Meet Our Graduate Students

Masters Student | Sustainable Design

Masters Student | Landscape Architecture

“Landscape architects require a comprehensive understanding of ecological and sociological processes in order to address global challenges,” Kyle Dickens, second-year masters student in landscape architecture, said. “It is not simply a tree or a wall, but a built experience—a transmutation of physical objects into sociocultural volumes.” 

Supported by the Architecture and Design Foundation, Dickens traveled to Himalayan agricultural communities to examine the connections between landscape, spirituality, design and policy. For example, Bhutan’s constitution mandates that 60% of the country’s surface remain undisturbed forest, positioning landscape as a primary informant of local architectural design. 

Ph.D. Student | Community and Regional  Planning

While large and centralized water treatment systems can sometimes reduce water pollution disparities in urban areas, they may fail to provide equitable protection in rural areas. Yueying Ma, fourth-year Ph.D. student in community and regional planning, is using AI to address Texas’ growing water challenges from flooding and pollution. 

“By combining AI with advanced hydrologic modeling, I provide comprehensive risk assessments that help prevent disasters, protect health and guide long-term water management,” Ma said. “My work pinpoints where infrastructure and safety measures are most urgently needed, which helps local governments respond more effectively during emergencies.” 

Ph.D. Student | Finance

Inspired by his work at a forensic finance consulting firm before grad school, Prateek Mahajan now studies finance as a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the McCombs School of Business. He is currently investigating finance-related challenges ranging from identifying fraud in government programs and inflated valuations in auto asset-backed securities to understanding the drivers of shrinking homeownership rates.

His first paper, co-authored with two UT finance professors, Drs. Griffin and Kruger, examined the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a COVID-era government stimulus program targeted at small businesses, for signs of fraud. Analyzing over a dozen different data sources, they were able to identify fraudulent activity in over 1.4 million loans representing more than $64 billion in taxpayer money.

Masters Student | Advertising

Meet graduate student Bella Kang! Earning her master’s in advertising while working as the Global Impact Graduate Consultant for the Graduate School’s Office of Career and Life Design, Kang’s group research dives into Korean-American women’s communication patterns and how it shapes their health outcomes.

“The reason why we decided to study this population was Korean-American women are still understudied,” Kang said. “So we wanted to really emphasize what physical and psychological outcomes they have been struggling with, and hopefully we can get more attention to this understudied population.”

Ph.D. Candidate | Advertising

“I’m interested in how we can design and talk about technology in ways that benefit society while staying practical and effective,” Jeewon (Joanne) Kim, third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations, said. “My research focuses on how consumers perceive and interact with new media and how those interactions shape their behavior and influence advertising effectiveness.” 

Before studying at UT, Kim spent over five years as a research analyst and consultant at multinational consulting firms and later as a community marketing specialist at a global sportswear retail company. 

Masters Student | Screenwriting

Masters Student | Media Studies

Ph.D. Student | Advertising

From viral memes and BookTok fandoms to Formula 1 drama and social media crises, Andrea Lim is turning internet culture into academic inquiry. A second-year Ph.D. student in the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations at UT Austin, Lim brings a unique lens to the intersection of fandom, identity and digital communication.

An international student, Lim combines her personal interests with scholarly depth, exploring how parasocial relationships, online communities and branding influence consumer behavior and public perception. With a strong foundation in strategic communication and a passion for storytelling, she’s carving a path that bridges pop culture and impactful research. 

Ph.D. Student | Media Studies

Ph.D. Candidate | Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

“Understanding the effects from collisions of charged particles is a key issue in plasma physics,” Rodrigo Gonzalez Hernandez, fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the Oden Institute, said. “Simulating the evolution of plasmas is a very challenging, yet important problem. During my Ph.D., I have spent most of my time developing computer simulations of this phenomenon.” 

Ph.D. Student | Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

“UT was my dream school for a long time,” Nina De La Torre, third-year Ph.D. student at the Oden Institute, said. “The CSEM program is perfect for me because it allows me to learn a large variety of topics and use mathematics to create computational models!” 

This summer, De La Torre is interning at MathWorks, but during the school year, she focused her studies on the chemistry of star formation. Her computational models, which she has presented at the Cosmic Horizons Conference and Oden’s SCIML Workshop, describe the chemical composition of a star-forming region at a given time.

Ph.D. Student | Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

Third-year CSEM student Vignesh Sella has put his Ph.D. studies on pause...for an internship at Google X! Sella is currently an AI Research Scientist Resident, where he’s working on AI/ML modeling for a project involving finance, decarbonization technologies and climate.

