The Texas Leadership Research Scholars Program, which debuted in Fall 2024, is a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board research scholarship and leadership opportunity program for high-achieving graduate students with financial need.

UNT was among only nine public universities in the state selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the program, which awards selected doctoral researchers a nearly $18,000 scholarship renewable for up to four years.

“The TLRS program provides access and opportunity to exceptional doctoral scholars to excel in their research, academics and graduate life. The funding removes barriers for our scholars as they expand their career and life experiences to be readied for the workforce. This investment by the state of Texas is highly impactful and life-changing for UNT's doctoral students,” says Brenda Barrio, UNT associate vice president for graduate studies and student research.

The stories of the researchers selected to represent UNT's second cohort of Texas Leadership Research Scholars will be shared throughout Summer 2026 below.

Jennifer Nguyen

Jennifer NguyenHealth Sciences

From a young age, Jennifer Nguyen wanted to study neuroscience. That fascination inspired her to pursue a bachelor's degree in neuroscience at UT Austin, followed by a master's degree in behavior analysis at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Hoping to bridge her interests in her doctoral work, Nguyen was excited to discover the Beatrice Barrett Behavior Analytic Neuroscience Initiative at UNT, which supports two behavioral neuroscience labs led by faculty members April Becker and Daniele Ortu. Two years into the program, Nguyen is hard at work on a study that could reveal more effective methods for treating phobias. Through tests that combine neuropsychological measurement tools (such as a person’s sweat gland response to stimuli) and a behavior analysis framework, she hopes to eventually quantify emotional and fear responses — with the goal of changing them. Nguyen believes this method could have a range of applications, including interventions for post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Isaiah Salazar

Isaiah SalazarHealth Sciences

When he arrived at UNT, Isaiah Salazar began working on a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Salazar went on to earn a master’s degree in behavior analysis at UNT. When his interests turned toward training systems, he decided to pursue a Ph.D. in health sciences at UNT as well. Now he studies organizational behavior management, a discipline he describes as “behavior analysis on a larger scale.” During his master’s degree, Salazar completed a thesis exploring how to ensure healthcare staff followed proper intervention procedures. To accomplish this, he created a self-monitoring training system intended to support consistent implementation of treatments by staff members. Now, as he works on his dissertation, Salazar hopes to expand on that work and develop large-scale, data-driven systems that improve healthcare employee performance while limiting ineffective supervisory systems.

Cristina Castillo

Cristina CastilloChemistry Education

In her first year at Tarrant County Community College, Cristina Castillo had an important conversation about her passions with a concerned professor who saw engineering wasn’t where she truly belonged — in fact she required a different, difficult challenge. As a first-generation student, Castillo initially had little guidance choosing her career. This discussion put her on the right track with a chemistry associate’s degree before transferring to UNT with a double major in chemistry and physics. Now she’s focusing on her career to study chemistry education. Once she finished her master’s degree in physics, Castillo was called back to chemistry — but wanted to focus on education to help those dealing with similar struggles she experienced in school.

Alexandra Candelaria

Alexandra CandelariaSpecial Education

Alex Candelaria (’18) was working as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst when she saw firsthand just how challenging it can be to help children with autism transition into a traditional classroom. That inspired Candelaria, who earned her bachelor’s degree in applied behavior analysis from UNT in 2018, to return to her alma mater in 2022 to pursue her Ph.D. in special education. Support looks different for K-12 students than for students in postsecondary programs, but Candelaria’s research mission remains unchanged: improving collaboration to better support individuals with disabilities as they navigate college, build independence and find a place in their community after graduation. As a Texas Leadership Research Scholar, Candelaria has been able to expand her professional network and gain more visibility for her research. 

Bryan Anderson

Kase PennartzInformation Sciences

Bryan Anderson remembers when the only access to technology he had growing up were the computers at the public library. That issue has turned into research for his Ph.D. in information science that aims to find ways to educate the public on cybersecurity best practices in a way that is approachable and meets the individual user where they are to help bridge the digital divide. Communities that rely on public resources, such as public libraries, can face challenges such as limited access and the potential risks that come with entering sensitive information on a public computer. Anderson sees addressing the digital divide as more than just an issue of resources. It’s also about finding ways to effectively share best practices to help communities that rely on public resources use that technology safely. Anderson implements focus groups and online surveys in order to get a better understanding of the wider public’s relationship with cybersecurity best practices. He says one of the biggest challenges has been avoiding IT industry jargon so he doesn’t risk alienating individuals who may have a hard time being willing to admit what they don’t know.

