The University of Texas at Dallas > Research > Women in STEM

Women in STEM

More than 100 women in STEM are conducting innovative research and teaching the next generation at The University of Texas at Dallas.

  • Stephanie G. Adams

    Dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair is considered a pioneer in engineering education. Research expertise includes team effectiveness, quality control and management, broadening participation in STEM, faculty and graduate student development, and global education. 

  • Anne Balsamo

    Was founding dean of the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at UT Dallas. Her book, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work, offers a manifesto for rethinking the role of culture in the process of technological innovation in the 21st century. 

  • Chandramallika Basak

    Studies how and where in the brain we remember information over a short period of time, the interplay between attention and memory, and the effects of cognitive training, including video games and memory exercises, on the brain and cognition in both young and old adults. Also investigates the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness on cognition. 

  • Swati Biswas

    Current research interests include statistical genetics, cancer genetics and risk prediction models. Along with her collaborators, she has extended the genetic risk prediction model BRCAPRO for breast cancer and developed the first risk prediction tool for contralateral breast cancer, CBCRisk. A recent extension to CBCRisk also addresses racial disparities in breast cancer patients. 

  • Denise Boots

    Professor of Public Policy and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for Urban Policy Research was named Minnie Stevens Piper Professor and UT System Regents’ Outstanding Teacher. Criminologist with research focus on topics related to interpersonal violence, death penalty and evaluation.  

  • Xtine Burrough

    Director of LabSynthE, a collaborative laboratory for the creative development of synthetic and electronic poetry. Describes herself as a media artist who uses remix as a strategy for engaging networked audiences in critical participation at the intersection of computational art, social engagement and digital poetry. 

  • Kristina Butler

    Sedimentary geologist and geochemist works on critical minerals, the tectonic evolution of mountains and sedimentary basins, and terrestrial climate proxy records. Studies brine- and sediment-hosted critical mineral resources in sedimentary basins and uses the sedimentary record to understand how mountains and their basins were formed. 

  • Jennifer Callahan

    Research centers on identification and development of mechanisms for improvement of patient care and behavioral health outcomes among under-served and disadvantaged populations. Has earned numerous awards, from local to regional to national to international, and her work has been published hundreds of times. 

  • Chen Cao

    Cao Lab utilizes and develops cutting-edge single cell omics, imaging and microfluidics tools to investigate on lineages commitment, cell type evolution and cell-cell interactions. 

  • Yan Cao

    Researching the general areas of computer vision and pattern theory, especially biomedical applications. People can recognize the same or similar shapes in any circumstance, and they have a good intuition of the main structure and variation of a shape. The goal is for the computer to do the same thing; mathematics can be used to achieve this goal.

  • Sandra Bond Chapman

    Chief Director, Center for BrainHealth; Dee Wyly Distinguished University Chair; and a leading pioneer advancing the new field of brain health. The cognitive neuroscientist’s work discovers and applies novel approaches to improve brain performance to be stronger for longer at all ages in health, brain injury and disease. She is devoted to training the next generation of brain health experts. 

  • Heidi Rae Cooley

    Media theorist considers mobile technologies and related practices, such as GPS, haptic/gestural technologies, etc., to study how such technologies and their related practices provide means for habit change in the 21st century. She collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to design interactive, geo-locative software applications. Research areas include media studies and theory, philosophy, documentary theory and practice, and visual studies. 

  • Shuang ‘Cynthia’ Cui

    Research focuses on sustainable energy and water solutions to harness and efficiently utilize renewable energy sources, mitigate climate change, ensure a reliable and resilient power grid, and address water scarcity. Research interests include nanoscale heat transfer and energy conversion, intelligent soft materials and devices, grid-interactive efficient buildings, additive manufacturing, advanced thermal energy storage, and industrial decarbonization. 

  • Sheena D’Arcy

    Focuses on expanding the protein structure-function paradigm to include dynamics or protein motions. Particularly interested in proteins that influence the wrapping of DNA around histone proteins in the nucleus of all multicellular organisms. 

  • Anila D’Mello

    Studies the neurocognitive basis of language and social cognition across typical and atypical development, including in autism, with a focus on the role of cerebro-cerebellar circuits. To do this, combines tools from cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry and developmental psychology.

