This webpage provides a listing of new faculty participating in the New Faculty Spotlight. Our Spotlight feature highlights faculty working in selected research areas that cut across multiple departments.

Faculty List by Research Area

Neuroscience (January)

Name Title Department Research Description
Sama Ahmed
Ahmed Lab		 Weill Neurohub Term Assistant Professor Psychology Neural circuit interactions for generating complex behaviors.
Michele A Basso
Basso Faculty page		 Professor Biological Structure and Physiology and Biophysics The work performed in Dr. Basso’s laboratory is aimed at unraveling the neuronal circuits of decision-making in health and disease. Her work spans multiple species and employs multiple technologies designed to understand how memory and sensory information are combined to give rise to our decisions and choices of action.
Tim Brown
Brown Faculty page 		 Assistant Professor

 

 Bioethics & Humanities Interpersonal and societal impact of neuroengineering.
Gabriel Cler
Cler Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Speech & Hearing Sciences How does the brain support speech and language? What brain differences do we see when someone has difficulty learning their first language?
Donald L. Elbert
Elbert Lab		 Associate Professor Neurology Mechanistic mathematical models of neurodegenerative diseases.
Matthew Golub
Golub Faculty page 		 Assistant Professor Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering Machine learning for systems neuroscience and neuroengineering; computation through neural population dynamics; brain-computer interfaces.
Kim Ingraham
Ingraham Faculty page		 Assistant Professor

 

 Electrical & Computer Engineering Advancing human mobility using personalized assistive robots.
Amber Nolan
Nolan Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Laboratory Medicine and Pathology The neuroscience and neuropathology of traumatic brain injury.
Marco Pravetoni
Pravetoni Faculty page		 Rick L. Seaver Endowed Professor for Brain Wellness, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Lead Scientist, Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions

 Psychiatry Immunotherapeutics and Pharmaceutics for Substance Use Disorder and Overdose.
Alec Smith
Smith Faculty page		 Research Assistant Professor Physiology and Biophysics / The Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) Stem cell-based models of neuromuscular disease.
Oscar Vivas
Pharmacology Faculty pagePhysiology and Biophysics Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Pharmacology, Physiology and Biophysics Our research seeks to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the deterioration of the autonomic nervous system.
Z Yan Wang
Wang Lab		 Assistant Professor, Weill Neurohub Term Professor Psychology, Biology Neurobiology of aging, senescence, and death

Race and Social Justice (March)

Name Title Department Research Description
M. Aziz
Azia Faculty page		 Assistant Professor of African American Studies American Ethnic Studies Dr. Aziz’s research explores the role of safety and well-being in Black Power History. It uses unarmed self-defense and martial arts as a lens to understand not only history, but contemporary struggles for justice.
Nazry Bahrawi
Bahrawi Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Asian Languages and Literature I study the intersections between interracial and interspecies concepts in the animal narratives of maritime Southeast Asia as an underexplored literary tradition from the non-West. This indigenous tradition of racial formation is both distinguishable from and complementary to America’s critical race theory.
Theresa Rocha Beardall
Beardall Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Sociology

Faculty Affiliate: Law, Societies, and Justice; Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology; Center for Human Rights

 Dr. Rocha Beardall’s sociolegal research examines how policing and the child welfare system shape social life, operate as systems of social control, and structure intergenerational disadvantage
Sebawit Bishu
Bishu Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Evans School of Public Policy and Governance Sebawit Bishu’s research is at the intersection of identity (gender and race) and organizational performance, focusing on how individual and organizational behavior can improve effectiveness in the public sector.
Tim Brown
Brown Faculty page 		 Assistant Professor Bioethics & Humanities Interpersonal and societal impact of neuroengineering.
Aylin Caliskan Caliskan Faculty page Assistant Professor The Information School, The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (Adjunct) How do artificial intelligence (AI) models learn social bias from large scale sociocultural data? How do biased AI systems impact equity and society?
Joan Casey
Casey Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Dr. Casey studies how climate-related exposures like wildfires and power outages affect health across the lifecourse through the lens of social determinants of health.
Jelani Ince
Ince Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Sociology My research employs the lens of cultural sociology to examine how racial diversity is managed in formal organizations through the ordinary procedures and the social interactions between actors, as well as how social movements shape the political process in response to racial injustice.
Debrielle Jacques
Jacques Faculty page		 Assistant Professor of Child Psychopathology and Development Psychology How parental drug and alcohol addiction impact parenting, family functioning, and young children’s mental health
Tyler Jimenez
Jimenez Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Psychology Tyler Jimenez researches social inequality from micro and macro level perspectives, focusing on topics such as racism, capitalism, settler colonialism, policing, and incarceration.
Patricia Louie
Louie webpage		 Assistant Professor Sociology My research focuses on the role of stress and coping resources in explaining Black-White differences in mental health and how different specifications of race (such as skin tone or disaggregated multiracial status) can influence how we understand health disparities.
Monica R. McLemore
McLemore Faculty page		 Professor, Interim Director, Adjunct Professor Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing,

