UT Experts : University Communications : The University of Texas at Austin

Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 6224, +1 781 223 8395, jabramson@austin.utexas.edu

Abramson teaches in the areas of constitutional law, civil liberties, the jury and political theory. He is the author of "We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy and numerous law review articles. In his book "Minerva's Owl: The Tradition of Western Political Thought" (2009) argues politics with the classic writers, such as Socrates and Plato. Professor Abramson clerked for Rose Bird, the late Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, and served as an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts. He has recently completed an assignment as a court-appointed jury expert for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Massachusetts. Professor Abramson also teaches courses in the Department of Government in political theory.

Professor , Department of Curriculum and Instruction , College of Education
, jadair@austin.utexas.edu
Spanish Speaker

Jennifer Keys Adair, PhD is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and the Director of the Agency and Young Children Research Collective at The University of Texas at Austin. A trained cultural anthropologist and former preschool teacher, Using video-cued ethnography, Dr. Adair works with young children, teachers, parents and administrators to understand how racism and white supremacy impact the learning experiences of young children. Dr. Adair focuses on the importance of agency for childrens capability expansion as well as ways to locate/measure agency to overcome the overly-controlled schooling environments many children of color experience, even in the early years of school. Dr. Adair is a former Young Scholars Fellow with the Foundation for Child Development and recently completed a major Spencer Foundation study on civic agency in preschool classrooms. Dr. Adair is the author of the book, Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism and Early Learning (The University of Chicago Press, 2021; Awarded the Council on Anthropology and Education 2021 Outstanding Book Award) with Dr. Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove. Dr. Adair has published in numerous journals including Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Young Children, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. She currently serves on multiple, national editorial and advisory boards, and lectures in multiple countries. In addition to academic conferences, Jennifer has spoken at SXSW and Blackademics on why white parents need to talk to their children about racism and white supremacy. Jennifers work and expertise can be found in a variety of media Washington Post, NPR, New America, Code Switch, Huffington Post, Edweek, The Conversation, Chicago Register and the Migration Policy Institute and NAEYCs recent equity statement.

Professor , Department of Educational Leadership and Policy , College of Education
+1 512 232 2288, cpbrown@utexas.edu

Christopher is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. He also is a Faculty Fellow with The Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis. He is also a former preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teacher who worked in Title 1 schools. Dr. Brown's research interests, which are rooted in qualitative research methodologies, emerged from his experiences as a classroom teacher across a range of early childhood contexts. Such experiences centered him in building a research agenda with varied education stakeholders that seeks to foster, sustain, and extend the complex educational, sociocultural, and individual goals and aspirations of children, their families, teachers, and school leaders. Much of his research centers around examining how teacher education programs can prepare preservice teachers to not only being successful classroom teachers but also advocates for change so that they can engage in instructional practices that best align with the needs and wants of their students and the communities in which they teach. His other primary line inquiry seeks to understand the impact of policymakers reforms on the field of early education. Much of this work seeks to understand how early childhood stakeholders in public school settings make sense of and can respond to policymakers reforms that emphasize increased academic achievement, standardization, and accountability while providing limited resources through rigorous and developmentally appropriate learning experiences; such practices seek to support all children so that they can grow as learners and as members of their communities. Such work has resulted in Dr. Brown receiving funding from the Spencer Foundation multiple times and published over 70 peer-reviewed articles using a range of qualitative research methods, including case study, video-cued multi-vocal ethnographic, and qualitative metasynthesis methods, to examine a range of issues centering on policy, early childhood education, teaching, and teacher education. These publications have appeared in such journals as: Qualitative Inquiry, Teaching and Teacher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, American Educational Research Journal, The Elementary School Journal, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Action in Teacher Education, Journal of School Leadership, and The Teacher Educator. Among these pieces, he is first author on 68 of them, and 45 were written with 17 former and current graduate students. He has also edited two research-oriented books, written one practitioner-oriented textbook with two former graduate students, a parent-oriented book on the issue of kindergarten readiness, and recently published a book about the changed kindergarten with Teachers College Press. Lastly, he has written numerous book chapters and research-based commentaries. As an instructor at UT, he is a highly rated professor who has been awarded the University of Texas System Board of Regents Outstanding Teaching Award and the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Outstanding Early Childhood Teacher Educator Award. In terms of service, he currently serve as the co-editor for the ECE Series at Teacher College Press. He is also on the editorial board for the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, and the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Early Childhood Research. He has also served as the Past-Chair, Chair, and Chair Elect of the Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group of AERA. Furthermore, at UT, he currently serves as the M.Ed. Program Coordinator for the Educational Policy and Program Area and Assistant Graduate Advisor for the ELP department.

