Three Doctoral Students and Two Post-Docs Named 2024-2025 Future Faculty Fellows

 

The Future Faculty Fellowship (F3) program was created to prepare Texas A&M doctoral students and post-docs for the academic job market. 

By Kasey Clay, Texas A&M University Graduate and Professional School

College Station – Doctoral students Lydia Morley, Zhale Nowroozilarki and Peggy Carris, and post-docs Damion Dixon and Chi-Ho Lee have been selected as the Texas A&M Future Faculty Fellowship awardees for 2024-2025.

“Each of these Fellows has made significant contributions through their teaching and research, impacting our campus, state and national communities,” said Dr. Charles Criscione, Associate Dean of the Graduate and Professional School, Professor of Biology and director of the F3 program. “They will be strong candidates for top academic positions in their fields.”

The Graduate and Professional School is collaborating with the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (under the Division of Research) and the Center for Teaching Excellence to host an Academic Job Market Preparation Workshop on Friday, September 27 for the F3 fellows. 

At the workshop, the program administrators and a panel of faculty volunteers will work with the F3 fellows on their Research and Teaching Statements and take part in discussions on various topics, such as strategies for academic job searches, excelling in job interviews and presentations, negotiating job offers, and overcoming early-stage faculty challenges.

Dr. Andreea Trache from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and Dr. Bahman Shahri from the Center for Teaching Excellence will join Criscione to facilitate the workshop. The five faculty participating are: Dr. Daniel Spalink (Ecology and Conservation Biology), Dr. Victoria Crawford (Computer Science & Engineering), Dr. Pat Goldsmith (Sociology), Dr. Shreya Raghavan (Biomedical Engineering) and Dr. Abdoulaye Djire (Chemical Engineering).

The Graduate and Professional School is providing funding support for the doctoral students; the Vice President for Research is supporting the post-docs. 

“We are proud to provide these fellowships for such a deserving cohort of doctoral students and post-docs,” said Dr. Fuhui Tong, Associate Provost and Dean of Texas A&M’s Graduate and Professional School. “It’s important for aspiring faculty to feel fully supported and encouraged at this stage of their journey. I look forward to seeing where they land and all they accomplish in their careers.”

A follow-up workshop will be held in spring 2025.

This year’s fellows, listed in alphabetical order: 

Peggy Carris 

Carris is a sixth-year doctoral student in the Sociology Department, focusing on the sociology of education, race, and ethnicity. Her research examines the cultural mismatch first-generation students face in higher education and its impact on their sense of belonging. She explores how institutional selectivity, social class, and cultural norms affect belonging and educational outcomes and investigates whether minority-serving institutions mitigate this mismatch. Additionally, she is actively engaged in research investigating the effects of COVID-19 school closures on the academic performance and absenteeism of 3rd to 8th-grade Latine students. Her previous work highlighted educational inequalities along the U.S.-Mexico Border, showing increased test score disparities between Latine and White students with proximity to the border. 

 

Dr. Damion Dixon 

Dr. Dixon is a postdoctoral research associate and visiting lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Southern University and his Ph.D. in engineering with an emphasis in mechanics and materials from the University of Georgia. Dixon’s long-standing research interests are in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, specifically for the treatment of segmental bone defects. Dixon’s Ph.D. research centered around the development of stimuli-responsive biomaterials for targeted regeneration of load-bearing bone. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Dixon joined Prof. Melissa Grunlan’s research group with a focus on creating “self-fitting” shape memory polymer (SMP) bone scaffolds with improved osteogenic and antimicrobial properties. 

Dr. Chi-Ho Lee 

Dr. Chi-Ho Lee is a post-doctoral researcher in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in bionano technology from Hanyang University, South Korea. His expertise encompasses the development of comprehensive methodologies that merge multiscale theoretical modeling, physics-based hybrid modeling, and advanced data-driven machine learning, including transformer technologies. Based on integrated methods, Lee’s research is primarily focused on developing catalysts for electrochemical processes, as well as anode and cathode materials for lithium-ion and next-generation battery systems. 


Lydia Morley 

Morley is a PhD candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology. Her research explores why, how and where speciation and hybridization happen in life forms. Specifically, Morley’s dissertation incorporates phylogenomics, phylogeography, niche analyses, and pollinator observation to study speciation and hybridization dynamics in Spiranthes, a clade of native North American orchids. Her work aims to understand both the ecological and evolutionary drivers of divergence and gene flow. 

Zhale Nowroozilarki 

Zhale Nowroozilarki is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, specializing in machine learning for healthcare. Her research focuses on developing advanced models for biosignal processing and modeling, with an emphasis on model fairness and generalizability. Nowroozilarki has contributed to significant projects, including non-invasive biomarker estimation and multimodal data-driven adverse outcome prediction. She has published several papers in IEEE conferences and journals, showcasing her expertise in generative modeling and time-series analysis. As a recipient of the Graduate Teaching Fellowship, she taught an undergraduate machine learning course at Texas A&M. With a deep commitment to improving healthcare through innovative technologies, Nowroozilarki is passionate about leveraging machine learning to solve complex problems in healthcare, particularly those that lead to improved patient outcomes and quality of care. 

Dr. Chi-Ho Lee 

Dr. Chi-Ho Lee is a post-doctoral researcher in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in bionano technology from Hanyang University, South Korea. His expertise encompasses the development of comprehensive methodologies that merge multiscale theoretical modeling, physics-based hybrid modeling, and advanced data-driven machine learning, including transformer technologies. Based on integrated methods, Lee’s research is primarily focused on developing catalysts for electrochemical processes, as well as anode and cathode materials for lithium-ion and next-generation battery systems. 

 

^{Media Contact: Rob Dixon, rdixon@tamu.edu}