Center for Anti-Racism in Nursing,

Health Systems and Population Health

 My work is grounded in reproductive health, rights, and justice.
José Jorge Mendoza
Mendoza Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Philosophy José Jorge Mendoza’s current research deals with issues in migration ethics (especially immigrant rights), Latinx identity, and racial justice.
Raphaëlle Rabanes
Rabanes Faculty page		 Assistant Professor

 

 Anthropology (Sociocultural / Medical Anthropology) Ethnographic focus: Community responses to health and racial inequities in the French Caribbean. Broader frameworks: Health, race, social movements, and the long shadow of history in the African Diaspora.
Oliver Rollins
Rollins Faculty page		 Assistant Professor American Ethnic Studies My research explores how the politics of race and the systemic practices of inequity are influenced and affected by the production, use, and anticipated social value of neuroscientific knowledges and technologies.
Mienah Z. Sharif
Sharif Epidemiology Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Epidemiology and Health Systems, Population Health Racism is a fundamental driver of health inequities, and to effectively address racism we, as a field, must actively challenge the many ways in which racism persists in our conventional public health methodologies, practices and norms.
Mike Teodorescu
Teodorescu Faculty page		 Assistant Professor The Information School My passion is to do research that helps improve equality through empirically-tested policies – whether managerial or governmental. My research areas recently have been machine learning fairness and economics of innovation. The second research stream, in economics of innovation, focuses on testing innovation policies that may be used to help entrepreneurs get access to funding, obtain patents, and become serial innovators.
Christopher Tounsel
Tounsel Faculty page		 Associate Professor of History, Interim Director of the African Studies Program History I am an historian of modern Sudan, with particular interests in the use of race and religion as political technologies.
Timeka N. Tounsel
Tounsel Faculty page		 Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Communication Communication I am a critical-cultural studies scholar who focuses on race, gender, and sexuality in the media.
Ruoniu (Vince) Wang
Wang Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Runstad Department of Real Estate My research is focused on examining the causes, consequences, and solutions of housing unaffordability and residential segregation in the U.S. I study in what way and to what extent urban amenities and opportunities are disproportionately distributed in the built environments. My recent work centers on building nationwide datasets of inclusionary zoning policies and community land trusts.
Amelia M. Wirts
Wirts Faculty page and Wirts webpage		 Assistant Professor Philosophy My research explores how injustice affects the legitimacy of systems of criminal law, with a special focus on sexism, racism, and class-based injustice.

Data Science (April)

Name Title Department Research Description
Mia Bennett
Bennett Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Geography Combining remote sensing and ethnographic fieldwork, my research explores the politics and cultures of frontier-making in the Arctic with respect to three global transformations: the space age, Indigenous empowerment, and the rise of Asia.
Aylin Caliskan
Caliskan Faculty page		 Assistant Professor The Information School, The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (Courtesy) How do artificial intelligence (AI) models learn social bias from large scale sociocultural data? How do biased AI systems impact equity and society?
Carlos Cinelli
Cinelli Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Statistics Everyone knows correlation is not causation. What can we do then? Cinelli’s research focuses on developing new theory, methods, and software to help data scientists make reliable causal inferences under realistic settings.
Sayamindu Dasgupta
Dasgupta Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Human Centered Design and Engineering My research focuses on how young people can learn with and about data—especially in contexts of the communities that they live, learn, and play in.
Simon Shaolei Du
Du Faculty page		 Assistant Professor The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering Theoretical foundations of deep learning and reinforcement learning.
Bamdad Hosseini
Hosseini Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Applied Mathematics Prof. Hosseini works on the mathematical foundations of data science and machine learning by combining ideas from applied mathematics, statistics, and probability theory.
Anna Preus
Preus Faculty page		 Assistant Professor of Humanities Data Science English My research focuses on early 20th-century publishing history in England and considers how historical print cultures are being transferred online through large-scale text digitization efforts.
Oliver Rollins
Rollins Faculty page		 Assistant Professor American Ethnic Studies My research explores how the politics of race and the systemic practices of inequity are influenced and affected by the production, use, and anticipated social value of neuroscientific knowledges and technologies.
Armeen Taeb
Taeb Faculty page		 Assistant Professor Statistics My work focuses on developing efficient methods for graphical and latent-variable modeling, learning causal relations from data, and model selection in non-traditional settings.
Mike Teodorescu
Teodorescu Faculty page		 Assistant Professor The Information School My passion is to do research that helps improve equality through empirically-tested policies – whether managerial or governmental. My research areas recently have been machine learning fairness and economics of innovation. The second research stream, in economics of innovation, focuses on testing innovation policies that may be used to help entrepreneurs get access to funding, obtain patents, and become serial innovators.
Lucy Lu Wang
Wang Faculty page		 Assistant Professor The Information School Investigating how AI and NLP technologies can help people make better health-related decisions