  • Nicole De Nisco

    Investigates recurrent urinary tract infection and the urinary microbiome with a goal of developing new therapeutics and advanced diagnostics. Research leverages clinical samples obtained through collaborations at UT Southwestern Medical Center, animal models, and advances molecular biology and analytical biochemistry techniques to define how both microbe and host contribute to a disease that affects millions of women. 

  • Nikki Delk

    Fellow, Cecil H. and Ida Green Professor in Systems Biology Science, and Assistant Vice President for Research Development in the Office of Research and Innovation studies inflammation-mediated breast and prostate cancer cell survival and treatment resistance mechanisms, including autophagy and sequestosome-1 functions.  

  • Sheel Dodani

    Is engineering biomolecular technologies for negatively charged ions or anions in human health and environmental sustainability. Her pioneering research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Welch Foundation. She has received prestigious awards, including the Sessler Early Career Researcher Prize and Zasshikai Lectureship. 

  • Xintong Dong

    Principal investigator of lab studying antimicrobial peptides signaling at key microbe-host interfaces. Looks at how defensins contribute to skin, airway and urinary tract immunity by activating receptors on immune cells and sensory neurons. Also interested in inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis and neuro-immune crosstalk that cause pain and itch. 

  • Crystal Engineer

    Holder of bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees in cognition and neuroscience from UT Dallas has focused research on auditory processing, autism spectrum disorder, plasticity, speech perception and neuromodulation. Has written for dozens of publications, including Nature Neuroscience, the top research journal in the field. 

  • Monica Evans

    Earned her master’s degree in arts and technology and PhD in arts and humanities from UT Dallas. Now the director of the Narrative Systems Research Lab, she works at the intersection of game design, development and production; game studies; narrative systems; serious and educational games; and science fiction studies.

  • Diana Tavares Ferreira

    Studying cellular and molecular mechanisms of axonal integrity and the role of RNA transport and non-coding RNAs in neuropathies and neurodegenerative diseases using multi-omics and computational approaches. Earned the 2022 Peter J. Dyck Abstract Prize for diabetic neuropathy research from the Peripheral Nerve Society.

  • Francesca Filbey

    Professor and Bert Moore Chair in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She directs the Neuroimaging of Reward Dynamics Lab at the Center for BrainHealth. The overarching goal of her research is to advance the understanding of biobehavioral mechanisms related to addiction, and enhance early detection and intervention. She incorporates translational approaches from cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, genetics, neuropharmacology, psychology and psychiatry. Current projects involve the determination of drug effects on brain mechanisms using neuroimaging tools, neuromodulation, genetics and computational modeling. 

  • Emily Kyle Fox

    Research areas include algorithms and theory, computational geometry and topology, and combinatorial optimization and graph algorithms. Received a five-year, $586,654 National Science Foundation award to explore how the mathematical field of topology can be used to design more efficient and faster algorithms to solve difficult problems. 

  • Brenda Gambol

    Joined UT Dallas in 2021 and studies Asian ethnic stratification in the United States, with a focus on Filipino Americans. Research areas include international migration, intergenerational mobility, family, marriage, second-generation Asian Americans, Filipino Americans, and race and ethnicity. 

  • Mona Ghassemi

    Has won several prestigious awards, including DOE Early Career Research Program, NSF CAREER, AFOSR YIP and Texas Instruments Early Career Award. She is the Vice President (Technical) of IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS), IEEE Senior Member and Professional Engineer. Research interests include electrical insulation materials and systems, high voltage/field engineering and technology, power systems, and plasma science.  

  • Eugenia Gorina

    Seeks to understand how state and local governments  manage fiscal risk and navigate organizational, economic and political environments to achieve longer-term fiscal health while also maintaining service-level solvency. Also studies how fiscal institutions and governance arrangements affect public sector financial performance.

  • Jiahui Guo

    Studies cognitive and computational neuroscience of high-level perception and cognition in typical and neuropsychological populations, combining research techniques such as naturalistic stimuli, neuroimaging, behavioral measurements, computational modeling, and artificial neural networks. Her research leverages neuroimaging data and computational algorithms to understand the neural basis of high-level perception, maps individualized functional brain topographies, and examines the human behavioral outcome. 