"The data-driven modeling and multi-disciplinary nature of the work fit perfectly with my education as a computational scientist at the Oden Institute,” Sella said. “The Oden Institute is a rare institution which exists as a cross-functional place between many fields – reflecting computational science in general.”

Ph.D. Student | Exercise Physiology

You might have seen Yanbing Zhou before...at the Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, Zhou was a professional DanceSport athlete for 20 years. His career ignited a passion for promoting an active lifestyle, through cardiovascular health. During the first year of his Ph.D. as part of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory, he has been supported by a Harrington Fellowship.

“My Ph.D. research explores how cardiovascular health is influenced by external factors such as exercise and chronic inflammatory diseases,” Zhou said. “One of my studies focused on patients with conditions called large vessel vasculitis, where inflammation affects major arteries. The preliminary results showed that their arteries, instead of widening as expected during increased blood flow, actually narrowed, which indicates impaired vascular function.” 

Ph.D. Candidate | Physical Culture and Sport Studies

A former collegiate athlete, Erin Crownover brings her A-game to uncovering the history of the athletic training profession and its origins at UT-Austin. A fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in physical culture and sport studies in the College of Education, Crownover focuses on three key figures in the history of athletic training at Texas: Henry “Doc” Reeves, Frank Medina and Christina Bonci. 

“The field of athletic training has long been an outlier in sports medicine, striving for representation due to the lack of doctor status among practitioners,” Crownover said. “The stories of Reeves, Medina and Bonci provide a window into the history of the broader impact of the profession’s development in the 20th century.”

Ph.D. Student | Counseling Psychology

Jackie Yang is a first-year Ph.D. student studying counseling psychology in the College of Education. He was drawn to this field because of its holistic approach, incorporating mental health, social justice and advocacy elements. His research projects have covered a range of topics:

“In my first publication, we found that digital dating abuse, a form of intimate partner violence, is linked with external and internal stressors experienced by gay and bisexual men - the external stressor being discrimination and the internal stressor being internalized homophobia. I assisted on a second publication related to the demographic and behavioral factors associated with kratom usage, a traditional medicine in Thailand and Malaysia that produces a stimulant effect similar to opioids. The study demonstrated that White men and sexual minorities are at an increased risk for using kratom. These were very important findings for us.”

Masters Student | Software Engineering

Meet CONNECT fellow Heila Shahidi, a first-year master’s student in software engineering. She is working with Strength Through Strides, an advocacy and resource initiative by the Summer Willis Foundation, to create a resource map for survivors of sexual assault.

"This was an incredible opportunity to bring my skill set to an organization where I can be a part of its vision for change," Shahidi said.

Ph.D. Candidate | Chemical Engineering

When San Diego residents were concerned about sewage-related air contamination from a nearby river, Lea El Khoury, Ph.D. candidate in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, stepped in to investigate. Her data played a role in prompting local authorities to act on improving air conditions in San Diego.

“My work helps to highlight areas where air pollution is a serious concern,” El Khoury said. “It provides scientific evidence to support better environmental policies that promote cleaner air and healthier communities."

Masters Student | Vocal Pedagogy and Literature

Experience a day in the life with UT Austin graduate student Alexandra Dorantes. Earning her master's degree in vocal pedagogy and vocal literature all while being a recording artist, Latin Grammy voting member and vocal teacher.

Join Dorantes as she teaches mariachi voice at Lehman High School in Kyle, Texas and then squeezes in some study time before a long night on the stage!

Ph.D. Student | Historical Musicology

“I study how we, as a nation, ‘hear’ the United States,” Anna Marinela Lopez, fourth-year Ph.D. student in historical musicology, said. “How do other people create their identities with song and sound? What sounds define a nation? How can a nation built up of various identities find a national sound?”

Lopez’s dissertation examines a niche field of study in musicology: theme park music. By analyzing the songs, genres and styles performed by the live music ensembles at Disney’s themed lands, such as Frontierland, Lopez seeks to understand how Disney creates conceptions of an American identity through music.

Masters Student | Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities

Growing up in rural Nigeria, where storytelling and performance were vital tools for connection, Annase Raji saw firsthand how theatre could educate, heal and empower. Now a second-year M.F.A. student studying drama and theatre for youth and communities in the Department of Theatre and Dance, she explores how drama therapy can help immigrant youth build stronger connections across cultural divides. 

“What I found is that drama workshops give these youths a safe and creative space to express their feelings, share their stories and better understand both their own identities and those of others,” Raji said. “Participants gained more confidence, developed empathy for people from different cultures and began to break down the misunderstandings that often exist between cultural groups.”

Ph.D. Student | Performance as Public Practice

Having begun belly dancing as a teenager, Draconis von Trapp, second-year Ph.D. student in performance as public practice, is now booked all over the world as not just a performer and teacher, but as a belly dance historian. 

