Dean's research scholars

2025-26 scholars

The CAS Dean’s Research Scholar program provides for reassigned time during the fall and/or spring semesters to make progress on a scholarly project. The highly competitive awards of up to .50 for the academic year are made via faculty applications each spring.

Christina Bejarano, Political Science

Bejarano's research centers on advancing women’s political leadership. We are studying strategies and mobilization efforts towards increasing women of color voters and political candidates.

In the project, “Deepening Democratic Engagement: Moving Women of Color from Reliable Voters to Candidates for Public Office,” Bejarano and her collaborator document the shadow labor women of color are doing to extend who constitutes, “we the people.” In doing so, she disrupts the narrative that women of color are not engaged in formal electoral politics and document an important history that deserves to be recorded. Through research, interviews and convening of groups, they are uncovering the contributions to increasing political participation. Women of color are cultivating participation in new ways but are also highly reflective of the often-historic untold stories of their strategic political organizing. This significant role women of color play in extending democratic inclusion has previously gone undocumented by scholars.

Bejarano is working on the final phase of the project, which includes drafting and publishing a monograph in which they establish these women of color groups and link them to the historical legacies of women of color as democratically engaged actors.

Christopher Brower, Biology

Proposed activities include research and writing a revised proposal to address key weaknesses identified in a previous R01 grant application to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, with the goal of generating data for a stronger resubmission.

Specifically, Brower is investigating the function of the Liat1 protein (discovered in TWU’s lab) and its regulation through interactions with Jmjd6 and Ate1. The study aims to understand how Liat1 contributes to biomolecular condensation in the nucleolus via liquid-liquid phase separation and how its function is modulated by specific protein interactions. His research integrates a combination of molecular biology, biochemistry and proteomics techniques to uncover the function of Liat1.

Stina Soderling, Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies

Her book project, with a working title of “Cyclical Temporalities for the End Times: Fermentation and the Creation of Time in the Rural Queer South,” builds on dissertation research on senses of time in rural queer spaces. Using a community in rural Tennessee as its site of inquiry, this project utilizes an interdisciplinary set of methods from the humanities and humanistic social sciences to show how human senses of time are constructed in relation to place, identity and interactions with microbes, plants and animals.

The book will contribute to the field of Queer Studies by expanding and revising queer theorizations of temporality to include rural settings. The book makes a case for a “rural queer temporality,” distinct from the urban-focused theories of time that are dominant in Queer Studies scholarship.

M. Giovanni Valderas, Visual Arts

Valderas’ public scholarship with The Oak Cliff Community Mural District aims to collaborate with business owners, institutions, organizations, arts professionals and community members to create 12 murals throughout Dallas’ predominantly Latino/x West Oak Cliff neighborhood.

Valderas’ work seeks to enhance quality of life, foster community empowerment, stimulate economic activity and preserve and celebrate the area's cultural history and traditions. Additionally, the initiative provides an opportunity for youth and the broader community to actively participate through community paint days. This effort will serve as a national model, demonstrating how arts collaborations can play a crucial role in preserving and sharing history.

Wen Xu, Computer Science

The rapid spread of misinformation and rumors on social media can have severe consequences. Identifying influential users who can help stop the spread of false information (e.g., truth seed nodes) is critical to mitigate the negative impact of rumors and misinformation.

Existing methods for containing rumors often overlook the diversity of topics associated with information and fail to consider user interests, resulting in an incomplete understanding of rumor propagation. To address this gap, Xu’s work focuses on developing and implementing the Topic-aware Rumor-Truth Cascade model to combat misinformation and rumors in online social networks. This model will integrate user interests and topic relevance to more accurately capture the dynamics of information flow. Xu plans to test the performance of the proposed algorithm on real-world datasets and compare its effectiveness with traditional rumor containment methods. The evaluation metrics will be rumor-containment rate, computational efficiency (time and memory) and scalability. Xu’s project will analyze the experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Past receipients

Shazia Ahmed, Biology

Nasrin Mirsaleh-Kohan, Chemistry and Biochemisty

Ilana Morgan, Dance

Emarely Rosa-Davila, Social Work

Danielle Woolery, Music