Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellows

Fellows

Name: Jake Butts
PhD Program: PhD program in Psychology
Hometown: Springfield, PA
Education: Williams College; B.A., Psychology
Research: My research explores conceptual development with a focus on mathematical symbols and notations. Specifically, I am interested in how linguistic input and spatial representations impact children’s understanding of mathematical concepts. Through this research, I hope to better understand the basic cognitive processes that drive learning and identify mechanisms to close achievement gaps in mathematics.

Name: David Cerny
PhD Program: PhD program in Geophysical Sciences
Hometown: Prague, Czech Republic
Education: University of California, Los Angeles; B.S., Ecology, Behavior and Evolution
Research: Since high school, I have been interested in the evolution of animals with backbones and in evolutionary processes taking place above the level of species. I took part in paleontological fieldwork in Krasiejów, Poland; conducted ecological and behavioral field research in French Polynesia; and worked as a computational biology research intern at the Centre de Regulació Genòmica in Barcelona, Spain. At UCLA, I had the opportunity to work in the Alfaro Lab on several projects involving molecular dating (a technique that combines paleontological information with DNA sequence data to infer the ages of origin of various groups of organisms), resulting in two published papers and several others still in preparation. In the Slater Lab at the University of Chicago, I hope to contribute to the development of methods that integrate fossil and molecular data in order to help us develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of Earth’s biosphere.

Name: Binglu Chen
PhD Program: PhD program in Mathematics
Hometown: Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
Education: University of Chinese Academy of Sciences; B.S.
Research: My undergraduate thesis is a very basic survey related to K-stability of Fano varieties, which itself is an active math branch. Now I’m trying to get into the research area of Algebraic Geometry and Representation Theory.

Name: Basil Dababneh
PhD Program: PhD in Cinema and Media Studies
Hometown: Buffalo Grove, IL
Education: Vanderbilt University, BA, Cinema and Media Arts
Research: Basil Dababneh is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He holds a BA in Cinema and Media Arts from Vanderbilt University, where he also minored in Women’s and Gender Studies. His research coalesces around theories of cinematic temporality, the politics and aesthetics of queer theories of time, and the anachronisms of horror cinema in the digital age. He is also interested in postcolonial theory and Arab cinema.

Name: Daniel Epstein
PhD Program: PhD Program in Political Science
Hometown: Cape Elizabeth, ME
Education: Harvard College, Cambridge, MA; A.B. Social Studies
Research:  My interests include restorative justice and prison abolition; relationships between politics, ethics, and law; 20th century social and political thought; phenomenology; and the politics of time. During the 2020-2021 academic year, I will be completing a Master of Legal Studies degree at the University of Chicago Law School.

Name: Zehua Lai
PhD program: PhD program in computational and applied mathematics
Hometown: Quanzhou, Fujian, China
Education: Tsinghua University, BA in mathematics and economics
Research: I am a first-year Ph.D. student at Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics. Prior to coming to Chicago, he received his bachelors degrees in Economics and Mathematics at Tsinghua University. I have broad interests in machine learning, partial differential equations and image processing.

Name: María D. Hernández Limón
PhD Program: PhD in Geophysical Sciences
Hometown: Waukegan, IL
Education: Brown University, Providence, RI; B.S., Geology-Biology;
Columbia University, New York, NY; Post-Bacc. Earth Science
Research: Maria became the first in her family to graduate from college when she earned a B.S. in geology-biology in 2014 from Brown University. As a junior, Maria helped to assess hypoxia in Narragansett Bay, which led to her interest in aquatic ecosystems. After graduating, Maria worked with the Schuler Scholar Program which prepares underserved students to excel in college. In August 2016, Maria joined the Dyhrman laboratory at Columbia University, which focuses on understanding the interaction between phytoplankton and their environment. In 2017, María’s research focused on comparing data from phytoplankton grown at ambient and increased CO2 to elucidate how increases in CO2 influence phytoplankton physiology. The results were published in Frontiers in Microbiology. María’s current research aims to describe patterns of important process in Emiliania huxleyi from samples collected in the Pacific Ocean. At University of Chicago Maria hopes to explore the microbial diversity of the Great Lakes.

Name: Carol Medina
PhD Program: PhD in Psychology
Hometown: Charleston, SC
Education: Brown University, Providence, RI; B.S. Psychology
Research: Having been a summer camp counselor, babysitter, and pediatric health researcher, working with children has been a lifelong passion, but my interest in children’s cognition is a more recent discovery. In college, I discovered my fascination with the human mind and all that makes humans such extraordinary learners. This incredible capacity is most evident in toddlers as in only a few years, they go from knowing little about the world to being able to walk, talk, and recite the ABC’s! As a developmental psychologist at UChicago, I plan to study how children learn to navigate their world, when they learn from others, and how they generate hypotheses as such processes may be the foundation for children’s later science abilities. In addition to psychology, I am also passionate about music. I sing (mostly to myself) and played the sousaphone throughout college as a member of the Brown University Marching Band.

Name: Solomon Quinn
PhD Program: PhD program in Computational and Applied Mathematics
Hometown: New York, NY
Education: University of Richmond, Richmond, VA; B.S., Mathematics and Physics
Research: Solomon’s current research interests include physically motivated problems, particularly in quantum mechanics and applications of partial differential equations. At the University of Richmond, Solomon conducted research in cosmology with Prof. Ted Bunn, examining the possibility of extracting multi-wavelength maps from single-filter observations of the cosmic microwave background. Solomon and Prof. Bunn presented their results at the 231st American Astronomical Society Meeting in January, 2018. Solomon’s undergraduate work also included a project in game theory, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Kerckhove. Aside from mathematics and physics, Solomon enjoys playing the piano, sports, chess and hiking.

Name: Nicolás Torres-Echeverry
PhD Program: PhD program in Sociology
Hometown: Bogota, Colombia
Education: Stanford Law School, Stanford, J.S.M. (Master of the Science of Law); Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, LL.B. (Law) and B.A. (Economics)
Research: I am interested in political and economic sociology, specifically in how social interaction on the Internet is shaping people’s political and economic ideas. During my time at UChicago, I would like to reflect on the way the Internet and data are changing political and economic processes and the organizations behind such changes. My research adopts an interdisciplinary approach and combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Before coming to Chicago, I was at Stanford conducting socio-legal research as a JSD fellow and a research assistant at FSI’s Global Digital Policy Incubator. My previous research was on political sociology, in particular on state-building challenges in post-conflict settings, with a focus on Colombia. Before that, I worked as a researcher at the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia), and as a consultant for the Ministry of Justice in Colombia. I love cooking and swimming!

Name: Hai Tran Bach
PhD Program: Statistics Ph.D.
Hometown: Bucharest, Romania
Education: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; B.S. , Mathematics & Data Science
Research: My research interests are in Machine Learning, Network Analysis, and High Dimensional Inference. At the Big Data Summer Institute, I have worked in identifying the relationships between financial and private entities in the Panama Papers to unveil the world’s hidden wealth. Later at Chenope, I had the opportunity to build a statistical model which reveals the interaction of political clusters on Twitter over time. During my PhD program, I plan to further my understanding of the underlying structure of real big data sets. I am also interested in the socio-politico-economic history of the 20th century and trying new culinary recipes.

Name: Emily Willson
PhD Program: PhD in Computer Science
Hometown: Appleton, WI
Education: Wheaton College (IL); B.S. Mathematics and Physics
Research: I graduated from Wheaton in 2016 and was employed for several years as an applied research mathematician for the Department of Defense. My work there touched a variety of areas ranging from quantum computing to machine learning to blockchain technology. In my PhD studies at UChicago, I will pursue my research interests in applied machine learning and blockchain technologies through my work with Dr. Ben Zhao. Once I graduate, I hope to serve as a leader in a government, corporate, or academic research institution. In my spare time, I enjoy running, reading, and searching for the best pancake restaurant in the Chicagoland area.

Name: Chih-Hsuan Wu
PhD Program: Statistics
Hometown: Taiwan
Education: National Taiwan University, Taiwan, MA, Mathematical Statistics; B.A., Mathematics
Research: During my graduate school study, I accumulated research experiences by probing into a robust regression method, Self-Updating Process (SUP), with Dr. Ting-Li Chen. In the future, I hope to do more research on  high-dimensional data and robust methods with faculties in UChicago.

Name: Angela Zorro Medina
PhD Program: PhD program in Sociology
Hometown: Bogota, Colombia
Education: B.A. Economics Universidad de los Andes, LL.B Universidad de los Andes. LL.M. Yale Law   School, JSD Candidate Yale Law School
Research: My research focuses on the criminal justice system and the way it produces and reproduces inequality in Latin America and the United States. For the Latin American case, I study the impact of carceral outcomes in inequality, and the factors that influence the prison population. For the U.S. case, I study the impact of non-carceral outcomes in inequality at the sub-felony justice level.

Fellows

Name: Chris Batterman Cháirez
PhD Program: Ethnomusicology
Hometown: Detroit, MI
Education: Emory University, Atlanta GA; B.A. in Music and Latin American Studies
Research: Generally speaking, I am interested in music and sound’s intersection with the political, broadly defined. More specifically, my work examines questions of race/ethnicity, nationalisms and cosmopolitanisms, post-coloniality, and modernity in Latin American sonic contexts (especially in Brazil and Mexico). I am a proponent of collapsing disciplinary boundaries and blurring lines of inquiry. My research, then, draws upon music studies, sound studies, critical theory, ethnic studies, history, and anthropology to consider music/sound’s aesthetic, affective, and material functions in society. To that end, much of my past work has interrogated questions of subjectivity, racialization, indigeneity, and constructions of identity and community in Brazil and greater Mexico. Past contexts for this research have included: Brazilian opera and ideologies of race and nation; hip-hop, language, and racialized communicative aesthetics; community, nationalism, and political militancy in Chicana/o music; and opera, early ethnography, indigenous language, and racialized listening in 19th c. Mexico.

Name: Avigail Ben-Gad
PhD Program: Egyptology
Hometown: Haifa, Israel
Education:
Research: I am a first-year PhD student in the Egyptology program with research interests focusing mainly on Egyptian interactions with the Near East during the New Kingdom, particularly under the Ramesside kings of the 19th and 20th dynasties. I completed my bachelor’s degree in Egyptology and Assyriology at Cambridge University, where my dissertation investigated parallels between Ancient Egyptian and Semitic literary texts in order to reconstruct possible models for the cross-cultural spread of ideas. My non-academic interests include reading science fiction and fantasy, attempting to garden, and playing the violin.

Name: Sthira Bhattacharya
PhD Program: South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC)
Hometown: Dhanbad, India.
Education: BA English, Delhi University (2014); MA English, Jawaharlal Nehru University (2016); MPhil English, Jawaharlal Nehru University (2018)
Research: I hope to explore how different actors imagined what it meant to lead ‘public’ lives in late 19^th-early 20^thcentury eastern India; how and why certain print and oral genres as well as forms of associational life gained popularity in this context; and processes of subject-formation and self-fashioning specific to actors’ location within social-linguistic hierarchies.

Name: John Burden
PhD Program: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Harrisonburg, Virginia
Education: University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va: B.A. in Foreign Affairs; University of Oxford, Oxford, UK: MPhil in Islamic Studies and History
Research: I am a PhD student focusing on Islamic Thought. My research interests include Islamic Law, particularly medieval and early modern legal reasoning, as well as Sufism and its role in the construction of religious orthodoxy in the medieval period. My graduate thesis, entitled “The ‘Real’ Uṣūl al-Fiqh? The Role of Qawāʿid Fiqhiyya in Late Medieval and Early Modern Islamic Legal Reasoning,” explores the function of Islamic legal maxims in the interpretation and extension of legal precedents identified in canonical handbooks of positive law. I have worked, studied and travelled throughout the MENA region. I spent a year working at the Casablanca American School in Morocco, followed by two summers studying Classical Arabic at Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman, Jordan. I have also worked for a peace-building NGO in Israel/Palestine. In my free time, I enjoy reading (especially 19^thcentury Russian and 20^thcentury American literature), cooking, and playing ultimate frisbee.