Professor , Department of Curriculum and Instruction , College of Education
+1 512 232 4257, keffrelyn@austin.utexas.edu

Keffrelyn D. Brown (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is the Suzanne B. and John L. Adams Endowed Professor of Education and Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Cultural Studies in Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She is the co-founder and co-director (with Dr. Anthony Brown) of the Center for Innovation in Race, Teaching, and Curriculum. She also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Center for Women and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the sociocultural knowledge of race in teaching and curriculum, critical multicultural teacher education and the educational discourses and intellectual thought related to African Americans and their educational experiences in the U.S. Keffrelyn has published over 50 books, journal articles, book chapters and other educational texts. She serves on the editorial boards for several well-recognized peer-reviewed journals including Teachers College Record, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Teaching and Teacher Education and Urban Education. Her most recent book, After the "At-Risk" Label: Reorienting Risk in Educational Policy and Practice was published by Teachers College Press. Keffrelyn has received recognition for both her research and teaching. In 2017 she received the Division K Mid-career Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In 2013 she was awarded the Kappa Delta Pi/Division K Early Career Research Award from AERA. She is also the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and the Wisconsin-Spencer Foundation Research Training Grant. In 2012 she received the Regent's Outstanding Teaching award, the highest teaching honor given for excellence in undergraduate teaching across the University of Texas system. She was inducted in the Provost's Teaching Fellows program at UT-Austin in 2017 and in its Academy of Distinguished Teaching in 2019. Keffrelyn is a sought after presenter in her local, regional and national communities. She is active in the multiple roles she has as a researcher, teacher, teacher educator and critically engaged community member. As a former elementary and middle school teacher, school administrator, and curriculum developer, Keffrelyn is keen to the everyday challenges of schooling.

Associate Dean for Student Success, Community Engagement, and Administration , College of Education
+1 512 232 7519, +1 512 471 7551, vsaenz@austin.utexas.edu
Spanish Speaker

Victor B. Sáenz serves as the Associate Dean for Student Success, Community Engagement, and Administration in the College of Education and as the L. D. Haskew Centennial Professor in Public School Administration in the [link:https://education.utexas.edu/departments/educational-leadership-policy]Department of Educational Leadership and Policy[/link] at the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds courtesy appointments with the [link:https://lbj.utexas.edu/]LBJ School of Public Affairs[/link], the [link:https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/cmas/]Center for Mexican American Studies[/link], the [link:https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mals/]Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies[/link], the [link:https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/ppi/]Irma Rangel Public Policy Institute, the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis[/link], and the [link:https://heri.ucla.edu/]UCLA Higher Education Research Institute[/link]. Sáenz's current work advances research-informed best practices and policy solutions that improve educational outcomes for underserved students in education, with a special emphasis on boys and young men of color. In 2010 Sáenz co-founded an award-winning initiative at UT-Austin, a multi-pronged effort focused on advancing educational outcomes for male students of color. Under Project MALES he launched a nationally recognized Student Mentoring Program that partners with local schools to connect undergraduate peer mentors with middle school and high school male students. He also co-created a network of K-12 and higher education institutions called the [link:http://diversity.utexas.edu/txedconsortium/]Texas Education Consortium for Male Students of Color[/link] that focuses on advancing educational outcomes for this critical student population. Supported by grants from the Greater Texas Foundation (GTF), the Trellis Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation, this statewide collaborative focuses on improving educational outcomes for male students of color across the state of Texas. The Consortium is made up of over thirty institutional partners in K-12 and higher education, and it seeks to align and coordinate existing programs and services across the education continuum. Over the years, Sáenz has received various research and service recognitions for his support of schools, students, and communities (e.g., Somos Austin, Seedling Mentors, Catch the Next). In 2009 he was named by Diverse Magazine as "One of 25 to Watch" diversity leaders in American higher education. In fall 2010, he was recognized as one of seven "ING Professors of Excellence" among over two thousand faculty members at the University of Texas. In 2018 he received a Research Award from the AERA Hispanic Research Issues SIG, and in 2022 he received the Mentoring Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He has also earned several faculty fellowships at UT-Austin and is currently the holder of the W.K. Kellogg Professorship in Community College Leadership. Sáenz has co-authored three books and has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and his work has been cited in numerous policy reports, scholarly publications, and by local and national media. He has presented his research at countless conferences and meetings across the country, including at the White House, the National Press Club, and on Capitol Hill. Sáenz is a member of two distinguished editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals in his field, and he is an active member of several national associations focused on higher education issues, including ASHE, AERA, AIR, AAHHE, and TACHE. He has also served on the national boards of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, the National Resource Center for the First Year Experience, the Hispanic Scholarship Consortium, and the Texas Puente Project (Catch the Next). Locally he serves on the UT Elementary School Management Board, the Ann Richards School Foundation Board, and the Texas Lyceum Board. He is currently the Board Chair of AAHHE, a national association committed to advancing leadership opportunities for the Latinx community in higher education. Dr. Sáenz earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change in 2005 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also completed a Master's in Education in 2002. He also earned a Master's degree in Public Affairs (1999, LBJ School of Public Affairs) and a Bachelors degree in Mathematics (1996, College of Natural Sciences) from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Sáenz is a fourth-generation Texan and a second-generation Longhorn.

Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Technology and Director of the Office of Academic Technology
+1 512 232 1772, julie.schell@austin.utexas.edu

Dr. Julie Schell is the Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Technology and the Director of the [link:https://provost.utexas.edu/the-office/academic-affairs/office-of-academic-technology/]Office of Academic Technology[/link] at The University of Texas at Austin. She oversees the University's technology-enhanced learning ecosystem and works to advance teaching and learning through the strategic use of academic technology. She is also an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Departments of Design and Educational Leadership and Policy, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on learning experience design. In her current studios, Dr. Schell and her students are partnering with generative AI to prototype speculative objects and environments designed to improve teaching and learning in education settings. Dr. Schell is also an award-winning college teaching and learning expert with over 25 years of expertise in higher education. She has delivered over 100 talks, workshops, and keynotes on teaching and learning. She is the creator of Think Before You Design Think?, a popular introductory human-centered design curriculum she first launched at AT&T and has delivered at Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations throughout the United States. Dr. Schell's approach to design thinking focuses on using the principles of learning science to develop design thinking self-efficacy, especially among non-designers. She has supported thousands of new learners in their journey to understand and apply human-centered design to improve lived experiences. Before joining the Provost's office, Dr. Schell served as the Assistant Dean of Instructional Continuity and Innovation at the College of Fine Arts, where she led the [link:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10071173/]transition to online learning[/link] for over 200 arts and design faculty and academic staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Schell completed her doctorate in higher and postsecondary education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a four-year post-doctoral fellowship focused on the science of teaching and learning in the Mazur Group at Harvard University. Her dissertation, dedicated to improving undergraduate teaching and learning, won the Dissertation of the Year award for the American Educational Research Association's higher education division. She has held positions at the nation's top research universities, including Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard.

Associate Professor , Department of Special Education , College of Education
+1 512 475 6551, jrtoste@austin.utexas.edu

