A committee voted on Thursday to grant tenure to two current junior faculty members.

David Evans ’92, a professor in geology and geophysics, is now a tenured full professor, while Christine Jacobs-Wagner, in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department, has become a tenured associate professor.

Evans primarily researches global tectonics and trends of the geological evolution of the Earth, focusing on continental reconstruction and paleomagnetism. He is head of the Yale paleomagnetic laboratory.

Evans is working on documenting evidence that the Earth’s current north pole may once have been a different direction, Yale College Dean Mary Miller said.

Graduate School Dean Jon Butler said Evans is known within his field as an innovator and an excellent teacher.

“He has an exceptional ability to explain why it is and how it is that rocks can tell us about the Earth,” Butler said.

Evans received his doctorate in geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1998. Before arriving at Yale in 2002, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Western Australia, Perth.

Jacobs-Wagner is head of her own lab, named for her, which is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research concentrates on the mechanisms that control the cell cycle as well as the nature of the cytoskeleton that structures a cell.

“It’s always wonderful to see a woman receive tenure in the sciences,” Miller said. “She is absolutely at the forefront of a frontier that cell biology didn’t know it was going to cross a decade ago.”

Jacobs-Wagner grew up in Belgium, receiving her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Liege in Belgium and her doctorate in 1996 from the University of Liege and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

Neither of the two professors was immediately available for comment.

The decision marks the third set of appointments under the revamped tenure system, which was approved by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in spring 2007. Three junior professors were granted tenure under the new system last fall, followed by five more in the spring.

DIVYA SUBRAHMANYAM