Graduate Students

Brandon is a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2019. His research for the Center of Engineering Education involves understanding the ways in which LGBTQIA+ identifying engineering students respond to the heteronormative climate in engineering. Brandon is especially interested in understanding the factors that encourage students to persist in engineering and how to use that research to produce meaningful change at the department level. This project also involves promoting student activism and reinforcing connection to LGBTQIA+ identities through a student-led reading group. In addition to his educational research, Brandon conducts research in drug delivery in the UT Biomedical Engineering Department.

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Ariel is a Ph.D. student in STEM education at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her B.S. in biology and her M.A.T. in secondary education from Brandeis University. While at Brandeis she researched active site lysine in rhodopsin complexes. Prior to coming to Austin, she worked as a high school biology, anatomy, and engineering teacher in Massachusetts. During this time, she also worked as a research associate and teacher partner with Boston College at the Innovation in Urban Science Education Lab. Ariel’s current research interests include graduate funding pathways, accessibility in lab-based science courses, computational learning in general science classes, and sense of belonging for disabled students in STEM.

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Sydni is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering and a Graduate Research Assistant in the Center for Engineering Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University in 2015. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a design engineer in the automotive industry (2015-2021). Her research interests include engineer preparedness for industry roles, social and professional skillsets engineers need for industry, and factors that lead historically excluded groups to leave the engineering profession. Her recent work has focused on Ph.D. students and Postdocs relationship with their advisors, and how those relationships impact the future career goals of the students and Postdocs.

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Elisa is a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student and earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2022. Elisa’s current research focuses on how students navigate through maker spaces, disabled student experiences, and teaching tool assessment. Elisa also has a passion for running student programs in the mechanical engineering department.

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Emily is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Her passion for education and activism led her to the Center of Engineering Education. Her current work focuses on the disabled experience in undergraduate engineering and how to teach faculty and TAs ways to make engineering education more accessible for all students. After becoming disabled in 2019, the challenges in engineering she faced, especially when starting grad school, motivated her to find a way to better the accessibility in university classrooms. She received a B.S. in Integrated Engineering and Humanities from Lehigh University in 2021. Her academic and career interests include architectural acoustics, universal building design, science policy, and teaching.

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Jill is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Assistant in Mechanical Engineering – Manufacturing & Design at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida in 1994 and her Masters in Business Administration from the University of Houston in 1999. With over 25+ years in a variety of engineering roles & disciplines, she is excited to incorporate these experiences into her UT research and teaching roles. Jill’s current research interest lies in expanding engineering opportunities to underserved areas with a focus on the LGBTQ+ community. 

Alumni

Madison earned her Ph.D. in STEM Education in 2023. She was a graduate research assistant for the Center for Engineering Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University in 2017 and her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Her research interests include issues of gender and racial/ethnic inequities in undergraduate STEM education. Her recent work has focused on undergraduate students’ various attitudes towards engineering, including sense of belonging, self-efficacy and intent to pursue a career within engineering.

Maya received her Ph.D. in STEM Education in 2023. She was a Graduate Research Assistant in the Center for Engineering Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 2014 and her M.S. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from UT-Austin in 2021. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a chemical engineer for an industrial gas company (2014-2017). Her current research interests include career pathways within engineering, issues of gender and other marginalized groups at all levels of engineering education, and environmental engineering education, including K-12 outreach. Her recent work has focused on asset-based frameworks, navigation strategies of engineering transfer students, and early careers of engineering doctoral recipients, with an emphasis on non-academic career preparation and pathways.

Licia earned her Ph.D. in the STEM Education in 2023. She was a NASCENT Education and Evaluation Graduate Research Assistant. She received her M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering (Optoelectronics) from Polytechnic of Milan (Italy). Her current research interests include integration of engineering in K-12 curriculum and standards and evaluation of the impact of research experience on engineering undergraduate education.

Vivian Chou earned their M.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Biomechanics in May 2023. They were a Graduate Research Assistant in the Center for Engineering Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Their research revolves around investigating how LGBTQ+ students resist the hostile culture of engineering and, more broadly, STEM. They mentored a group of LGBTQ+ undergraduate engineers and investigate the collective resistance by LGBTQ+ students through student-driven organizations with them. They are especially interested in rethinking ways in which DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) can be approached to be more inclusive and effective.

Roxy is a M.S. Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2015. Her research with the Center for Engineering Education is focused on makerspace use as a component of undergraduate STEM Education. Her work and research in the department of mechanical engineering includes design/topology optimization, prosthetic limb development, and humanitarian engineering efforts.

Malini Josiam earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Educational Psychology, in May 2021. During her undergrad at UT, she has explored various NSF-Funded projects within Engineering Education, including exploring motivations for student use of Texas Inventionworks, graduate student experiences as it relates to funding, and STEM classroom observations on instructor strategies to mitigate student resistance to active learning. Her research interests include student motivations towards engineering, noncognitive factors such as sense of belonging, engineering identity, and self-efficacy, and classroom pedagogical methods. She also held a part time role in the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) office as an Evaluation and Program Assistant, where she performed qualitative and quantitative data analysis with student data and strategic evaluation. She is pursuing her doctoral studies in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech.

Anita earned her B.S. in Bioengineering from Clemson University in 2012 and her Ph.D. in the STEM Education from UT Austin in 2020. She was a graduate research assistant and postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Engineering Education at UT Austin. Her research interests include bio/biomedical engineering education, graduate education, identity, career decision-making, student motivation and issues of equity at the intersection of race and gender. She was a postdoctoral research associate in the Psychology Department at Spelman College studying the experiences of Black women in STEM and successful STEM education practices at HBCUs. She is now a Research Analyst at Primerica.

Sneha earned her Ph.D. in the STEM Education from The University of Texas at Austin in 2021. She holds her Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies from Azusa Pacific University, as well as a Master of Arts in Education-Curriculum and Instruction from Cal Poly Pomona University. Her past experiences teaching middle school science and language arts, her involvement with national STEM teacher professional development initiatives like NASA Spaceward Bound, and her STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) internship with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory led her to develop a keen interest in pre-college engineering education. Her dissertation research, supervised by Dr. Maura Borrego, explored the use of project-based service-learning in precollege engineering education and how it contributes to purposeful learning and STEM career interest and aspirations. Some other areas of research interests also include: curriculum development for precollege engineering, in both formal and informal settings; teacher professional development for engineering education; purposeful teaching; and, the use of active learning pedagogies in undergraduate engineering. She served as an Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California and is now a User Researcher at Edpuzzle.

HyungSok “Nathan” Choe, Ph.D., The George Washington University

Kevin A Nguyen, Ph.D., Sonoma State University

Jerry Yang, B.S., Graduate Student, at Stanford University