  • Sandra Harabagiu

    Research Initiation Chair in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science studies natural language processing, medical informatics and artificial intelligence for public health. Is a leader in the field of human-computer interaction.  

  • Fatemeh Hassanipour

    Focuses on heat transfer and fluid mechanics with applications in bioengineering, health and energy management. Recent awards include National Science Foundation Mid-CAREER Award and the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. 

  • Heather Hayenga

    Aims to understand and prevent the progression of cardiovascular diseases through the use of experimental and computational models. Experimental: studying cellular responses affected by altered mechanical stimuli. Computational: creating models to predict arterial behavior and disease progression.

  • Jennifer Holmes

    Lloyd V. Berkner Professor and Dean of the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Her major area of research is political violence and terrorism in Latin America. In addition to numerous journal articles, she is the author or editor of seven books and has been co-principal investigator on National Science Foundation grants totaling more than $6.5 million.  

  • Shayla Holub

    Psychology Department Chair’s research goal is to promote physical and psychological health of children and families by investigating how parents socialize their children’s eating habits using multiple methods, including behavioral observation, self-report and experiments. Also examines children’s developing body image and weight attitudes. 

  • Julia W.P. Hsu

    Research spans solution-processed novel materials for energy and electronic applications, applying intense pulsed light for thin film processing, and incorporating machine learning approaches to optimize materials processing. Current projects include flexible transparent conducting electrodes and perovskite solar cells, neuromorphic computing, and metal oxide extreme ultraviolet resist. 

  • I-Ling Yen

    Research interests include high assurance systems, parallel and distributed computing, secure and dependable systems, grid and peer-to-peer computing, systems engineering and component-based design of adaptive systems. Has been a panelist and reviewer for the National Science Foundation. 

  • Ifana Mahbub

    Research interests include antenna, radio-frequency integrated circuits, and systems design for wireless communication, wireless power transfer, and tracking systems; ultrawideband/millimeter-wave phased-array antenna design for long-range power beaming; and secured vehicle-to-vehicle communication for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 

  • Nadine Igonin

    Conducts seismology research on earthquakes across Texas, New Mexico and Finland. Current projects include earthquake source characterization, mitigation of injection-induced seismicity, using near-surface geophysics to study climate change and geothermal well risk monitoring.

  • Inga H. Musselman

    Was named Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost in 2017 after serving as the interim provost. Also is a professor of chemistry and the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair of Academic Leadership. Research in the Musselman Group has four emphases, with a microscopy theme in common.  

  • Kelly Jahn

    Devoted to improving treatments for hearing loss by studying how auditory perception changes across the lifespan and following acoustic injury. Received funding from the U.S. Army to study why the majority of people with autism spectrum disorder are unusually sensitive to sound — research that could lead to new and more effective treatments. 

  • Caroline Jones

    Researches immunoengineering, sepsis, immunology and infectious diseases, inflammation, lab-on-a-chip technology, biosensors and host-pathogen interactions. Focused on bridging cutting-edge engineering disciplines with immunology to prevent, diagnose and treat immune-related disorders.  

  • Heidi Kane

    Research examines how social and cognitive processes shape interpersonal experiences and how these experiences then impact relationship dynamics and health. She is particularly interested in the biopsychosocial pathways through which close relationships are related to health-related outcomes, such as sleep and stress-related physiology. 

  • Kristen Kennedy

    Professor, Head of Cognitive Neuroscience Track, Cognition and Neuroscience PhD program; studies normal and pathological (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease) aging of brain and cognition, environmental/genetic/health/lifestyle modifiers, and MRI brain function-structure associations. Serves as Senior Editor at Imaging Neuroscience. Her research has been continuously federally funded by the National Institute on Aging since 2010.

  • Colleen Le Prell

    One of the leading researchers in noise-induced hearing disorders and their prevention, she has worked to identify cell death pathways activated by noise, assessed investigational agents that prevent cell death and hearing loss, and sought to learn more about the development and trajectory of noise-induced auditory dysfunction 

  • Yeungjeom Lee

    Research areas include developmental life-course criminology, juvenile delinquency/justice, victimization, psychopathy, cybercrime and comparative criminology. In 2023, received three early career honors for her work from the American Society of Criminology (Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology) and Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (Victimology Section; Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Section). 