Jessica R. Toste is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. She holds research affiliations with the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk and Texas Center for Equity Promotion; and is a fellow with the IES-funded Research Institute for Implementation Science in Education (RIISE). Her research is focused on methods for intensifying intervention for students with persistent reading challenges and reading disabilities, and she is principal investigator on research grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Toste was trained in reading intervention research as a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University and as a Fulbright scholar at the Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University. She has worked as an elementary special education teacher and reading specialist in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr. Toste is associate editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities and a principal member of the reading, writing, and language development grant review panel for the Institute of Education Sciences. She is an award-winning teacher; she was the recipient of a 2023 President's Associates Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, 2022 Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award, and was named one of the 2017 "Texas 10" professors at UT Austin. She is current Chair of the Graduate Assembly and Immediate Past Chair of the Provost's Teaching Fellows Program at UT Austin, as well as current President of CEC's Division for Learning Disabilities, and Vice-President for CEC's Division for Research. Dr. Toste is engaged in advocacy as a member of the Board of Directors for GLSEN, a leading national organization focused on LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 education, and as Past Chair of the Board of Directors for Disability Rights Texas, the federally designated legal protection and advocacy agency for people with disabilities in Texas.

Professor and Leonidas T. Barrow Centennial Chair Emeritus in Mineral Resources , Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences , Jackson School of Geosciences
, wfisher@jsg.utexas.edu

William L. Fisher is the Leonidas T. Barrow Chair and Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he served as the Inaugural Dean and the first Director of the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences (2001-2006), a school he was instrumental in founding as well as securing its substantial endowment. He is a former long-time director of the Bureau of Economic Geology (1979-1994, 2000-2001), former chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences (1984-1990) and former director of the Geology Foundation (1984-2006). Dr. Fisher is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He served as Assistant Secretary of Interior for Energy and Minerals under President Gerald Ford (1975-1977). Fisher has chaired and served on numerous state and federal advisory boards, as well as committees and boards of the National Research Council and professional societies. He has also served on several corporate boards. He served on the White House Science Council under President Ronald Reagan (1988-1989). Fisher's research has focused in the areas of stratigraphy, sedimentology, and oil and gas assessment. In 1967 he introduced the concept of depositional systems-now a fundamental part of modern stratigraphy and sedimentology. In 1987 he led an assessment team for DOE that turned around the then-prevalent view of natural gas scarcity. He has championed the importance of technology in resource availability and has been a leader in the rethinking of the significance of reserve growth from existing, geologically complex oil and gas fields. Dr. Fisher is past president of American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Association of American State Geologists, the American Geological Institute, the American Institute of Professional Geologists, the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, and the Austin Geological Society. He has received the Powers Medal from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Twenhofel Medal from SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology), the Campbell Medal from the American Geological Institute, the Parker Medal from the American Institute of Professional Geologists, the Boyd Medal from the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, the Hedberg Medal for Energy from the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, and the Milling Legendary Geoscientist Medal from the American Geological Institute,among numerous other awards. Fisher holds a B.S. and D.Sc. (Hon.) from Southern Illinois University, a M.S. and Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Kansas, a D. Eng. (Hon.) from the Colorado School of Mines and D.Sc. (Hon) from Flinders Univeristy; he received the Presidential Citation (equivalent to an honorary doctorate) from The University of Texas at Austin.

Professor , Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
+1 512 471 2064, sheila.olmstead@austin.utexas.edu

Sheila Olmstead joined the LBJ School as an Associate Professor of Public Affairs in 2013. Before joining the LBJ School, Olmstead was a Fellow (2010-2013) and Senior Fellow (2013) at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, as well as Associate Professor (2007-2010) and Assistant Professor (2002-2007) of Environmental Economics at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she was the recipient of three teaching awards. Olmstead is an environmental economist whose current research projects examine the environmental externalities associated with shale gas development in the United States, regulatory avoidance under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act, the influence of federal fire suppression policy on land development in the American West, and free-riding in dam placement and water withdrawals in transboundary river basins. She has worked extensively on the economics of water resource management, focusing on water demand estimation, water conservation policy, and access to drinking water services among low-income communities. Climate and energy policy are additional topics of her research, especially with regard to the application of market-based environmental policy instruments. Olmstead's research has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Urban Economics, and Water Resources Research. With Nathaniel Keohane, she is the author of the 2007 book Markets and the Environment. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of the Interior, World Bank, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Olmstead is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Water Resource Economics Consortium. She holds a PhD from Harvard University?s John F. Kennedy School of Government (2002), a Masters in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin (1996), and a BA from the University of Virginia (1992).

