Congratulations to the 2026 Recipients
Ashley Cornish
Department of Geography
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Ashley Cornish is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Gabriel Kooperman. Her research utilizes Earth system models to study the influence of land-atmosphere interactions on extreme events such as extreme heat, wildfires, drought, and flood risk in future climates.
Throughout her time as a graduate student, Cornish has collaborated with scientists at national labs to better understand the influence that increasing carbon dioxide has on vegetation dynamics and how it will modify lower-atmosphere moisture and energy budgets, informing research into processes that dominate risks to human health and security on global scales.
Cornish completed her Bachelor of Science in meteorology at Rutgers University in 2020 before starting her Master of Science in geography at UGA, which she completed in 2022. She chose to join UGA’s Department of Geography because of its interdisciplinary work and dedication to student support, training, and success, as well as its nationally recognized atmospheric science program.
Cornish has received numerous awards for both her teaching and research, including the Graduate School’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in 2021 and 2024 and the Wagner Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences, a national honor awarded by the Desert Research Institute in recognition of the publication of an outstanding academic paper.
Upon completion of her degree, Cornish plans to continue her work studying the risks of natural perils in a changing climate, whether it be in academia, government, or the private sector.
Amin Davarzani
College of Engineering
Amin Davarzani is a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Leidong Mao and Dr. Lohitash Karumbaiah. His research integrates microfluidics and cancer biology to develop tumor-on-chip platforms for glioblastoma research. He chose UGA for its strong interdisciplinary research environment, collaborative engineering and biomedical sciences community, and the opportunity to work at the interface of microphysiological systems and translational cancer research.
Davarzani’s dissertation focuses on developing vascularized glioblastoma-on-chip models to evaluate the potency of emerging therapies, including CAR T cell immunotherapy and combination drug-delivery strategies. His work aims to better recapitulate the tumor microenvironment by incorporating patient-derived tumor spheroids, endothelial barriers, dynamic perfusion, and quantitative imaging and non-imaging readouts. Through this research, he seeks to improve preclinical therapeutic testing and contribute to more predictive platforms for personalized cancer treatment.
During his graduate training, Davarzani has been involved in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT), contributed to interdisciplinary collaborations across different institutes, served on student leadership councils, and completed a research internship at Calico Life Sciences. He has also participated in the NSF I-Corps regional program and has mentored multiple undergraduate researchers.
After completing his program, Davarzani plans to pursue a career in translational bioengineering, with a focus on developing human-relevant microphysiological systems for therapies that bridge academic discovery with clinical settings.
Seaira Lett
Department of Linguistics
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Seaira Lett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Pilar Chamorro. She specializes in the semantics of underrepresented languages and is interested in increasing the field’s knowledge of how meaning is expressed around the world by analyzing data from these lesser-studied languages. Her dissertation focuses on how linguistic expressions are used to locate events in time in Chuj, a Mayan language spoken primarily in Guatemala.
During her time at UGA, Lett has worked on projects on Chuj and other languages, including Wari’, spoken in the Amazonian region of Brazil. She has also been involved in language revitalization projects: she facilitated workshops on the structure of Chuj for native speakers and led a project that resulted in the development of Chuj translations of children’s books. Lett chose UGA to work with faculty such as Dr. Chamorro, who is an expert in semantics and language documentation.
Originally from Georgia, Lett graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and linguistics, during which she received highest honors for her thesis on Chuj. She then joined the Teach For America corps, leading her to teach dual-language kindergarten and obtain a Master of Education.
Lett has received awards including UGA’s ASCEND Award, a travel grant from the Permanent International Committee of Linguists, a fellowship from the Linguistic Society of America, and the Best Graduate Paper Award at the Conference on the Americas. After finishing her Ph.D., she hopes to obtain a postdoctoral fellowship to continue her research on Chuj.
