2023 Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

Petra Banks

Texas State University

Banks is a Ph. D. candidate at Texas State University. Her research explores skeletal trauma patterns and fracture behavior from known and experimental blast events.

Cassandra Beattie

Kansas State University

Beattie is a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Kinesiology at Kansas State University. Her research focuses on improving gym spaces to be more inclusive.

Paige Figanbaum

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Figanbaum is a Ph. D. candidate at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her research examines the intersection of public, western, environmental, and Indigenous history in Nevada. She explores five Nevada interpretive sites to demonstrate the intersections of Indigenous history, rural history, and the history of federal land management.

Justin Goldstein

Texas State University

Goldstein is a Ph. D. candidate in applied anthropology at Texas State University His research focuses on developing new identification processes for long-term unidentified individuals, particularly through novel cortical bone histology methods.

Jessica Hoyle

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Hoyle is a Ph. D. candidate at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research is focused on relationship among social relationships and the health and well-being of people with developmental disabilities as they age.

Sojung Huh

Texas State University

Huh is a Ph. D. candidate at Texas State University. Her research explores the profession of geography teachers' knowledge, skill and wisdom to effectively teach sustainable development in the US geography curriculum.

Iqra Pervaiz 

Texas Tech University

Iqra is a Ph. D. candidate at the Texas Tech University of Health Sciences, Her research focuses on understanding the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) physiology in Glucose Transporter 1 (GLUT-1) Deficiency Syndrome, as well as investigating altered brain energy metabolism and the role of the ketogenic diet.

Hong-My Nguyen

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

Nguyen is a Ph. D. Candidate at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at the Abilene Campus. Her research interest encompasses the areas of cancer immunotherapy, with a focus on microbes-based therapies and their application as monotherapy or in combination with other anti-cancer agents to treat different types of solid tumors.

Dylan O'Hara

University of Maine 

O'Hara is a doctoral candidate in American History at the University of Maine. She is also the Editor of the Maine History Journal, the only academic publication dedicated to the state of Maine's history.

Rotana Radwan

Virginia Commonwealth University

Radwan is a Ph. D. candidate and research assistant at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests are focused on measuring patient and decision-maker preferences for health and pharmaceutical interventions, in the area of oncology.

Keyur Savla

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Savla is an OD/Ph. D. candidate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research focuses on improving available myopia control treatments to prevent and slow the progression of nearsightedness in children.

Rachel Washburn

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

Washburn is a Ph. D. candidate at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Her research focuses on the immune system. She is studying how testicular Sertoli cells regulate the immune system to create a transplant-protective environment.

Elliot Varney

University of Mississippi

Varney is a Ph. D. candidate at University of Mississippi. His research focuses on health disparities, and the development of imaging biomarkers for obesity and obesity-related disease. 

Emilie Wiedenmeyer

Texas State University

Wiedenmeyer is a Ph. D. candidate at Texas State University. Her research focuses on how musculoskeletal markers in the human skeleton react and adapt to lived experiences and can be interpreted, after death, as distinct biological signatures for forensic identification purposes.