Faculty Affiliates
Jacqueline L. Angel
Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
Professor, Department of Sociology
Wilbur J. Cohen Professor of Health and Social Policy
Interests: Health and retirement issues in the U.S., with a focus on older minorities, the impact of social policy on the Hispanic population and Mexican American families.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Owen Beck
Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Interests: Biomechanics, physiology, and performance of human locomotion
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Jared Benge
Associate Professor of Neurology, Department of Neurology
Interests: Assessment of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, dementia, and cognitive impairment in movement disorders.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Aprile Benner
Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: Development of low-income and race/ethnic minority youth, investigating how social contexts influence experiences of marginalization and discrimination, school transitions, and developmental outcomes during adolescence.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Adam Bush
Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Interests: Novel MRI methods to explore human pathophysiology and make imaging safer, particularly for children. Engineering, physiology, and medicine to pursue novel blood flow and oximetry methods in disease.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Marika Cabral
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Interests: Health economics, public finance, and industrial organization. The role of market failures, the impacts of incentive design, and the consequences of government intervention in health-related insurance markets.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Catherine Calder
Professor, Department of Statistics and Data Sciences
Interests: Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics, Bayesian Statistics, Network Analysis.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Jacob E. Cheadle
Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Ambulatory Research, Social Networks, Biosociology/Biodemography, Race/Ethnic Health Disparities, Quantitative Methods, Social Neuroscience.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Namkee Choi
Professor, School of Social Work
Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in Gerontology
Interests: Geriatric Mental Health; Depression Treatment in Aging Services; Social Policy for older persons (Social Security and Supplemental Security Income); Program evaluation.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Alexandra L. Clark
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Aging, neuropsychology, mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, clinical cultural neuroscience, brain health equity, neuroimaging, TBI.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Diane Coffey
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Social influences on health in India.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Jordan Conwell
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Sociology of Education; Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility; Wealth; Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois; Research Methods; Race, Class, and Gender; Family.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Robert L. Crosnoe
Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Liberal Arts
Professor, Department of Sociology
Rapoport Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts
Interests: Human Development, Education, Family, Health, Immigration.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Heather Cuevas
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Interests: Diabetes self-management, glucose variability, cognitive function, Latino health
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Audrey Duarte
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Memory and the Brain.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Christy Erving
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Research Lab Director (Academic), Population Research Center
Interests: Health disparities, older Black adults, stress exposure, psychosocial resources.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Mateo Farina
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Research Lab Director (Academic), Population Research Center
Interests: Life course origins of dementia risk and biological aging, examining health and health disparities across race/ethnic groups, evaluating healthy life expectancies across demographic and geographic groups, how life course pathways look different across contexts, with a growing focus on Latin America.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Karen Fingerman
Wilson Regents Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Faculty Research Associate, Population Research Center
Director of the Texas Aging and Longevity Center
Director of Research for the CAPS Program Development and Pilot Callout Block Headline
Interests: Family relationships and social integration, with recent work focusing on social interactions and experiences in the daily lives of older adults.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Erica C. Garcia-Pittman
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Interests: Medical education/clinical teaching focused on ambulatory psychiatric care of older adults. Treatment of late-life psychiatric, behavioral and neurocognitive disorders (Geriatric Mental Health) with expertise in late-life bipolar disorder.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Shaoqing Ge
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Interests: Healthy aging, well-being, and chronic conditions among older adults.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Michael Geruso
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
National Bureau of Economic Research Faculty Research Fellow
Interests: US Health Insurance Markets, including in Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA insurance Marketplaces. Environmental determinants of child health in the developing world, and various other topics in applied microeconomics.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Jennifer Glass
Professor, Department of Sociology
Centennial Commission Professor of Liberal Arts
Interests: Work and family issues, gender stratification, telecommuting and new labor practices, STEM labor force retention, religious ideology and women's economic attainment.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Marci Gleason
Associate Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: The influence of major life transitions on adults’ mental, physical, and relationship health.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Bridget Goosby
Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Health Disparities, Race and Ethnicity, Biosociology/Biodemography, Poverty/Inequality, Life Course.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Stephanie Grasso
Assistant Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Interests: Alzheimer’s and Dementia, Brain, Speech, Language and Hearing, and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Andreana Petrova Haley
Professor, Department of Psychology
Director of Clinical Training, Department of Psychology
Interests: Aging, cognition, neurobiology, neuroimaging (MRI, MRS, fMRI).
