UNLV Angel Network Recipients

Lincy Professorships

Daniel Allen

Daniel Allen (Ph.D., University of South Dakota, 1993) received the Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award in 2011, recognizing his groundbreaking research, four co-authored books, 90 articles, and 20 book chapters. Arriving at UNLV in 1999 and promoted to professor in 2009, his extramural grants success is also remarkable, most recently with a National Institute of Mental Health Award of $390,000 listing him as chief investigator on neural auditory mechanisms in chronic schizophrenia, and another for $2 million, again as chief investigator, on family behavior therapy in collegiate athletes. Attacking some of the most complex mental health disorders that we are confronted with, Allen is a central figure in the collaborative research of our clinical Ph.D. graduate students.

Tara Emmers-Sommer

Dr. Tara Emmers-Sommer currently serves as associate dean for research and graduate education for the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, and as professor for communication studies. Prior to joining UNLV in 2006, Emmers-Sommer was faculty at the University of Oklahoma, during which time she was the recipient of the Steve Duck Young Scholar Award from the International Network on Personal Relationships and the Central States Communication Association Federation Prize Award. Emmers-Sommer also served as faculty at the University of Arizona, where she was awarded the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Outstanding Overall Teaching Award. Emmers-Sommer conducts research on interpersonal and health communication issues, particularly sexual behavior and gender. More specifically, Emmers-Sommer’s research focuses on sexual coercion, safer sex/condom negotiation, and the impact of sexually violent media on attitudes toward women. Emmers-Sommer's current personal research projects include examining sexual behavior justifiability and a book on sexual coercion.

Shawn Gerstenberger

Shawn Gerstenberger, Ph.D., is the executive associate dean of the School of Public Health as well as chair of the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health. He has acquired millions of dollars of extramural funding on behalf of UNLV and is the recent recipient of the Harry Reid Silver State Award, UNLV’s most prestigious research award. He is the founder and director of the Nevada Healthy Homes Partnership, which examines the critical connection between the home environment and health of its occupants. His other funded research includes toxicology-related issues that bridge the gap between human and ecological health and environmental toxicants, specifically mercury, lead, and PCBs.

Pushkin Kachroo

Pushkin Kachroo, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Transportation Research Center, has been a part of UNLV’s campus since 2007. During the spring of 2012, his driving simulator was used to encourage students to pursue education and careers in the STEM fields by getting hands-on experience driving while distracted. His areas for research involve theoretical and applied feedback control.

Scott Lee

Scott Lee, Ph.D., professor of finance, Lee Business School, joined our faculty in January 2013. He comes from Texas A&M University, where he was a professor of finance and research fellow for the Private Enterprise Research Center. His research focuses on the economic, legal, and managerial labor market repercussions of financial misreporting. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Law & Economics, and Strategic Management Journal. He teaches corporate finance and valuation analysis.

Debra Martin

A former dean of Hampshire College’s School of Natural Science and a former chair of UNLV’s Department of Anthropology, Debra Martin (Ph.D., 1983, University of Massachusetts) is internationally lauded for her work in bioarchaeology and paleopathology, working with ancient human remains to provide insights into the evolution of violence and inequality, agriculture, health, and diet in arid environments, as well as health in indigenous communities. With six books to her credit, Martin’s “bone lab” is a very popular place amongst UNLV’s graduate students, whom she involves in her extensive and successful extramural grant-funding efforts. Joining UNLV in 2007, Martin is on sabbatical this year, but she continues to work with her Ph.D. students, who very much look forward to her return and to continuing their collaborative research with her back on campus and in the field.

Jane McCarthy

Dr. Jane McCarthy has an extensive record of research and publication in the fields of school reform, classroom management, and effective teaching strategies for students in at-risk situations. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Inquiry Award given for research by the Accelerated Schools National Center, the Outstanding Faculty Award given by the Board of Regents, and the Outstanding Faculty Award given by the UNLV Alumni Association. She was recently chosen to give the Distinguished Educator Lecture at the national conference of the Association of Teacher Educators.

Kenneth McCown

Ken McCown, director of the UNLV Downtown Design Center, holds degrees in both landscape architecture and architecture and comes to UNLV as an accomplished researcher. McCown collaborates with other passionate people applying the latest in research, science, and art to create spaces that are sustainable and beneficial to the community. Having taught at Cal Poly and Arizona State and having served as chair of the Landscape Program at the University of Tennessee, his goal as a UNLV professor is to educate community leaders who can make informed, holistic decisions and prepare students for the rigors of a demanding profession.