Name: Irina Cristali
PhD Program: Statistics
Hometown: Bucharest, Romania
Education: Duke  University, Durham, N.C.; B.S., Mathematics and B.S., Statistical Science
Research: Finding rigorous proofs and explanations has always challenged me and it motivated me to expand my mathematical foundation. At Duke University, I deepened my background in computational analysis and probability theory and used it to pursue exciting research in both pure and applied mathematics. My two projects in probability were focused on investigating the limit behavior of random structures. I also used dynamical systems to study the renal blood flow autoregulation and model time-series processes, and I understood the important role real data plays in model design. As a Statistics PhD student, I plan to combine theoretical probability techniques with data-driven modeling and inference, and discover new estimation and uncertainty quantification methods. I am currently interested in theoretical high-dimensional and statistical learning problems, motivated by real world applications.

Name: Yue Deng
PhD Program: Geophysical Sciences
Hometown: Shenzhen, China
Education: Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA; B.A., Biological Sciences / Classics (minor)
Research: I became interested in evolutionary biology after a class my first year of college. Then I stumbled upon a most bizarre group of bivalves– the watering pot shells, which I wrote an undergrad thesis on, and which dragged me into the world of bivalves. I’m now interested in further understanding the evolution of bivalves combining paleontological data with the biology of living species.

Name: Daniel Ehrlich
PhD Program: Economics
Hometown: Boston, MA
Education: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; B.A., Economics
Research: My research explores the determinants of economic growth in developing countries, particularly through the lens of regional variation and spatial distributions of economic activity. Joint work with Professor Robert Townsend (MIT) examines the spatial effects of scaling up financial interventions in rural Thailand and how individuals migrate in response to changes in access to financial services. My other projects including examining the effects of geographic location on entrepreneurship in Ghana and the joint responses of regional trade-financial linkages in the US to economic shocks. I am excited to be back at UChicago to start my PhD. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, backpacking, and window shopping at farmer’s markets.

Name: Cristina Esteves-Wolff
PhD Program:Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies
Hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Education: B.A. Literature, Yale University; J.D., Fordham University School of Law; M.A. Comparative Literature, University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras
Research: My research focuses on identity politics of peripheral subjects, those on the margins of discourses of power. I work primarily with 20^thand 21^stcentury Caribbean and Latin American literature with a focus on postcolonial and decolonial theory. As a scholar of law and literature, I am also interested in exploring how the judicial and political fictions of modernity intersect with identity formation and cultural production. My Master’s thesis focused on the Puerto Rican case study, and I will now broaden the scope of my work towards a comparative analysis of the colonial experiences of peripheral subjects throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. My research looks for points of correspondence and dissonance across empires, as well as how imperial formations endure and reproduce themselves in modern territories and nation-states.

Name: Jane Gordon
PhD Program: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Cuneiform Studies)
Hometown: Ardmore, PA
Education: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; BA, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; University College London, London, UK; MA, Ancient History
Research: I study the textual record of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria), with a particular focus on literary development and cultural exchange during the second millennium B.C.E. While I was an undergraduate at Chicago, I wrote a thesis on the narratological use of physical spaces in the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. I then pursued an MA in Ancient History from University College London, where my master’s thesis analyzed emotional expression and discussion of emotion in Assyrian merchants’ letters. My research interests include Mesopotamian narrative literature and literary history, the rhetoric of letter-writing, and ancient Near Eastern conceptions of social space and landscape, particularly during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. In my free time, I like to read novels, bake almond-based desserts, and go to art museums.

Name: Jenny Harris
PhD Program:Art History
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Education: Wellesley College, B.A. Art History
Research: I focus on 20th century art with particular interests in performance, intersections of dance and visual arts, and the status of decoration and craft in postwar American art. Prior to arriving at the University, I worked in The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Painting and Sculpture where I participated in the reinstallation of the collection galleries and contributed to exhibitions including The Shape of Shape, Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman(2019), The Long Run (2017-18) and Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends(2017).

Name: Bret Klein Hart
PhD Program: Cinema and Media Studies
Hometown: Santa Monica, CA
Education: B.A., UC Berkeley, Statistics, Media Studies
Research: My research concerns the experiential qualities of data collection and algorithmic prediction – how it looks and feels to be within surveillance computational apparatuses such as social media, video games, and digitally monitored everyday life. Interested in industrial, technical, and aesthetic analyses of machine learning processes, I work to make legible how behavioral data processing and prediction define contemporary experience. In my free time, I sing in the Rockefeller Chapel Choir and enjoy discussing esports and digital culture.

Name: Peng Hui How
PhD Program: Mathematics
Hometown: Selangor, Malaysia
Education: Stanford University, Stanford, CA; B.S., Mathematics; M.S. Computer Science
Research: Among pure math, I have scratched the surface of Lie theory, algebraic number theory, topology, and geometry throughout my years at Stanford and Bonn. I am also highly intrigued by physics, both observables and unobservable ones, as mathematical inspiration and as a subject on its own. At UChicago, I am looking into topology/geometry for now, but am always open-minded to other things, since I strongly believe that mathematical study originates from motivating problems, and separation of mathematical field is artificial.

Name: Tejas Kannan
PhD Program:Computer Science
Hometown: Palo Alto, California
Education: University of California at Berkeley, B.A. Computer Science; University of Cambridge, MPhil Computer Science
Research: Tejas is a computer science student who works at the intersection of computer systems and machine learning. His master’s thesis involved designing a machine learning technique to solve traffic routing problems in cities. Currently, his research focuses on adaptive and energy-efficient computing. In particular, he is interested in techniques to execute machine learning models on low-power devices. Outside of computer science, Tejas is an avid sports fan (football, basketball, and soccer), and he enjoys distance running and traveling.

Name: Olivier Kooi
PhD Program: Economics
Hometown: Rotterdam, Netherlands
Education: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; M.A., Social Sciences Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Bsc., Economics
Research: My research interests are in public finance, macroeconomics and political economy. For my undergraduate and master theses I studied how government can redistribute income most effectively through social insurance and tax instruments. During my time at Chicago I would like to expand my interest in optimal government policy to the study of growth enhancing policies and policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic fluctuations. In addition to studying features of optimal policy I hope to improve our understanding of how our political institutions result in the policies we see.  When I am done studying I enjoy doing Judo and reading books on history and political philosophy.

Name: Lex Ladge
PhD Program: Art History
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Education: Reed College, Portland, Oregon; B.A., Classics
Research: I study Greek and Roman art with a particular focus on the cultural and political environment of the Hellenistic period. I am especially interested in how material culture and space interact with concepts of power, memory, and perception. While at Reed, I wrote a thesis entitled “Memory Objects: a Study of Attalid Memory and Object Creation under Philetairos and Attalos I.” In my free time, I enjoy cooking and baking and practicing calligraphy.

Name: Carol Lewis
PhD Program: Committee on Social Thought
Hometown: Greenville, SC
Education: Furman University, Greenville, SC; B.S., Mathematics
Research: I’m interested in unhappiness, human nature, education, and love of one’s own. I particularly enjoy discussing Plato, Aristotle, Pascal, Austen, Tocqueville, and Nietzsche in seminars, around dinner tables, and on long walks or runs. I most attentively studied and wrote on Plato’s Symposiumas an undergraduate. My less-academic loves include camping, singing, playing board games, tackling home improvement projects, and spending time with my family.

Name: Xinyi (Camilla) Liu
PhD Program: Geophysical Sciences
Hometown: Shenzhen, China
Education: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA; B.S., Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Research: My undergraduate research projects involved 1) evaluating tectonic and climatic effects on long-term chemical weathering rates and 2) earth’s oxygen and phosphorus cycle and the evolution of animal life. During my PhD program at UChicago, I look forward to exploring the interaction between these processes on early Earth using primarily isotope geochemistry techniques. I enjoy all sorts of outdoor recreation, especially backpacking. I’m also a German speaker and a badminton player.

Name: Nadia Lucas
PhD Program: Economics
Hometown: Bellevue, WA
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; B.S., Mathematical Economics and Computer Science
Research: Coming from a computationally heavy undergraduate background, I began my post-graduate career working at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. It was here that I learned to synthesize a mathematically and computationally rigorous set of tools to analyze human behavior and social issues. My goal in working towards a PhD in economics is to develop the skillset for sound policy analysis. My interests broadly encompass the economics of energy and environmental policy. Specifically, I am interested in looking at energy and environmental policy through the lens of sustainable growth of industries and firms on a microeconomic level. In my free time I enjoy being a part of the running community in the Chicago area and taking every opportunity I can to travel.

Name: John Muller
PhD Program: Social Thought and Philosophy
Hometown: Santa Monica, CA
Education: Dartmouth College, B.A., History and Economics; Yale Law School, J.D.; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, M.A., Philosophy
Research: My academic interests center on self-deception, ambivalence, and privation. I work on these issues in philosophy, drawing as well on law, literature, and psychoanalysis. My initial training, as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, was in history and economics. I then studied law at Yale. After law school, I clerked for a pair of federal court of appeals judges in the northeast, spent a couple of years as a fellow and lecturer at Harvard Law School, and then practiced law in Los Angeles. I come to UChicago from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I completed a master’s in philosophy. In addition to my academic work, I write occasional essays and book reviews for a non-academic audience.

Name: Quynh-Anh Nguyen
PhD Program: History
Hometown: Thanh Hoa, Vietnam
Education: Earlham College, Richmond, IN; B.A., History
Research: Informed by Critical Theory’s critique of modernism, colonialism, and nationalism, my current research concentration lies at the intersection of print culture, urban politics, gender, and emotion in modern Asia. I have found my research engaging with two sets of questions. The former concerns the condition of freedom: the encounter with the Other, forms of agency in tragedies, and the possibility of politics (as a verb) in everyday life. The latter confronts the condition of historical writing: concept work, the possibility of writing world history and history in the plural, and positionality. I’m recently interested in questions about spatial history and capitalism, which may have to do with my summer weekend exercise: getting on the CTA and getting off at a random unexplored stop.

Name: Clara Nizard
PhD Program: English and Theatre and Performance Studies
Hometown: Aix-En-Provence, France
Education: Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, MFA; McGill University, BA
Research: In my research, I rehearse questions of social bonds, affiliations, and fractures via frameworks of affect or ‘feeling-labour’ present in performance at large. I focus particularly on paradoxes of the body raised by contemporary dance practices and feminist and queer performance practices. My work finds a foothold in the tensions between theory and practice both in performance studies, aesthetic theories, and psychoanalytic approaches to text(s). As a practitioner, I explore queer poetics and embodiment in writing and performance, working with and against – among other things – notions of camp, ‘the personal as political’, esoteric and pastoral modes of writing, as well as interrogations on the choreographic potential of desire.

