Mid-Career Fellows

Stephen Baek is an Associate Professor of Data Science at the University of Virginia, where he also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Baek received his B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, Korea in 2009 and a Ph.D. in 2013 from the same institution for his award-winning study on the statistical space of shapes modeled on a Riemannian manifold. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Machinery Design at SNU from 2013 to 2015 and a visiting research associate at the Ronald E. McNair Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina in 2014. During his training, Baek received the National Science and Engineering Scholarship and the Global Ph.D. Fellowship from the Korean Ministry of Education. He was also awarded the Presidential Postdoc Fellowship by the President of the Republic of Korea. After his training, he moved to the United States to join the University of Iowa as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. He has been a (co-)principal investigator of numerous government- and industry-sponsored research projects, including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, NASA, Hyundai Motors, Department of Transportation, and others.

A.D. Carson is an award-winning performance artist and educator from Decatur, Illinois. His work focuses on race, literature, history, rhetorics & performance. His album, i used to love to dream, the first-ever rap album peer-reviewed for publication with an academic press, was released with University of Michigan Press in 2020. This work is the third in a series of albums that build on concepts from his doctoral dissertation and forthcoming peer-reviewed album, Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions. The 2017 version of Owning My Masters was internationally heralded and was also recognized with the Outstanding Dissertation Award from Clemson’s Graduate Student Government.Dr. Carson received the 2021 Research Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities from the University of Virginia after the release of i used to love to dream, which was also a Category Winner (Best eProduct) of a Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers in 2021. His work at Clemson University with students, staff, faculty, and community members attempting to raise awareness of historic, entrenched racism was recognized with a 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Excellence in Service. He has authored a novel, COLD, which hybridizes poetry, rap lyrics, and prose, and The City: [un]poems, thoughts, rhymes, & miscellany. Dr. Carson’s work has been featured by Rolling Stone, SPIN, Complex, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, NPR’s All Things Considered and Code Switch, OkayPlayer, Time, and XXL among others. His most recent album, V: ILLICIT, and other projects are available to stream/download free from aydeethegreat.com.

Mete Civelek is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and a resident faculty at the Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia. He joined UVA faculty in 2015 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.His laboratory studies the complex interactions among genes and environment that increase our risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In the last fifteen years, we learned more about the genes that affect our disease risk than in the previous 50 years, thanks to technological advances in genome sequencing. But for most of the genes, we still do not know how they affect the development of heart disease or type 2 diabetes. His laboratory takes a holistic approach by carefully studying various human populations to connect the dots between genes and disease. They use data science, systems biology, and traditional molecular biology approaches to discover novel disease pathways in human cells and mice. They aim to develop new therapies customized to individual heart disease or type 2 diabetes patients.Dr. Civelek’s research has been funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Leducq Foundation, the American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association. Dr. Civelek is a Fellow of the American Heart Association. He received many awards for his research, mentorship, and teaching, including the NIH Pathway to Independence Award, Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, ATVB Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Recognition Award, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award from UVA’s Office of Citizen Scholar Development. He serves as the chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and is a member of the leadership team of the Driving Change Initiative supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Bimal grew up in Mumbai, India and came to US for graduate training in biomedical research. For his PhD training in Immunology, he used chemical biology and biochemical approaches to study cell signaling (advisor: Dr. Stuart Schreiber, HHMI & Department of Chemistry, Harvard University). During his postdoctoral training, Bimal became interested in how electrical signals govern biological processes. He focused on ion channel physiology and calcium signaling (advisor: Dr David Clapham, HHMI & Boston Children’s Hospital). In 2012, Bimal started his research lab in the Department of Pharmacology at UVASOM. The Desai Lab seeks to understand the how immune cells use electrical signals to rapidly interpret the physical and chemical changes in their tissue environment, and the consequences of these processes on host defense, inflammation, and tissue homeostasis. His most important talent in this endeavor has been to recruit incredibly talented and hard-working trainees to his lab and simply talk to them about interesting questions, ideas, experiments, and data. Bimal spends most of his free time with his teenage daughter, often relearning from her all the math he has forgotten. While trying to stay fit, he listens to (too many) podcasts about history and geopolitics. Bimal enjoys watching (or occasionally playing) cricket, squash, and chess.

