Alternative Academic Careers Forum Panelists

Nicole Barbaro is a Research Scientist with WGU Labs in Salt Lake City. She earned her Ph.D. from Oakland University in 2020 with a dissertation on “Associations Between Attachment Orientations and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration and Victimization” (Experimental Psychology). At WGU Labs, she manages grants and researches educational technology. She has also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Oakland University, Oakland Community College, and Utah Valley University. Her most recent publication is a chapter published this year in the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion (Oxford University Press).

Katina Rogers is the Co-Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The Futures Initiative promotes educational equity and innovation. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 2010 with a dissertation on “Trauma and the Representation of the Unsayable in Late Twentieth-Century Fiction” (Comparative Literature). Her most recent book, Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom, was published last July by Duke University Press.

Shaun Lin is finishing a Ph.D. in Geography at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he studies immigrant communities, food and foodways, and abolition geography. He is currently a Graduate Fellow with the Futures Initiative, where he works on community engagement. He is also a lecturer in Urban Studies at Queen’s College.

Derek Attig is Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development in the Graduate College. In this role, Derek oversees Graduate College Career Development services, develops new strategies to support graduate students’ and postdocs’ professional and career development, and builds relationships on and off campus to help students succeed at Illinois and beyond. Before joining the Graduate College in 2015, Derek taught at the University of Illinois, worked in nonprofit marketing, and advised graduate students at the university’s Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning. Derek holds a B.A. in History and Women’s Studies from Beloit College and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mike Firmand is the Associate Director for Career & Professional Development for Graduate College. Mike supports graduate students by advising students, coordinating major events and workshops, and collaborating with career services units across campus. Mike also works with employers to connect University of Illinois graduate students to new opportunities and promote the value of graduate education. He previously worked for the College of Business at Illinois State University and has held positions in insurance, marketing, banking, and retail and event management. Mike holds a B.S. in Recreation, Sport and Tourism from the University of Illinois and an M.S. in Communication from Illinois State University.

Saniya Ghanoui is finishing her Ph.D. in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her research looks at the transnational history of sex education in the twentieth century. She is the Senior Producer for the podcast Sexing History, an editor for the international blog Notches: (Re)marks on the History of Sexuality, and an editor for the digital history initiative SourceLab.   

Brian Campbell is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studies twentieth-century U.S. and African American history. Brian received his B.A. from Ohio State University in 2011 and an M.A. from the University at Buffalo in 2013. Before pursuing his Ph.D., Brian served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with the United Way in Buffalo, NY. From 2018-2020, he worked as an American Historical Association career diversity fellow in the History Department at Illinois.

Lee Ann Lyons received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 2008 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She worked for the USDA-FSIS for five years as a Supervisory Veterinary Medical Officer before returning to the University of Illinois to obtain a Master’s in Public Health in 2016. Currently, she is working on completing her Ph.D. in Epidemiology through the Department of Pathobiology. Her primary research interests are in tick and tick-borne disease surveillance within Illinois.

Ophelia Bolmin is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She first came to Illinois as a Fulbright Scholar, and has since joined the doctoral program. Her research focuses on dynamics and robotics, and she is working on a project to create a self-righting mechanism, inspired by the ability of click beetles to perform legless jump.

Ben Bamberger is a Proposal Coordinator at the Sponsored Programs Administration. Prior to this, he worked as an Outreach and Programming Assistant at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center. He received a Ph.D. in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 with a dissertation entitled, “Mountains of Discontent: Georgian Alpinism and the Limits of Soviet Equality.”

Fereshteh Sabet is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.S. in Structural Engineering. Her research focus is on modeling mechanical properties of bone at different length scales and bio-inspired 3D-printed composites. She was a recipient of the Michael Sutton Outstanding Graduate Student award and Kuck Computational Science & Engineering Scholarship.

Jackson Okech Ang’Ong’A is a doctoral student in the group of Bryce Gadway in the Physics Department. He is doing experiments that involve trapping, cooling, and imaging of individual atoms to be used for studying quantum many body phenomena in materials. 

David Sepkoski is the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2002 with a dissertation on “Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy” (History of Science and Technology). Before joining the faculty here at University of Illinois, he spent six years as a Senior Research Scholar with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The University of Chicago Press last year published his most recent book, Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity. He is currently the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Mark Steinberg is a Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 with a dissertation on “The Printers of St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1855-1905” (History). His research currently focuses on cities, emotions, revolutions, and utopias. His next monograph, Utopian Russia, will be published this year by Bloomsbury Press.

Mark E. Hauber is the Harley Jones Van Cleave Professor of Host-Parasite Interactions in the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2002 with a dissertation on “Cognitive Challenges for Brood-Parasitic Cowbirds: Species Recognition and Host Discrimination” (Neurobiology and Behavior). His research currently focuses on how animals recognize themselves, their mates, their young, their prey, and their predators. His research will produce nineteen journal articles this year alone. His most recent book, The Book of Eggs: A Lifesize Guide to the Eggs of Six Hundred of the World’s Bird Species, was published by the University of Chicago Press.

Mira Sotirovic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1996 with a dissertation on “Media Influences on Ways of Thinking” (Mass Communication). She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the Institute of Communications Research, and the Karin and Folke Dovring Scholar in Propaganda. Her most recent publication is a chapter on “Trumpaganda: The War on Facts, Press and Democracy” in the Sage Handbook on Propaganda, published last year by Sage.

Justine S. Murison is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 with a dissertation on “The Politics of Psychology in American literature, 1780–1860” (English). She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for English, and Conrad Humanities Scholar. Her most recent publication is a chapter on “Whitman, Women, and Privacy” in The New Walt Whitman Studies, published last year by Cambridge University Press.

Matthew Winters is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2009 with a dissertation on “The Impact of Domestic Political Constraints on World Bank Project Lending” (Political Science). He is currently the Associate Head for Graduate Programs for Political Science. He is also a member of the AidData Research Consortium at William and Mary. His most recent publications are four journal articles, all published this year by World Development, Review of International Organizations, and Political Research Quarterly.