Name: John Peterson
PhD Program: Chemistry
Hometown: Menomonie, WI
Education: Hope College, Holland, MI; B.S. Chemistry
Research: I have been broadly interested in the natural sciences for most of my life and decided on formally studying chemistry as a way to interact, or at least understand as much about the other sciences as possible. My research interests have evolved over time along with my ever-increasing desire for quantitative results. At Hope, I did bioinformatics research studying how bacterial communities interact for a couple of years before I had had enough of staring at a computer screen and worked at some inorganic synthesis of cobalt complexes. At the graduate level, I intend to study physical chemistry. Because my interests are broad, the exact research project I work on during my PhD is not my major concern. Having the chance to rigorously explore the physics of chemical systems and getting a tangible result in the end is what matters to me

Name: Jacob Reed
PhD Program: Music Theory and History
Hometown: Chapel Hill, NC
Education: Yale University, New Haven, CT; B.A. Music, Mathematics; M.A. Music; M.M. Organ Performance
Research: I’m an organist and music theorist, focusing on interactions between music and words: historical discourses on music, musical responses to lyrics, and musical effects of sung and spoken language. Recently, I’ve been studying how lyrics are used to produce and disturb rhythms in pop music traditions, with an eye to similar interactions between rhythm and harmony/melody. Otherwise, I’m fascinated by writing on music (literary and theoretical) in pre-modern China, and continue to perform on a variety of early and modern keyboard instruments.

Name: Dominiquo Santistevan
PhD Program: Sociology
Hometown: Pueblo, Colorado
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; B.S., Computer Science
Research: I would really like to understand how we communicate and use language to make sense of the world, especially in places where mobile technology has, almost overnight, increased the access to information by orders of magnitude. During undergrad, I worked with Human Dynamics Lab at the MIT Media Lab to study call detail records to better understand the relationship between social networks and physical spaces. I then spent a couple years working in Uganda, Chile, and most recently, Myanmar, as a Luce Scholar. In each of these countries, I worked in some variant of the technology/society intersection whether it was via an academic lab, government consultant, or NGO. In my free time, I like to run, watch movies, and see live music.

Name: Lily Scherlis
PhD Program: English
Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Education: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; A.B., Comparative Literature and Visual and Environmental Studies
Research: Broadly, I’m interested in how everyday encounters with contemporary literature and media let us feel emotionally plugged into a community, cause, or place. My research involves working in video and sculpture as well as writing.

Name: Arthur Schott Lopes
PhD Program: History
Hometown: Curitiba, Brazil
Education: Harvard College, Cambridge, MA; A.B. History
Research: My research explores the intersection of race, nationalism, and democracy in early twentieth century Brazil. My undergraduate senior thesis interpreted Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933), perhaps Brazil’s most emblematic work of social science, as a work of literature that employed the rhetoric of science and myth to postulate Brazil as a Western nation on the world stage. My current research focuses on early-twentieth-century Brazilian understandings of democracy and democratic culture, particularly in relation to the United States. I spend most of my free time following Brazilian and American politics obsessively or watching the Great British Baking Show (even though I am a terrible cook).

Name: Audrey Jane Slote
PhD Program: Music History & Theory
Hometown: Meadville, PA
Education: St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) B.M. Cello Performance, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN) M.M. Cello Performance, M.A. Music Theory
Research: As a music theorist, I am interested in using techniques of musical analysis in service of broad philosophical questions. My work centers around music as a site of resilience and an object of political resistance particularly for people in marginalized groups. Recent projects have focused on Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony and the music of Janelle Monáe. My article, “Deconstruction as Political Discourse in Janelle Monáe’s ‘Q.U.E.E.N.,’” was published in the Music and Politics special issue of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Student News. In my free time, I enjoy practicing cello, perusing the galleries at The Art Institute of Chicago, and watching The Great British Bake Off.

Name: Sofia Smith
PhD Program: Political Science
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Education: Denison University, Granville, OH; BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; Johns Hopkins SAIS, Bologna, Italy and Washington, DC; MA in International Economics and Middle East Studies
Research: My research comes from the four years I lived and worked in Jordan in the humanitarian aid and development sector. I hope to explore how Islamic religious education, everything from Quranic schools to da’wa on Instagram, affects women’s conceptions of themselves as political subjects and the kinds of political action they participate in within the Middle East. I am broadly interested in gendered politics of the every day, socialization, political media, and cross-cultural relationships. In my free time, I like to backpack, ski, cook, and watch reality TV.

Name: Hayoung Song
PhD Program: Psychology, Integrative Neuroscience
Hometown: Seoul, Korea
Education: Sungkyunkwan University, MS in Biomedical Engineering and BA in Psychology
Research: I am interested in the neural dynamics of high-level cognition, as we constantly interact with the external world and formulate our internal representation. Specifically, my research aims to understand the naturalistic process of story comprehension and storytelling, as our attentional states fluctuate on a moment-to-moment basis. I seek to understand how memory of the real-world events change accordingly, and how they interact with the creation of novel stories. I eventually hopes to bring the perspective of an artist in the scientific inquiry of human mind.

Name: Maya Van Nuys
PhD Program: Political Science
Hometown: Rapid City, SD
Education: University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; B.A. Global and International Studies/Humanities
Research: I graduated from the University of Kansas (KU) in 2019. While at KU, I worked with Dr. Brittnee Carter to study religiously-motivated terrorist groups. My recent research continues this focus on ideologically-motivated political violence. I hope to continue in this topic area at the University of Chicago with a broad focus on ideological violence as it relates to religious, ethnic, and racial tensions in an international context. In addition to political science, I also greatly enjoy cooking, exploring Chicago, and playing violin.

Name: Veronica Vazquez-Olivieri
PhD Program: Psychology
Hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Education: Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia; B.A., Psychology
Research: I am a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Dr. Boaz Keysar. I received my BA in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from Emory University in 2019. My research interests lie at the intersection of higher-level social cognition and decision making and how this affects the way we perceive the world, evaluate events, decide what actions to take, and how we interact with others.

Name: John Veillette
PhD Program: Psychology (Integrative Neuroscience)
Hometown: Alexandria, VA
Education: University of Chicago; B.S., Statistics, B.A., Psychology, B.A., Economics
Research: I am interested in bidirectional interactions between the neural mechanisms of sensorimotor control and higher level mental function. In particular, I am currently investigating how the timing relationships between neural structures involved in the control of our muscles and the perception of our sensory feedback enable the effective, coordinated control of our articulatory muscles during speech. Moreover, I am testing whether perturbations of these timing relationships impact certain elements of subjective experience, such as the experience of agency over one’s movements, and, in turn, the neural and cognitive processes supporting the acquisition of new motor skills.

Name: Christopher Williams
PhD Program: Sociology
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Education: University of Missouri, BA; University of California-Irvine, JD
Research: I am a proud Southside native. Before starting my PhD here, I completed my law degree where I worked on numerous race and law projects. More recently l have done in-depth work on legal education, race, and the law. Currently, I envision my research to turn towards policing, crime, race, and the law. I thoroughly enjoy basketball, music, podcasts, and being an avid foodie.

Name: Aaron Zhang
PhD Program:Computer Science
Hometown: New York, NY
Education: Brown University, Providence, RI; B.S. Computer Science and Mathematics
Research: I’m interested in theoretical computer science, including computational complexity, algorithms, and cryptography.  At Brown University, I collaborated with self-driving car researchers to design algorithms and wrote a senior thesis in cryptography on proofs of sequential work.  Outside of research, I love stargazing and playing chess.

Name: Yunning Zhang
PhD Program: Comparative Literature
Hometown: Beijing, China
Education: University of Oxford, UK, MPhil in Modern Languages; Peking University, China, B.A. in Hispanic Philology
Research: My research focuses primarily on Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American writers from late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, and especially, the theorization of Baroque and Neobaroque. I am also interested in critical theory, photography, performance studies and the dialectics of science and literature. An immanent concern for the discourse of “Other” (otherness) underlines all my works.

Name: Jinjin Zhao
PhD Program:Computer Science
Hometown: Ottawa, ON, Canada
Education: Princeton University, BS
Research: My area of research is in data systems and databases. As machine learning and complex statistical analyses become more popular, we are rapidly seeking out more volumes of data across disciplines, and shifting the way we interact with information as a whole. I want to explore what these trends mean for the underlying systems which store that information, and if there are ways such that those systems can guide researchers and developers to make their analyses easier to develop and more accurate.

Name: Richard (Licheng) Zhu
PhD Program: Computational and Applied Mathematics
Hometown: Vernon Hills, IL
Education: Caltech, Pasadena, CA; B.S., Physics
Research: Before coming to UChicago, I studied physics at Caltech. While there, I conducted research in fields ranging over planetary dynamics, condensed matter, and machine learning. I have also worked in Silicon Valley as a machine learning engineer. I am broadly interested in problems at the intersection of computation and biology. Outside of the lab, I can usually be found breaking a sweat at the gym, reading, or debating with friends.

Fellows

Name: Melissa Adrian
PhD Program: Statistics
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Education: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA; B.S. Mathematics, B.S. Statistics
Research: I was initially drawn to the field of statistics because I could see its applicability to a variety of fields. My undergraduate research spanned many different topics where I was able to utilize mathematics and statistics, such as breast cancer, the human gut microbiota, student enrollment data analytics, differential privacy, and 3D printing metal objects. Though these topics are seemingly unrelated, these areas of research all have benefitted from the application and development of statistical methodology. In graduate school, I plan to further explore statistics through applications in the environmental sciences. Particularly, I plan to focus my research on environmental and spatial statistics for climate modeling. In my free time, I enjoy watercolor painting, embroidering, and playing volleyball.

Name: Arshy Azizi
PhD program: PhD in Classics
Hometown: Los Angeles
Education: Vassar College, BA Philosophy
Research: I am interested in Homer and Homeric receptions (from Milton to McCarthy), the quarrel between poetry and philosophy, and the epic as a literary genre. I also enjoy reading Virgil and the impassioned tragedies of Racine.

Name: Trevor Brandt
Ph.D. program: Art History
Hometown: Lansdale, Pennsylvania
Education: Pennsylvania State University, BA; Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, MA
Research: I study the material culture of immigration and multi-sensory objects within the early American home, especially interactive prints and objects that engage users in unexpected ways. My chapter within an edited volume (De Gruyter, March 2021) examines a genre of labyrinthine broadsides among German-Americans. Before joining UChicago, I was the curator of a Scandinavian museum in Philadelphia, where I organized shows on the intersections between Nordic folk textiles and women’s rights groups, art deco and midcentury glass, and works by Gustaf Tenggren for Disney, among others. Outside of school, I’m passionate about local history. I serve on the board of my hometown’s historic district and chair its collections committee. In my free time, I enjoy biking (both pedal and motor variety), reading, and attempting to cook.

Name: Naomi Harris
PhD program: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Education: University of Chicago: B.A. English Literature; M.A. Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Research: My research explores literary tropes in Hittite texts from Late Bronze Age Anatolia (modern day Turkey), with a focus on metaphors and rhetorical organization. I am particularly intrigued by the intersection of metaphor and ritual objects and actions, which led to my MA thesis on apiary symbolism in Hittite myths and rituals. Other research interests include beekeeping in the ancient world, Hittite art and visual culture, and canon formation. Outside of literary adventures in Ancient Near Eastern texts, I teach academic writing at the UChicago Writing Program, and in my free time, I tremendously enjoy reading novels and attending operas.

Name: Nathan Katkin
Program: PhD in Classics
Hometown: Cincinnati, OH
Education: BA Columbia University, 2018; MPhil University of Oxford, 2020
Research: Nathan studies the stories that ancient people told about their past, especially in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. He is also interested in prose style.

Name: Yan Jin
PhD Program: PhD in Art History
Hometown: Guangzhou, China
Education: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (M.A., Art History) & University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC (B.A., Art History)
Research: Yan JIN studies East Asian art history, focusing on visual and material culture of late imperial China. Her research interests include cross-regional exchanges, negotiation between global and local artistic traditions, objects and agency. Her MA thesis examines the production and display of glass mirror table screens at Emperor Qianlong’s court.

