Mid-Career Fellows

Mark Beenhakker is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology and the director of UVA’s Neuroscience Graduate Program. During his PhD work, Mark worked on invertebrate neural circuits with Mikey Nusbaum at Penn. After receiving his PhD, Mark worked on mammalian neural circuits with John Huguenard at Stanford.The Beenhakker lab aims to understand how the brain generates complex electrical signals, and how these signals are used to process information. A major extension of this aim is to understand why electrical activity in the brain becomes uncontrollable during certain diseases such as epilepsy. The lab uses electrophysiological, anatomical and computational approaches to resolve answers to these questions.

Peter Belmi is the Scott C. Beardsley Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business. He also holds a courtesy appointment at the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Peter’s research focuses on social class, culture, stratification, and inequality. His scholarship has received several awards. In 2012, Peter received the Outstanding Research Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. In 2014, he received the Best Paper Award from the Excellence in Ethics Research Conference. In 2016, he received the Best Article Award from the Academy of Management. And in 2020, he received the Wells Fargo Award for Most Outstanding Research Publication. Thinkers50 named Peter one of the "30 emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions to management theory and practice." He currently serves on the editorial board of Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Academy of Management Discoveries.Peter teaches the Leading Organizations Core Course and a popular MBA elective called "Paths to Power." He has been recognized with many accolades for his teaching. In 2018, he was named by Poets & Quants as one of the "40 Best Business Professors Under 40." That same year, he received the University of Virginia's Mead-Colley Award, a distinction given to a Darden professor who embodies the Jeffersonian vision of an ideal teacher. In 2020, Peter received the Faculty Diversity Award for his "exceptional contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Darden community." And in 2023, Peter was voted by the graduating class as the Faculty Marshal for the Residential MBA Program. Peter also works regularly with executives, managers, and companies to address issues relating to leadership, strategic change, and DEI.Peter's work is published in leading psychology and management journals, such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organization Science, and Organizational Behavior and Human Design Processes. It has also been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, Forbes, NPR, Huffington Post, Newsweek, the Financial Times, Marketwatch, Priceonomics, Public Radio International, The Boston Globe, Medium, Harvard Business Review, Academic Minute, and InsideHigherEd.

Gia-Wei Chern joined the Physics Department at the University of Virginia (UVa) in the fall semester of 2015. Before coming to UVa he was a J. R. Oppenheimer Fellow at the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D in Optoelectronics Engineering at the National Taiwan University. After briefly working in the optics and fiber industry, he decided to pursue a career in Physics and enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Ph.D in Physics. His primary research interests are in theoretical condensed matter physics with a special focus on novel phases of matter and nonequilibrium phenomena in complex systems and quantum materials. Such material systems are crucial building blocks for the next generation multifunctional devices. Indeed, recent breakthroughs in materials science such as high-temperature superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, and multiferroics are all canonical examples of functional quantum materials. In particular, many of these materials exhibit the formation of complex nano-scale patterns, which not only are of fundamental interest, but also have important technological implications. A complete modeling of these functional materials require a multi-scale task integrating microscopic quantum calculations with large-scale dynamical simulations. Dr. Chern’s recent efforts focus on applying the artificial intelligence and data science methods to the multi-scale modeling of quantum materials. One central goal of his research is to develop analytical and numerical tools that can reliably predict collective behaviors and new emergent phases of these materials.

Jennifer L. Chiu is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education at the School of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on increasing learners’ access to science, engineering, mathematics, and computational fields (STEM) to foster independent, innovative, and critical citizens. She is particularly driven to include those who are typically underrepresented in STEM, including students from historically minoritized backgrounds and students with disabilities. She pursues these goals by studying how technology-enhanced environments can help learners understand challenging STEM and computer science concepts, investigating how integrating instructional technologies into classrooms can support student engagement in STEM practices, and helping teachers understand and promote student thinking in diverse learning contexts. Her research has focused on student learning environments to gain insight into learning processes and student practices through both qualitative and quantitative methods, using AI-based technologies to capture and give feedback to teachers and students, and using AI-based simulations to help teachers rehearse effective pedagogical strategies. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters about learning and teaching in STEM contexts and has served as PI or Co-PI in grants totaling over $23 million; funding sources include the National Science Foundation (with a CAREER grant), the Department of Education, private foundations, and state and intramural funds.

