The College of Sciences is excited to introduce 17 new faculty members into five departments and one school in 2021. Welcome!
Anthropology
Emily Zavodny, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Emily.Zavodny@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Investigating how prehistoric human and animal populations successfully adapted to uncertainty and risk posed by marginal landscapes, resource scarcity, and/or changing climate and environments. Additional interests include how studying past resilience, sustainability, and biodiversity can help us approach present-day social and environmental problems.
Chemistry
Halina Werner, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Halina.Werner@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Chemistry education, specifically the role of metacognition in chemistry and STEM, and the relationship between learning and student enjoyment of various teaching strategies.
Nicholson School of Communication & Media
Eric Adelson
Lecturer
Eric.Adelson@ucf.edu
Research Interests: A journalist whose courses include News Reporting, Advanced Reporting. Freelance Writing, and Journalism Readings.
Betsy Kalin
Lecturer
Betsy.Kalin@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Women in film and media, social impact documentary, independent film, LGBTQIA film, film history, film distribution, outreach and engagement, and editing.
Robb Lauzon, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Robb.Lauzon@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Conducting community-based research on the department’s Transparency Project, Winter Park Sunshine. In his courses, students are guided through real-world research experiences that contribute to observable results.
Matthew Maddex
Lecturer
Matthew.Maddex@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Rhetoric and Argumentation – Hip Hop and Politics – Political Communication and Intercultural Communication.
Giovanna Varela
Lecturer
Giovanna.Varela@ucf.edu
Physics
Adam LaMee
Assistant Professor
Adam.LaMee@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Formative assessment strategies and performance assessment alternatives to large-scale, high-stakes science tests at the Center for Advancement of Learning and Assessment, FSU, and the CMS detector collaboration at CERN’s LHC that discovered the Higgs boson.
Ramses Ramirez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Ramses.Ramirez@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Modeling the planetary atmospheres of potentially habitable terrestrial planets both within and outside our solar system.
Psychology
Michael Chetta, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Michael.Chetta@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Hospitality, client satisfaction and qualitative analyses.
Kimberly Kent, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Kimberly.Kent@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Clinical psychology.
Raymonde Neal, Psy.D.
Lecturer
Raymonde.Neal@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Clinical psychology working with the Caribbean population and children/adolescents with special needs.
Statistics & Data Science
Chudamani Poudyal, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Chudamani.Poudyal@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Actuarial data science, risk analytics, robust & computational statistical loss modeling with particular emphasis on the actuarial and financial loss data.
Rong Zhou, Ph.D.
Instructor
Rong.Zhou@ucf.edu
Research Interests: Data Analysis, Bioinformatics, Biomathematics, and Numerical Computation. Teaches Statistical Methods I and Statistical Methods II.
Mengyu Xu, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: The covariance matrix estimation and time-varying network recovery from high-dimensional time series and the distribution theory of quadratic forms and high-dimensional hypotheses test.