John J. McKetta Centennial Energy Chair, Professor , Mechanical Engineering , Cockrell School of Engineering
+1 512 475 6867, webber@mail.utexas.edu

Dr. Michael E. Webber is the John J. McKetta Centennial Energy Chair in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and CTO of Energy Impact Partners, a $3 billion cleantech venture fund. From September 2018 to August 2021, Webber was based in Paris, France where he served as the Chief Science and Technology Officer at ENGIE, one of the worlds largest energy companies. Webbers expertise spans research and education at the convergence of engineering, policy, and commercialization on topics related to innovation, energy, and the environment. His book Power Trip: The Story of Energy was published in 2019 by Basic Books with an award-winning 12-part companion series spread out over two seasons that aired on PBS, Amazon Prime, AppleTV, and in-flight entertainment on American Airlines. The series had more than 10,000 broadcasts in the United States and has been distributed in dozens of countries, ultimately reaching millions of viewers. He was selected as a Fellow of ASME (the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and as a member of the 4th class of the Presidential Leadership Scholars, which is a leadership training program organized by Presidents George W. Bush and William J. Clinton. Webber has authored four full-length general interest books, created two interactive textbooks, written more than 500 publications, and been awarded 6 patents. He serves on the advisory board for Scientific American and GTI Energy (an industry consortium formerly known as the Gas Technology Institute). A successful entrepreneur, Webber was one of three founders in 2015 for an educational technology startup, DISCO Learning Media, which was acquired in 2018. Webber holds a B.S. and B.A. from UT Austin, and M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He was honored as an American Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow on four separate occasions by the University of Texas for exceptional teaching. Webbers areas of expertise are Energy policy; Food, Energy & Water; Alternative and renewable energy; Energy in Texas; Smart Grid; Power Sector

Professor of Surgery , Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care , Dell Medical School
+1 512 495 5089, kevin.bozic@austin.utexas.edu

Dr. Kevin Bozic is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care, and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. He was most recently the William R. Murray Professor, M.D. Endowed Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a member of the core faculty of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School. Dr. Bozic is a graduate of the UCSF School of Medicine and the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program. Additionally, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Dr. Bozic has fellowship training in Adult Reconstructive Surgery from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Bozics clinical interests are in management of patients with arthritis of the hip and knee, with an emphasis on primary and revision hip and knee replacement. His research interests are broadly in the fields of health policy and health care services research, and specifically in the areas of healthcare technology assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, shared medical decision making, and the implementation and evaluation of value-based payment and delivery models. In addition to his clinical and research activities, Dr. Bozic is actively involved in numerous regional and national health policy initiatives, including the University of California Center for Health Quality and Innovation, the American Joint Replacement Registry, the Integrated Healthcare Associations Episode of Care Payment Program, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and Harvard Business Schools Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. Dr. Bozic also holds both regional and national leadership positions, including member of the Board of Trustees of the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation, Chair of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Council on Research and Quality, and member of the Board of Directors of the American Joint Replacement Registry. He is former Chair of the California Joint Replacement Registry. Dr. Bozic has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundations Clinical Research Award, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Clinician-Scientist Traveling Fellowship Award, the American Orthopaedic Associations American-British-Canadian Traveling Fellowship, the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons James A. Rand Young Investigator Award, and the Orthopaedic Research Societys William Harris Award.

Professor , Department of Kinesiology and Health Education , College of Education
+1 512 232 7636, dcastelli@utexas.edu

Darla M. Castelli, Ph.D. is a professor of physical education pedagogy and health behavior health education in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an active fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology, who examines the effects of physical activity and metabolic risk factors on cognitive health. Castelli strives to understand how physical activity can reverse the effects of health risk. She has been working with school-age youth in physical activity settings for more than 25 years, leading several physical activity interventions (e.g., Kinetic Kidz, FITKids1,FITKids2, Active + Healthy = Forever Fit, Fitness4Everyone). Castelli has received teaching awards in both the public school (i.e. Maine Physical Education Teacher of the Year) and higher education (i.e., University of Illinois Teaching Excellence Award, University of Texas at Austin, Kinesiology and Health Education Graduate Teaching Award). Recently she was named 2020 Catherine D. Ennis Scholar Award from AERA and the 2020 SHAPE America Scholar. Award. As a fellow in the SHAPE America RC and past Young Scholar award recipient from NAKPEHE and AEISEP, her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, American Dietetic Foundation, and U.S. Department of Education. She has presented her work at U.S. Congress and Senate Briefings in Washington, DC in support of the FIT Kids Act. Castelli has been a member of two Institute of Medicine committees on Fitness Measures and Health Outcomes in Youth and Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment. She received a B.S. from Plymouth State University, a M.S. from Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Castelli currently directs the department's Kinetic Kidz Lab, found at https://sites.edb.utexas.edu/kk2.

