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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Owen Beck
Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Interests: Biomechanics, physiology, and performance of human locomotion
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Aprile Benner
Associate 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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
George Biros
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Interests: Imaging, computational mechanics, high-performance computing.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Frances Anne Champagne
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Gene-environment interplay, developmental trajectories, epigenetic inheritance, social neuroscience.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Jacob E. Cheadle
Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Ambulatory Research, Social Networks, Biosociology/Biodemography, Race/Ethnic Health Disparities, Quantitative Methods, Social Neuroscience.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Diane Coffey
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Social influences on health in India.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Jordan Conwell
Assistant 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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Audrey Duarte
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Memory and the Brain.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Christy Erving
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Research Lab Director (Academic), Population Research Center
Interests: Health disparities, older Black adults, stress exposure, psychosocial resources.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Lauren Gaydosh
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Understanding the role of early life environments in shaping health across the life course. Lauren integrates social, contextual, and biological data from population-based longitudinal studies to examine how inequalities in the social environment get under the skin to create health disparities.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Bridget Goosby
Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Health Disparities, Race and Ethnicity, Biosociology/Biodemography, Poverty/Inequality, Life Course.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Stephanie Grasso
Assistant Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Interests: Alzheimer’s and Dementia, Brain, Speech, Language and Hearing, and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Andreana Petrova Haley
Professor, Department of Psychology
Director of Clinical Training, Department of Psychology
Interests: Aging, cognition, neurobiology, neuroimaging (MRI, MRS, fMRI).
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Sae Hwang Han
Assistant 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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Paige Harden
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Behavioral genetics, sociogenomics, cognitive development, adolescent development, externalizing psychopathology.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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)
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Theresa Jones
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Neural plasticity across the lifespan, motor skill learning, mechanisms of brain and behavioral adaptation to brain damage, and glial-neuronal interactions.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Ken-Hou Lin
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Inequality, Economy and Society, Finance, Organization, Race, and Methods.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Elizabeth Muñoz
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Interests: identifying early and modifiable predictors of adult cognitive health.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Franco Pestilli
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Neuroimaging, human development, learning, aging, lifespan, brain anatomy, white matter, computational modelling, neuroinformatics.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Tetyana Pudrovska
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Population health disparities, gender and health, work and health, biopsychosocial stress, biodemography, aging.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Research Gate
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Phillip Schnarrs
Associate Professor of Population Health, Department of Population Health
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Afroze Shaikh
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
Interests: Older adulthood, suicide intervention and prevention, access to healthcare, mental health service use, anti-oppressive practices.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Mary Steinhardt
Professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
Associate Vice President for Research - Research Integrity Officer
Interests: Behavioral and biological pathways by which resilience resources impact type 2 diabetes health outcomes among African Americans.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Edison Thomaz
Assistant 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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Robert Town
James L. and Nancy Powell Centennial Professor
Interests: Health economics, industrial organization, applied econometrics.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Elliot Max Tucker-Drob
Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Development, academic achievement, quantitative methods.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
Abigail Weitzman
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Interests: Issues central to family demography: reproductive decision-making and behavior and their implications for population health.
Goolge Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
David S. Yeager
Raymond Dickson Centennial Professor, Department of Psychology
Interests: Social-cognitive development, Motivation, Aggression, Adolescence, Research methodology, and Psychological interventions.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
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.
Google Scholar
Photo Credit.