Climate Science and Sustainability (October)

Name Title Department Research Description
Jungwon Choi Assistant Professor Electrical & Computer Engineering Power Electronics, Renewable Energy, Wireless Power Transfer
Corey Garza Professor School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences My research involves studying spatial and temporal variation in the distribution and composition of coastal ecosystems. I use autonomous technologies, such as drones, coupled with spatial statistics and image analysis to conduct my research.
Bethany Gordon Assistant Professor Civil & Environmental Engineering Dr. Gordon specialises in applications of behavioral science and psychology to improve design processes for a more equitable built environment. For example, we are working with systemic equity objectives to address the Environmental Justice implications in the design of protective (hazard mitigation) capacities of urban stormwater management infrastructure systems.
Celina Balderas Guzmán Assistant Professor Landscape Architecture Dr. Balderas Guzmán conducts applied environmental science research to inform environmental planning and landscape design on coastal adaptation to sea level rise and urban stormwater.
Christie Hegermiller Assistant Professor Civil & Environmental Engineering Hydrodynamics and sediment transport in the coastal ocean
JeremVikram Iyery J. Hess Professor Emergency Medicine, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Global Health, Atmospheric Sciences My research is focused on the health impacts of climate change and how to implement effective, equitable health protections at scale both domestically and globally. This involves interdisciplinary, implementation-oriented research with communities and practice partners in a wide range of settings
Vikram Iyer Assistant Professor Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering Bio-inspired systems, wireless technologies
June Lukuyu Assistant Professor Electrical & Computer Engineering Sustainable, inclusive, and integrated energy development for improved livelihoods in underserved communities
Michelle Muth Assistant Professor Earth and Space Sciences Dr. Muth studies the chemistry of magmas.
Julie Rorrer Assistant Professor Chemical Engineering Sustainable chemical synthesis using heterogeneous catalysis
Sameer H. Shah John C. Garcia Term Professor & Assistant Professor of Climate Adaptation School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Dr. Shah studies how climate change impacts are mediated by social, economic, and political inequalities.
Zachary Sherman Assistant Professor Chemical Engineering Computational soft matter physics
Bhuvana Srinivasan Associate Professor Aeronautics & Astronautics Plasma science and fusion energy research towards a clean, green, abundant energy future
Cory Struthers Assistant Professor Evans School of Public Policy and Governance Dr. Struthers’ research asks how scientific information, special interests, and public opinion filter through institutions to shape policymakers’ decisions, especially on climate change and the environment.
Shijing Sun Assistant Professor Mechanical Engineering Dr. Sun’s research is centered at design and engineering of materials & systems for energy harvesting, conversion, and storage applications, helping our society transition to a carbon-neutral future.
Kendall Valentine Assistant Professor School of Oceanography Dr. Valentine’s work aims to understand coastal landscape change by examining the interplay between geology, physics, and biology.
Claire Willing Assistant Professor School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Dr. Willing’s research program focuses on forest mycobiomes (the fungal component of the microbiome) and climate change. We investigate how fungal communities shift in response to factors associated with climate change and the functional consequences for plant responses to future climatic perturbations.
Lingzi Wu Assistant Professor Construction Management Simulation-enabled Data-Driven Decision Support Systems