Professor of Surgery , Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care , Dell Medical School
+1 512 495 5044, richard.freeman@austin.utexas.edu

Richard B. Freeman Jr., MD, a veteran transplant surgeon and leading innovator in health care delivery and redesign, is the inaugural Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Freeman comes to the Dell Medical School from Dartmouth Medical School, where he served as Chair of the Department of Surgery. As Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs, he leads the school's pursuit of strategies that seek to redesign health care delivery and create excellence in health care research, transdisciplinary programs and interprofessional education. Specifically, Dr. Freeman provides strategic leadership, oversight and management in the effort to integrate the local network of physicians and practices with Dell Medical School's efforts to create a model healthy city and community. He is the point of contact with physicians and other care providers, as well as key Dell Medical School partners such as Central Health (Travis Countys health care district) and the Seton Healthcare Family. As surgery chair at Dartmouth, Dr. Freeman oversaw a department offering training and treatment in 11 surgical specialties and seven graduate medical education training programs. He also led both the Tufts-New England Medical Center transplant fellowship program and the Surgical Research Laboratories at the Tufts University School of Medicine. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for New England Organ Bank, as an associate editor for both the American Journal of Transplantation and Liver Transplantation, and as an editorial board member or reviewer for scholarly journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1983. His research has focused on genetic differences in immune response, the immunology of liver regeneration, viral infections in transplantation, long-term outcomes after transplants, and policies on the allocation of donor organs. He is the principal investigator on several projects funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), and the New England Organ Bank.

Professor of Medicine (Clinical Educator) , Department of Population Health , Dell Medical School
, tierney@utexas.edu

Dr. William Tierney is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Population Health, and a professor of Population Health, at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a general internist and medical informaticist who came to the Dell Medical School after serving as President and CEO of the Regenstrief Institute, Inc., the countrys oldest research institution dedicated to improving health systems. The Regenstrief Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports the research and service missions of the Indiana University School of Medicine where Dr. Tierney was Associate Dean for Clinical Effectiveness Research and practiced general internal medicine at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis where he was Chief of Internal Medicine from 2009 to 2014. Dr. Tierneys research focuses on improving health care delivery and its outcomes through developing and implementing electronic health record systems (EHRs) in hospital and outpatient venues in Indiana and in East Africa. His team of developers implemented sub-Saharan Africas first ambulatory EHR in 2000 which has grown and evolved into OpenMRS, the worlds most widely used open-source EHR system thats been implemented in more than 40 countries and nationally in all Ministry of Health sites in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Mozambique, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. Dr. Tierney is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians and is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and Master of the American College of Physicians. He has received the lifetime achievement award from the nations leading organizations in three disciplines: academic general internal medicine (from the Society of General Internal Medicine), biomedical informatics (from the American College of Medical Informatics), and translational science (from the Society for Clinical and Translational Science). He is the former Co-Editor of the Journal of General Internal Medicine and Medical Care. Hes received more than $30 million in grants and contracts and has published 290 peer-reviewed medical journal articles. His publications have been cited by others more than 20,000 times.

