Faculty Fellows

Lindsay Hahn is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY where she directs the Media Psychology and Morality Laboratory. Hahn earned her PhD in Communication from Michigan State University in 2018. Her research investigates the cognitive processes surrounding media use and effects in audiences across the lifespan. In particular, she researches entertainment media’s effects on children’s moral attitudes and behaviors, and separately, media’s role in the radicalization of violent extremists.

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.

Professor James Milles is vice dean for undergraduate studies at the University at Buffalo School of Law, where he teaches in the areas of legal ethics and information privacy. Milles earned his master's degrees in English (1980) and Library and Information Science (1982) at The University of Texas at Austin, and a JD at Saint Louis University School of Law (1990).

Richard O’Brocta is a clinical associate professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is also the Director of Experiential Education and works to help students obtain Pharmacy Rotations as part of the curriculum. O’Brocta has an interest in pharmacy-related math and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He is excited to launch his innovative course titled Math and Medications the Foundations for Safe Patient Care.

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. 

Professor Adrián Rodríguez Riccelli was born in Austin, Texas, but growing up he also lived in Washington D.C., Houston, TX, and in New Jersey (NYC metro area). Riccelli's mother is from Venezuela and his father was born in Panamá but also lived in Puerto Rico. Riccelli earned a BA in Global Studies from the University of New Haven in Connecticut, after which he became interested in the Spanish language, in how language works, and in bilingualism; then, he went on to earn an MA in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Florida, and a PhD in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to Spanish and Portuguese language, his teaching and research deal with processes of variation or competition between form-and-function pairings in language structure, how those processes are affected in situations of language contact or multilingualism, how they are represented in the mind, and how they are affected by the social, cultural, and historical conditions in which speakers find themselves. One aspect of his research and teaching considers the language Cabo-Verdean Creole, a Portuguese-based language with substantial influence from Mandinka, Wolof, and Fula, among other languages spoken on the adjacent African mainland. Another aspect of his research and teaching deals with Spanish across language contact scenarios, such as throughout the Afro-Hispanic diaspora in the Americas, and among the tens of millions of speakers in the USA, and with Spanish in digital text such as on social media and in research corpora.

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/.

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.