Minlan Yu, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, will join the Yale Computer Science Department this fall.

She will fill the second of five positions guaranteed by two anonymous donations totaling $20 million received in the spring of 2015 to bring the department up to par with its peers.

With Yu’s appointment, three positions funded by the donations remain unfilled. According to chair Joan Feigenbaum, the department is currently in negotiations with another candidate interviewed in the spring and will continue recruiting during the 2016–17 academic year.

Yu, who received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011, focuses on data networking, distributed systems, enterprise and data center networks, network virtualization, and software-defined networking. It is still to be decided which classes Yu will teach in the fall, Feigenbaum said.

“With the arrival of Minlan Yu, Yale CS has the chance to be world class in networked systems,” Feigenbaum said. “I hope that the CS department will have the opportunity to hire more people in this area.”

Yu will be the seventh female ladder faculty member out of 21 in the CS department. Feigenbaum said the department is proud of its “excellent record” of hiring female faculty, but continues to work toward diversifying further.

In addition to Yu, the department also recently hired Scott Petersen as a Lecturer. A musician by training, he will play a “crucial role” in the department’s Computing and the Arts program, Feigenbaum said.

According to his personal website, Petersen’s primary teaching responsibilities will be two courses required for the Music track of the Computing and the Arts major. The courses focus on “advanced programming techniques in the area of algorithmic music and digital sound.”

Previously, Petersen worked as Technical Director for the Yale Music Technology and Multimedia Labs and as a Program Director for the Department of Music’s Open Music Initiative.

Correction, July 28: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Minlan Yu is sixth female ladder faculty member out of 20 such faculty members in the CS department. She is in fact the seventh out of 21. It also incorrectly stated that the Open Music Initiative is housed within the School of Music; in fact, it is a Department of Music program.