SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 — UTSA Academic Affairs has awarded endowed fellowships to nine faculty members for the 2022-2023 academic year. The awards are granted annually to recently tenured faculty to recognize exceptional early career impact, and to advance scholarly research and the academic success of their students.
Eunhee Chung, Claudia García-Louis, Greg Griffin, Ashwin Malshe, Kathryn Mayer, and Megan Piel were named recipients of the Lutcher Brown Fellowship; Murtuza Jadliwala and Rohit Valecha were selected to receive the Cloud Technology Endowed Fellowship; and Yanmin (Emily) Gong received the Microsoft President’s Endowed Fellowship. All three endowments are one-year, non-recurring, honorific appointments that began on September 1.
“These faculty are a prime example of the scholarly excellence that exists here at UTSA, and I’m excited to advance their work and impact through these fellowships,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, UTSA provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “The groundbreaking research and outstanding teaching conducted by our faculty played a large part in UTSA becoming a Tier One research university last year, and these endowments will only boost the research efforts of some of our most outstanding instructors.”
Chung is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology. Her research focuses on understanding cardiac and metabolic adaptations in various stimuli including pregnancy, exercise, diet and obesity. She plans to use funding from the fellowship to expand the scope of research that her team is conducting on obesity and related diseases.
García-Louis is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Her research seeks to disrupt negative stereotypes about Latinxs, minoritized populations, and underrepresented groups in higher education through the critical incorporation of culturally appropriate, asset-based methodological approaches. She hopes to use funding from the fellowship to make conferences and research more accessible to students and the community.
Griffin, an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, studies how planners and publics work together with technology to improve transportation, civic engagement and health. He currently works as a co-principal investigator for the UTSA ScooterLab, where he and his team research micromobility. The fellowship funding will help support Griffin’s micromobility research and international planning studies to meet developing urban and regional challenges.
Malshe is an associate professor in the Department of Marketing. His research interests include social media marketing, the intersection of marketing and finance, consumer behavior and machine learning. In particular, his research focuses on measuring the impact of marketing strategy in financial markets. He intends to use the funding to continue his work on several projects in which he is using machine learning to analyze textual data.
Mayer is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Her research interests include biophysics, optical techniques, single molecule studies, plasmonics, nanotechnology and nanomedicine. She directs the Mayer Lab, where she works with students to analyze metallic nanoparticles and their applications in biology and medicine. Mayer plans to use her fellowship funds to further support her team’s research during the upcoming year.
Piel, an associate professor in the Department of Social Work, studies child welfare and foster care systems, youth and family resilience, and mental health and trauma. Since 2019, she has worked as the principal investigator for the Bexar County Fostering Educational Success Pilot Project (BCFES), which aims to improve graduation rates and promote postsecondary academic success for students with a history of foster care. She intends to use the fellowship funds to continue her research and improve outcomes for youth and families in the foster care system.
Valecha is an associate professor in the Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security. He conducts research to analyze crisis response, health information security, information privacy, cybersecurity and social media. His research utilizes social, psychology and design theories for understanding the role of social media in mitigating large-scale societal disruptions. He plans to expand his research on these topics using funding from the fellowship.
Jadliwala is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. His research spans all aspects of cyber and cyber-physical systems security and user privacy. He currently directs the Security, Privacy, Trust and Ethics in Computing Lab (SPriTELab). Jadliwala will use his fellowship funding to continue his team’s security and privacy research and to advance education and student training opportunities in these areas.
Gong, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, conducts research involving security and privacy in big data, machine learning, Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, mobile computing and wireless networks. She is the director the Trustworthy and Intelligent Networked Systems Lab (TINS). Gong plans to further advance her research program and establish more research collaborations at UTSA with her fellowship funds.
Fellows are nominated by academic leadership and selected by the provost through a competitive process. The fellowships are supported by funds available from unfilled endowed chairs or professorships.
UTSA currently has more than 85 endowed chairs, professorships and fellowships that recognize the scholarship and research of the university’s highest achieving faculty.
— Chloe Johnson
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The Racial Justice Book Club was established at UTSA by members of the campus community to explore social justice following acts of racial violence across the nation over the last few years. We are reading The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas by Monica Muñoz Martinez. We will meet every Wednesday in September and October at 2 pm on Zoom.
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at our very own street fair – Calle UTSA. We will have activities, performances, food, music, and piñatas to break open.
“La Plática” is a space for thoughtful dialogue to build a sense of connection among the Roadrunner Community by getting to know each other better and sharing what’s on our minds and about ourselves to increase to increase awareness of diverse perspectives.
This September 30, the Friday Series will feature Prof. Milena Ang, who will be presenting A Tren to Nowhere: Statistic Development and the Politics of Racial, a paper co-authored with Tania Islas-Weistein where they discuss Mexico’s long history of state-led development projects that contribute to economic and racial inequality. The authors argue that despite professing racial justice, official discourses surrounding the Tren Maya reproduce existing symbolic and material forms of racism.
We invite you to learn about the process of screenwriting and explore the intersection of identity and pursuing dreams from Jorge Ramirez-Martinez and Raymond Perez, screenwriters for the Selena: The Series, released on Netflix. They will discuss their careers and writing process, including how their identities as Mexican American and gay men have shaped their professional experiences.
Please join us in remembering those who have entered the next part of life by designing a nicho box in their memory. This workshop will provide the necessary items to create your nicho box, though please remember to bring a photo or small object that can fit in a 3.5 x5x1 inch box (small jewelry box).
Come celebrate the end of Hispanic Heritage Month with La Comunidad at The University of Texas at San Antonio. We will have food, games and dancing!
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The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property – for Texas, the nation and the world.
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UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