Paul Oh

Paul Oh is the Lincy Professor of Unmanned Aerial Systems in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Formerly, from 2000 to 2014, he served as a mechanical engineering professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia and both founded and directed the Drexel Autonomous Systems Laboratory (DASL). He received his Mechanical Engineering degrees from McGill (B.Eng.1989), Seoul National (MSc 1992), and Columbia (PhD 1999). Honors he received include faculty fellowships at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (2002) and Naval Research Lab (2003), the NSF CAREER Award (2004), and the SAE Ralph Teetor Award for Engineering Education Excellence (2005). He was named a Boeing Welliver fellow (2006), elected as ASME fellow (2011), and appointed as Senior Faculty Fellow (2013) at the Naval Seas Systems Command (NAVSEA) for the Office of Naval Research (ONR). He was also the founding chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Aerial Robotics and UAVs. He served for two years (2008-2010) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the program director managing the robotics research portfolio.

Sang-Duck Seo

Associate Professor Seo received his MFA in graphic design from Iowa State University, Ames. After beginning his career in automotive, electronic, and computer design, Professor Seo, who came to UNLV after receiving his MFA in 2006, has achieved an impressive reputation in the graphic design professional and academic communities, not only for his excellence as a practicing, award-willing designer, most notably in the field of national security printing, but also as an innovative educator through his ongoing pedagogical research presented at international design conferences sponsored by AIGA (American Institution of Graphic Arts), among others, and published in their peer-reviewed journals.

Stowe Shoemaker

Stowe Shoemaker, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned expert in hospitality marketing, with a focus on consumer behavior, customer loyalty, service operations, and strategic pricing. He has worked with hotel and restaurant companies, gaming manufacturers, airline companies, and hospitals. He has published two textbooks on hospitality marketing and has published numerous academic articles and a case study published by Harvard Business School. Currently, Dr. Shoemaker has an adjunct appointment at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he is working on understanding how to improve the patient experience. He is also on the executive education faculty at Cornell University.

Stacey Tovino

Stacey Tovino is a leading expert in health law, bioethics, and the medical humanities. Educated as both a lawyer and a humanist, Professor Tovino publishes her legal and interdisciplinary work in textbooks, casebooks, edited readers, law reviews, medical and science journals, and ethics and humanities journals. At the Boyd School of Law, where she serves as professor of law and associate dean for faculty development and research, Tovino teaches required first-year courses, including torts, as well as upper-level health law electives.

Nora Caberoy

Dr. Nora Caberoy is a new face to UNLV, and her research focuses on the eye’s retina and diseases affecting it. Caberoy was the recipient of the competitive National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute Pathway to Independence Career Development Award. After getting her Ph.D. in genetics and cell biology and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, she was attracted to the interdisciplinary research happening in the UNLV School of Life Sciences.

Alyssa Crittenden

Alyssa Crittenden (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 2009) joined UNLV’s Department of Anthropology just this fall, but her research is already generating a buzz on campus — and around the world. A nutritional anthropologist examining the evolution of the human diet through her field studies in Tanzania among a hunter-gatherer tribe, the Hadza, her work may lead to significant changes in the composition of infant formula. Published widely in top-tier academic journals, her research on the role of honey in the development of the human brain has also found its way to more popular venues, such as The Smithsonian, and a documentary on the Hadza scheduled for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Carolee Dodge-Francis

Dr. Carolee Dodge-Francis is an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health as well as the director of the American Indian Research and Educational Center. Dr. Dodge-Francis is nationally recognized for her research, program/curriculum development, and evaluation work in chronic disease within tribal communities. Recently, she received funding from the Milagro Foundation to create the DreamCatcher project and a five-year National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK) Short-Term Education Program for Underrepresented Persons (STEP-UP) to increase health/research skills and provide college readiness.

Yu Kuang

Yu Kuang, Ph.D., recently joined the Department of Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences in fall 2012 after completing postdoctoral scholar work at Stanford University focusing on imaging-guided radiotherapy and molecular imaging. His current research focuses on translational research of quantitative multimodal imaging for early detection of cancer and image-guided intervention.

Gwen Marchand

Dr. Gwen Marchand’s research focuses on motivational development and the social and personal factors that influence student engagement. Most recently, her work has centered on the impact of frequent school mobility and student removal from comprehensive school settings on students’ educational experiences and outcomes.

Tara Raines

Dr. Tara Raines’ area of expertise is school psychology. She is a former bilingual school psychologist and has worked with the Georgia Association of School Psychologists to establish a consistent credentialing system for multiculturally competent school psychologists in Georgia as well as with the Los Angeles Unified School District on the Project Act Early IES grant. Her research interests include screening for behavioral and emotional risk.

