Welcome New BSOS Faculty!

John E. Drabinski joins the Department of African American Studies as a Visiting Professor in fall 2020, having previously served as the Charles Hamilton Houston 1915 Professor of Black Studies at Amherst College. His teaching and research interests center on the philosophical dimensions of the Black Atlantic intellectual tradition, postcolonial studies, and cultural theory in Caribbean and African American thought. In particular, he is interested in notions of history, memory, and the formation of vernacular culture in poetry, poetics, and the Black radical tradition.

Madeline Brown joins the Department of Anthropology as an Assistant Professor. Her research focuses on human-environment interactions across a variety of spatial scales, from community-based forest management in China to large landscape conservation in North America. Brown’s long-term fieldwork is focused on cooperation and resource access among wild mushroom harvesting communities in southwest China. This work combines ethnography with social network and spatial analysis to understand complex natural resource governance dynamics. Read more

Marlaina Martin is a UMD Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. Martin is a cultural anthropologist with specific expertise in the politics of disenfranchisement, particularly among Black women, and the ways in which power and powerlessness are constructed in visual representations. She will be working on several writing projects, including a book, critically examining the production and distribution strategies employed by Black women filmmakers, especially as they navigate issues of race, gender, and class. She will also expand her research to include multimedia projects centering the voices of Black artists from various backgrounds.

Matthew Thomann joins the Department of Anthropology as an assistant professor. Thomann is a cultural and critical medical anthropologist whose research examines sexuality and the politics of health in sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, crossing subfields of medical anthropology, global health, and queer anthropology. Prior to coming to UMD, he held the positions of Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College, and Postdoctoral Fellow in Global HIV Implementation Science Research at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Read more

Rachel Ellis joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as an assistant professor in the fall of 2020. Her research focuses on gender and punishment. She uses qualitative methods to examine women’s experiences of prison and reentry, with particular attention to the role of religion in the criminal justice system. Ellis earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, and started her career at the University of Missouri-St. Louis before joining UMD. Read more

Brooklynn K. Hitchens joins the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice as a postdoctoral fellow (Fall 2020) and tenure-track assistant professor (beginning Fall 2021). Hitchens received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University in July 2020. Hitchens is an urban ethnographer whose research interests include race, class and gender in crime and victimization; urban violence and trauma; Black female survivors of violence; and participatory action research (PAR) methods. Hitchens aims to advance scholarship that centers the lived experiences of marginalized Black Americans and elucidates how structural inequities shape disparate outcomes for that population.

Zubin Jelveh is an assistant professor with a joint appointment at the College of Information Studies (iSchool) and Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, starting in January 2021. Zubin is currently a research director at Crime Lab New York – a University of Chicago research institute that partners with civic and community leaders to design, test, and scale promising programs and policies to reduce violence and the harms associated with the criminal justice system. Zubin’s research connects techniques from machine learning to problems in the social sciences. Prior to entering the data science field, Zubin was a journalist covering economics for outlets like The New York Times, Condé Nast Portfolio, and The New Republic. Zubin holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University.

Jessica Miller joins the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice as a lecturer in the Fall of 2020. She is excited to teach courses on topics including criminology, responses to violence, human trafficking and juvenile delinquency. She is also looking forward to including some of her prior research interests in her courses, such as victimology and the impact of parental incarceration on children. Jessica earned an M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland.

Robert Stewart joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as an assistant professor after receiving a PhD from the University of Minnesota. As a sociocriminologist, his research interests are centered on the social, political and collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement with an emphasis on the accumulating effects of criminal justice interaction and criminal records on impacted people and communities. He is a member of a multistate research team studying criminal legal financial obligations, and he is co-principal investigator on a study of online criminal record data accuracy.

Meredith Gore joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an associate professor in fall 2020. She uses risk concepts to build new understanding of human-environment relationships. Meredith’s research is designed to build evidence for action. The majority of her activities can be described as convergence research on conservation issues such as wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, fishing and mining. Her work is global in nature, ranging from Madagascar to Mexico to Maryland and spaces in between. Read more

Amanda Hoffman-Hall joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as a professional track faculty member and Director of Undergraduate Studies. She earned her PhD from the University of Maryland in 2020 where her research focused on algorithm development for satellite mapping of land cover and land use change, spatial epidemiology and prediction of infectious disease risk, and population and human settlement mapping. She is passionate about undergraduate education and ensuring that every Geographical Sciences major achieves a fulfilling post-graduate career.

