Faculty Fellows

Cooke-Cottone is a Professor in the Department of Counseling, School of Educational Psychology (CSEP), where she teaches courses on mindful therapy, yoga for health and healing, self-care and service, eating disorder prevention and treatment, and counseling with children and adolescents. Presenting nationally and internationally, she uses her model of embodied self-regulation to structure discussions on empirical work and practical applications. Similarly, Cooke-Cottone's research focuses on embodied self-regulation (i.e., yoga, mindfulness, and self-care) and psychosocial disorders (e.g., eating disorders, trauma). Her research has been funded by lululemon, athletica, the National Science Foundation, and UNICEF.

Gregory Delaney is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, where he teaches courses in architecture history, building and urban analysis, and studios in architecture and urban design at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. His work spans architecture, urban design, history, and critical preservation, operating in the interdisciplinary spaces between these fields. Guided by an interest in lateral thinking, he promotes public discourse around architecture and design. He emphasizes site-based analysis, community engagement, travel, and experiential learning in his teaching. A graduate of The Ohio State University's Knowlton School, he earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees there and taught architecture and landscape architecture before moving to Buffalo in 2011.

Laura Lewis’ work has focused on expanding international opportunities for students and creating virtual classroom collaborations around global issues. She has facilitated academic partnerships with colleagues in Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, India and Mexico, and recently helped to launch the new First Year Global Experience in Costa Rica. Lewis was the recipient of a Fulbright award for International Educators in 2018.  She teaches courses in the School of Social Work’s MSW Program and in the School’s undergraduate minor in Community Organizing. Before joining the School of Social Work, Lewis practiced social work in both clinic and school settings. Her work included advocacy for increased access to mental health services, and on reducing stigma.

Elizabeth Mietlicki-Baase is an associate professor in the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. She earned her MA in Psychology and PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience at UB, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. The focus of her research is the neural controls of energy balance and motivated behavior. She investigates how feeding-relevant hormones act on reward-related nuclei in the brain to control energy intake, weight gain, and motivation for palatable food. She also examines neurobiological changes that are associated with altered satiation processing, including in the context of Prader-Willi Syndrome as well as binge eating behavior. These projects may aid in the identification of improved treatments for overweight and obesity.

Steven Miller is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Executive Director of the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture. His academic interests encompass psychoanalytic theory, continental philosophy, and 19th- and 20th-century European literatures, along with translation studies. He is the author of War After Death: On Violence and Its Limits (Fordham University Press, 2014), which explores the intricate relationships between violence, law, and desire.

In addition to his book, Miller's work includes "Lacan at the Limits of Legal Theory: Law, Desire, and Sovereign Violence," featured in Penumbra: Counter-Histories of the Present (2013), and the theoretical introduction, "Literature and the Right to Marriage," for a special issue of Diacritics (2005). His essay "Open Letter to the Enemy: Jean Genet's Holy War," also published in Diacritics (2004), showcases his deep engagement with literary and philosophical discourses.

Aisha K. O’Mally works in the School of Management, Organization, and Human Resources department. She teaches mostly business communication and organizational behavior. She also is very active in the School of Management’s Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness programs through leadership coaching and executive training. She is the academic advisor for the School of Management Minority Alliance (SOMMA) student groups and the SOM Student Diversity & Inclusion Committee. O’Mally is passionate about teaching, coaching and research. 

Derek R. Strykowski is an associate teaching professor of historical musicology at the University at Buffalo’s Department of Music. As a scholar, Strykowski investigates the artistic impact of the music publishing business upon the work of nineteenth-century concert composers in both Europe and, increasingly, the United States. His recent journal articles include an exploration of the strategies by which composers and publishers negotiated questions of musical style and a quantitative study of the professional relationships that Romantic-era composers formed with publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. Digital projects include Musical Geographies of Boston, 1865–1915, the recipient of a 2023 research grant from the UB Digital Scholarship Studio & Network. Strykowski also maintains a second program of research involving the formal empirical analysis of sixteenth-century polyphony. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Learn more about his research at https://dstrykowski.com/.

