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.

Amelia Acker

Amelia Acker is an associate professor in the School of Information where she directs the Critical Data Studies Lab. Amelia researches people who build and maintain archives, data technologies, and information infrastructure. Amelia's PTF project is SCiSCHOOL, a science fiction book club that brings graduate students together to discuss the ethics and social impacts of near and future information technologies in our daily lives.

Renee Acosta

Renee’ Acosta is a Clinical Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. 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.

Lucy Atkinson

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.

Maura Borrego

Matt Bowers

Dr. Matt Bowers is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Sport Management at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies youth development in and through sports and has published research studies related to the impact of sport participation on creativity and the value of sandlot/unstructured sports for children. His work has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Wired, The Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal, SXSW, and the Aspen Institute’s Sport for All, Play For Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game.

Keffrelyn Brown

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.

Courtney Byrd

As Founding Director of The University of Texas at Austin Michael and Tami Lang Stuttering Institute, Courtney has unparalleled access to one of the largest and most diverse clinical populations of children and adults who stutter. Given the low incidence nature of this disorder, she feels a profound responsibility to share my unique access to the stuttering community with students, professors, and practicing clinicians across the globe. Her PTF initiative aims to do just that.

Andrew Carlson

Ashley Castleberry

As an Assistant Dean of Curriculum and Assessment 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.

Stephanie Cawthon

Julia Clarke

Hands-on research experiences for undergraduates offer unique active-learning experiences with real-world questions. These experiences create communities and improve 4-year graduation rates. They may also help create a student body and alumni population that recognize the importance of the research mission of large R1 universities.

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).

Natalie Czimskey

Natalie Czimskey, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at The University of Texas where she earned all three of her degrees. She began teaching as a doctoral student in 2012 and continued teaching part time until completing her Ph.D. in 2019 when she joined the faculty full-time.  Her primary research area is adult neurogenic disorders with a special interest in traumatic brain injury, though her passion is teaching; she has taught 9 different courses in the past 2 years.

Andrew Dell'Antonio

Andrew Dell’Antonio (he/him/his) specializes in musical repertories of early modern Europe, with a focus on seventeenth-century Italy. His research interests include musical historiography, reception history, and disability studies.

Erin Donovan

Michael Findley

Steven Finkelstein

Steven Finkelstein is a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Washington in 2003, his PhD in 2008 from Arizona State University, and from there he took a postdoctoral position at Texas A&M University. In 2011 he earned a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship which he took to the University of Texas in Austin, where he was hired on as faculty in 2012. His research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe, and the interplay of these sources with reionization.

Erica "EG" Gionfriddo

Erica Gionfriddo is a dance artist, educator and somatic researcher who believes in the intelligent body each of us occupies. They are co-founder of ARCOS Dance (arcosdance.com), whose ongoing inquiry probes the intersection of technology and humanity through rigorous interdisciplinary experimentation. ARCOS’ recent work has focused on “hacking” consumer technologies, or repurposing them outside of their intended uses, into performance and developing an embodied cyborgian movement language.

Vernita Gordon

I did my undergraduate work at Vanderbilt, with a double major in physics and math, and my Ph.D. work in physics at Harvard. At both institutions, I saw and experienced the positive difference that caring, committed instructors and a nurturing university community can make in students' lives. I have been a faculty member in the Physics department at UT Austin since 2010. I have taught introductory calculus-based mechanics for Physics majors, a Plan II Physics course for liberal arts honors students, and an upper-division course on Biological Physics.

Layla Guyot

Layla Guyot is a data scientist, educator, and researcher, who joined UT Austin during Fall 2020. After pursuing mathematics and physics in undergrad, Layla completed a M.S. in Applied Probability and Statistics, just by chance. She gained some experience as a statistician before combining her aspiration to teach and conduct research through her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education at Texas State University. Her research focuses on designing courses and developing curriculum materials to promote authentic practices and ease the transition to the workplace.