Hope Long
Department of Chemistry
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Bio info not available
Gopinath Mummaleti
Department of Food Science & Technology
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Gopinath Mummaleti is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of Georgia, where he conducts research in the Food Engineering Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Fanbin Kong. His research focuses on micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs), including their characterization, behavior in the human gastrointestinal tract, and risk assessment.
He earned his B.Tech in food technology from Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University and his M.Tech in food science and technology from the Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, where he investigated microbial production of functional polysaccharides for food applications.
Mummaleti chose the University of Georgia for its strong interdisciplinary research environment, leadership in food science, and the opportunity to work within Dr. Kong’s research group, which applies advanced in vitro digestion models and engineering approaches to address complex challenges in human health and food safety. His doctoral research integrates gastrointestinal simulation, analytical chemistry, and microbiological techniques to study how micro- and nanoplastics interact with nutrients, digestive enzymes, and gut microbiota.
He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, including Food Chemistry and LWT. His academic excellence has been recognized through several prestigious awards, including the American Association of Candy Technologists Scholarship and Dr. John J. Powers Graduate Scholarship. He has also received top honors in research presentations, including third place at the IFT FIRST oral presentation.
Following the completion of his degree, Mummaleti aims to pursue a career in academia focusing on sustainable food systems, food safety, and mitigating emerging contaminants to improve global public health.
Rachel Okamoto
Department of Human Development and Family Science
College of Family and Consumer Sciences
Rachel Okamoto is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Georgia, under the mentorship of Dr. Catherine Walker O’Neal. Her research specializes in financial identity development and relational processes, examining the financial socialization parents provide children through childhood and adolescence, how emerging adults develop a sense of financial identity and influences on well-being, and how couples entering romantic relationships navigate merging their financial identities and the impact on couple processes.
Okamoto earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and her master’s degree in marriage, family, and human development before beginning her doctoral work at the University of Georgia in 2023. She chose UGA for its interdisciplinary opportunities, strong support for research and scholarship, and the ability to learn from and work with Dr. O’Neal. Okamoto is a mother of three children, one of whom was welcomed into the family during her current program.
She has several peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations since joining UGA. Okamoto will earn her Ph.D. in May 2027 and then plans to pursue a research position at a university. Her long-term goal is to help create education and experiential opportunities for parents to teach children about finances and for couples to navigate family financial planning.
Vanessa Revheim
Department of Romance Languages
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Vanessa Revheim is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic linguistics in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Timothy Gupton. She has two decades of professional experience teaching across K-12 and higher education in the United States, Brazil, and Chile. She chose UGA due to its faculty specializing in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.
Her dissertation investigates language contact and heritage language acquisition in Marietta, focusing on the tense and aspectual mapping of Brazilian Portuguese. Her objective is to build a heritage-language corpus of Portuguese that will provide insight into how language contact restructures the bilingual mind, thus complementing previous work on heritage Spanish. Her work is personally inspired by the story of her uncle, a heritage speaker of Portuguese whose proficiency was affected by societal attitudes toward multilingual speakers, a common challenge faced in Latinx communities.
Revheim’s work challenges linguistic models that label heritage grammars as “incomplete,” advocating for research that validates home varieties and provides both theoretical and community-based contributions to the field. Beyond her research, she has co-authored multiple works with peers and faculty.
Revheim’s academic excellence has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the UGA Presidential Fellowship, a Goizueta Foundation Fellowship, and a prior Fulbright Fellowship at Yale University. Following graduation, Revheim aspires to work at a research-intensive university. There, she plans to establish the first publicly available corpus of Heritage Brazilian Portuguese to eliminate the barrier of primary data collection for future researchers, continuing her career goal of bridging empirical linguistic research with community empowerment.