Name: Kun Liu
PhD program: PhD program in Mathematics
Hometown: Shandong, China
Education: Peking University, B.S., Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
Research: My undergraduate research is about arithmetic duality theorem in which I mainly studied the basic case of Galois cohomology. I studied certain structures related to constructing moduli space in my undergraduate thesis. I hope to study number theory further at the University of Chicago.

Name: Megan MacGregor
PhD Program: Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science; Anthropology
Hometown: Denver, CO
Education: University of Chicago, M.A. Social Sciences; University of Colorado, Boulder, B.A. Anthropology and Humanities
Research: Broadly, I am interested in the relationships between science, technology, health, and sociopolitical spheres. My undergraduate thesis arose from an ethnographic study of politeness in Buenos Aires, while my more recent MA research examined scientific process and communication related to the microbiome. Currently, I am interested in exploring the relationships between genomics, microbes, medicine, and bodies in transnational contexts. Between my undergraduate and graduate careers, I worked in hospitality and as an educator, performer, and coordinator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, cooking, watching musical theater, and working with ink and paper.

Name: Kaelan Doyle Myerscough
PhD program: PhD program in Cinema and Media Studies
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, M.S. in Comparative Media Studies; McGill University, Montreal, QC, B.A. in East Asian Studies
Research: I am a trans/non-binary scholar and critical creator interested in game design and worldbuilding. As an undergraduate at McGill University, I studied the context of media creation and wrote a thesis on competitive communities of the Pokemon video game series. Then, I studied Comparative Media Studies at MIT, where I worked as a research assistant for the MIT Game Lab and wrote a thesis on the close analysis of video games for intimate affects. I hope to bring together contextual understanding and close analysis in my research at UChicago, where I will consider the history and political stakes of the process of building fictional worlds. My work is heavily influenced by my game design practice, which takes up much of my free time; when I want to get away from a computer, I sew and knit gender-expansive clothing for my friends.

Name: Jeson Ng
PhD Program: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Singapore
Education: University of Cambridge, BA Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Research: I am interested in understanding how the ambiguity of cross-cultural encounters was articulated and negotiated across the medieval Mediterranean through constructions and contestations of identity. Comparing twelfth-century Crusader-era texts in Old French and Arabic, my article in Al-Masāq (2019) explores how race and gender were intertwined in motifs of female whiteness and sensuality to sustain a religio-ideological conflict that was neither necessary nor inevitable in everyday life. Arabic literary production at this time was rich, eclectic and prolific; I seek to read these texts, particularly the poetry, as generative of their own critical apparatus and bring pre-modern Arabic literature into conversation with comparative fields of inquiry. I have had the opportunity to study in Beirut, Palestine and Amman but am still told I sound more Egyptian. I also have emerging interests in metaphor, analogy and allegory as epistemic sources in the Arabophone world.

Name: Phillip Sergio
PhD Program: South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC)
Hometown: North Carolina
Education: Harvard Divinity School, MTS, South Asian Religions
Research: My research focuses on the reception history of Sanskrit texts through premodern commentaries, adaptations, and translations into regional languages. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the journey of Sanskrit texts across space and time, the audiences that received these texts, and the intellectual and literary engagements that transformed them.

Name: Melani Shahin
PhD program: PhD Program in Music History & Theory
Hometown: San Jose, CA
Education: Fordham University, Bronx, NY; B.A., Philosophy and Music
Research: My research focuses on the history and historiography of music theory (especially Renaissance and early modern theory). I am particularly interested in thinking about the epistemological frameworks that structure theoretical discourses. I also have secondary research interests in the histories of philosophy and science, continental philosophy, and hermeneutics. At Fordham, I studied the rhetorical function of mathematical theories in the writings of eighteenth-century German theorists Andreas Werckmeister, Lorenz Mizler, and Johann Mattheson. My special interest in German theory and culture led me to teach English in Germany for two years on Fulbright and Pädagogischer Austauschdienst grants after college. As a graduate student, I hope to expand the scope of my research by exploring the history of music theory in broader global contexts. In my free time, I enjoy browsing used bookstores, exploring new cities, playing bass, and learning languages.

Name: Joseph Spellberg
PhD program: PhD program in Chemistry
Hometown: Highland Park, IL
Education: Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; B.A., Chemistry
Research: My research interests are at the intersection of physics and chemistry and I am fascinated by how underlying physical properties give rise to the chemical phenomena that we observe. At Washington University, my research focused on computational modeling of electron dynamics in gas phase molecules. During my PhD at the University of Chicago, I am looking forward to continuing research in Physical Chemistry and to spending more time in the lab developing experimental techniques. Currently, I am most interested in using spectroscopy to probe the electronic properties of condensed matter systems. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, playing board games, and hanging out with friends.

Name: Chaoqi Wang
PhD program: PhD program in Computer Science
Hometown: Hangzhou, China
Education: Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, B.Eng. Computer Science; University of Toronto, Toronto, M.Sc. Computer Science.
Research: In the past, my research has been focused on Bayesian deep learning, understanding the training dynamics of neural networks, and neural network pruning. In the future, I will pursue these directions in more depth. In specific, I hope to design more principled algorithms with rigorous mathematical guarantees, and more importantly, fewer hyperparameters to tune, to address the problems remaining in the field. Apart from research, I enjoy playing soccer and skiing.

Name: Yiwen Wu
PhD program: Joint Program in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and Theater & Performance Studies
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Education: University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; B.A., Drama, Media Studies; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; M.A.
Research: My interests in Chinese opera and the history of performance have emerged from one fundamental question: How do stories evolve across time and space? I want to explore the modality of Chinese opera across mediums, across decades, and across evolving national cultures. The dynamic interplay between performance and its medium fascinates me the most: How does media awareness affect our conceptions of performance? How does the experience of reading, listening, and watching enrich each other? I seek to explore performance as a living heritage–an amorphous assemblage of cultural conventions that continues to furnish the page, the stage, the screen, and our everyday life.

Name: Yuwei Zhou
PhD program: East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Guangdong, China
Education: University of California San Diego, CA; B.A., History and B.S., Mathematics.
Research: My current research interest lies on the craft production system in Bronze Age China. More specifically, I am interested in investigating how craft production activities reveals the social and power relations. Another focus of mine is the development of early Chinese writing, as reflected in the oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions. Coming from an undergraduate background of math and computer science, I am very enthusiastic about using computational methods to quantify and visualize the late Shang elite social network as represented in the distribution of clan emblems, which are preserved primarily on bronze vessels.

Fellows

Name: Rhya Moffitt Brooke
PhD program: English Language and Literature
Hometown: Piscataway, NJ
Education: University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (M.A., English); Northeastern University, Boston, MA (M.A., English); Southern Adventist University, Collegedale, TN (B.A., English)
Research: My research focuses on the intersections of Blackness, gender, and (dis)ability/(un)wellness in anglophone literatures of the Black Diaspora. While the bulk of my work focuses on fiction of the 20th- and 21st centuries, my work is cross-historical in its considerations of Black interiority and the affective afterlives of slavery. I am also an educator with experience teaching at the secondary through undergraduate levels. My curriculum design centers historically marginalized voices and prioritizes accessible pedagogies.

Name: Ihsan Ul Ihthisam Chappangan
PhD program: South Asian Languages and Civilization
Hometown: Kerala, India
Education: Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India (M.A., 2020); Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India (B.A., 2018)
Research: I am interested in the early modern history of Malabar (modern Kerala) and Ma‘bar (Coromandel) in the ‘Indian Ocean World’ (IOW). My project aims to undertake a historical and anthropological study of the circulation of Sufi texts and sounds, and its reception across the IOW. I would read texts in Arabic, Persian, Malayalam, Arabi-Malayāḷam, Tamil and Arabu-Tamil; as primary sources for my research. I am also interested in the historical, political and sociological aspects of various performance traditions among the Māppiḷa Muslims of Malabar.

Name: Panyu Chen
PhD program: Physics
Hometown: Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Education: University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (B.S., Physics; B.S., Mathematics)
Research: My research interest lies in the field of active matter, which are non-equilibrium systems driven internally by its microscopic components. As it is dissipative such system breaks time reversal symmetry and therefore possesses some novel properties. At UCSB I researched on microtubule based active nematics in Professor Zvonimir Dogic’s lab. Particularly, we placed inclusions within active nematics and studied their interaction. Currently I am working in Professor William Irvine’s lab on a system of spinning magnetic particles. We have observed several interesting phenomena. Most notably, the particles can self-organize into layers. I hope my research can reveal the fundamental laws behind the non equilibrium physics.

Name: Anna Conner
PhD program: History
Hometown: Portland, OR
Education: Portland State University, Portland, OR (B.A. Honors, History and English Literature); Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK (M.A., History of Medicine)
Research: I am interested in the history of medicine in early modern Europe, and specifically in experiences and representations of diverse or non-normative bodies, focusing on intersectional ideas of gender, disability, and race. I am also interested in the reception of classical medical ideas in the early modern period, particularly as they relate to understandings of the body. My B.A. Honors thesis focused on the possible dissection and vivisection of criminal bodies in Ptolemaic Alexandria, and my M.A. thesis studied representations of female bodies in early modern Europe, mainly within medical literature. In my free time I enjoy reading novels, baking, watching baking competition shows, and spending time with my family.

Name: Melina Gioconda Davis
PhD program: Comparative Human Development
Hometown: Miami, FL
Education: Barnard College of Columbia University, New York, NY (B.A., Political Science)
Research: My research spans topics in contemporary sexuality including pleasure, gender, anatomical variation, and the role of social movements and transnational medical communities in the production and dissemination of knowledge about sex. In addition to my studies at the University of Chicago, I work with grassroots collectives in the U.S. and Mexico and am co-founder of Vulgar, a Spanish-language sex education organization with a focus on pleasure and social justice. I facilitate trainings for educators and health professionals and have collaborated on projects that critically rewrite approaches to sexual health including Our Bodies Ourselves Today, It Gets Better’s Queer Sex Ed, and Pussypedia. I also create original cabaret and have performed at queer and transfeminist spaces internationally. In my free time, you can find me salsa dancing or cooking for friends.

Name: Isabella Di Giovanni
PhD program: Comparative Human Development
Hometown: New York
Education: Cornell University (B.A. Linguistics; B.A., Psychology)
Research: Broadly, I am interested in language acquisition and development. In particular, I am interested in exploring how children’s social interactions and environment influence how they learn language, and how these processes might be similar or different in different cultural and linguistic contexts. I also have an interest in language endangerment and revitalization. In my free time I enjoy reading, cooking, baking and visiting museums.

Name: Zi Yun Huang
PhD program: Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
Hometown: Toronto, Canada / Urumqi, China
Education: University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada (Master of Museum Studies and B.Sc., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology); University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada (M.A., Philosophy)
Research: My research connects the history of museums, natural history, and digital humanities. I’m especially interested in how the colonial legacy of museums creeps into contemporary practices of digitizing natural history collections, and conversely, how critical digitization practices can help to decolonize and indigenize museums. Before starting my PhD, I worked on various projects at the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto Allan Gardens Conservatory, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Toronto’s First Post Office. In my free time I like to garden, ferment vegetables, and hang out with other people’s cats and dogs.

Name: Henry Jones
PhD program: Psychology, Integrative Neuroscience
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Education: Brown University, Providence, RI (B.S., Cognitive Neuroscience)
Research: I am interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie adaptive behavior. In my undergrad work with David Badre, I explored how people create context-specific value representations. In my post-baccalaureate work with Russ Poldrack, I surveyed high-level functions of self-regulation. My current research focuses on how people can maintain goals in concert with other information to support flexible action. I’m interested in the format and dynamics of these representations – how quickly they are formed, how much information is stored, how robust to interference they are. Outside of research, I enjoy exploring the city, consuming a lot of media, and bringing people together.