  • Juyoung Leem

    Research areas include nanoscience and engineering (nanoscale phenomena, mechanics, nanomaterial synthesis, nano/micro fabrications and manufacturing), functional materials (hybrid materials, synthesis and fabrication) and applications (energy, sensing, optoelectronics, plasmonics and bio-nano interfaces).

  • Lena Nguyen

    The Nguyen Lab focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of brain development and how dysregulation of molecular signaling pathways contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders and epilepsy. The ultimate goal of the research program is to enhance neuroscience knowledge by advancing the treatment and prevention of human diseases. 

  • Li Zhang

    Cecil H. and Ida Green Distinguished Chair in Systems Biology Science has published an array of original research articles elucidating heme signaling, gene regulation and lung tumorigenesis. Research results strongly support the idea that heme sequestration can be an effective strategy for the suppression of lung tumors and other drug-resistant tumors. 

  • Lin Jia

    Long-term research goal is to identify critical mediators and important pathways that contribute to the development of advanced liver damage and associated metabolic disorders. Also interested in investigating the important role of organ crosstalk in disease initiation and progression.

  • Linda Thibodeau

    Exploring assistive technology for persons with hearing loss to reduce communication challenges in noisy environments. Primary research interest is the relationship between psychoacoustic processing and possible benefits from amplification circuits. Secondary research interest is the evaluation of auditory training approaches and assistive devices. 

  • Jin Liu

    Current projects include adaptive equalization and clock/data recovery circuits for high-speed data communications, low-power complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor motion detection imagers, radiation-hardened sensor interface circuits for satellite, power and data transmission circuits for battery-less and wireless sensors and high-speed A/D converters. 

  • Anne M. Burton

    Research is primarily concerned with the spillover effects of risky health behaviors and crime. For example, her research has found that smoking bans in bars lead to increases in alcohol consumption, and the cognitive effects of fine particulate matter pollution lead to increases in fatal car crashes. 

  • Mandy Maguire

    Studies the impact of home environment on children’s brain and language development and learning by using EEG and behavioral measures. Has focused on how early home environments might influence language abilities and learning in preschoolers as well as how this might impact later word learning in grade school. 

  • Margaret Tresch Owen

    Research focuses on children’s environmental contexts, particularly children’s home experiences and child care experiences and how they relate to the child’s development. Studies relations among mother-child, father-child and husband-wife relationships, and examines how qualities of these relationships are associated with children’s development.

  • Sarah Maxwell

    Research interests include health policy, tick-borne illness/Lyme disease; infectious disease and vulnerable populations. Has written numerous refereed articles, focusing on human tick-borne disease risk using multi–modal databases under a One Health model framework. 

  • Christa McIntyre

    Research interests focus on neural mechanisms of stress effects on memory and extinction of conditioned fear. Winner of Aage Møller Teaching Award from UT Dallas (2013), which honors outstanding teaching, mentoring and supervision through nominations by student evaluations and peer recommendations.   

  • Kristin S. Miller

    First engineering faculty member to hold a joint appointment in mechanical engineering and bioengineering. Research focuses on the mechanobiology of soft tissues, including evaluating the role of elastic fibers and contractility in the female reproductive system. Earned National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2018.

  • Candice Mills

    Examines how children develop the ability to take a critical stance when learning from others. Past research has examined the factors that help children evaluate explanation quality and respond accordingly. More recent research has examined developmental and individual differences in how children reason about fantastical beings such as Santa Claus. Ongoing work also examines how to improve developmental science. 

  • Camila Morales

    Director of Research for the Texas Schools Project. Research interests are the economics of education, immigration economics and labor economics. Specifically, studies the impact of immigration policies on the labor market outcomes of young adults and the efficacy of school-level programs and peer interactions on the academic achievement of immigrants/refugees and English learners.  

  • Jackie Nelson

    Studies family dynamics, including how mothers and fathers work together in parenting, how stress occurring in parents’ multiple roles affects family interaction, and how parents interact with their children and socialize their children’s social-emotional development. An example of her work is studying how parents navigate conflicts with their preschoolers at mealtimes. 

  • Alice O’Toole

    Research interests include visual perception, memory and cognition. Compared the performance of computational models of face recognition to the characteristics of human performance on similar tasks. Also focused on the analysis of machine learning models of high-level vision, with emphasis on whether deep neural networks of face and body recognition can model human perception. 