Jonathan Goodall is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA) and Director of the UVA Engineering Link Lab. He is a water resources engineer working to advance the field of hydroinformatics where data and computational sciences are used to improve the understanding, forecasting, and management of water systems. Much of his current work focuses on adapting techniques from cyber-physical systems for real-time flood mitigation in coastal urban communities experiencing sea level rise impacts. Professor Goodall leads the Hydroinformatics Research Group housed in the Link Lab, co-directs the UVA Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), is a member of UVA's Pan-University Environmental Resilience Institute steering committee, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Transporation Studies. Professor Goodall is a registered Professional Engineer (PE), a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and an elected member of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia.

John Holbein studies political participation, political inequality, democratic accountability, political representation, and education policy. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and Nature Human Behavior (to name a few). His research has been supported by two National Science Foundation grants.Holbein's book–Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action–was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. It explores ways to increase perpetually low rates of voter participation among young people. His work has been covered by outlets such as the Washington Post, Vox, New York Magazine, the Boston Globe, NPR, Bloomberg, Politico, Fast Company, Salon, Business Insider, the 74, VoxEu, and FiveThirtyEight, and he has served as an expert witness in voting rights cases in several states.

Chemical and nutrient signaling are fundamental for all cellular processes, including interactions between the mammalian host and the microbiota, which have a significant impact on health and disease. My lab is interested in understanding how bacterial pathogens exploit chemical and nutrient signaling to precisely regulate virulence gene expression to establish infection and cause disease. Elucidating these processes may enhance our arsenal of tools, such as new therapies or vaccines, to combat infectious diseases. 

Professor Lashley’s research lies at the intersection of strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organizational theory. Her research focuses on questions related to organizational social evaluations such as stigma, reputation, and status, particularly in entrepreneurial firms. She is also interested in how organizations and their audiences use language to affect social evaluations. Her work has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly and Academy of Management Annals.Professor Lashley has taught courses in strategic management and entrepreneurship at the undergraduate level. Before her academic career, she worked for several years coordinating buyer-supplier relationships between major corporations and their small suppliers. She also has startup experience.

Matthew Lazzara is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, UVA Shannon Center Mid-Career Faculty Fellow, Co-Director of the UVA Cancer Systems Biology U54 Center, and a member of the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with highest honors from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He remained at MIT for postdoctoral studies in Biological Engineering and was the recipient of an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship. Work in the Lazzara Lab employs integrated experimental and computational methods to study cancer cell signaling and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and American Cancer Society. Projects focus on the rational, model-driven identification of combination therapies for cancer and on fundamental studies of the spatiotemporal regulation of cell signaling by phosphatases and receptor trafficking. Dr. Lazzara is the prior recipient of the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant and several teaching awards, including the S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award and the Outstanding Faculty Award of the AIChE Delaware Valley. He is a standing member of the NIH Tumor Evolution, Heterogeneity and Metastasis study section, editorial board member of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering and Frontiers in Systems Biology, and co-chair of the NCI Cancer Systems Biology Consortium steering committee.

Suzanne Morse Moomaw is Chair and Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Founding Director of the Community Design Research Center, and Interim Director of Real Estate and Design + Development. Moomaw served as Director of the University of Virginia Press from 2019 until 2022. She was instrumental in the financial and organizational stability of the Press as well as a range of new publishing initiatives. Before coming to UVA, she was President of the national research institute, the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. She is the author of Cities Without Work: The Long Road from Boom to Bust (forthcoming Harvard University Press, 2024); Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future (Second Edition (Jossey Bass/John Wiley, 2014); and Renewing Civic Capacity: Preparing College Students for Service and Citizenship (ASHE-ERIC, 1989). Moomaw has been recognized for her teaching and research including the All-University Teaching Award in 2015 and the Excellence in Education Abroad Award in 2021. In 2015-2016 she served on the Urban Sustainability Expert Committee for the National Academies. She is a trustee of the Kettering Foundation since 2000.

Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC) at the University of Virginia. Her research is in the historical and comparative-historical sociology of race. She is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017) which examines changes in race and racialization in New Orleans under the French, Spanish and Anglo-American administrations. The book was co-winner of the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial book award (2018); co-winner of the American Sociological Association’s Barrington Moore book award in comparative-historical sociology (2018); and recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Thomas & Znaniecki Best Book Award, International Migration Section, American Sociological Association (2018). She is currently at work on a book manuscript tentatively entitled "Reckoning and Reconciliation: On Race and Memory in Civic Life" which compares and contrasts the social histories of three key sites in New Orleans over a three-hundred-year period as a way of examining and publicly discussing transformations in race, gender and power. In addition to this research, she is active in public-facing teaching and scholarship where she provides training for K-12 educators who are looking to better integrate Black writers and Black history into their teaching. A book related to this work came out in 2022 entitled, The Black Intellectual Tradition:Reading Freedom in Classical Literature (Classical Academic Press) She completed her B.A. in sociology at Yale University and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright grant.

