Current and Past Fellows
Raven E. Brown is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and at the Urban Democracy Lab. She has a Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy from The New School where she was a recipient of the Provost Fellowship, an MPH in Global Health from New York University, an MA in International Affairs from The New School, and a BA in Social Sciences and Ceramics from Bennington College.
Raven’s research interests include alternatives to neoliberalism, the “urban”, varieties of welfare capitalism, political transitions, social and economic rights, and poverty and inequality. Her dissertation, “Neoliberalism, the Right to Housing and the Evolution of the Welfare State in post-apartheid South Africa” provides a broader historical context to explain the persistence of inequality and lack of access to adequate housing in the democratic state. Her work posits that the failure to engage in sufficient institutional reforms, the fall of the Soviet Union, concessions made during the “Grand Bargain” negotiations, and the maintenance of apartheid-era distribution regimes have undermined the capacity of the state to build a more equitable society, despite its redistributional orientation. Raven’s research, as part of the Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship, will focus on the nexus of climate change, cities, service delivery, and migration with the goal of attempting to mitigate inequality as the climate crisis deepens.
Grace A. Chen is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Learning, Teaching and Diversity from Vanderbilt University and B.A. in Psychology and in Organizational Studies with Highest Honors from the University of Michigan. A former secondary school mathematics teacher, Grace studies teacher learning around issues of race, power, and equity, with particular interests in identity, ethics, and affect.
Her academic research on teachers' attunements, teachers' pedagogical responsibilities, marginalization in mathematics education, and Asian Americans in STEM education has appeared in Cognition & Instruction; Pedagogy, Culture & Society; Race Ethnicity and Education; and the Review of Educational Research. She was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Her teacher-facing work on the politics of teaching mathematics, building mathematical community in secondary classrooms, and refusing racialization has appeared in The Best of the Math Teacher Blogs 2015, the Global Math Department newsletter, and as keynotes at Twitter Math Camp and other professional development experiences. She also co-founded the monthly #miseducAsian Twitter chat.
Prema Filippone is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at the Silver School of Social Work. She earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Before joining NYU, Prema was a recipient of the Provost’s Diversity Fellowship at Columbia University. Prema is interested in understanding how systematic exclusion, stigmatization and discrimination serve as drivers for HIV-related health disparities in local and global communities.
Her research examines the effects of intersectional stigma and discrimination on health decisions, the ways in which vulnerable communities engage in the HIV Care Continuum, and HIV-related health outcomes affected by persistent barriers to HIV/STI prevention and treatment. Her dissertation work utilized mixed methods to evaluate the effects of intersectional stigma on the health decisions among vulnerable women living with HIV in Masaka region, Uganda. Prema’s future research aims to better understand intersectional stigma as one of the fundamental causes of HIV health disparities and to establish culturally adaptive and cost-effective innovative interventions to improve HIV-related health outcomes among poorly engaged persons living with HIV and vulnerable local communities affected by poverty, gender-based violence, and syndemic conditions—HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and mental illness. At NYU Silver School of Social Work, Prema will implement the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) framework to develop and evaluate culturally salient intervention components that address the effects of intersecting stigmas on effective HIV prevention and treatment engagement among populations living in high-risk local contexts. Prema has co-authored publications appearing in the Journal for Interpersonal Violence, Advances in Social Work, BMC Women’s Health, eClincial Medicine: The Lancet Discovery Science, Methodological Innovations, AIDS Education and Prevention, and Health Education & Behavior.
David Ray Garcia, PhD, FNP-BC, NP-C is a provost’s postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at NYU Meyers College of Nursing. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the syndemic relationships between substance use, violence, mental health, and HIV risk behaviors among adolescent gay and bisexual men, and the protective factors that mitigate HIV risk.
Among his many honors, Garcia received the Outstanding Dissertation Award (2022) for his PhD dissertation entitled Syndemic Predictors of HIV Risk Behaviors Among Adolescent Gay and Bisexual Men: A Secondary Data Analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Years 2015-2019. The integrative review conducted for his dissertation has been published ahead of print in the journal Nursing Research. As a postdoctoral fellow, Garcia works as a research assistant on the NIH-funded clinical trial Adherence Connection for Counseling, Education, and Support (ACCESS) II (PI: Navarra), which examines the contextual factors of the peer participant relationship among young people of color living with HIV. He is also focusing on grant development for an intervention that aims to decrease HIV testing hesitancy among young Black and Latino gay and bisexual men.
Prior to joining the faculty as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at NYU Meyers in 2022, Garcia was an adjunct clinical instructor for the Master of Science program and has also mentored numerous undergraduate nursing students in the Bachelor of Science program. Garcia is a double board-certified family nurse practitioner and previously held a clinical position at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the Men’s Sexual Health and Reproductive Medicine Program treating sexual and hormonal dysfunction in men surviving cancer.
Anabel Gutierrez is an Assistant Curator/Faculty Fellow in the Division of Libraries’ Research & Research Services. She is a librarian liaison for the departments of Latin American, Caribbean, and Indigenous Studies. Anabel holds a MA in Latin American Studies from San Diego State University, a MLIS from San Jose State University, and a BA in Spanish Literature with a minor in History of Latin America from the University of California, San Diego. Previously, she was an Assistant Librarian in the Department of Research, Instruction, and Outreach at San Diego State University.