  • Noa Ofen

    As part of the Center for Vital Longevity, combines behavioral assessments with structural and functional MRI and intracranial EEG to investigate cognitive and brain development across the lifespan focusing on the development of human memory, the hippocampus, spatiotemporal dynamics of brain rhythms, and genetic and environmental influences in development.

  • Hui Ouyang

    Research focuses on atmospheric aerosol science, bioaerosol transport in indoor environments and the broader implications for indoor air quality. Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, her lab is investigating critical processes such as coagulation following new particle formation in the atmosphere, as well as the mechanisms of virus transmission through virus-laden bioaerosol particles in indoor environments. 

  • Kelli Palmer

    Department Head of Biological Sciences studies antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria. Helps students conduct experiments under the auspices of the Tiny Earth Initiative, which assigns them the task of isolating bacteria from soil samples and then screening the isolates for any that are producing antibiotics. 

  • Irina Panovska

    Research interests focus on modeling the macroeconomy, in particular the responses of the economy to different policy actions, and on the speed and duration of economic recoveries. The second stream of her research is methodological and focuses on identifying the trend and cyclical movements that define the state of the economy. 

  • BoKyung Park

    Studies the emerging field of moral psychology. How do people from different cultures form and update impressions about others’ moral characters? How does culture explain people’s varied reliance on information about others’ personalities and situations when making moral judgments? How do people from different cultures make judgments about violations of moral values? 

  • Denice C. Park

    Director of Research for the Center for Vital Longevity focuses on understanding how the mind changes and adapts as we age and whether stimulation can maintain the health of the aging brain. Studies isolating a “neural signature” of middle-age adults who will age with vitality versus those who are at greater risk of less adaptive cognitive aging.

  • Amy Pinkham

    Works to identify mechanisms of social dysfunction in individuals with schizophrenia and related mental illnesses. Studies the behavioral characteristics and neural underpinnings of social cognitive functioning with the goal of learning how social cognitive impairments affect day-to-day lives and to understand how brain functioning may contribute to these impairments.   

  • Shalini Prasad

    Principal Investigator of Biomedical Micro devices and Nanotechnology Laboratory at UT Dallas, which develops novel sensor technologies ranging from wearable technologies and portable diagnostics to defense and environmental monitors. The research leverages multi-omics approaches in investigating the interaction of humans with their environment and it lies at the intersection of basic sciences, applied sciences and engineering 

  • Pumpki Lei Su

    Research focuses on language development and caregiver-child interaction in autistic children and bilingual children using observational and eye-tracking methods. She hopes her work will help identify malleable aspects of caregiver-child interaction to optimize language outcomes in various children and develop culturally and linguistically sensitive assessment tools to facilitate the identification of language disorders in bilingual children. 

  • Purna Joshi

    Explores the fate and function of epithelial and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells and niche mechanisms during development, tissue regeneration and cancer. Core vision is to build new knowledge on highly plastic stem cell lineages in mammalian tissues that can be leveraged to generate innovative cancer prevention/treatment strategies and regenerative therapies. 

  • Rashaunda Henderson

    Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor directs the High Frequency Circuits and Systems Laboratory, which uses enabling technologies for microwave circuits and electronic packages for high frequency communication applications. It also facilitates microwave and millimeter-wave design, simulation, fabrication and characterization of passive components, circuits and antennas and integrated packages for communication systems.

  • Millie Rincón-Cortés

    Researches normative and stress-induced plasticity of reward and mesolimbic dopamine function, with an emphasis on early development and the postpartum period. Her work examines how becoming a mother changes reward-related brain function and how normative changes interact with postpartum adversity. 

  • Karen Rodrigue

    Psychology Program Director conducts adult lifespan studies of the brain and cognitive aging, utilizing structural, functional and PET imaging. Maps the changes that the healthy human brain undergoes with aging to understand how these changes affect behavior. Specifically interested in how health factors such as hypertension in combination with genetic risk can shape the course of aging.

  • Danieli B.C. Rodrigues

    Studies orthopedic and dental biomaterials, development of bone cements for implant fixation and bone augmentation, failure mechanisms in modular total-joint and dental implants, corrosion and its association to pseudotumor and peri-implantitis development, and biocompatible and antimicrobial coatings for orthopedic and dental implants. 