Dr. Pompano's research interests center on developing microfluidic and chemical assays to unravel the complexity of the immune response and inform new immunotherapies. Her lab combines unique expertise in bioanalytical chemistry, microfluidics, bioengineering, and immunology to create brand new ways to look at the immune system. One area of interest is utilizing live samples of intact tissue to test new vaccines and immunotherapies outside of the body. The Pompano lab has created specialized microfluidic technology to locally stimulate specific regions of these samples, to mimic the arrival of drugs through blood or lymphatic vessels. Another exciting area is to hold two types of tissue in communication on a microfluidic chip, for example to study tumor immunity or neuro-immune communication.The Pompano lab is funded by a prestigious Individual Biomedical Research Award from The Hartwell Foundation and received the national Starter Grant Award from the Society of Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh in 2016. In 2017, the lab was awarded an NIH R01 to develop hybrids of microfluidics and lymph node tissue to study inflammation. Dr. Pompano is also active in advocating for continued funding for education and biomedical research on Capitol Hill.Dr. Pompano is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. Please see the Pompano Lab website for an up-to-date list of publications and news: www.pompanolab.com.

Lana Swartz is an associate professor of Media Studies and Shannon Mid-career Fellow at the University of Virginia. She studies social and cultural aspects of money. She wants to understand the future of financial technology, livelihoods, financial literacy, and consumer protection in the digital economy. She is currently writing a book on scams, which will be about all of that, as well her upbringing on a boat in Miami.Her book, New Money: How Payment Became Social Media was released from Yale University Press in 2020. It was named #12 on a list of "greatest tech books of all time" by The Verge. Her co-edited book Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff was published by MIT Press in April 2017. In 2023, she released a major research research report on the warning signs and ways forward for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which was conducted in collaboration with the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. Her co-authored 2013 articleon bitcoin is the first socio-cultural analysis of cryptocurrency. Her 2018 follow-up article has also been influential in understanding cultures of cryptocurrency. She has published on topics ranging from the Diners Club Card to ICO scams to blockchain dreams.She has held fellowships with Berggruen Institute, University of Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England. She received the 2024 Research Excellence Award from the University of Virginia.She regularly speaks to academic, industry, and public audiences, such as recent keynotes at Cambridge University Law School, Re:Publica in Berlin, and the Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, New York Times, PBS Nova, TANK, Wall Street Journal, and more.

Rachel Wahl is an associate professor in the Social Foundations Program, Department of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. She is also the Faculty Lead for Education and Democracy at the Karsh Institute of Democracy and a Fellow at UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Her research focuses on learning through public deliberation between people on opposing sides of political divides. Her prior research focused on efforts by community activists to change police officers’ beliefs and behavior through activism and education, which is the subject of her first book, Just Violence: Torture and Human Rights in the Eyes of the Police (Stanford University Press, 2017). Her research has been funded by donors such as the Spencer Foundation and National Academy of Education, the Carnegie Corporation, and the federal Institute of International Education.

Ishan is an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, School of Nursing, who teaches health policy, qualitative methods, health promotion, and culture and diversity courses – studies broadly quality of life and healthcare among older adults and their family caregivers, with a particular eye on vulnerable populations. She is trained as a social-behavioral scientist, concentrating her training and expertise in family gerontology. She has conducted health outcomes research focusing on aging issues across the lifespan and how they impact individuals and their families that provide care and support for them over time. Her funded research spans projects using community-based research approaches to health promotion among populations that have been affected disproportionately from health disparities and disease (i.e., often those who have been marginalized and under-represented in clinical and behavioral research). Dr. Williams brings expertise focusing on the intersection of behavioral health and health policy. She also collaborates with colleagues across the country on work focused on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, with her key foci center a diversity of caregiver perspectives (from nurses, surgeons, respiratory therapists, anesthesiologists, and lab techs, among others) to qualify meanings derived and actionable items to pursue from patient data and ensuring that the data itself comes from patients across racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and geographic domains.Williams earned a degree in psychology at UNC Chapel Hill, a MS and a PhD in human development and family studies at UNC Greensboro before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill’s Institute on Aging. Her research has been published in various peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Journal of Applied Gerontology, and The Gerontologist). She has been an active member in the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and is a Fellow of GSA.