Founding Director, Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation , Center for Sports of Leadership and Innovation
+1 512 471 2320, daronroberts@utexas.edu

Daron K. Roberts is a former NFL coach and author of, Call an Audible: Let My Pivot from Harvard Law to NFL Coach Inspire Your Transition (Greenleaf 2017). Call an Audible was named a #1 New Release and Best Seller by Amazon and Sports Illustrated selected the book as one of its Best Sports Business Books of 2017. Roberts serves as founding director of the Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation (CSLi) at the University of Texas. He created CSLi in the fall of 2014. The Center is the first university-based institute dedicated to developing leadership and character curricula for high school, collegiate and professional athletes. Roberts is also a lecturer in the Liberal Arts Honors Program and he focuses on issues of leadership and innovation in the sports arena. He also developed a course A Gameplan for Winning at Life that he teaches to incoming freshmen student-athletes at the University of Texas. During the course of each academic year, Roberts teaches nearly 300 students. After graduating from Harvard Law School (2007), Roberts served coaching stints with the Kansas City Chiefs, Detroit Lions, West Virginia Mountaineers and Cleveland Browns. He holds a B.A. in Plan II Honors and Government from the University of Texas (2001) and an M.P.P. from Harvards Kennedy School (2004). Roberts served as Student Body President during his tenure at the University of Texas. Before entering graduate school, Roberts worked as an aide to Senator Joe Lieberman. In 2010, Daron launched a nonprofit football camp 4th and 1, Inc. 4th and 1 provides free SAT prep, life skills development and football training to at-risk youth in Michigan, Texas and Florida. The camp has served nearly 500 student-athletes since 2010. The Presidential Leadership Foundation a joint venture between Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush tabbed Roberts as a Presidential Leadership Scholar for 2015. He was one of 60 members in the inaugural class. Roberts has been featured in ESPN the Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek and Sports Illustrated and is a contributor to Forbes.com. His articles have appeared in The Dallas Morning News, Fortune, Houston Chronicle, and Time. Roberts is the host of an industry-leading podcast A Tribe Called Yes (available on iTunes and Stitcher).

Associate Professor , Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
+1 512 471 2411, +1 512 471 2601, inboden@austin.utexas.edu

William Inboden is Executive Director of the William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security. He serves as associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Inboden's other current roles include non-resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, senior advisor with Avascent International, and associate scholar with Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Project. Previously he served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council at the White House, where he worked on a range of foreign policy issues including the National Security Strategy, strategic forecasting, democracy and governance, contingency planning, counter-radicalization, and multilateral institutions and initiatives. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a member of the policy planning staff and a special advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom, and has worked as a staff member in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Inboden has also served as senior vice president of the London-based Legatum Institute, and as a civitas fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and his commentary has appeared in numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Sky News, and BBC. He has lectured widely in academic and policy settings, and received numerous research and professional development fellowships. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge University Press) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Inboden received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from Yale University, and his A.B. from Stanford University.

Dean, School of Law , School of Law
+1 512 232 1120, rchesney@law.utexas.edu

Bobby Chesney is a national security law specialist, with a particular interest in problems associated with terrorism. Professor Chesney recently served in the Justice Department in connection with the Detainee Policy Task Force created by Executive Order 13493. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, a senior editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, an associate member of the Intelligence Science Board, a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the American Law Institute. He holds a TS/SCI clearance. Professor Chesney has published extensively on topics ranging from detention and prosecution in the counterterrorism context to the states secrets privilege (testifying in Congress last year regarding the latter topic). He has served previously as chair of the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools and as editor of the National Security Law Report (published by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security). His upcoming projects include a book (under contract with Oxford University Press) concerning the evolving judicial role in national security affairs. Professor Chesney's scholarship is posted on SSRN here. He also maintains a BePress Selected Works page here, though it is not as current as the SSRN page. For a complete list of his publications including works-in-progress, please see his CV (posted in the left-side column of this page). For those interested in following national security law developments, Professor Chesney welcomes subscriptions to his listserv, which focuses exclusively on distributing news of recent judicial opinions, new statutes, forthcoming scholarship, and other similar resources relating to national security and the law. Just send him an email if you'd like to subscribe. The course website for Professor Chesney's Con Law class is posted here. For National Security Law, click here. For Law and Terrorism, click here. Finally, to get the syllabus for the special one-week mini-course on terrorism and law, click here

Assistant Dean , Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
+1 512 471 8324, +1 512 656 6592, srgreenberg@austin.utexas.edu