  • Pamela Rollins

    Research has emphasized using behavioral paradigms to understand the dynamics of infant/child social interactions and social experiences as predictors of social, communication, and language development. Has extended this work to autistic children, charting developmental trajectories and conducting translational studies. Current work focuses on developing evidence-based, culturally responsive interventions for low-income Hispanic autistic children, and artificial intelligence applications for assessing social attention. 

  • Allison Russell

    Research interests include nonprofit management, volunteering and volunteer management, ethical decision-making, social innovation, organizational theory and behavior, and cross-sector partnerships. For example, her study suggested that volunteer managers should begin to consider how the service careers of their older volunteers will end. 

  • Meghna Sabharwal

    Studies human resource management, workforce diversity, job satisfaction and productivity, comparative human resources practices and high-skilled migration. She serves as an Associate Provost for Faculty Success, managing the Faculty Mentoring Program. In addition, she is the editor-in-chief of the Review of Public Personnel Administration and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.  

  • Katelyn Sadler

    Studies gut-brain circuits in chronic pain conditions in hopes of increasing understanding of interoceptive processes and provide opportunities for novel drug development. Also looks at how pain from sickle cell disease is encoded within the central nervous system.   

  • Erica L. Sanchez

    Studies Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) contribution to metabolic regulation, trafficking and signaling, using tissue culture models and molecular biology techniques. This work is designed to inspire graduate and undergraduate student researchers interested in exploring human disease at the molecular level. 

  • Kendra Seaman

    Seeks to understand what motivates people, how this impacts the choices they make and how these things change across the adult life span. Examples of her work include examining how skewed decision-making and learning contribute to older adults taking excessive financial risks and having excessive trust compared to younger adults. 

  • Elizabeth Searing

    Primary research focus is the financial management of nonprofit and social enterprise organizations, but she also conducts work on comparative social economy more broadly. Studies how nonprofit and other social economy organizations become more resilient. Believes that scholars should be rooted in the needs of the community. 

  • Adrianna Shembel

    Studies the role of the larynx in sensorimotor voice disorders, including primary muscle tension dysphonia (pMTD) and vocal fold paralysis. Devised new metrics and methods to track laryngeal and paralaryngeal-respiratory muscle movement patterns in occupational voice user, pMTD, and vocal fold paralysis.

  • Angela Shoup

    Executive Director of the Callier Center for Communication Disorders researches the implementation and outcomes of universal newborn hearing screening programs; congenital cytomegalovirus and hearing; developmental issues in audition, auditory electrophysiology; and cochlear and auditory brainstem implants. 

  • Berrak Sisman

    Research features an interdisciplinary study that involves speech processing, emotion, audio-visual learning and deep learning methodology. Leads the Speech & Machine Learning Lab at UTD. Develops cutting-edge neural models for inclusive and expressive speech synthesis. Received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2024.

  • Sheryl Skaggs

    Research addresses gender and racial/ethnic workplace disparities, within and across occupations, organizations, and industries. Additionally, a recent set of studies with Dr. Lynne Vieraitis, using several decades of airline passenger misconduct reports, details primary disruption types, key precipitating factors such as intoxication, and victim experiences. This research highlights the many costs associated with this form of publicly disruptive behavior.

  • Ana Solodkin

    Has worked for more than 25 years to discover biomarkers associated with clinical predictions in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and spinocerebellar ataxias, in the hope of finding therapeutic interventions. She has conceptualized and developed analytical tools, from anatomical neuropathology to computational modeling embodied by The Virtual Brain. 

  • Mihaela C. Stefan

    Department Head for Chemistry and Biochemistry conducts research that encompasses the synthesis and characterization of novel polymeric materials for applications in organic electronics and medicine. Has won numerous awards, including the UT Dallas President’s Teaching Excellence Award.

  • Marianne Stewart

    Conducts research and teaches in the areas of electoral politics, political behavior and research methodology. Serves as co-director of the Survey Center for Opinion Research and Elections and has been executive vice dean, acting dean, graduate studies director and political science program director in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences.

  • Alva Tang

    Research focuses on normative changes and individual differences in social and emotional development and how they shape mental health. She has conducted interdisciplinary studies that investigate individual differences in children’s and adolescents’ processing of social information, temperament and friendships, which are important for psychosocial functioning. In understanding atypical development, she examined exposures to early adversities (e.g., child maltreatment and neglect).