Mehdi Hosseini is an associate research professor of the NASA Harvest Hub in the Department of Geographical Sciences. His research is related to optical and SAR applications to crop monitoring and production forecasting for both large-scale agricultural systems and smallholder systems at the field to national scales. This involves developing and refining models for yield forecasting, cropland and crop type mapping, crop phenology detection, and crop condition assessments. Read more

Curtis Jones joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an assistant research professor. His research involves developing, evaluating and applying terrestrial ecosystems models toward quantitatively understanding the processes, behavior, outcomes and interactions of agricultural systems or other managed landscapes. These efforts have largely focused on sustainability, with particular emphasis on soil carbon and nutrient cycling, soil water and nutrient flows, impacts, mitigation, and adaptation to climate change, production and consumption of greenhouse gasses, and leveraging emerging technologies and data products to improve model skill at stakeholder relevant scale. Read more

Natacha Kalencinksi joined the Department of Geographical Sciences as a postdoctoral associate in November 2019. She is a member of the Terrestrial Information Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Natacha received her PhD at Polytechnique School in France in 2015 where she developed new methods for solar irradiance forecasting using geostationary satellite data and numerical weather models. Her interests are focused on the analyzing of remote sensing data and numerical models for land cover land use change, agricultural studies and meteorological applications.

Ahmad Khan received his Ph.D. in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland in 2019 and joined the department as a post-doctoral associate in September 2019. He also holds a M.S in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a B.Sc. in Forestry from the Pakistan Forest Institute. Prior to joining UMD in 2012, he worked as Conservation Biologist in Pakistan for more than 25 years. His research interest is land cover land use change (LCLUC), crop area and production estimation using moderate and high-resolution satellite data, wetlands biodiversity and ecosystem services evaluation, renewable energy technologies, and geo-spatial analysis in agriculture, health and biodiversity sectors.

Rejanne Le Bivic joins the Masters of Geospatial Information Sciences program as a lecturer to teach digital image analysis, remote sensing using Lidar and other programming, and GIS courses. She received a Master of Engineering in Geology and a Master of Geosciences in France before getting a PhD in Geomorphology and Remote Sensing at the University of Western Brittany, France. Read more

Veronika Leitold is a faculty specialist in the Department of Geographical Sciences. She has a background in Remote Sensing (MSc) and Earth Sciences (BA), and her research combines airborne Lidar and satellite imagery with field-based measurements to study forest structure and dynamics across different forest types, primarily in the tropics. Currently, she is working with Dr. Laura Duncanson from the GEDI Science Team to look at protected areas worldwide and assess how effective they are at preserving carbon stocks in forest biomass.

Kara Mobley is a faculty specialist with the Department of Geographical Sciences for the NASA Harvest program. Her position involves supporting the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) initiatives and contributing to the Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW) monthly reports. These reports provide information on current crop conditions at the sub-national scale for countries at risk for food insecurity and offer consensus-based information designed for use by agencies concerned with food security and humanitarian aid. Additionally, Kara develops reports for countries experiencing severe internal conflict to demonstrate the impact that ongoing conflict has on agricultural production and food security.

Khaldoun Rishmawi joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an assistant research professor. His research focuses on characterizing terrestrial ecosystem processes for carbon modeling and for the sustainable management of natural resources. He is currently combining optical and LiDAR remotely sensed data to study active fire behavior and to map changes in forest structure at multiple scales between the local and the global.

Maria Zubkova joined the Department of Geographical Sciences as a postdoctoral fellow in January 2020. Maria received her PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Idaho in 2019. Her areas of interest include remote sensing of fire, current changes in fire activity, and global fire regimes. Maria’s research focuses on improving our understanding of fire-climate-human relationships on a global scale.

Keelin Haynes joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as a faculty specialist. He focuses on partner engagement and communications for NASA Harvest. Before UMD, he earned a MA in Geography at Miami University of Ohio, focusing on predictive land-cover/land-use change modeling in Southwest Vietnam. His interests are in remote sensing applications for agricultural monitoring and food security and science communication.

Yiqun Xie is an assistant professor at the Department of Geographic Sciences and Center for Geospatial Information Science. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Yiqun’s research focuses on the intersection of computer science and geo/spatial data (e.g., geospatial artificial intelligence and data science) with applications in smart cities, transportation, agriculture, etc. His work has received several best paper awards (e.g., ACM SIGSPATIAL, SSTD) and was highlighted by the Great Innovative Ideas program at the Computing Community Consortium. Read more

Candace Turitto joins the Department of Government and Politics as a full-time lecturer. Her research and professional interests are focused on political advertising, campaigns and elections, public opinion measurement, voter psychology and experiments. She received her Ph.D. and Master's from the University of Maryland in College Park, and her Bachelor's from James Madison University.

