Mentors

Dr. Fasil Abebe is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His research interests are designing, synthesizing, and spectroscopic characterization of fluorescent small organic molecules for sensing and recognition of various transition or other toxic metal ions. He has mentored 3 RISE scholars: Treshaun Sutton, a Ph.D. student at Brown University in the Chemistry Program, Pierce Perkins who received a 2-year post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (postbac IRTA) at the NIH, and Khalil Makins-Dennis. 

Dr. Mingchao Cai is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. His research interests are to developing fast solvers for partial differential equations and their applications in biomechanics, material science, environmental science, and geoscience.

Dr. Yun-Chi Chen is an Associate Professor of Biology. His research interests are chiefly related to immunology, virology, vaccinology, epidemiology, and preventive and social medicine. His current focus is on the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and certain sexually transmitted infections among HIV-positive men in Maryland. He mentored Rachel Bauer who is doing a Ph.D. in Biomolecular Science at Michigan State University.

Dr. Edward Dillon Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research focus is studying favorable and unfavorable impacts that technology can impose on social atmospheres.

Dr. Douglas Dluzen is an Assistant Professor of Biology. His research interest is in identifying novel biological and socioeconomic factors that influence health disparities in the community and their impact on healthy aging and age-related diseases. He is the current research mentor to Mercy Arkorful, Wendy Camejo Nunez, and Mikayla Harris

Dr. Ingrid Tulloch is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Her research focus is on the neurobiology of Risky Behavior and also the role of immune function in risky health behaviors such as sexual behaviors and substance use. She is currently mentoring Adisa Buchanan.

Dr. Yuejin Li is an Assistant Professor of Biology. Her research seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying heart muscle dysfunction in heart diseases, including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, ischemic-reperfusion injury, and cardiac toxicity of cancer treatment.

Dr. Santosh Mandal is a professor and Graduate Coordinator of Chemistry. His research interests are anticancer drug development. He mentored Tiara Hinton who is doing a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at Wayne State University.

Dr. Pumtiwitt McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Her research interest is vaccine development. She mentored Ophelia Ukaegbu who is doing a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Delaware. Dr. McCarthy is currently mentoring MaryAgnes Balogun.

Dr. Asamoah Nkwanta is a Professor and Chair of the Mathematics Department. His research uses combinatorial and thermodynamic methods to model RNA sequences for RNA secondary structure prediction and is currently using the same applications to develop HIV-1 and yellow fever molecules.

Dr. Jiangnan Peng is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His research interest is the discovery of new drugs from natural resources for the treatment of human diseases such as cancer and infectious diseases, using bioassay-guided isolation, structure elucidation, and chemical optimization.

Dr. Saroj Pramanik is an Associate Professor of Biology. His research interest is bioremediation, somatic embryogenesis of plants, protein synthesis, and cancer drug development.

Dr. Md Rahman is an Associate Professor of Computer Science. His research interests are Computer Vision, Image Processing, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, and Data Mining and their application to retrieval for relevant and actionable information to achieving clinical and research goals in biomedicine.

Dr. Alexander Samokhvalov is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His research focuses on Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as a new chemical platform for encapsulation and controlled delivery of anti-cancer drugs. He also focuses on environmental applications of MOFs and associated chemical mechanisms. He is currently mentoring Barrington Henry and Sarai Rankin.

Dr. Viji Sitther is an Associate Professor of Biology. Her research focus is on the genetic manipulation of cyanobacteria for sustainable energy.

Dr. Angela Winstead is a Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department. She is also the director of the NIGMS-RISE program. Her research focus is on the Microwave Synthesis of Near-IR heptamethine Cyanine Dyes and pathogen detection and development of organorhenium tosylato compounds as a new class of anticancer drugs. She mentored Dr. Ashley Kennedy who is a clinical trials program coordinator at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Rachel Matthews who is a Technical Service Representative at Colortech Inc, Dominique Munson who is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the Biological and Biomedical Program.

Dr. Yongchao Zhang is an Associate Professor of Chemistry. His research interest is in developing sensors for biologically and environmentally important molecules and species and developing bioelectronics
such as biofuel cells. 

Dr. Najat Ziyadi is an Associate Professor of Mathematics. Her research interests are on the development and applications of mathematics, statistics, and simulations to models of systems in biology, epidemiology, and ecology.