Name: Stefanos Jones
PhD program: The Committee on Social Thought
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Education: Yale University, New Haven, CT (B.A., Philosophy)
Research: I completed my B.A. with a thesis on Plato’s Theaetetus and the philosophical problems surrounding the possibility of falsehood and error. I continue to think about these topics in the context of: Plato and Plato’s relation to the Sophists and the pre-Socratics; 19th Century German Idealism; the current intersection of Idealism and analytic philosophy.

Name: Daniel Lapinski
PhD program: South Asia Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Oak Brook, IL
Education: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (M.A., South Asia Studies); University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (B.A., Linguistics and SALC)
Research: My research focuses on the role of language in the conceptualization of Northeastern India in the history of modern South Asia. Focusing in particular on the situation of Meiteilon (“Manipuri”), I intend to examine the interactions between developments in linguistic scholarship, state language policies and literary institutions, and popular linguistic rights movements in shaping the political and sociocultural space of Northeast India over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Name: Jamie Lee
PhD program: English Language and Literature and Theatre and Performance Studies
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Education: University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA (B.A., Ethnic Studies with Honors); New York University, New York, NY (M.A., Performance Studies)
Research: I am a joint PhD student here at The University of Chicago in the departments of English Language and Literature and Theater and Performance Studies. The impetus of my work finds itself caught up in the thinking/doing/feeling of 20th and 21st century eco-literary and eco-artistic works written and created by Black women and Femmes. I am interested in engaging what it might mean to negotiate the category of human/non-human, as well the ways this finds itself positioned within moments and scenes of doom, devastation, and catastrophe within the current geological era, otherwise known as the “Anthropocene”. Furthermore, I am deeply intrigued by the ways Black Women and Femmes theorize “earth” in their writing and art practice. Moreover, I also am curious in thinking about the ways we can mobilize trans* as an emergent analytic, guiding principle, and commonplace for meditating on the entwined relation of race, gender, and ecology. By discussing new theories of relationality and embodiment in Black Feminist ecocriticism and its praxis, my research seeks to illuminate modes of gathering, assembly, and congregating in the lives of Black women and Femmes, and how these strategies in Black Feminist literature and art move us towards an insistence on Black livability that gesture towards new transcorporealities at the end of the world.
Subject Areas: African American Literature, Black Feminist Thought, Performance Studies, 20th/21st Visual Cultures, Trans* Studies, Ecocriticism/Environment Humanities, and Affect Studies.

Name: Rayne Liu
PhD program: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Hometown: Xiaogan, China
Education: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (B.A., Astronomy; B.A., Mathematics)
Research: I study theoretical cosmology. I am intrigued by topics such as dark matter and dark energy, tests of general relativity and beyond, baryogenesis and inflation. Some of my past works include using the large scale structure of the universe to constrain modified gravity models, and testing the black hole no-hair theorem with the ringdown of gravitational waves. This is primarily why I find UChicago Astro where my heart and soul belong. I am excited to continue working and growing with the vibrant cosmology community here, and learn to build theories and/or examine them with the wealth of upcoming observational data. When not working, I enjoy doing handicrafts including crochet, sewing, origami, polymer clay, etc. while driving myself crazy with philosophical problems and poems. I am also a regular French learner, and am taking voice lessons with an interest in coloratura.

Name: Yuhan Liu
PhD program: Computer Science
Hometown: Chongqing, China
Education: University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI (B.S., Computer Sciences)
Research: I am generally interested in the intersection between systems/software and Machine Learning. More and more researchers and developers are starting to use ML models, and it’s important to optimize not only the ML models to achieve better accuracy but also the software that uses ML models. My undergraduate research focused on improving the ML models by accelerating the training or inference procedures of Deep Neural Networks (e.g. large-scale language models). Currently, I am interested in developing robust and efficient software systems that better utilizes ML techniques to meet different objectives across various users and applications.

Name: Kunal Marwaha
PhD program: Computer Science
Hometown: Sacramento, CA
Education: UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (B.S., Engineering Physics; B.S., Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences)
Research: I study the possibilities and limits of algorithms for quantum computers.

Name: Misha S McDaniel
PhD program: English, Black Studies
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Education: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (B.A., English; B.A., Africana Studies)
Research: By adopting a Black feminist approach that emerges from my readings of a host of thinkers such as Michelle M. Wright, Zenzel Isoke, Saidiya Hartman, and M. NourbeSe Philip, I situate the story as a container for imagining new Black possibilities, a space where history, truth, and fact are stretched beyond the limits of what constitutes the “real.” Inspired by the question of who owns the future, I endeavor to think about violence within the temporal plane, considering ownership to be a relational construct while rethinking the unique role African Americans play in that state of (re-)ownership. My research seeks to answer several questions: how do African-American speculative narratives reflect the American master narrative and society in ways that are the most “unbelievable”? How does positioning memory as archive allow for the re-renderings, “re-tellings,” or “un-tellings” of Black histories and presents? How does the Black Imaginary help us to imagine Black presents and futures that do not end in extinction, that are able to exist outside of Eurocentric forms of knowledge production and outside of anti-Black capitalist conceptions of time, reality, and possibility? Outside of the classroom, I write speculative and realistic fiction, I act, and I do digital illustration and design.

Name: Siqi Ni
PhD program: Physics
Hometown: Wuhan, China
Education: The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (B.A., Physics; B.A. Mathematics)
Research: Broadly, I’m interested in a variety of topics in theoretical physics. I am particularly intrigued by the intersections of physics at different energy scales. My time outside of physics drips away in rewatching movies, indulging in classical music, and learning new languages.

Name: Mark Olson
PhD program: Computation and Applied Mathematics
Hometown: Los Osos, CA
Education: University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (B.A., Mathematics, computer science minor)
Research: While studying at Berkeley Mark worked at the Center for Integrative Planetary Science, developing and testing crystal structure search algorithms. He is interested in probability and computational optimization problems. On a more personal note, Mark enjoys tennis, baking, playing the piano, and studying Swedish.

Name: Sebastián Ortega
PhD program: Sociology
Hometown: Escondido, CA
Education: California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA (B.A., Sociology); Columbia University, New York, NY (M.A., Sociology)
Research:
Spending most of my teen years in the juvenile system and engaged in street violence, I have spent the last nine years using educational, political, cultural empowerment to support gang members in California. My research focuses on the perpetuation of settler colonialism in the (in)justice system and how it targets resistance groups (street/prison gangs).

Prior to coming to UChicago, I worked at the Columbia Justice Lab as an Officer of Research on the Rikers Island Longitudinal Study (RILS) led by Dr. Bruce Western. From 2016 to 2019 I also worked with youth in the juvenile system as a case manager. While working as a case manager I had the opportunity to train various youth-serving agencies throughout Southern California on how to work with “gang involved” youth and share my knowledge on settler colonialism as it relates to Chicano/Indigenous street and prison gangs and the movement to abolish the current carceral apparatus.

Name: Yifan Peng
PhD program: Computational and Applied Mathematics
Hometown: Zhejiang, China
Education: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China (B.S., Mathematics; B.S., Applied Mathematics)
Research: My research interest lies in machine learning and its application for scientific computing. During my undergraduate study, I had research on deep learning to develop long range convolution for point clouds, especially for dealing with long range interaction with quasi linear computational cost. Besides, I also developed a new method in neural network framework to solve high dimensional partial differential equations based on certain initialization strategy of neural parameters, which is easy to analyze its training dynamic. For future research, I have broad interests in optimization and data analysis.

Name: Rebecca Posner-Hess
PhD program: Classics
Hometown: Chapel Hill, NC
Education: Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA (B.A., Ancient Greek)
Research: I received my BA from Swarthmore College in 2021 in Ancient Greek and Latin, with a second minor in Religion. My undergraduate work focused on the Odyssey, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Vergil, and Ovid. Some of my current interests include Greek tragedy and theatrics, metaphorical and material textiles, ancient conceptions of the body and its borders, and literary expressions of memory and mourning. I have also studied biblical Hebrew and ancient Judaism and have recently been interested in biblical and Homeric orality and multitextuality. Outside of academia, I enjoy choral music and fiber arts.

Name: Benjamin Salman
PhD program: Committee on Social Thought
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Education: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (B.A., Joint Major in Philosophy and Religions Studies); Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (M.M., Music Composition)
Research: I am broadly interested in philosophy, both historical and systematic; specific areas of focus are Greek and German Philosophy (especially Plato and Hegel), aesthetics (especially the philosophy of music), and the history and philosophy of logic. In addition to my philosophical work, I am a classically trained pianist and composer, and continue to perform and compose semi-professionally. When not reading or writing philosophy or playing music, I endeavor to spend as much time as I can hiking in the mountains and rainforests of my native Pacific Northwest.

Name: Misha Wei Sohan
PhD program: Statistics

Name: Lourdes Honor Lacombe Taylor
PhD program: English

Name: Gasira Timir
PhD program: English
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Education: Haverford College, Haverford, PA (B.A., English, Concentration in African and Africana Studies)
Research: I am interested in analytic frameworks which take up and respond to institutionality and precarity. My thinking often constellates around educational institutions in the 20th and 21st century, and the cultural and intellectual formations of inextricably entangled phenomena such as “merit” and “meritocracy.” Currently, my research attends closely to the machinery of racial-class mobility and bourgeois racial uplift, and in doing so, I excavate contradictions concerning bourgeois black mobility and the ultimate “non-event of emancipation” transhistorically.

Additionally, I feel frequently interpellated to research and discuss a wide range of seemingly unrelated objects and materials—from cowboys in the afterlife of the frontier; to Las Vegas weddings; to the Oprahfication of reality and the remediation of 19th and 20th century New Thought philosophy into the mainstream; to Rachel Dolezal. A recurring topos across these subjects is a generalized preoccupation with disaffiliation and the conditions of present-day, everyday citizenship. Consequently, my work is very character-driven: I am motivated by and naturally gravitate towards individuals and individual circumstances that many would consider spectacularly kitschy, or otherwise “off-beat.” Accordingly, my thinking frequently gets caught up with/between the aesthetics of refusal—of disaffiliating and of “turning away,” especially from that which would be generally considered “normal”—and current discourse around pre-personal social forces and formations, “the affective turn.”

Name: Kelly Wagman
PhD program: Computer Science
Hometown: Annapolis, MD
Education: MIT, Cambridge, MA (M.S., Comparative Media Studies);
Brown University, Providence, RI (B.A., Computer Science; B.A., Economics)
Research: I’m interested in understanding how to build more equitable and inclusive technology. I work in the area of human-computer interaction, which fuses computer science with social perspectives. Before coming to UChicago, I completed a master’s in Comparative Media Studies at MIT where my thesis focused on understanding gender and power in engineering communities as well as in human-machine relations. Prior to MIT, I spent several years working in the tech industry. I look forward to continuing to bring a critical, feminist lens to technology development in my work at UChicago. In my free time, I like to escape the tech world through rock climbing, yoga, and art.

Name: Jennifer Williams
PhD program: English Language and Literature; Theater and Performance Studies
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Education: University of Washington, Seattle, Seattle, WA (B.A., Law)
Research: My work is situated at the intersection of Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies. At this junction, I primarily think about the material techniques of Black performers working across dance and new media genres. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the role of affect and embodiment in Black queer performance art as a window into Black political life. Taking the premise that the body is a principal site of knowledge-production as a point of departure, I am interested in how Black and Black queer performers illustrate this fact, as well as how they reveal the nature of black political ontology. In this way, I am guided by the idea that the realm of the aesthetic can help us understand the theory and praxis of Black political subjects. My work has been featured in the Black Embodiments Studio’s annual publication, A Year in Black Art.

