a good job of that,” she said.
Northeastern’s emphasis on AI played a role in why Tara Mansour joined the university.
“AI is here,” she said. “We have a responsibility to prepare our students, our partners, our clinicians to utilize how to use it responsibly.”
With 25 years under her belt as an occupational therapist, Mansour comes to Northeastern from MGH Institute of Health Professions, where she was in part the faculty lead for AI-enhanced curriculum and clinical education.
Now, she is an associate clinical director and associate program director of the Doctor of Medical Science in Healthcare Leadership Program at Northeastern that offers post-professional clinical doctoral degrees.
“I’m excited to be stepping into a university that just has so many resources and is really leading the innovation,” she said.
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