Abbie Teel

Kayla Nguyen-AlleyLearning Technologies

Abbie Teel had a simple observation that she couldn’t shake: she never dreams about technology. That observation may become one of the avenues of her doctoral research, which she hopes will explore how people cognitively abstract information from the technology used to deliver it — and what that reveals about learning and memory. Teel came to UNT's Ph.D. program as a natural extension of her master's work in library science. She still works part-time as a librarian, a background that shapes the way she approaches her other major research focus: artificial intelligence ethics and literacy in education. She has published more than 15 peer-reviewed publications with over 1,200 citations and has two forthcoming book chapters. She recently learned that universities across the country are citing her research in informing their own AI policies. As a Texas Leadership Research Scholar, Teel gains access to monthly seminars covering everything from research communication to managing graduate school anxiety — resources she's quick to pass along as president of UNT's Learning Technologies Student Association, a Graduate Student Council Senator and as an informal mentor to students behind her in the program. 

Raven Gipson-Washington

Raven Gipson-WashingtonPsychology

Raven Gipson-Washington wants to develop culturally-informed holistic wellness frameworks and interventions and tackle gendered racial issues that impact the mental wellbeing of Black women, such as the strong Black woman schema. Now in her second year at UNT, Gipson-Washington is preparing for her dissertation, where she is developing a holistic wellness model for Black women that, instead of current models informed by Euro-Western philosophy, will be informed by African, Eastern and Native American principles and worldviews. Her model will also incorporate women-centered dimensions of wellness that are often missing or decentered in these conversations, such as caregiving duties, the mental management and balancing of various domains of women’s lives, and external pressures.

Kase Pennartz

Kase PennartzKinesiology

Kase Pennartz discovered a passion for research, realizing it aligned with his curiosity and love of learning. This realization carried him through a master’s degree in kinesiology and eventually to UNT, where he began his Ph.D. in 2024. Pennartz is preparing to begin his dissertation while continuing to dedicate his time at UNT to working with fellow researchers. He has contributed to and written thirty published scientific works thus far, covering complex topics from skeletal muscle to brain health. Pennartz recently presented his findings about cerebral oxygenation as a finalist at the Texas American College of Sports Medicine annual conference in Waco. Thanks to support from the Texas Leadership Research Scholarship, he can take his research to the national level at the ACSM conference in Salt Lake City at the end of May.

Kayla Nguyen-Alley

Kayla Nguyen-AlleyBiology

Kayla Nguyen-Alley, who earned her doctorate this spring, is researching the effects of air pollution on the severity of systemic lupus erythematosus symptoms. Commonly known as lupus, the autoimmune disease can affect all organs and tissues in the body and causes swelling and inflammation. It has no known cure. Nguyen-Alley is also researching the potential for probiotics as a supplement to existing treatments to lower the use of traditional pharmaceuticals. Her research journey is a personal one. When she was 14, Nguyen-Alley was diagnosed with lupus. For her dissertation, Nguyen-Alley focused on kidney outcomes associated with lupus. Her research found that when exposed to air pollution, a known inflammatory stimulus, lupus symptoms worsened. Nguyen-Alley will begin her postdoctoral work in the summer. She hopes to one day become a professor and be the primary investigator of her own lab. 

Quanisha Whittfield

Kayla Nguyen-AlleyCounseling Psychology

Growing up, Quanisha Whittfield knew she wanted to be a therapist. She loved helping her friends whenever they came to her for advice and even when she worked retail, customers would share their worries with her. It wasn’t until she hit a hard point in her life that she decided to pursue research in an effort to create the support she wished she had. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began while she was a master’s student and working full-time. Her required clinic hours began to be affected by the switch to telehealth. At the same time, the year also saw an increase in health inequities and racially motivated attacks, with researchers calling it a racism pandemic. Now, Whittfield focuses on Black women’s holistic wellness, specifically focusing on the mind and body. She earned a scholarship to get a yoga teacher certification so she could bring that work into her doctoral research. Her dissertation looks to better understand the pathway between experiences with gendered racism, how Black women identify and relate to their gendered racial identity, and what impacts the two have mentally and physically.