Mohammad Fallahi-Sichani is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the Basic Science Lead of the Melanoma Translational Research Team at the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. He received a B.Sc. in Biotechnology from the University of Tehran and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He completed his postdoctoral training as a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) fellow in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, where he also earned a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). At UVA, he leads a systems biology research program aiming to discover the fundamental mechanisms through which human cancer cells respond heterogeneously to environmental and therapeutic perturbations. A detailed understanding of these mechanisms will help us identify novel therapeutic targets to: (i) maximize tumor cell killing, (ii) block aggressive tumor behaviors (such as metastatic outgrowth), and (iii) prevent the emergence of therapy resistance in patients. Dr. Fallahi-Sichani’s research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), Department of Defense, as well as multiple private foundations that sponsor innovative and high-risk, high-reward research projects. His research accomplishments have been recognized by a variety of awards, including the Cell and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Research Collaboration Award from the UVA VPR office, and a V Scholar Award from the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

B. Brian Foster is an ethnographer and multi-medium storyteller working to document and interpret the culture, folklore, and placemaking practices of Black communities in the rural U.S. South. For the last ten years, he has set his work in several towns and small communities in north Mississippi, where he was born and raised. Brian’s areas of expertise include the sociology of racism and race, place studies, urban/rural sociology, and qualitative methods.Brian has written two books. I Don’t like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life (2020) chronicles the growth and development of blues tourism in the Mississippi Delta. The book received awards from the Association of Black Sociologists and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.His second book Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight (2024) is a collaborative photo-essay collection featuring the work of award-winning photographer Richard Frishman. Frishman’s hyperpixel photographs document vestiges of racism, oppression, and segregation in the U.S. (e.g., a set of double doors that once was a “Colored Entrance,” the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL), and Foster’s essays blend memoir and personal storytelling with ethnographic reporting and sociological analysis to offer piercing commentary on the realities and histories captured by the photographs.Brian is working on a new book—Casino Town—which interrogates the cultural, environmental, and human impacts of casino development in the Mississippi Delta. He is also creating a multimedia archive—“The Black Time Capsules”—focused on Black culture and placemaking in the rural South. At UVA, Brian is a member of the “Home Places: Mapping Black Virginia” working group, which received funding from the Karsh Institute to pilot a public history program focused on the history and culture of Black communities in central Virginia.Since 2021, Brian has served as co-editor-in-chief of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, an official journal of the American Sociological Association and the top peer review outlet for sociological scholarship on racism and race.Brian is also an essayist and filmmaker. His writing has appeared in edited volumes, as well as national, regional, and local outlets, including Delish, Veranda, and Bitter Southerner; and his short films have been selected and awarded by more than a dozen film festivals.

A music historian who works across disciplines and creative practices, Bonnie Gordon is a Professor at the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching focus on early modern music, Opera, gender, early America and community engagement. The author of numerous articles, two books and one co-edited essay collection, her most recent book Voice Machines: The Castrato the Cat Piano and Other Strange Sounds was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. Monteverdi’s Unruly Women appeared in 2004 and The Courtesans Arts; a co-edited essay collection appeared in 2006 She is working on a third book called Syncopated Histories that centers the sounds of early America. She is a founding faculty member of the Equity Center at UVa and a co-director of the Sound Justice lab. She also co-directs Cville Tulips; a program that supports recently arrived Afghan women and children. In the music department she teaches classes on music history, noise, gender, race, and history as storytelling. She has also taught in the Engagements and the Pavilion Seminars and is affiliated faculty in Women and Gender studies as well as Jewish Studies. She is the recipient of a dissertation grant from the American Association of University Women, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She has also been the Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. In addition to her scholarly writing, she has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate and the Cville weekly. She plays jazz, rock, and classical viola.