Name: Rachel Willis
PhD program: English

Name: Yaoxuan Zeng
PhD program: Geophysical Sciences
Hometown: Zigong, China
Education: Peking University, Beijing, China (B.S., Atmospheric Sciences)
Research: I’ve been working on ocean dynamics in worlds outside the Earth. My undergraduate research focuses on oceanic superrotation on tidally locked planets orbiting M-dwarfs. In UChicago, my research will focus on ocean dynamics on icy moons (like satellites orbiting Jupiter and Saturn) in the solar systems.

Name: Ronghu Zhu
PhD program: East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: China
Education: Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China (A.B., 2010); University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (A.M., 2016); Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands (M.A., 2019); University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (M.A., 2021)
Research: I am interested in the transmission of early Chinese magico-religious practices into Medieval China. By focusing on practices, I seek to investigate the lived religion by actual religious individuals.

Víctor Hugo Almendra Hernández

PhD Program: Mathematics
Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico
Education: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, B.S. Mathematics
Research: I am interested in the interaction of combinatorics with other areas of mathematics, particularly with algebra and topology. During my undergrad at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México I did research on discrete geometry studying Helly type theorems and wrote a dissertation on homological and representation stability of braid groups. I am looking forward to learning more about math in general at UChicago with the main purpose of doing research on interesting topics that bring combinatorial ideas into play. In my free time I enjoy watching and playing sports in general, especially soccer, and watching movies.

Eitan Borgnia

PhD Program: Computer Science
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Education: Caltech, Pasadena, CA, B.Sc., Mathematics
Research: At UChicago, I plan to work at the intersection of security and machine learning with Ben Zhao. I graduated from Caltech in 2019, where I studied math with a focus on geometry and topology. Prior to joining UChicago, I worked on a variety of machine learning projects as a research scientist at UMD including differentially private dataset release, model explainability with parameter saliency, algorithm-solving neural networks with weight sharing, and cold diffusion models. When I’m not working on research I like swimming, playing chess, and cooking.

Jiaheng Chen

PhD Program: Computational and Applied Mathematics
Hometown: Zhengzhou, China
Education: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, B.S. Mathematics & Applied Mathematics
Research: My research interests lie in the general area of applied math and statistics: scientific computing, machine learning, applied analysis and probability. Also, I’m extremely interested in building bridges between statistical physics, information theory and deep learning, designing efficient and provable algorithms and deepening the theoretical understanding. Outside of mathematics, I enjoy watching movies and reading books.

Abby Clements

PhD Program: Comparative Human Development
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Education: Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA; B.A., Neuroscience & Linguistics
Research: Abby is broadly interested in research on neurolinguistics, sign languages, and concepts, and their developmental progression. In the past, she has done work into event boundaries, semantic memory biases, and whether concepts have cores or essences. She hopes to study Protactile sign language, which is used by DeafBlind people, using both psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspectives. Outside of the university she fosters dogs and cats and owns far too many house plants.

Alejandro Cueto

PhD Program: Music History and Theory
Hometown: Tucson, AZ
Education: Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) B.M. Horn Performance, Music Theory; University of Texas (Austin, TX), M.M. Music Theory
I am a music theorist and historian focusing on topics of decoloniality, agency, and accessibility in contemporary jazz and popular music. Recent research of mine has considered the way Esperanza Spalding weaves racial capitalist and Black feminist themes into her musical textures and narratives in her album, Emily’s D+Evolution (2016). Outside of academic studies, I am an avid ceramicist, continue to play the horn, and am learning recorder.

Katelyn Feuling

PhD Program: Chemistry
Hometown: Muskego, WI
Education: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN; B.S., Chemistry; Minors: Physics, Leadership
Research: I am interested in studying and harnessing the fundamental physics of light-matter interactions by using ultrafast spectroscopy. Quantum mechanical properties dictate essential chemical reactivity and biological functions, such as energy transfer in photosynthesis. By understanding and tuning these processes through our “window” into the quantum world – light – we can not only appreciate the complex functions necessary for life, but also use the principles to inform chemical, material, and biological engineering. In addition to conducting research in quantum biology, I am passionate about and committed to increasing accessibility in science education and research. Through building intentional and inclusive pedagogical and workplace structures, science as a whole will be accessible to current scientists and an increasingly diverse next generation.

Yu-Shan (Grace) Huang

PhD Program: Developmental Psychology
Hometown: Taiwan (ROC) and Shanghai, China
Education: Boston University, Boston, MA; Ed.M. Higher Education Administration | Northeastern University, Boston, MA; B.S. Psychology
Research: I am a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Lin Bian (EAST Lab) and Dr. Susan Levine (Cognitive Development Lab) at the University of Chicago. During my studies at Northeastern University, I worked in Dr. John Coley’s lab where I studied “cognitive consturals”, such as essentialism, and how they affect people’s understanding and reasoning about the world. I completed an undergraduate honors thesis that explored the relations between empathy and anthropic thinking in vegetarians and non-vegetarians. After graduating from NU, I obtained a Master’s degree in Education from Boston University, during which I formulated my doctoral research inquiries. I am interested in questions related to gender stereotypes and social biases in educational settings. In my free time, I enjoy pour-over coffee, yoga, and traveling.

Daniela Juarez

PhD Program: Sociology
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Education: The University of Texas at Dallas B.A., Sociology, A. Tyler Junior College, Political Science
Research: My research aims to understand the educational, political, and social inequalities that undocumented immigrants encounter in higher education institutions. Particularly, I am interested in examining the experiences of undocumented students that were not able to qualify for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). In addition, I want to explore and document how undocumented immigrants utilize social media to build meaningful connections and communities. Outside of school, I really enjoy spending time with my cat Buki.

Ye Ram (Esther) Kim

PhD Program: Comparative Literature
Hometown: Tunis, Tunisia
Education: B.A. in Comparative Literature, French & Francophone Studies, and Political Science, Bryn Mawr College, 2022
Research: My research explores questions of multilingualism and identity in North Africa/Maghreb, along with my interests in vernacularism, postcolonialism, and indigeneity (Amazighté). While multilingualism is the daily reality of many people and accompanies the process of globalization, it is only rarely manifested in literature which remains by and large defined by monolinguistic markets. Multilingualism has shaped my identity: I grew up in Tunisia, where I spoke Korean at home, French and Modern Standard Arabic in school, Tunisian dialect in the streets, and have continued higher education at English-speaking universities in the US. Despite its specificities, my situation echoes that of the Maghrebi community that does not speak in the languages they write, and do not write in the languages they speak. Hence, I ask: Can there be such a thing as a multilingual literature? How can multilingualism be expressed in languages of the “Other?” I plan to continue exploring how literary spaces can accommodate the expression and exploration of multilingual and multicultural identities. While I seek to focus on North Africa/Maghreb, I’m interested in researching linguistic politics and parallels between the Maghreb and East Asia, through a study of literature and cinema in French, Arabic, and Korean. Other than research and reading, I enjoy writing music and recording songs!

Julia Kulon

PhD Program: Slavic Languages & Literatures
Hometown: Warsaw, Poland; Chicago, IL
Education: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (M.A., Modern and Contemporary Art History); St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD (B.A., Liberal Arts)
Research: Broadly speaking, I am concerned with the affective complexity of tumultuous social and political tensions in post-war Poland, c. 1945-1960, and how these factors found their expression in artistic, literary, and cultural production. At UChicago, I intend to appraise Socialist Realism (c. 1950-1955) as one such symptom of this entanglement, which had been informed by the discomposure provoked by the country’s enormous ruin and overwhelming project of reconstruction after the war. My current research grapples with the question of whether 1945 marked an intellectual caesura for Polish culture, or if the immediate post-war period was a disorienting continuation of the aspirations and ambitions of interwar leftist and avantgarde circles. In my free time, I enjoy visiting museums, listening to jazz, and bike rides by the lake.

Suyash Kumar

PhD Program: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Hometown: Patna, Bihar, India
Education: UCLA, BS Physics
Research: I currently work with Professor Hsiao-Wen Chen to examine the diffuse gas surrounding galaxies outside the Milky Way. Cosmological theories predict that roughly 5% of the Universe should be made up of visible matter, or baryons. While stars are a major source of baryons, they do not yield the expected baryon fraction of the universe. This led astronomers to look for baryons locked up in other sources. After extensive searches, they discovered a number of baryons comparable to the stellar mass in the Circumgalactic Media of galaxies, which refers to the diffuse gas around the star-forming region of galaxies. We use spectroscopic data from a variety of telescopes (like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Magellan Telescopes in Chile) to constrain the mass, kinematics, and chemical composition/ origin of the Circumgalactic Medium. Apart from research, I love cooking, watching TV shows, playing the guitar, working out, and making jokes!

Ziyi Lin

PhD Program: East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Zhejiang, China
Education: Harvard University, MA, Regional Studies-East Asia; University of California, Berkeley, B.A., Japan Studies & Computer Science
Research: I am interested in Japanese media and popular culture from the late 20th century to contemporary time, hoping to expand my research range to include China and Korea in the near future. I am particularly intrigued by the theme of space and modes of spatiality in different media, from printed to digital. During my years researching Japanese media, I have been guided by inquiries such as how space is configured and how people experience space with different media, especially digital media including the Internet and video games. A product out of such curiosity is my master’s thesis on Japanese video game maps. At the present, I actively seek to apply my background of programming knowledge to both better understand digital media and participate in digital humanities projects. I have worked in several digitizing and GIS projects and I am also an amateur game developer.

Tyler Lutz

PhD program: English Language and Literature
Hometowns: Ripon and Modesto, CA
Education: University of Chicago: A.B. English; Yale University: Ph.D. Physics and Certificate in Environmental Humanities
Research: I work at the intersection of science and literature, but not to “bridge the gap,” think with “both sides of the brain,” or reconcile our “two cultures.” I’m committed, rather, to thinking the gap itself: to charting the space between literature and science by respecting both the difference and interpenetration of its limiting terms. By meeting literature and science in their ecological middle—examining both how literature has shaped scientific practice and how science has informed literary reading and writing in turn—I pursue a two-way tack uniquely apposite to focalizing the intricate push and pull between human and non-human domains that characterizes contemporary ecological thinking.

Lucia Neirotti

PhD Program: Art History
Hometown: Birmingham, UK
Education: Cambridge University (B.A., Art History)
Research: My research focuses on artist’s altered modes of production in the context of dictatorship in Latin America. With particular focus on Argentina in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I study the parallel and overlapping discourses of dematerialisation of the art object and commitment to political militancy. This encompasses the development of Media Art, performance, and so-called exploitation art, as well as all new forms of address in self-curated, extra-institutional installations. In my work, I seek to problematise essentialising Western narratives of Latin American art and expand scholarship in English on this subject.

Anwār Omeish

PhD Program: Political Science
Hometown: Fairfax, VA
Education: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (BA, Social Studies)
Research: My research focuses on the intersections between the intellectual and ethical traditions we describe as religions and the varied forms of theoretical inquiry about collective life we describe as political thought. In particular, I am interested in how to conceptualize hope, political action, and temporality in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, as well as how such conceptualizations connect to a broader loss of futurity in the face of late capitalism and climate crisis. I conduct my theoretical inquiry with a clear commitment to praxis, a commitment I try to embody throughout my life.

Before UChicago, I pursued an MPhil in Islamic Studies and History at the University of Oxford, focusing on juristic articulations of political thought in premodern Muslim societies, and completed a BA in Social Studies at Harvard University, where I explored how assumptions of secularity in Frantz Fanon’s work limited what he saw as politically possible in revolutionary Algeria.

