Fellows Directory

Niveen AbiGhannam

Dr. Niveen AbiGhannam is a science communication researcher and educator whose work centers around the strategic and inclusive communication of technical knowledge. More specifically, her research seeks to understand individual, organizational, and social factors that can drive or hinder public engagement with STEM behaviors. She also examines the identities of publicly engaged scientists and engineers and the meanings that they associate with their engagement experiences. On the teaching front, Dr. AbiGhannam has taught Engineering Communication at UT since 2015.

Renee Acosta

Renee’ Acosta is a Clinical Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Pharmacy. Renee teaches extensively in the professional PharmD Program. Her primary instruction includes Nonprescription Pharmacotherapeutics and Self-Care I and II, and a UGS courses titled Self-Care and OTC Products. Her PTF project focused on the use of standardized patients in Objective Structured Clinical Exams(OSCEs).

Marina Alexandrova

Dr. Alexandrova teaches a variety of courses on Russian history, culture, and language. Her current research interests include international modernism and avant-garde, Russian radical and revolutionary movements, spirituality in Imperial Russia, and, most recently, cultural and spiritual ties between Russia and the United States. Her Signature Course, UGS 303 "Tsars and Mystics," examines (un)Orthodox spiritual practices of Russian rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II.

Samy Ayoub

Hina Azam

Dr. Hina Azam teaches courses in Islamic Studies such as Islamic theology, Islamic law, the Qur'an, Qur'an interpretation, and Islamic feminism, as well as a course on comparative religions of the Middle East. Her research focuses on women/gender/sexuality in Islam, ethics, and pedagogy. She supervises or serves as reader for undergraduate and graduate theses and dissertations across the University.

Matthew Balhoff

Matthew is a professor in the Hildebrand Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (PGE) Department. Matt’s work as a PTF includes a curriculum-wide design project that is presented to the students in their first petroleum engineering class, taught in the spring of their first year. In every PGE class they are assigned at least one homework assignment or project taken directly from the design project. The objective of this initiative is to use unique methods and tools to develop an integrated and synergistic program.

Deborah Beck

Deborah Beck has won various awards for both teaching and research, including the 2021 Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College and University Level from the Society for Classical Studies and a prize for Excellence in Faculty Teaching from the Gamma Sigma chapter of the national Classics undergraduate honors society Eta Sigma Phi (2019) and two Plumer Visiting Research Fellowships at St Anne’s College, Oxford (2017 and 2019). Her main research interest is ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry, especially Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Daniel Birkholz

Carl Blyth

Maura Borrego

Brian Bremen

Project Title: Graduate Student Training and Support in Lower-Division Literature Classes 

 

Erika Bsumek

Bsumek is an Associate Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts, a recipient of the Dad’s Teaching Award, the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award, and she is currently a 2nd-year Provost’s Teaching Fellow. Her areas of research include Native American history, environmental history/studies, the history of the built environment, and the history of the U.S. West. Her current research explores the social and environmental history of the area surrounding Glen Canyon on the Utah/Arizona border from the 1840s to the present.

Ashley Castleberry

As a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Pharmacy Practice in the College of Pharmacy, Dr. Castleberry teaches first- and second-year pharmacy students cardiovascular physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology and coordinates the Pharmacy Practice Lab course. As Division Head of Pharmacy Practice, she leads a team of 20 faculty. She is passionate about assessment, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and faculty development.

Tanya Clement

Tanya E Clement is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Her primary areas of research are textual studies, sound studies, and infrastructure studies as these concerns impact academic research, research libraries, and the creation of research tools and resources in Digital Humanities (DH).

Zhengrong Cui

View Rong's profile on his department's site >

Patrick Davis

Professor of Pharmacy (Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry). Teaches required and elective pharmacy coursework in drug metabolism, infectious diseases, and interprofessional health education. Also teaches a First-Year Signature Course on historical pandemics and their impact on society.

Janet Davis

Juan Dominguez

Jen Ebbeler

Project Title: Identifying Successful Learning Strategies in Online and Blended Classrooms 

 

Jules Elkins

Dr. Elkins is the Director of Sustainability Studies and Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Geography and the Environment. Dr. Elkins’ research and teaching is in environmental health, and healthy indoor environments. She is particularly interested in low-dose chemical exposures, especially during the period from preconception to early childhood. Her interests focus on how exposures can be practically and cost-effectively reduced or prevented based on evidence-based models of what interventions measurably work.

Michael Findley

Sam Gosling

Lars Hinrichs

Peniel Joseph

Peniel Joseph is the First-Year Representative on the 2020 PTF Steering Committee.

Krishna Kumar

Krishna Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the Civil, Architecture, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Krishna’s work involves developing exascale micro and macro-scale numerical methods for modeling natural hazards. Krishna also develops Scientific Machine Learning algorithms: Graph Network Simulators and Differentiable programming to accelerate numerical methods and solve optimization, design, and inverse problems.