Tajie Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree from Bemidji State University and her PhD from the University of Wisconsin. At UVA, she is the Director of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG), a group of investigators that is focused on understanding the role of the immune system in neurological conditions. She is also the co-Director of the National Institutes of Health-funded BIG Training Program (T32) that supports graduate student training in neuroimmunology. Dr. Harris’ research has focused on the immune response to brain infection. In her early research, Dr. Harris defined a migration pattern of CD8+ T cells in the infected brain that is similar to how animals search for food. At the University of Virginia, Dr. Harris was involved in studies that initially described meningeal lymphatic vessels and has subsequently investigated their role during CNS infection. Dr. Harris’ lab continues to define how immune cells are recruited to the brain, including how cell death and alarmin release are linked to neuroinflammation. Dr. Harris was named a Pinn Scholar at the University of Virginia in 2021. In addition to her roles at UVA, she serves on the Organizing Committee for the Americas School of Neuroimmunology and has served an Associate Editor for the Journal of Immunology.

Hicks does research on the history of computing, labor, technology, and science and technology studies. Their work studies how collective understandings of progress are defined by competing discourses of social value and economic productivity, and how technologies often hide regressive ideals while espousing "revolutionary" or "disruptive" goals. Their research investigates everything from how power and AI intersect, to the long history of transphobic algorithmic bias, to the connections between gender and technological change.Hicks’s current work focuses on how the experiences of marginalized groups change the core narratives of the history of computing in unexpected ways. They are currently working on a book about the hidden histories of digital infrastructure and moments of resistance in the history of digital computing. Hicks's multiple award-winning first book, Programmed Inequality (MIT Press, 2017), looks at how the British lost their early lead in computing by discarding women computer workers, and what this cautionary tale can tell us about current issues in high tech. Hicks is also co-editor of the book Your Computer Is On Fire (MIT Press, 2021), a volume of essays about how we can begin to fix our broken high tech infrastructures, as well as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.Before joining UVA, Hicks held permanent and visiting positions at: Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, and North Carolina State University. Hicks was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2018-2019. Hicks holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University in History, and a B.A. in History from Harvard. More information about their work can be found at marhicks.com

Mathews Jacob is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is heading the Computational Biomedical Imaging Group (CBIG). His research interests include image reconstruction, image analysis, and quantification, mainly in the context of magnetic resonance imaging. He received his Ph.D. from the Biomedical Imaging Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and was a Beckman postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.Dr. Jacob is the recipient of the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2009, the Research Scholar Award from American Cancer Society in 2011, and the Faculty Excellence Award for Research from University of Iowa in 2021. He is currently the associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and has served as the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computational Imagingfrom 2016-20. He was the senior author on two best paper awards (2015 & 2021) and one best machine learning paper award (2019) from IEEE ISBI. He was the general chair of IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, 2020 He was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE (2022) for contributions to computational biomedical imaging.

Thomas Koberda is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in 2012 at Harvard University, under the supervision of Curtis T. McMullen. He held an NSF Graduate Fellowship while at Harvard and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University, where he was a Gibbs Assistant Professor from 2012-2015. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia in 2015, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019, and to Full Professor in 2023. He was named a Sloan Foundation Fellow in 2017, and the same year was awarded the Kamil Duszenko Prize for research in geometric group theory. He was named a College Fellow in 2022, and in 2024 was named a Simons Fellow in mathematics. While at UVa, he has been a PI or co-PI on numerous federal grants. His research lies in the area of geometric group theory, with connections to surface topology, dynamics of group actions on manifolds, and mathematical logic. He has authored or co-authored over 50 research papers and two books. During his time at UVa, he has mentored and advised a large number of undergraduate, master's and PhD students, and has been involved with several undergraduate educational and research initiatives in the USA and in Vietnam.