  • Catherine Thorn

    Winner of 2024 UT Dallas award for Outstanding Achievements in Research focuses on motor and habit learning with an emphasis on the role of neuromodulators in motor system plasticity. Research in the Motor and Habit Learning Lab aims to understand how we learn new motor skills and develop the many motor habits we use every day. 

  • Hedieh Torabifard

    Primary goal of the Torabifard Lab’s research program is to apply computational and theoretical methods to study complicated and unsolved biological problems. The lab aims to uncover the underlying principles of selectivity and transport mechanism in different transporters, and histones post-translational modifications. Also interested in designing new bio-based ionic liquids to improve their green character. 

  • Christine Veras

    Directs the experimenta.l. lab, a collaborative space for creative research and critical practices in animation involving students, faculty and external collaborators. She encourages experimentation through diverse techniques, tools and interfaces of animation, expanding fields related to STEAM. 

  • Lynne Vieraitis

    Research areas are identity theft, gender inequality and violence, criminal justice policy and corrections. Her study with Dr. Sheryl Skaggs showed that incidents of passenger misconduct on airplanes are predominantly caused by passenger intoxication. Also conducted a study about how women handle the stigma of staying with men who are incarcerated.

  • Amy Walker

    Research goal is the development of simple, robust materials for constructing complex two- and three-dimensional surfaces by manipulating interfacial chemistry. Metal/self-assembled monolayer (SAM), semiconductor/SAM and biomolecule/SAM structures that have applications in organic electronics, sensing, catalysis, photovoltaics and optoelectronics.

  • Jiayi Wang

    Researches functional data, low-rank modeling, causal inference and reinforcement learning. Broadly interested in methodology and theory in nonparametric statistics and machine learning. Recent research focuses on statistical problems with complex functional data or unknown missing structures. 

  • Andrea Warner-Czyz

    Measures how infants, children and adolescents who wear cochlear implants learn to communicate with others and how communication affects how they feel about themselves. Current research focuses on the effect of having a hearing aid or cochlear implant on children’s development of communication skills, music appreciation and social well-being. 

  • Stacie L. Warren

    Studies clinical psychology, neuropsychology, psychopathology, executive function, emotion regulation, cognitive and affective neuroscience, early adversity and brain development, trauma, individual differences, neuroimaging, cognitive training, and computational modeling. Takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how (mal)adaptive behavior emerges from complex dynamic, biopsychosocial cultural systems and pathways to developing psychopathology.   

  • Weili Wu

    Director of Data Communication and Data Management Laboratory studies big data management and analysis, social networks, database systems, wireless sensor networks, data mining, spatial data mining, parallel and distributed systems, algorithm design and analysis, and bioinformatics. 

  • Yanwen Xu

    Focuses on digital twin, physics-informed machine learning, design under uncertainty, reliability and safety analysis, and uncertainty quantification. She earned her PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023, and holds a BS in mathematics. Her outstanding contributions to the field have been recognized with several best paper awards.

  • Leehyun Yoon

    Research focuses on the neural and environmental mechanisms of self-related thoughts in social and achievement contexts. Specifically, why do some people persistently believe that they are not good enough? Why do some people integrate failure more strongly than success into their self-esteem and self-efficacy? Does the way the brain processes success and failure explain these individual differences? 

  • May Yuan

    Research interest expands upon space-time representation and analytics to understand geographic dynamics. Recently founded the Geospatial Analytics and Innovative Applications (GAIA) Lab, where she and her students develop spatial data science methods to compute changes and processes for place-based predictions.  

  • Xiaojia Zhang

    Main research interests are causal inference in precision medicine and Mendelian randomization, nonparametric and semiparametric analysis, and high-dimensional analysis. Also interested in studying uncorrupted data and machine-learning techniques. 

  • Yujie Zheng

    Research is driven by one main passion: making the most of modern geodetic datasets, especially interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements, to understand the changes on the Earth’s surface. One of the central goals is to understand earthquake and volcanic processes through the lens of SAR. Another goal is to exploit the use of remote sensing to better understand how human activities impact the Earth’s surfaces in the era of climate change.