Madeline Ouimet

PhD Program: Near Eastern Art & Archaeology and Cuneiform Studies
Hometown: Spring Green, WI
Education: University of Chicago, B.A., Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Research: My broad goal as a researcher is to further our understanding of daily life and its emic experience(s) in ancient Mesopotamia by integrating archaeological and textual evidence. As an archaeologist, I have participated in fieldwork in the U.S., Israel, Turkey, and Iraqi Kurdistan. As a philologist, I am a researcher for the Oriental Institute’s Tablet Collection in projects such as artifact digitization, museum exhibition, and educational outreach. As for independent research, my interests lie primarily in ‘the anthropology of the senses’: my past work ranges from ontologies of observability in first-millennium-BCE divination texts to the socially-constitutive and material implications of legal witnessing, as sensory practice, in the Late Bronze Age. My plans for future research continue to draw upon such body-centric, experiential perspectives (e.g., habitus, ‘body technique,’ and phenomenology) to investigate how encultured sensory experiences, activities, and the ways people in the ancient world thought about their own sensoria play a fundamental role in shaping historically-specific social structures as well as the urban built world itself, particularly in contexts of non-elite daily life and small-scale domestic contexts.

Ravi Prakash

PhD Program: South Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Bhopal, India
Education: Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (MA, Arts and Aesthetics); Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (BTech and MTech, Chemical Engineering)
Research: I am interested in the co-constitutive relations between forms of literature and sociality. I would like to think about how ‘Hindi’ poetic texts circulated and how their literariness was variously conceived by different interpretive communities (courtly, mercantile, monastic etc.) in the 16th to 18th centuries. My project will also look into the discourse created around these same texts under the rubric of history (itihās) and criticism (ālocanā) from the early 20th century onwards. Hopefully, thinking through these two moments will allow me to discern how the affinities between poetics and ethics changed from pre-modern to modern times.

Kate Reed

PhD Program: History
Hometown: Annapolis, MD
Education: Princeton University, New Jersey: AB in History (2019); Oxford University, United Kingdom: MPhil in Economic and Social History (2022)
Research: I study the economic and social history of modern Mexico, with a particular emphasis on social histories of development, labor, gender, and their intersections. My research takes up questions about the articulation of traditionally unwaged domestic work with formal labor markets; the role of debt and indebtedness in nineteenth and twentieth century labor regimes; and the unequal distribution of risk, both financial and otherwise, at scales from the intra-familial to the international. Before beginning graduate study, I worked as a teaching fellow at Princeton’s Global History Lab, and I continue to participate in a number of collaborate teaching, oral history, and writing projects with refugee and migrant historians.

Asya Sagnak

PhD Program: Theatre and Performance Studies and Comparative Literature
Hometown: Istanbul, Turkey
Education: Barnard College, New York, NY, BA in Political Science; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, MA in the Humanities
Research: Asya Sagnak’s research focuses on the cultural and affective economies of self-sacrificing protest performance, particularly in the Middle East. In this, she wishes to articulate a performance philosophy of decay—of that which degrades over time. She is attentive, first, to the body: to the materiality of bodily decay, and to the body’s decay under the carceral state. She wonders what collective subjecthood or futurity might be found under these circumstances. Her inquiries draw from the fields of performance studies, political theory, affect studies, poetics, and queer theory, as well as from ethnography and translation. Asya loves photography and stone fruit. Prior to her arrival in Chicago, she was a writing consultant at Columbia University.

Nishan D. Varatharajan

PhD Program: Social Thought
Hometown: Sydney, Australia
Education: University of Cambridge (MPhil, Political Thought and Intellectual History); University of Sydney (M.A., Political Theory and Design)
Research: I look to explore the possibility of leading an integrated life during the Anthropocene. My research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century German thought, philosophical accounts of human nature, moral epistemology, the sacred, moral imagination, and the philosophy of narrative. Two songs by the name of ‘Work’ – performed by Rihanna and Charlotte Day Wilson, respectively – have been on my Spotify Wrapped every year since 2016.

Xinyu Wang

PhD Program: PhD program in Political Science
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Education: New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China (B.A., Humanities; B.A., Social Science with Honors); The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (M.A., Social Sciences)
Research: I am interested in the intersection of domestic politics and grand strategy. I am fascinated by the puzzle of why states invent grand-strategic visions. Exploring normative ideals of world order, I wrote my BA honors thesis on the usefulness of Confucianism for contemporary China and beyond. I asked why and how thinkers construct a Confucian alternative to the “liberal international order.” Shifting to empirical inquiries into grand strategy, I wrote my MA thesis on China’s Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI). I asked why some BRI members have engaged more with BRI than others. To further research the puzzle of grand-strategic visions, I would like to address it as part of a broader question of how revisionist states close capability gaps via the interaction between economic and military might. And I am eager to analyze the impacts of states’ failure to meet economic objectives on grand-strategic changes and military buildup.

Alex Akhundov

PhD Program: Chemistry
Hometown: Baku, Azerbaijan
Education: Honors Bachelor of Science (H.B.Sc.) in Chemistry (2023) – York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Research: During his undergraduate studies, Alex spent two years working with Prof. Ryan Hili on a medicinal chemistry project in epitranscriptomics, developing small molecule inhibitors of a protein that binds modified RNA. He then joined the lab of Prof. Christine Le to work on synthetic organic methodology, developing a stereoselective reaction to synthesize monofluorinated lactams using difluorocarbene reagents. His future research interests lie with exploring novel paradigms of reactivity, exploiting unique reactive intermediates and studying their mechanisms to develop new chemical reactions and strategies for constructing organic molecules. Outside of science, Alex is a former dual-sport competitive athlete, having run the 400m sprint at the European Youth Olympics and played at the FIBA Junior European Basketball Championship. He is also a passionate music fan and musician, mainly playing the drums and guitar, and also enjoys working in visual arts, primarily through photography. At UChicago, Alex will pursue a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, a discipline that provides the perfect blend of artistic creativity and analytical problem solving.

Annabella Archacki

PhD Program: Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
Hometown: Austin, TX
Education: University of Cambridge (MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science), University of Chicago (BA in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine)
Research: I study the history of science, with particular interest in the role of ethics and law. I am especially drawn to questions about doubt, denial, probability, and prediction in imperial and colonial contexts. I want to know how historical actors move from what they say they know to what they actually do. Before the PhD, I worked at an environmentalist nonprofit, where I developed curricula on local ecology for schools across Chicago. I was also a student researcher for UChicago’s College Summer Institute, pursuing interdisciplinary research on animal and artificial intelligence. My non-academic writing has covered topics including the environmental history of what have been termed “diseases of the will” (such as mental illness and tuberculosis), the role of AI in sustainability, and the debates over legal personhood for animals and AI.

Taimur Aziz

PhD Program: Committee on Social Thought
Hometown:    Islamabad, Pakistan
Education: Harvard University (B.A, Philosophy); University of Chicago (M.A, Divinity)
Research: My interest in the history of philosophy is focused mainly on two areas: Ancient Greek and modern German thought. Thematically, I am most interested in questions of metaphysics and epistemology, perception, and the problem of error as they relate to idealist thought. More recently, I have also become interested in questions of political philosophy especially as they pertain to the development of public institutions, especially legal and educational institutions, in post-colonial states.
I competed a BA in Philosophy at Harvard with a focus on modern German thought and medieval Arabic philosophy. In my MA at the University of Chicago, I focused mainly on studying Ancient Greek and Aristotle.

Camille Biron-Boileau

PhD Program: Sociology
Hometown: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Education: Université de Montréal, Montreal, B.Sc. in Sociology
Research: My research interests lie at the intersection of stratification studies, economic sociology, and gender studies. During my Ph.D., I aim to challenge the way stratification research studies the role of women in the intergenerational reproduction of social advantage by considering their involvement in financial transfers to children, such as inheritance, gifts, and other parental investments. Up until now, intergenerational wealth transmission has been perceived and studied as occurring mainly through the paternal line. However, because this type of transmission involves a great share of emotional and care work, which is disproportionately taken on by women, their involvement in these processes deserves further exploration. Before coming to UChicago, I worked on projects studying testamentary practices and inheritance trends in the context of Quebec and Canada.

Tania Dhaliwal

PhD Program: Developmental Psychology
Hometown: Tarn Taran, Punjab, India
Education: Stanford University, CA; B.S. in Symbolic Systems; Minor in Data Science
Research: Currently, at UChicago, I work with Dr. Susan Levine and Dr. Katherine Kinzler. Broadly, I am interested in the development of mathematical reasoning and concepts: (a) how it unfolds in diverse environments—affected by different cognitive, linguistic and sociocultural factors, and (b) how it affects our social behavior and skills such as negotiation. Prior to joining UChicago, I completed my undergraduate studies at Stanford University, then worked as a research associate at Carnegie Mellon University and as a lab manager at University of Michigan. In my research at these places, I have investigated healthy-eating growth mindsets, cross-cultural development of causal relational reasoning, associative and taxonomic priming effects on the development of word learning, perception and use of generic language, and children’s causal understanding of viral transmission. Apart from research, I enjoy pour-overs, hiking, travelling, late-night news satire shows, and Formula One!

Joe (Zihui) Ding

PhD Program: Philosophy
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Education: Haverford College, BA, Mathematics and Philosophy
Research: Her philosophical interests have been inspired by reflections on human capacity for knowledge, mainly through reading Kant and John McDowell. At the center of her current thinking is the aim to understand the place of rationality in nature. From there, she starts to see the connections with logic, Aristotle’s metaphysics as well as Chinese philosophy, as scattered as they might seem. When not doing philosophy, she likes distilling, though not always successfully, her potentially self-indulgent sentiments into poetry, and taking photos of random subtleties on the road that catch her attention.

Nam Anh Dinh

PhD Program: Computer Science
Hometown: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Education: University of Chicago, B.S., Computer Science; Minor, Linguistics
Research: I’m working with Dr. Rana Hanocka and members of the 3DL (Threedle) lab, where we explore the intersection between 3D graphics and deep learning. I’m currently working on deep learning methods for geometry processing and 3D shape representation, with an aim to build fruitful and exploratory creative tooling for artists.

Sana Elgamal

PhD Program: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hometown: Giza, Egypt
Education: New York University Abu Dhabi, B.S., Physics
Research: My interest lies in the field of theoretical cosmology. I am particularly interested in exploring the Physics of the early Universe and models beyond the standard cosmological paradigm. In the past, I have conducted research in astrophysics and cosmology spanning observations, simulations, and theory. Specifically, I have investigated the formation and evolution of galaxies, explored the nature of dark matter using cosmological simulations, analyzed weak gravitational lensing data, and studied the large-scale structure of the Universe using Lagrangian Perturbation Theory. During my PhD at UChicago, I am very excited to utilize analytical and numerical approaches to further learn about the origin and evolution of structure in the Universe and possibly of new fundamental physics. Currently, I am doing research in the area of inhomogeneous cosmologies using numerical relativity, where I am assessing the impact of backreaction (i.e., the effect of inhomogeneities) on observables. Beside research, I love playing the violin and doing nature photography.

Alex Evert

PhD Program: Political Economics
Hometown: Cincinnati, OH
Education: University of Rochester, B.S., Political Science, B.A., Physics
Research: After initially planning on studying physics, I discovered my passion for applying a more quantitative approach to topics in politics and economics. My current research is on how candidates strategically shape their own perceptions in the electorate and under what conditions that can lead to partisan polarization. At UChicago, I’m hoping to use applied game theory to study how the availability of information impacts the strategic interactions between politicians and voters in elections and in government. On the side, I also enjoy cooking, baking, and playing piano to destress.

