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.

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.

Diane Bailey

Open any book on university teaching and you are sure to find thorough discussion of in-class techniques to engage and motivate students, to place learning squarely in their hands, and to get them collaborating with one another. Now look for the section on how to negotiate your courseload, market your under-enrolled elective, build up a largely stable repertoire of courses, or network in a new community to find industry folks and others who can help you with materials for and guest talks in your course.

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's PTF-supported podcast co-produced with her advanced ancient Greek students, "Musings in Greek Literature," released its most recent season in 2024.

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.

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).

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.

Rhonda Evans

Dr. Rhonda Evans is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Government and directs the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies. She received the Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019 and the Jean Holloway Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2022. Her research focuses on an array of legal and political issues and institutions in Australia and New Zealand, such as the Australian Human Rights Commission, New Zealand Supreme Court, efforts to amend Australia’s Constitution, and critical minerals policymaking.

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 Associate 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.

Carlos Landaverde Alvarado

Carlos Landaverde-Alvarado is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.