Greg Fullmer Professorship

Brian Hedlund

Dr. Brian Hedlund has been teaching, researching, and serving at UNLV since 2003. His research focuses on the ecology of life in high-temperature habitats, particularly continental hot springs. In 2010, Hedlund was given the Regents’ Rising Researcher Award by the Nevada System of Higher Education in recognition of his early-career accomplishments and his potential for advancement. During his short career, he has been awarded more than $6 million in grant funding, including $3.75 million for the Tengchong PIRE Project, which focuses on the largest geothermal field in China and is the largest international effort centering on life in terrestrial geothermal systems.

Tony and Renee Marlon Professorship

Steen Madsen

Steen Madsen, Ph.D., has been a part of the Department of Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences since 1997. During his time here, he has become the director for the Comprehensive Medical Imaging Program, the chair of the Department of Health Physics, and a founding member of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Cancer Institute. He is also a visiting researcher at the Beckman Laser Institute, University of California, Irvine.

Jillian Inouye

Dr. Inouye is a professor and associate dean for research in the School of Nursing. She moved here from the University of Hawaii, where she was in a similar position. She is a licensed psychologist and a psychiatric/mental health nurse. Her research foci are in health disparities, chronic illness, and self-management. Dr. Inouye has been the principal investigator of numerous NIH grants and was recently invited to be a member of the Advisory Council of the NIH National Institute of Nursing Research.

Dominic Morracco Professorship of Energy Research

Robert Boehm

Robert F. Boehm, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and is also the director of the Energy Research Center. His areas for research pertain to heat transfer, thermal systems design, renewable energies, and development for low-water regions’ opportunities. In recent years, he has been recognized with the John Yellott Award, the highest solar energy award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2010), and the 2008 Nevada Renewable Energy Leadership Award, Solar NV-ASES.

Ted and Maria Quirk Professorship

Evangelos Yfantis

Evangelos Yfantis, Ph.D., joined UNLV in the fall of 1979 as an assistant professor in math. In the fall of 1984, he moved to the Department of Computer Science, where he has been a professor for 28 years. His research interests are computer-robot vision, statistical pattern recognition, e-commerce, signal processing, and multimedia communication.

Southwest Gas Professorship of Energy and Matter

Kwang Kim

Kwang J. Kim, Ph.D. is a professor in the department of mechanical engineering. Prior to joining UNLV, he served as director of two well-respected labs at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His research interests range from active materials/sensors to energy systems.

Jacimária Batista

Dr. Batista teaches and researches environmental engineering at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and has been a member of the faculty since 1997. She is a passionate teacher of environmental engineering and students praise her enthusiastic teaching style, high academic expectations, quality of the courses, and approachability. She is the recipient of seven teaching awards. Dr. Jacimária Batista’s research involves technology development for water and wastewater systems that combine biological and physico-chemical processes to remove contaminants from water. She has built an international and national reputation for her pioneering work on treatment technologies to remove the contaminant perchlorate from waters, using both physico-chemical and biological methods. In addition, Dr. Batista investigated the removal of several contaminants by ion-exchange, the treatment of ion-exchange brines and hydraulic fracturing waters, and biological phosphorus removal in collaboration with engineer practitioners and the industry. She has attracted over $3.5 million dollars in research funding. Dr. Batista has supported research projects of more than 40 graduate and 70 undergraduate students, many of them female and underrepresented minority students. She is a registered professional engineer and a sought-after environmental engineering consultant to the water industries of California, Nevada, and Arizona. Dr. Batista and Dr. Robert Boehm are principal investigators of a 20 million dollar grant to investigate the nexus between solar energy-water and the environment in Nevada. The multidisciplinary grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation in 2013 through the EPSCoR Program and involves researchers from UNLV, UNR, and DRI.

Saltman Professorship/Directorship

Jean Sternlight

Jean Sternlight is the Michael and Sonja Saltman professor of law at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, where she also serves as director of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. As one of the nation's leading experts on alternative dispute resolution, she is regularly invited to give talks to groups of both academics and practitioners, and she is also frequently quoted both by the courts and by the popular press. Co-author of books on the psychology of lawyering, mediation, arbitration, and dispute resolution generally, Professor Sternlight has also published numerous articles in law reviews in the field of conflict resolution. Before joining the Boyd faculty in 2003, Professor Sternlight taught first at Florida State University College of Law and then at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School as well as an experienced litigator.

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