Amber Fehrs

PhD Program: Cinema and Media Studies
Hometown: Norfolk, NE
Education: Brown University, B.A. English, Medieval Cultures
Research: I’m interested in topics that deal with the intersection of narrative creation and technological development, including (but not limited to!) podcasting, social media-based fiction such as alternate reality games and collaborative fiction, and fandom. I graduated from Brown University in 2022, where I completed an undergraduate thesis that explored the dynamics of artistic control between podcasters, advertisers, and audiences in our ever-shifting social media landscape. Outside of work, I enjoy running, playing the guitar, and listening to comedy.

Gregory Gorobets

PhD Program: Chemistry
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Education: University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; B.S., Chemistry
Research: At UCLA, I discovered my passion for chemistry under the guidance of Dr. Alexander Spokoyny. Driven by the potential for advances in chemistry to address pressing environmental challenges, I pursued further research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where I worked with Dr. Ramesh Bhave to develop membrane-solvent extraction techniques capable of recycling critical and scarce elements from lithium-ion batteries. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I am excited to research interfacial self-assembly on electrode materials to advance techniques that allow us to shift away from fossil fuels and achieve carbon negativity in a scalable way. Outside of the lab, you can find me watching Formula 1, bouldering at a local climbing gym, and exploring all of Chicago’s fantastic coffee and food!

Devin Green

PhD Program: Political Science
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Education: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; B.A., Political Science
Research: My research interests relate to the tension between wealthy interests and people’s movements in the political arena. My B. A thesis, supervised by Dr. Hahrie Han, illuminated the strained political conditions that drive activists to form coalitions with their “natural enemy” in politics, corporations. At the University of Chicago, I am researching the role of corporations and wealthy individuals in bankrolling police departments, prosecutors, etc., and the dire consequences of these relationships for race-class subjugated communities. These projects reflect my current research agenda of demonstrating the role of political and economic elites in subverting the interests of racial minorities and the poor. Before transferring to Johns Hopkins, I earned my A. A at the Community College of Baltimore County and I am passionate about mentoring students from backgrounds like mine. Outside of academia, I am an avid gamer and coffee shop enthusiast.

Nicole Hart

PhD Program: Sociology
Hometown: Houston, TX
Education: University of Houston, Houston, TX; B.S., Sociology; M.A., Sociology
Research: My focus lies in anti-Black racism and how that affects Black well-being in several contexts with a particular focus on urban sociology. I have previously completed studies on Black-White education disparities, racial differences in mental health coping strategies, and racial disparities in flooding in Houston, Texas. My goal at the University of Chicago is to incorporate geospatial data methodology, as well as qualitative methods, to investigate how anti-Black racism affects Black Americans in urban contexts.

Wenke (Coco) Huang

PhD Program: Joint PhD program in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Theatre and Performance Studies
Hometown: Beijing, China
Education: Northwestern University, Evanston, B.A. Performance Studies
Research: Coco has worked in Chicago and Beijing as a freelance dramaturg and director. As a scholar-artist, she is interested in the adaptations of classical myths and legends, physical theatre, and dance dramaturgy, in particular the folk dances of ethnic minorities in rural China. Focusing on Han China’s geographical and ethnic periphery, she hopes to investigate the interconnections of four cultural elements all pronounced “wu” in Chinese: martial arts, dance, witchcraft, and (performance) objects. Subsequently, how these expressive devices have consolidated and preserved the cultural identities of ethnic subgroups, manifested in the nation’s classical dance history and performance repertoire, and fused into contemporary choreography by Chinese and international artists.

Emir Faruk Kayahan

PhD Program: PhD in Germanic Studies
Hometown: Bremen, Germany
Education: BA in German Studies, Islamic Religious Education and BA in Islamic Theology, University of Osnabrück (21), MSt in Islamic Studies and History, Oxford University (22), MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation, Oxford University (23)
Research: Emir primarily focuses on the bidirectional cross-cultural exchange in philosophy and literature between the “Orient” and the “Occident.” His research centers on 18th-century German Enlightenment discussions of religion by thinkers like Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Goethe, including both their reception of Islamic thought and literature, and their reception by thinkers in the Islamic world. His ongoing projects include examining the reception of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Muslim world, especially through the work of Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869-1954), and investigating the literary and philosophical reception of Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185) in the German Enlightenment.

Juliet Kelso

PhD Program: Comparative Human Development
Hometown: Santa Cruz, CA
Education: Williams College, Williamstown, MA (B.A., Anthropology and German Studies); Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, Washington, D.C. (M.A., German and European Studies)
Research: I study the representation, participation, and exclusion of asylum seekers and refugees in social and political contexts, particularly in Germany and Europe. In my previous research, I have examined art workshops for refugees, housing for asylum seekers, and the political participation of noncitizens in Germany. In my free time, I like to cook, embroider, play darts, learn languages, and send postcards.

Edmund Kennedy

PhD Program: History
Hometown: Cleveland, OH
Education: Amherst College, B.A. in History
Research: My research interests focus on understanding the interworkings of the U.S. empire throughout the Pacific. For my undergraduate thesis, I focused on the U.S. Civil Administration on Okinawa following the end of the Second World War. At UChicago, I want to expand my focus to include more countries and territories throughout the Pacific, such as Korea and the Philippines, to fully encapsulate what “empire” looks like for the U.S. When I am not researching, I enjoy finding new cafes, record shops, and antique stores.

Matt King

PhD Program: Physics
Hometown: Syracuse, NY
Education: Yale University, New Haven, CT; M.S. Physics, B.S. Physics and Mathematics
Research: I think neutrinos are wild. There is so much that we are on the precipice of learning about them, and I am excited to be a part of that present and future. I am currently a collaborator on the LArIAT, SBND, and DUNE liquid argon neutrino experiments at Fermilab, which are instrumental in figuring out neutrinos’ role in the standard model and beyond. Specifically, I will be (most likely) measuring an interaction cross section of neutrinos in argon or a neutrino oscillation parameter on SBND for my thesis. While studying neutrinos piques my wonder, teaching students brings me profound joy. I have been a TA for physics and math courses for the past four years, and I intend on participating in CTL programs at UChicago to improve my craft. When not doing physics, I enjoy playing piano, writing short stories and poems, running half marathons, and playing with my dog.

Cathy Yuanchen Li

PhD Program: Computer Science
Hometown: Beijing, China
Education: UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; B.A., Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Data Science, Linguistics, Statistics, and Applied Mathematics
Research: My research interests are broadly at the intersection of machine learning, security, and privacy. I also seek to understand more about computing, logic, and cognition in general. At UChicago, I will be studying adversarial machine learning. Previously, I was at FAIR doing research on post-quantum cryptanalysis, focusing on attacking lattice-based encryption.

Hailey Main

PhD program: Organic Chemistry
Hometowns: Columbus, OH
Education: Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; B.A., Chemistry
Research: My undergraduate research was focused on the synthesis of novel small-molecule therapeutics for the treatment of organophosphorus intoxication under the advisement of Dr. Christopher Hadad and Dr. Christopher Callam. I am very excited to continue developing my knowledge and skills in organic synthesis here at UChicago. In my free time, I love to explore new restaurants and coffee shops, watch reality competition shows, and spend time with friends!

Sofia Ortega-Guerrero

PhD Program: Art History
Hometown: Oakland, CA
Education: Yale University, New Haven, CT; B.A., Art History, Economics
Research: Grounded in the Indigenous arts of Latin America, my research explores thematic interests in material ontology, faith aesthetics, corporeal ornamentation, and syncretism. My previous research for my undergraduate thesis, for instance, addressed the selective appropriation of diverse Indigenous dress practices toward the postrevolutionary construction of an ‘authentic’ Mexican image. Titled “Between Specificity and Myth: An Analysis of Carlos Mérida’s ‘Mexican Costume,’” the thesis earned the A. Conger Goodyear Fine Arts Award and the Diane Kaplan Memorial Senior Essay Prize, which prompted its publishing in Yale University Library’s EliScholar. With aspirations of a curatorial career, I have also held internships at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. In my free time, I enjoy baking, looking at art, and keeping up with my family.

Henry Stratakis-Allen

PhD Program: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Westport, CT
Education: William & Mary, BA (Medieval & Renaissance Studies and Mathematics)
Research: My research focuses on the political and intellectual landscape of Islamic civilization during the era of the Crusades. I am particularly interested in the social and political context of al-Ghazali’s philosophy and its influence on the development of Islamic thought; this topic lies at the intersection of the history of ideas and so-called ‘social history’. The ultimate aim of this project is to properly situate al-Ghazali’s philosophy within the sweep of Islamic history. At William & Mary, my senior thesis studied the social and political environment of Baghdad in the decades before al-Ghazali began teaching in the city.

Alec Sun

PhD Program: Computer Science
Hometown: Bolton, Massachusetts
Education: Harvard University, AB/SM
Research: My primary research area is algorithmic game theory. I am currently working on information design, where the goal is to first measure the extent to which the provision of information alone can influence behavior in limited-information settings and then design optimal mechanisms to release such information. In the future l also want to work on practical operations research problems involving social and economic systems. Outside of research I like contract bridge, frisbee, and piano.

Pramantha Tagore

PhD Program: Music
Hometown: Kolkata, India
Education: Jadavpur University, Kolkata, M. Phil; MA., English Literature
Research: My research explores the interplay between music, race, and cultural politics in the long nineteenth century. A prominent emphasis of my work has been on historical practices of music-making in modern South Asia, particularly in colonial Bengal, and how these practices, in turn, shape cultural identities. On the musical side, I am a professional Sarod player trained in the Maihar-Senia tradition of Hindustani Music. As a performer, I have collaborated with institutions and ensembles spread across a wide variety of genres and performance traditions, including those of South Asia, Indonesia, the United States, the Middle East, and Australia.

“Willers” Muye Yang

PhD Program: Computer Science
Hometown: Henan, China
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; B.S., Mathematics with Computer Science, Physics
Research: I am broadly interested in quantum computing and quantum information. Fascinated by the intricacy and complexity of the problems in this field, I hope to apply theoretical tools and concepts to tackle the practical challenges of designing an efficient, fault-tolerant quantum system that has the potential to compute classically unfeasible tasks. Here at UChicago, I plan to work with Prof. Fred Chong to improve the constructions and implementations of quantum low-density parity check codes to better harness their power for low-overhead executions of impactful quantum algorithms.

Yingxin Zhang

PhD Program: South Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Guangdong, China
Education: Jawaharlal Nehru University, MA Sanskrit; Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, BA Hindi
Research: Broadly speaking, I am interested in Sanskrit texts related to alaṁkāra, arthaśāstra, kāvya, and vedānta. My project will revolve around the works of Mallinātha, a Sanskrit scholar who flourished in fourteenth-century South India. This endeavor aims to explore the ways in which the interaction between his creative ingenuity and commentarial talent contributes to his philological practices that both connect him to some pre-existing fields and make sense in terms of his social and cultural milieu. Outside of academic studies, I spend a lot of time playing ping-pong.

Jieming Zhu

PhD Program: East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Hometown: Beijing, China
Education: BA in Comparative Literature, and Chinese Language and Literature, The University of Hong Kong, 2021; MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, 2023
Research: I’m interested in the politics and poetics of family revolutions in modern Chinese and Sinophone cultures, spanning late-Qing anarchism, Maoist utopianism, and contemporary queer-feminist radicalism. My master’s thesis investigated the transnational articulations of Marxist-feminist theoretical and literary writings in early-twentieth-century China, examining the insights and limitations of revolutionary intellectuals including He-Yin Zhen, Friedrich Engels, Alexandra Kollontai, Ding Ling, and Luo Qiong. During PhD studies I hope to further integrate theoretical perspectives with a grounded analysis of social history.