“My research focuses on fusion belly dance, an American diasporic style that draws heavily from Middle Eastern and North African dance traditions,” von Trapp said. “I’m particularly interested in tracing the lineage of stylistic influences and highlighting the contributions of male dancers, figures who are often left out of the historical record.” 

Ph.D. Candidate | Art History

“It is a privilege to work with not only professors in my home department in art history, but from other fields such as literature, history and ethnomusicology," said Chasitie Brown, a Harrington Fellow and fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in art history. “This interdisciplinary approach has expanded the horizons of my research, leading to more comprehensive findings.”

Brown’s dissertation examines “Queloides,” a group of art exhibitions in 1990s Cuba focused on questions of race and identity. The name “Queloides” references marks as a result of lashings and other forms of violent punishment on enslaved Afro-descendants in the colonial period.

Ph.D. Student | Geosciences

Bella Gray can often be found wading through thick thorn bushes, crawling under barbed wire fences, and evading jumping spider colonies. For her, it’s just another day exploring the Guadalupe Mountains as a Ph.D. student in geosciences.

“Field work always creates the perfect environment for fun memories,” Gray said. “Whatever we have to do is always worth it for the science.”

A burgeoning geomorphologist, Gray uses numerical modeling, remote sensing and field surveys to study how sediment influences vegetation growth, erosion, deposition and channel shape in ephemeral rivers, specifically in drylands.

Postdoctoral Fellow | School of Information

“I have always been fascinated by what makes learning truly meaningful,” said Anjali Singh, Bullard Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Information. “Deep and effective learning requires effort—making mistakes, learning from them and practicing regularly.” 

Singh studies how to help students think more critically about the information generated by Generative AI (GenAI) tools. She recently conducted a study exploring how students use GenAI tools when presented with cues that encourage them to pause and reflect. She is now developing an AI tool that provides personalized cues to guide learners in becoming more thoughtful and intentional in their search process.

Ph.D. Student | Information Studies 

Xinyue “Sally” You has always been interested in why people behave and interact the way they do, especially as it relates to immersive technology. Sally is in her second year as a Ph.D. student in the School of Information and spends her time exploring this complex human-technology relationship.

Her current study examines the psychology behind why people hesitate to try new experiences that initially seem uncomfortable, like when avatars walk through each other in virtual reality.

An international student from China, Sally was drawn to UT for many reasons, including Austin’s vibrant culture and her program’s cross-departmental, interdisciplinary approach to research.

Ph.D. Student | Computational Linguistics

“The sentences ‘I gave her the pen I found on my desk yesterday’ and ‘I gave the pen I found on my desk yesterday to her’ convey roughly the same event, but the first sounds more natural,” said Harrington Fellow Qing Yao, first-year Ph.D. student in computational linguistics. “Language models pick up these preferences very well, but are they simply ‘memorizing’ them from the vast amounts of training data?”

Yao trained small language models on carefully controlled training sets, such as by reversing the usual order of phrases. His research illuminates how computational models can inform our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in language.

Postdoctoral Fellow | Department of Geography & the Environment

“The thought of stepping into the unknown, peeling back layers of history, exploring, and revealing ancient buildings that have been hidden beneath the forest canopy for centuries has always sparked my imagination.” 

Carlos Morales-Aguilar, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography and the Environment, uses cutting-edge technology to turn imagination into reality. As part of the UT LLAMA Lab, he uses LiDAR technology to generate 3D maps that reveal the landscapes of ancient civilizations. This allows the Lab to pinpoint areas of interest before they travel on-site to excavate. 

Ph.D. Student | Middle Eastern Studies

As a freshman in college, Erin Kelleher remembers watching the Arab Spring unfold across much of the Middle East and North Africa. Curious to learn more about the region, she signed up for her first Arabic course. Erin is now pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in the College of Liberal Arts. Her research focuses on the cultural and social history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Egypt.

“I chose to study at UT because of my department’s emphasis on a regional understanding of the Middle East. Because I am interested in intersections of Ottoman and Arab histories, and the places where these histories are intertwined, this aspect of the department’s approach to the region really resonated with me.”

Ph.D. Candidate | Biological Anthropology

Izzi Clark has always been fascinated by animal behavior and ecology. After studying wild lemurs in Madagascar as an undergrad, she became incredibly drawn to primates by their rich social lives and evolutionary proximity to humans.

Before coming to UT, Izzi was a research assistant for the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, where she met her now-advisor and mentor, Dr. Aaron Sandel. Ngogo – once the largest group of chimpanzees ever studied – was splitting into two smaller groups, causing a hostile territorial conflict. Her deep interest in understanding the causes and consequences of this rare split brought her to UT where she is now a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate studying biological anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts.

