Fellowships recognize outstanding newly tenured UTSA faculty

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