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Sae Hwang Han
Associate Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: Social relationships and health in middle and later adulthood. Examining health consequences of social and productive engagement in middle and later adulthood, with a particular focus on examining how various forms of helping behaviors (e.g., formal volunteering, informal helping, or caregiving) influence behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms underlying health.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Paige Harden
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Behavioral genetics, sociogenomics, cognitive development, adolescent development, externalizing psychopathology.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Mark D. Hayward
Professor, Department of Sociology
Centennial Commission Professor in the Liberal Arts
Interests: Life course origins of health disparities, morbidity and mortality, biodemography.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutinal Contexts
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Maya Henry
Associate Dean for Research, Moody College of Communication
Associate Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Associate Professor (Medical), Department of Neurology
Director of the Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab
Lillie Hage Jamail Centennial Professorship (Fellow)
Robert Allen Jones and Mary Buford Jones Faculty Fellowship in Journalism (Holder)
Interests: The Nature and treatment of aphasia caused by stroke and neurodegenerative disease.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Eun-Ok Im
Dean, School of Nursing
Professor, School of Nursing
Adjunct/Clinical Affiliate, Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost
Laura Lee Blanton Chair in Nursing (Holder)
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Mbemba Jabbi
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Interests: Deep behavioral phenotyping and multimodal imaging genetics to better understand the neurogenetic basis for normal and dysregulated affective functioning.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Jung Kwak
Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Interests: Long-term care policy, dementia care and end-of-life decision-making, decision-support needs among dementia caregivers, the effects of personalized music listening on nursing home residents with advanced dementia.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Chandra L. Muller
Professor, Department of Sociology
Alma Cowden Madden Centennial Professorship
Ashbel Smith Professorship
Interests: How schools and education shape life course outcomes such as work and health. In particular, she focuses on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) preparation and careers. Of primary interest is the diversity in experiences and disparities according to gender, race and ethnicity, social class, as well as disability, immigration or language minority status.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Elizabeth Muñoz
Associate Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: Identifying early and modifiable predictors of adult cognitive health.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Lisa A. Neff
Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: Adult Development, Behavior, Biobehavioral Processes and Health, Contexts of Human Development, Interpersonal Relationships.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Charles B. Nemeroff
Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Director, Institute for Early Life Adversity Research
Co-Director, Center for Psychedelic Research & Therapy
Interests: Pathophysiology of mood and anxiety disorders, with a focus on the role of child abuse and neglect as a major risk factor. Role of mood disorders as a risk factor for major medical disorders including heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Yaolin Pei
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Franco Pestilli
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Neuroimaging, human development, learning, aging, lifespan, brain anatomy, white matter, computational modelling, neuroinformatics.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Carolyn Phillips
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Interests: Psychosocial determinants of health in people with chronic illness, family dyads at the end-of-life, and professional and family caregivers. Specifically, music-based interventions to improve coping, communication about grief and loss, and psychosocial and functional well-being.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Tetyana Pudrovska
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Population health disparities, gender and health, work and health, biopsychosocial stress, biodemography, aging.
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Kavita Radhakrishnan
Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Director, Luci Baines Johnson and Ian J.Turpin Center for Gerontological Nursing
Associate Dean for Research
Director, Cain Center
Interests: Technology interventions for cardiovascular self-management behaviors, aging-in-place, digital gaming, digital phenotyping.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Paul Rathouz
Professor, Department of Population of Health and Department of Statistics and Data Sciences
Director, Biomedical Data Science Hub
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Kathy Richards
Clinical Professor and Senior Research Scientist, School of Nursing
Interests: Ostructive sleep apnea (OSA) and cognition in older adults; sleep in critically ill patients; social activity, exercise, function, and sleep; restless legs syndrome (RLS); tailored biobehavioral intervention research methods.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
PubMed
Research Gate
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Stephen T. Russell
Director, School of Human Ecology,
Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, School of Human Ecology
Amy Johnson McLaughlin Administrative Chair in Human Ecology (Holder)
Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professorship in Child Development (Holder)
Interests: LGBTQ youth health and rights; programs and policies to improve human development; and cultural processes in families.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Seth Schwartz
Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Faculty Fellows Fund (Holder)
Interests: Identity, broadly defined (including personal, ethnic, and cultural identity), in culture and ethnicity, in parental involvement and family functioning, and in preventing problems and promoting competencies in adolescents and emerging adults.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Afroze Shaikh
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
Interests: Older adulthood, suicide intervention and prevention, access to healthcare, mental health service use, anti-oppressive practices.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Mary Steinhardt
Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Associate Vice President for Research - Research Integrity Officer
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Dean Spears
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Interests: Health, growth, and survival of children, especially in India; Environment, air pollution, and climate change; Population dimensions of social well-being.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Hirofumi Tanaka
Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Ruth Knight Millikan Centennial Professorship (Holder)
Interests: Vascular aging, sequel or consequences of aging-related vascular dysfunction, lifestyle modifications that prevent and reverse vascular dysfunction with aging.
CAPS Research Theme: Biosocial Processes
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Edison Thomaz
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jack Kilby/Texas Instruments Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Computer Engineering
Interests: Computational perception of human signals (e.g., behavioral, emotional, physiological) while leveraging ubiquitous and wearable sensing, systems and methods for recognizing and modeling the entire span of people's everyday activities and context.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
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Robert Town
James L. and Nancy Powell Centennial Professor
Interests: Health economics, industrial organization, applied econometrics.
CAPS Research Theme: Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Elliot Max Tucker-Drob
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Development, academic achievement, quantitative methods.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Debra Umberson
Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts and Professor of Sociology
Principal Investigator and Director of CAPS
Interests: The impact of the social environment on mental and physical health across the life course, with attention to diversity associated with gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual minority status.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Verónica García Walker
Clinical Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Luci Baines Johnson Fellow in Nursing (2021-2022)
Recipient of Dean's Excellence for Scholarship Award (2023-2024)
Interests: Mental health expertise: gerontology/aging.
CAPS Research Themes: Family and Social Engagement and Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts
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Abigail Weitzman
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Issues central to family demography: reproductive decision-making and behavior and their implications for population health.
CAPS Research Themes: Biosocial Processes and Family and Social Engagement
PubMed
Goolge Scholar
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Bo Xie
Professor, School of Nursing | School of Information
Interests: Health informatics interventions that can promote older adults’ use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for health information and decision-making (i.e., e-health literacy) that may have important implications for patient-provider relationships and health outcomes.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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David S. Yeager
Raymond Dickson Centennial Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Social-cognitive development, Motivation, Aggression, Adolescence, Research methodology, and Psychological interventions.
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Yuanjin Zhou
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Interests: Dementia care, informal and formal caregiving, health management for older adults, fall and injury prevention, risk and resilience, health disparities, gerotechnology, interprofessional collaboration and education, transdisciplinary research.
CAPS Research Theme: Family and Social Engagement
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Professor emeritus
Ronald J. Angel
Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology
Interersts: Medical sociology, social welfare, poverty and minorities, demography and epidemiology, research methods and statistics.
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