Jennifer Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics. Her research interests primarily focus on civil society movements in authoritarian states and environmental linkages to conflict, with particular focus on Southeast Asia. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College; a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Environmental Diplomacy from the University of Geneva; a MA in political science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a PhD from the University of Maryland.

Candace Nuzzo Michiels joins the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences as faculty assistant for the University of Maryland's Social Interaction Group Network for ALL (UMD SIGNA) program. Previously, she worked with teens in the UMD Executive Functioning For Effective Cognitive Transformation (EFFECT) program. Throughout her career, Candace has worked with pediatric, teen and adult clients in the home, daycare, clinic, and school settings. She has experience in the evaluation and treatment of articulation and phonological disorders, fluency disorders, receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language disorders, and executive function deficits. She received her M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Maryland-College Park, and holds the American Speech-Language Hearing Association Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC-SLP), as well as the D.C. and MD State License.

Naz Salahuddin has been named the new Assistant Chair of Equity and Inclusion in the Department of Psychology. This position was created to help coordinate, organize and deliver training and programming to develop a better and more anti-racist department, college and university. Over the next weeks and months, Naz will be reaching out to areas, graduate programs, student groups and committees to help coordinate a department-wide effort.

Fanita Tyrell joins the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor. Tyrell received her PhD in Developmental Psychology, with a minor in quantitative methods at the University of California, Riverside. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Her research program seeks to elucidate processes of risk and protection among ethnic-racial minority and adversity-exposed populations as they operate within broader cultural contexts.

Arianna Gard joins the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor of developmental psychology. She studies the neurobiological mechanisms linking environmental adversities and promotive factors to youth socioemotional development. More specifically, her research evaluates (1) the development of neural systems that underlie emotion processing and psychopathology, (2) which environmental adversities uniquely sculpt youth brain development and when in development these processes occur, and (3) individual differences in environmental sensitivity and risk for psychopathology. At UMD, Arianna will be expanding her research arm focusing on dimensions of the neighborhood context as critical for youth neurobehavioral development.

Nikita Arun is a professional track faculty member in the Department of Psychology, affiliated with the Industrial/ Organizational Masters of Professional Studies (IO MPS) program. She received her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology in 2016. She is passionate about teaching and mentoring students from diverse backgrounds and helping them to embrace and leverage their personal strengths to achieve their full potential. Her research has focused on motivation and self-regulation. She has worked in the non-profit and private sectors industry in the areas of selection, test development, and employee engagement.

Joyce Lui joins the Department of Psychology as an assistant research professor. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Washington State University in 2018 and her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020. Dr. Lui’s research seeks to improve mental health services and outcomes for youth with persistent disruptive behaviors. She aims to develop and test effective interventions with an eye toward sustained implementation in routine care settings serving youth.

Karen T. G. Schwartz joins the Department of Psychology as a postdoctoral associate, under the mentorship of Dr. Andrea Chronis-Tuscano and Dr. Michael Meinzer. She received her PhD from the SDSU/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, specializing in child and adolescent experimental psychopathology. Broadly, Schwartz’s research aims to (a) examine mechanisms of depression onset and maintenance in youth and families to inform intervention development and (b) implement evidence-based programming in community settings. Read more

David Illingworth is a Presidential postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology. He received his Doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research has drawn from both cognitive decision theory and general cognitive search theory to formalize a mathematical model of hypothesis testing—the act of acquiring information to evaluate one’s beliefs. The goal of this work has been to elucidate the role of beliefs (hypotheses) in test selection, information foraging and valuation judgments.

Collin Mueller is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University and recently completed his postdoctoral training through Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. His current research examines relationships between social policies, organizational processes, and individual experiences related to employment transitions, healthcare systems and functional health trajectories. Through his program of research, Mueller aims to advance scholarship on life course experiences of gendered racial/ethnic inequality to inform evidence-based interventions promoting population health equity.

Joey D. Brown joins the Department of Sociology as a lecturer. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and Sociology from the University of Mississippi, and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park. His current research interests include holistic health, well-being, and healing; religion & spirituality; racial wealth inequality; social psychology; and social research methods.