Ngutor Tembe
Mathematics Education
Mary Frances Early College of Education
Ngutor Tembe is a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics education at the University of Georgia, studying under the supervision of Dr. Anna Marie Conner. Originally from Nigeria, Tembe earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics/statistics education and master’s degree in mathematics education from the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, before completing a master’s degree in applied mathematics and informatics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Tembe chose the University of Georgia for his doctoral studies because of its prestige and standing as one of the nation’s leading programs in mathematics education, with exceptional faculty engaged in groundbreaking research. He was also drawn to UGA’s strong sense of community, a sentiment reinforced when a U.S. consulate officer in Nigeria greeted him with “Go Dawgs!” during his visa interview. His research investigates how culture mediates middle school algebra teachers’ decision-making during instructional planning, drawing on Schoenfeld’s framework and sociocultural theory.
Tembe has received multiple departmental scholarships, held Graduate Research Assistantships on NSF- and NIH-funded projects (CALC, COMS, and SISTEMAS), and served as Co-Colloquium Chair for the Mathematics Education Student Association and Associate Editor for The Mathematics Educator. He has presented at Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education conferences and co-authored a publication in School Science and Mathematics.
Upon completing his Ph.D., Tembe plans to return to Nigeria to establish a research institute dedicated to teacher professional development, culturally responsive STEM instruction, and equitable mathematics education.
Bruno Ubiali
Center for Integrative Conservation Research
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Bruno Ubiali is a Ph.D. candidate in the integrative conservation and anthropology program at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Don Nelson. His research focuses on the anthropology of development, conservation, and social-ecological change in the Amazon region. With a background in forestry and rural development, Ubiali was drawn to UGA by the anthropology department’s strong environmental focus and the interdisciplinary approach of the Integrative Conservation and Anthropology program.
His doctoral research examines the ideas and practices that smallholders and industrial farmers employ to gain and maintain land access in an Amazonian agricultural frontier. By analyzing the complexity of land access strategies in a rapidly changing frontier, this work aims to support more effective policies to reconcile food security and biodiversity conservation.
During his Ph.D., Ubiali has received grants and awards from the American Philosophical Society, the Society for Economic Anthropology, and the University of Georgia, including the J. Peter Brosius Integrative Conservation Research Award. The University of Georgia has provided him with comprehensive training and a collaborative environment that have shaped his development as an interdisciplinary scholar.
Looking ahead, Ubiali plans to build a career in teaching and research that combines theoretical and applied work while foregrounding the needs and priorities of community partners. He views teaching as a core part of this path, through which he intends to help students apply anthropological ideas to real-world situations. Ubiali is deeply grateful to the professors, staff, and colleagues at UGA who have made his doctoral journey such a meaningful and rewarding experience.
Saja Yim
Art Education
Lamar Dodd School of Art
Saja Yim is a Ph.D. candidate in art education at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Mira Kallio-Tavin. She also earned her Bachelor of Art in studio art and Master of Education in educational psychology with an emphasis in gifted and creative education from the University of Georgia. Her interdisciplinary background bridges studio practice and educational theories, informing a teaching philosophy grounded in creativity and student-centered learning.
Yim has taught across a wide range of educational contexts, including inner-city schools, undergraduate courses, and graduate-level seminars, experiences that have shaped her commitment to responsive and participatory pedagogy. Her research centers on empowering children to author their own stories and represent their lived experiences through handmade books as an arts-based methodology. Drawing on queer and feminist perspectives, she examines how the material and conceptual processes of bookmaking can challenge dominant narratives in children’s media and visual culture, particularly those that marginalize the experiences of underserved populations.
Throughout her university career, Yim has been deeply invested in teaching both within and beyond university settings, including museum education, after-school and summer camp programming, and interdisciplinary collaborations with community partners. Committed to social justice, her teaching emphasizes artmaking as a vital site for inquiry, identity formation, and social transformation.
Yim was selected as a 2025 Future Faculty Fellow and is the recipient of the 2026 Excellence in Teaching Award and the Willson Center Graduate Research Award. Upon graduation, she seeks to work in museums and higher education to expand representation and access to the arts for diverse populations.
