2023 Washington D.C. Fellows Program

2023 UNT Cohort of Washington D.C. Fellows

This fourth cohort of faculty members were nominated by the Deans and Associate Deans of Research within their respective colleges.

College of Business 

Jeremy "JJ" Kovach, Department of Operations Management -  Dr. Kovach's research interests include managing new product development and innovation, operations and supply chain strategy execution, and sustainable operations.

Lidan Xu, Department of Marketing - Dr. Xu's research expertise focuses on consumer response to innovation and new technology, social innovation, and creativity and innovation management.

College of Education

Sarah Deemer, Department of Kinesiology, Health Promotion and Recreation - Dr. Deemer's research interests include obesity, metabolic disease, adipose tissue dysfunction, weight loss, weight loss maintenance, nutrition, exercise, and health disparities.

College of Merchandising, Hospitality, and Tourism 

Jihye "Ellie" Min, Department of Hospitality and Tourism - Dr. Min's research interests include marketing, financial and revenue management, social impact analysis, and consumer behavior. Dr. Min has had many positions in the hospitality industry and worked for leading hospitality companies such as MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio Casino and Hotel, Korean Airlines in Las Vegas, Puffing Billy in Australia, and Sofitel Ambassador Hotel in South Korea.

College of Visual Arts and Design

Brian Campbell, Department of Studio Art - Dr. Campbell's research interests include the phenomenology of painting and drawing practice, epistemology, and the potential and/or limits for semiotics to shape meaning and understanding. 

Jeannine Vail, Department of Interior Design - Ms. Vail's research focuses on what role multisensory design as it is applied to the physical setting could be utilized to improve the learning environment for the dyslexic student. Her objective is to identify the best elements and the application of various stimuli - visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.

College of Engineering

Mark Albert, Department of Computer Science - Dr. Albert's research interests include AI / machine (deep) learning, wearable devices, clinical outcomes measurement and prediction, and transfer learning / continual learning models for prediction on small, limited data sets.

Fateme Esmailie, Department of Biomedical Engineering - Dr. Esmailie's research interests include computational cardiovascular fluid dynamics, designing therapeutic devices, developing medical predictive methods, and thermal fluid-assisted medicine.

College of Health and Public Service

Boji Lam, Department of Audiology - Dr. Lam's research focuses on the effects of bilingualism and motivation on language behaviors, learning, therapeutic outcomes in both children and adults, emotion, and vocabulary learning.

Bradley McDaniels, Department of Rehabilitation and Health Services - Dr. McDaniel's research focuses on addressing ways to mitigate apathy in people with Parkinson's disease: The role of meaning in life, loneliness, demoralization, and stigma.

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

Danica Slavish, Department of Psychology - Dr. Slavish's research focuses on health psychology, behavioral sleep medicine, and longitudinal methods.

Wei Kang, Department of Geography and the Environment - Dr. Kang's research focuses on GIS, spatial statistics/econometrics, spatial inequality, housing, and neighborhood change.

College of Music

Jung Choi, Department of Instrumental Studies - Dr. Choi's research interests include music and medicine, creating interdisciplinary art (dance and music, poetry and music, visual arts and music etc.) that represent the voice of historically marginalized people.

Stephanie Rhodes Russell, Department of Conducting and Ensembles - Dr. Russell's research focuses on the representation of women in leadership across the arts industry, music, and technology for education.

College of Science

Molly Atkinson, Department of Chemistry - Dr. Atkinson's research interests include chemistry education research, undergraduate/graduate student learning of chemistry, representational competence, eye tracking, assessment development, and pathways to graduate chemistry education.

Zacchaeus Compson, Department of Biological Sciences - Dr. Compson's research interests include food web ecology, aquatic ecology, environmental genomics, DNA metabarcoding, and stable isotope ecology.

Elinor Lichtenberg, Department of Biological Sciences - Dr. Lichtenberg's research interests include animal behavior, ecology, land use change, biodiversity conservation, and social learning.

College of Information

Regina Kaplan-Rakowski, Department of Learning Technologies - Dr. Kaplan-Rakowski's research interests include immersive learning environments (e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality), emotional responses to learning technologies (engagement, presence, anxiety, wellness, etc.), and computer-assisted language learning.

Sarah Evans, Department of Information Sciences - Dr. Evan' s research focuses informal learning, public libraries, adolescents, identities, multiple literacies (including health, data, visual), pop culture, fandoms, comics and graphic novels, children's and young adult literature, reading (history, habits, etc), and marginalized voices.