Anabel is a decolonial Latin Americanist who focuses on diasporic and immigrant communities from Latin America and the Caribbean at the San Ysidro/Tijuana United States-Mexico border. Anabel’s current ethnographic research on Haitian migrants in Tijuana utilizes qualitative mixed methods consisting of a survey and open-ended interview. Her research in the field of Latin American Studies intersects anthropology, history, and Spanish. She is the recipient of the Tinker Field Research Grant for her preliminary research on Haitian migrant restaurants in Tijuana. Her academic librarian research interests are in reference and user services, instruction, open access, and diversity and inclusion in librarianship and higher education.
Nada Haq-Siddiqi is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at the Tandon School of Engineering. She received her B.S. from Case Western Reserve University, M.S. from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. from the City College of New York. Nada’s background is in Biomedical Engineering. Her areas of expertise involve development of naturally-derived and synthetic polymeric biomaterials for a variety of tissue engineering applications.
Prior to graduate study, she held research positions in industry R&D and clinical trials of investigational biomedical devices. Nada's research centers on developing protein-engineered biomaterial scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug delivery, with an emphasis on orthopedic tissue repair. Nada's long-term research interests are in stimuli-responsive biomaterials and dynamic platforms for tissue regeneration.
Shuyuan Huang is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Rory Meyers College of Nursing. She received a Ph.D. in Nursing from Yale School of Nursing, a Master of Public Health from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, a Master of Science in Nursing from Central South University in China, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. She is also a registered nurse in CT and a trained lifestyle coach for the CDC National Diabetes Prevention Program.
Shuyuan’s research centers on lifestyle behavior interventions, diabetes prevention, gestational diabetes, immigrant health, and mhealth. Her dissertation, “Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors among Chinese Immigrants with a History of Gestational Diabetes,” was a cross-sectional study examining the patterns of objectively-measured physical activity and sedentary behaviors among understudied Chinese immigrants with a history of gestational diabetes, who have been disproportionately affected by gestational diabetes. In addition, she also explored the knowledge and risk perception, cultural, and psychosocial determinants of these two health behaviors. During this postdoctoral fellowship, Shuyuan will embark on her next research project aiming to develop culturally and linguistically sensitive lifestyle interventions with the community utilizing mHealth technology to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes among Chinese/Asian immigrants with prior gestational diabetes.
Rasha Kardosh is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Psychology Department in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychological Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rasha’s research centers on how the cognitive system perceives and represents the social diversity of our environments. Building on classical theories and paradigms from social psychology and cognitive science, she explores the different cognitive processes that underlie our (mis)perceptions of the diversity of social environments and our attitudes.
Her recent work on Minority Salience examines how the cognitive system is tuned to the presence of individuals from minority groups, thus leading us to perceive our environments as substantially more diverse than they truly are. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that these erroneous perceptions lead to decreased support for diversity-promoting policies. As part of this postdoctoral fellowship Rasha will work on her next research project, which seeks to build a theoretical and methodological account of how social diversity is represented in the cognitive system and how this representation shapes our social views on diversity and equality in society.
Sher Poudel is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at New York University College of Dentistry. He holds a Ph.D. in Oral Biology from Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea, where he specialized in stem cell, bone regeneration and repair biology. He received Master’s degree in Molecular and Human Genetics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India and B.Sc. in Biology from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Sher’s research centers on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of age-related changes in bone and cartilage. Using his background in molecular cell biology, Sher has been investigating mitochondrial activities and metabolism in skeletal cells of aged mice to identify the mechanisms of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis pathogenesis. He also studies on potential applications of mitochondrial modifying compounds in preventing/treating those diseases. His recent findings revealed that adult-onset isolated deficiency of growth hormone increases development of osteoarthritis in mice at the end-of-life stage. Severe cartilage loss and subchondral bone modification in the osteoarthritic mice were associated with chondrocyte senescence and synovial inflammation. During this training, he plans to establish genetically heterogeneous UM-HET3 as a mouse model for studying primary osteoarthritis that will resemble the variability seen in the human osteoarthritis severity.
Michelle Twali is an Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow in the Department of Applied Psychology at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Clark University in Worcester, MA, a Masters’ degree in Developmental Psychology from University of Utah, and a B.A (Hons) in Psychology and Political Science from University of Ghana.
Prior to joining NYU, Michelle was a postdoctoral research fellow with Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA) and Princeton University. Michelle’s research examines the factors that contribute to the persistence of intergroup conflict and violence, and the ways of reducing it. Specifically, she uses multiple methods to examine three research questions: 1) how people who belong to groups that have experienced collective violence and oppression make sense of their experience and how the derived meaning shapes intergroup relations and engagement in social change; 2) what psychological needs arise (e.g., need for acknowledgement and power) in the aftermath of collective victimization, and the adaptive or maladaptive consequences of meeting those needs; 3) how theory-driven context-relevant programs can be designed and evaluated to promote equitable societies. In addition, Michelle has consulted with non-governmental organizations to develop intervention programs that aim at reducing conflict and promoting intergroup relations (e.g., a mass media intervention in Juba, South Sudan and a micro-enterprise program among refugees and Kenyans in Nairobi, Kenya).
Nallely Mejia is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Her research is at the intersection of immigration, wealth, and stratification. Nallely is working on a manuscript about first- and second-generation immigrant understandings of money and wealth.
She draws on 70 in-depth interviews with Mexican immigrant parents and their second generation adult children to examine how they navigate various economic situations, such as inheritance and financial support, in a multigenerational and transnational context. Nallely’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and various UC Berkeley research centers. Nallely holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.A. in International Studies and Sociology from American University in Washington, D.C.