Ph.D. Student | Biochemistry

“In my first year at UT, I’ve been privileged to experience inviting environments where world-class research is happening,” said Emma Ryan, first-year Ph.D. student in biochemistry. “UT has an amazing research ecosystem that has contributed immensely to immunology and translational therapeutics research.”

Ryan’s goal is to make better vaccine candidates to block infection, by engineering protein-based therapeutics. Her research, supported by a Harrington Fellowship, involves studying the structures of proteins that members of the Phenuiviridae family use to infect cells. If common design strategies are identified across different viruses in this family, they can be rapidly implemented if a novel Phenuiviridae virus becomes an epidemic. 

Ph.D. Student | Cell and Molecular Biology

Cell and molecular biology Ph.D. student Kate Windsor strives to grow not only as a scientist, but as a science communicator. They recently presented their neuroscience research to middle school and homeschool centers across Austin, as part of the “Present Your Ph.D.” program.

“It was great to see middle schoolers be curious and engaged,” Windsor said. “Because that’s the age I was when I started getting interested in studying brains.”

Windsor is the host of “She Blinded Me With Science,” a science show on KVRX 91.7, to interview UT researchers. They also voice the “Slow-Moving Time Machine” on the podcast Memory Static. When they're not on the radio, they're in the lab studying manganese neurotoxicity. 

Ph.D. Student | Public Policy

Ph.D. Career Pathways fellow, Vuong Hoang, is working with I’m From Driftwood, a local nonprofit that focuses on community storytelling and archiving.

“I’ve been working on a new video series for I’m From Driftwood documenting the team’s behind-the-scenes experience traveling around the country collecting stories," Hoang said. "On the backend, I’ve also been using my technical knowledge with APIs to collect IFD social media statistics to create fundraising documents and other materials.”

Postdoctoral Fellow | School of Social Work

Before attending UT Austin as a postdoctoral fellow, Khamron Micheals was a respiratory therapist at the bedside of critically ill patients in the Texas Medical Center. While caring for patients on the front lines, Micheals was also learning about the broader systems, such as housing, income and access to care, that influence sickness and recovery time. 

Now a postdoctoral fellow in UT’s School of Social Work and Dell Medical School, Micheals’ current research focuses on understanding why some children experience worse asthma outcomes than their peers.

Ph.D. Student | Social Work

Amidst the opioid overdose crisis, third-year Ph.D. student Jake Samora has been conducting community-engaged research with people who use drugs (PWUD) and providers of substance use disorder services, a challenge further complicated by pandemic-related disruptions. Through this work, he’s observed barriers to accessing evidence-based treatment for substance use.

“In research examining opioid use and overdose, we have found that there are multiple barriers to accessing prevention and treatment services for people who use drugs,” Samora said.  “This includes fear of legal repercussions, limited support for services to meet the needs of PWUD and policy-related barriers to providing evidence-based interventions.”

Postdoctoral Fellow | School of Social Work

A child’s walk to school is a great way to incorporate physical activity and cardiovascular fitness into their daily routine. However, in the United States, only about 11% of children currently walk or bike to school, according to the National Household Travel Survey. Kaitlyn Swinney, second-year postdoctoral fellow in the School of Social Work, wants to know why. 

“Parents’ beliefs are strongly associated with whether their child actively commutes to school for elementary school children,” Swinney said. “Additionally, I have been looking at how access to environmental features like parks and sidewalk lengths (both associated with higher physical activity) differ by proportion of minority residents living in the area.”

Ph.D. Student | Social Work

“My experience as a first-generation immigrant motivates me to serve marginalized communities with social work policy and practice,” Cheng Chow, first-year Ph.D. student in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work said. “UT Austin has provided me with an incredible platform to pursue research that is both personally meaningful and impactful for underserved communities.” 

Chow’s research examines how immigration policies, healthcare access and social structures impact the well-being of immigrant communities. By understanding these dynamics, Chow hopes we can better design policies that promote equity and improve health outcomes for all populations. His work has been supported by a Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship.

Masters Student | Fiction and Poetry

“When I was a child, my father used to make me recite Tang Dynasty poems,” Jessie Li, second-year Michener fellow in fiction and poetry, said. “From those poems, I learned music and rhythm, form and precision. I attribute my love of words in part to that early experience.” 

Li’s short story “Mouth and Heart” was a 2025 winner of the PEN America Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. In May, she received a Keene Prize Honorable Mention. An admirer of Leo Tolstoy and Jhumpa Lahiri, Li gravitates towards stories about families, relationships and coming-of-age.