Wendy Lynch, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, specializes in the biological basis of substance use disorder (SUD), with a particular focus on sex and gender differences. This focus has been a consistent theme throughout her career, beginning during her graduate studies in Dr. Marilyn Carroll’s laboratory at the University of Minnesota, continuing as a BIRCWH Scholar at Yale, and currently in her tenure at the University of Virginia. Her work has been pivotal in enhancing our understanding of the differing vulnerabilities to SUDs between males and females, and has influenced major research directives in the field.As a Principal Investigator, Dr. Lynch has led multiple NIH-funded projects from both NIDA and NIAAA, and currently oversees three R01 projects funded by NIDA. Her scientific contributions cover a wide array, ranging from uncovering molecular mechanisms in preclinical models to dissociating sex and gender differences through human laboratory and epidemiological studies.Dr. Lynch is passionate about promoting the bi-directional translation of research, encompassing clinical, preclinical, molecular, human laboratory, and epidemiological studies. She is also deeply committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As a first-generation college student, she recognizes the importance of attracting and supporting individuals from underrepresented groups in science. Her long-term goal is to advance our understanding of sex/gender differences in addiction and improve treatments for women and men affected by SUDs.

Dr. Panzer is a Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, the Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Post-doctoral Affairs, and serves as Deputy Director at the Center for Applied Biomechanics. He graduated from Duke University with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and from the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada with this BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Panzer's research covers computational and experimental methods to study high-rate non-linear mechanics in the fields of tissue mechanics, impact biomechanics, vehicle crashworthiness, military blast and ballistics, and sports injury. Current applications of this research include the study of traumatic brain injury for blast, ballistic, and football helmet impacts, biological tissue testing and characterization, human body model development for automotive crashworthiness and blunt non-lethal weapons, and the development of injury mitigation systems such as helmets. Dr. Panzer has served as the Principal Investigator for more than 40 programs funded by various federal and industrial sponsors, and has author more than 125 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles.

Kwon Park was born and raised on Jeju Island, south of Korea and pursued his undergraduate education at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, earning a B.S. in Biology. He moved to the United States and received a Ph.D. in Developmental Biology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. During his postdoctoral research at Stanford University, he developed a keen interest in the interface between developmental biology and cancer biology. His laboratory at UVA builds genetically engineered models of lung cancer to understand how normal cells transform into cancer, how cancer cells appropriate the processes of early embryonic development, and what roles genetic mutations play in cancer evolution. The groundbreaking research in the Park Lab has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and American Cancer Society.

Janet Spittler is a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focus is early Christian literature, including the New Testament and early Christian apocrypha, particularly the apocryphal acts of the apostles. Her first book explores the literary context and significance of the animal-related episodes that are so common in the acts, with subsequent articles treating various other aspects of these texts. She is currently working on a commentary on the apocryphal Acts of John, alongside translations of various apocryphal texts. She is co-editor of the journal Novum Testamentum, co-editor of the series Early Christian Apocrypha, and associate editor of the series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament.

Megan Stevenson is an economist and criminal justice scholar. She conducts empirical research in areas such as bail, algorithmic risk assessment, misdemeanors, sentencing and juvenile justice.She was the inaugural winner of the Ephraim Prize given to an “early-career scholar in the field of law and economics whose work has advanced the state of knowledge in the field.” Stevenson was also the 2019 winner of the Oliver E. Williamson Prize for Best Article in the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization.She publishes widely in law reviews such as the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the University of Virginia Law Review, as well as economics journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Her research on bail was cited extensively in a landmark federal civil rights decision, O’Donnell v. Harris County, and has received widespread media coverage.She publishes widely in law reviews such as the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the University of Virginia Law Review, as well as economics journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Her research on bail was cited extensively in a landmark federal civil rights decision, O’Donnell v. Harris County, and has received widespread media coverage.