Sama Waham is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study and an internationally recognized director, producer, and cinematographer. Her films have screened at prestigious festivals, including Hot Docs and the European Independent Film Festival, earning over 21 awards and nominations. She holds an MFA in Film Production from York University in Toronto.

Her latest film, *Sing for Me*, is a poetic documentary exploring belonging, heritage, and the complexities of diasporic identities. It reflects on Mandaeanism, an ancient practice rooted in Babylonian history, and follows a personal journey through loss and memory, using archival footage to recreate a city that no longer exists. Premiering at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2015, it won the Best Long Documentary Award at the Alexandria Mediterranean Countries Film Festival and has received six additional international accolades. Professor Waham is an Associate Member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers and was nominated for the Robert Brooks Award for Best Documentary Cinematography in 2014. With extensive experience in narrative and experimental filmmaking, she teaches various filmmaking courses and focuses her research on the evolving forms and boundaries of cinematic storytelling.

Olga Wodo is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Design and Innovation (MDI) at UB. She does research in microstructure informatics and computational materials science. Her research involves leveraging machine learning to accelerate the pace of discovering and designing new materials. She uses algorithms from graph theory, the same we use in the navigation apps on our cell phones to reach new destinations, to understand how charges reach their destinations in electronic systems such as batteries. Wodo applies her ideas to the design of organic solar cells, additive manufacturing, and, more recently, mycelium-based materials. During the pandemic, she developed an interest in chocolate making following the bean-to-bar movement and gained practical knowledge about the importance of processing conditions on crystallization.

• A family sociologist whose research examines the individual, interpersonal and contextual factors that affect romantic and family relationships, and the role that these relationships play in health and well-being across the life course
• An associate dean whose research is funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, and includes finding innovative ways of integrating analytical processes into design processes in order to better see the “unseeables” of energy, carbon, comfort, climate, and air movement.
  
• A specialist in ethnographic data collection teaching Latinx Studies since 1981, who explores the identity formation and experiences of immigrants and refugees to the United States.
  
• A board-certified cardiology pharmacist who practices in the cardiac intensive care unit at Buffalo General Medical Center, where she teaches pharmacy students and residents through experiential education.
• A specialist in the literature and culture of modern Catalonia, Spain, whose areas of academic interest include twentieth and twenty-first-century fiction, narrative theory, landscape studies, theories of globalization, and ecocriticism. 
• A professor who teaches an advertising class, drawing on her experience in advertising, market research, product development/management and brand management. 
• An assistant professor who teaches courses on South Asian literature and culture, translation studies, and linguistic approaches to literature in conjunction with the Asian Studies Program at UB.
• An associate professor whose research is centered in the sociology of work, while also extending into the fields of social inequality, cultural sociology, labor, law, and social policy. 
• An assistant professor of theatre whose research sits at the juncture of theatre, media and performance studies.
• A researcher focused on ethics, economics and politics as three ways of assigning value in a liberal society, looking specifically at the creation of academic disciplines as vehicles for these values. 
• A feminist critical, interdisciplinary, qualitative educational policy researcher whose body of work focuses on the politics of education and how public education addresses societal violence, displacement, and centers the wellbeing of historically underserved students.
• A cultural historian of Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire with a particular interest in the history of everyday life, including gender, sport, fashion, religion and popular culture.
• A cognitive neuroscientist with interests in brain plasticity as it relates to learning, memory, and perception.
• An assistant professor who teaches courses that bring modern French literature into discussion with other art forms, such as film, music, painting, and installation art. 
• A genetic epidemiologist who researches the role of genetics in complex diseases/traits, including cancer health disparities in breast and ovarian cancer.
• An associate professor whose research lies at the intersection of psychology, endocrinology and neuroscience with a focus on the role of hormones in social behavior and sex differences during adolescence. 
• An associate professor who does research in and teaches algorithms that allow for processing large amounts of data efficiently as well as help recover original information from corrupted data. 
• An associate professor who teaches courses in 3D printing, emphasizing hands-on experience and providing an open classroom where students can learn by doing.