Sherri Greenberg served for 10 years as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, completing her final term in January 2001. In 1999, she was appointed by the Speaker of the House to chair the House Pensions and Investments Committee, which oversees the Texas State Employee Retirement System, state employee health insurance program, Teacher Retirement System, local public employee retirement systems, and regulation of state investments and public securities. After the 1999 legislative session, the Speaker appointed her as chair of the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance. Greenberg served two terms on the House Appropriations Committee, which is the House's budget writing committee, and served on the Appropriations Committee's Education and Major Information Systems Subcommittees. Other committee assignments included the House Economic Development Committee and the Welfare-to-Work Committee. Greenberg's professional background is in public finance. She served as the Manager of Capital Finance for the City of Austin from 1985 to 1989, overseeing the City's debt management, capital budgeting, and capital improvement programs. Prior to that she worked as a Public Finance Officer for Standard & Poor's Corporation in New York, where she analyzed and assigned bond ratings to public projects across the country. Greenberg has a B.A. in Government from UT Austin and an M.S. in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics. At the LBJ School she teaches courses in public financial management, policy development, and public administration and management. Her teaching and research interests include public finance and budgeting, Texas state government, local government, health care, education, utilities, transportation, and campaigns and elections.

Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 7275, dshaw@austin.utexas.edu

Daron R. Shaw is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Shaw specializes in American Government, Campaigns and Elections, Political Parties, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior, and Applied Survey Research. He is author of The Race to 270: The Electoral College and Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004 (Chicago), co-author of Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters (Oxford), co-author of The Turnout Myth (Oxford), co-author of The Appearance of Corruption (Oxford) and co-author of Battleground: Electoral College Strategies, Execution, and Impact in the Modern Era (Oxford). His research has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Communication, PS: Political Science, Party Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and several other professional journals. In addition to his academic career, Professor Shaw served as a strategist in the 1992, 2000 and 2004 presidential election campaigns. He is currently co-director of the Fox News Poll, co-director of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, director of the Texas Lyceum Poll, and associate Principle Investigator for the 2024 American National Election Study. He is also a member of the decision team for Fox News, the advisory board for the MIT Election Data & Science Lab, and the advisory board for the Annette Strauss Institute. Formerly, he served as President George W. Bushs representative on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and as one of the academic directors for President Barack Obamas Commission for Election Administration.

Professor , Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
+1 512 471 0210, kkockelm@mail.utexas.edu

The Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, Kockelman is a registered professional engineer and holds a PhD, MS, and BS in civil engineering, a Masters of City Planning, and a minor in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the NSF CAREER Award for faculty research and teaching (2000-2005), the NSF and Berkeley Fellowships for graduate study (1993-1998), the Tiebout Prize for best paper in regional science (1998), the U.C. Transportation Center "Student of the Year" Award (1998), and the University Medal from U.C. Berkeley as the "most distinguished graduate" among its body of 5,300 undergraduates (1991). Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, Kockelman worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the rural Andean region of Ecuador, managing the construction of potable water systems and other sanitation infrastructure. Kockelman's primary research interests include the statistical modeling of travel behavior and location choice, the connection between urban form and travel, and urban planning and policy-making. She has taught classes in transportation systems, transport economics, transport data acquisition and analysis, and geometric design (at U.T.) and statistics (at U.C. Berkeley). Dr. Kockelman is the author of numerous published papers, including the following: "A Model for Time- and Budget-Constrained Activity Demand Analysis" (Transportation Research B), "Changes in the Flow-Density Relationship due to Environmental, Vehicle, and Driver Characteristics" (Transportation Research Record No. 1644); "Travel Behavior as a Function of Accessibility, Land Use Balance, and Land Use Mixing" (TRR No. 1607); "The Effects of Location Elements on Home Purchase Prices and Rents" (TRR No. 1606); "High-Speed Rail for California: A Cost-Benefit Analysis" (Berkeley Planning Journal). Kockelman sits on the Transportation Research Board's Committee on Transportation and Land Development and its Sub-Committee on Integrated Transportation and Land-Use Modeling, and she is a member of NCHRP Panel 8-37 ("Statistical and Methodological Standards for Metropolitan Travel Surveys") and TCRP Panel B-19 ("Providing Transit Options for Older Americans").

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