Arumugam Jayaraman

Before joining the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Dr. Jayaraman built a notable career in experimental inorganic chemistry, with a special focus on organometallic and sustainable main-group chemistry. His academic journey, spanning an M.Sc., Ph.D., and two postdoctoral fellowships, provided him with a wealth of hands-on experience and a strong foundation in computational chemistry, enriched by international research in Canada and Germany. To date, Dr. Jayaraman has published 30 research articles in well-reputed international journals, and has also filed a US patent on his discovery made during his PhD.

Throughout his training, Dr. Jayaraman leveraged his expertise to investigate a diverse array of research projects centered on the development of earth-abundant, cost-effective, and environmentally benign main-group compounds. His pursuit of sustainable solutions led to important advancements in catalysis and the promotion of greener chemical processes.

Notably, his work as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Holger Braunschweig at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, supported by prestigious awards (NSERC and Alexander von HumboldtAwards ), focused on the synthesis, reactivity, and computational characterization of low-valent boron compounds, including diborenes—boron-based analogues of alkenes. During his first postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Frédéric-Georges Fontaine at Université Laval in Canada, he designed industrial-scale, greener processes for the C–H borylation and hydroboration of heteroarenes using robust boron-/nitrogen-based frustrated Lewis pair catalysts. Impressively, this research was adopted by a fine-chemical company in Canada.

Dr. Jayaraman’s doctoral studies with Prof. Brian T. Sterenberg at the University of Regina, Canada, focused on preparing transition-metal-complexed, highly Lewis acidic, low-coordinate phosphorus compounds, known as phosphenium ions, and examining their interactions with less-nucleophilic unsaturated hydrocarbons. Earlier, as a master’s student with Prof. Allan L.L. East at the same institution, he conducted computational mechanistic studies on organometallic and organic reactions, including the rearrangement of norbornadiene to an alkylidene within a tungsten coordination sphere and the permanganate oxidation of organic sulfides.

Collectively, Dr. Jayaraman’s multifaceted international training and research have uniquely equipped him to advance the frontiers of inorganic and sustainable chemistry at UNLV.

Kamala Narayanan

Dedicated researcher and educator in Electrical Engineering, specializing in autonomous systems,
robotics, and control theory. My research focuses on advancing technologies that improve
transportation safety, industrial automation, and sustainable energy. With a focus on AI-driven control
systems, my work directly addresses key technological challenges, contributing to the development of
intelligent transportation, autonomous systems, and smart infrastructure solutions.

Janice Pluth

I am a radiation biologist with training in cytogenetics and a strong background in DNA repair. Primary questions my research has focused on are 1) how cellular changes induced by radiation perturb a cell and its microenvironment to potentiate cancer risk. 2) How does radiation exposure during critical windows of development impact organ growth and the role of the immune system in these changes.

As an independent researcher since 2004 I have successfully managed five-prior NASA funded projects, as well as three successive DOE projects. I was a project leader for a NASA’s virtual systems biology team on DNA damage and oxidative stress for 5 years. These frequent research discussions aided in my staying current in the latest findings in the space radiation field.

Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee, MD is a current Associate Program Director of the UNLV OB/GYN Residency program and an Assistant Professor of Gynecologic Surgery & Obstetrics. Her research interests lie in graduate medical education, maternal and fetal health, with specific interests in maternal obesity and infectious diseases. She has been published in multiple peer review journals and presented at multiple national conferences, including the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology Annual Clinical & Scientific Meeting.

Chenghui Zhang

Dr. Chenghui Zhang specializes in criminology, bias crime, racial/ethnic inequalities, and quantitative methods. Her research explores how social structure influences crime and crime reporting behaviors, with a specific focus on how social inequalities affect perceptions of and reactions to bias crimes. Methodologically, Zhang employs survey experiments to obtain first-hand data as an alternative to official statistics and applies advanced statistical methods and machine learning techniques to reveal how social inequalities manifest in crime experiences and crime reporting behaviors.

Moni Ahmadian

I am specialized in the fields of oral and maxillofacial pathology and oral medicine. My research interests includes mucous membrane diseases, oral manifestations of systemic and immue-mediated diseases, salivary gland neoplasms, and odontogenic tumors.

Lisa Durette

I’m a passionate teacher, clinician, and advocate for child and adolescent psychiatry. In 2013, I spearheaded
southern Nevada’s first child & adolescent psychiatry (CAP) fellowship program, and have continued to serve
as its Program Director. In this role, I create and facilitate a weekly cross-educational didactic program which
includes problem-based learning, collaborative case consultation with UNLV’s Psychology Doctoral Program
(shared case conference for 3+ years), family systems therapy with emerita faculty and journal club. In
addition, I initiated the implementation of a collaborative care case discussion curriculum between residents
from pediatrics and our CAP fellows.
My impact on the child psychiatry community in NV and nationally has been significant. Nevada ranks 51st for
children’s mental health metrics (www.mhnational.org). Our fellowship’s mission is to build southern Nevada’s
CAP workforce. To date, 100% of graduates practice CAP in southern NV and two of them teach for the
program. My efforts to expand access to child psychiatry in Nevada are also reflected in my grant-funded work,
the Pediatric Access Line. The PAL is a statewide child psychiatry access program, and is a clinical experience
in which senior CAP fellows learn invaluable skills of collaborative care. To date, we’ve conducted over 300
primary care clinical consultations, and over 1,400 care coordination encounters. I also directly supervise
fellows rotating through Mojave Counseling, and individually supervise fellows I do not directly supervise
in-clinic. I’ve won an Excellence in Fellow Mentoring award from the CAP fellows.
I also teach child psychiatry curriculum to general psychiatry and pediatrics residents. I’ve taught for the
medical school and currently mentor two medical students’ research projects, one of which is a retrospective
chart review of psychotropic prescribing practices in a community clinic treating foster care involved youth, and
the other is analyzing data pre- and post-initiation of the child psychiatry access program’s questionnaire of
primary care clinicians’ experiences working with youth mental health concerns. Both projects’ databases are
complete and we are actively analyzing our outcomes for publication, in which the medical students have a key
role in both background research and writing.

Daniel Young

My research aims to combat the immobility harm experienced by patients in the hospital by better understanding the access to, outcomes, and costs associated with inpatient rehabilitation efforts.

Lung-Chang (JoJo) Chien

Dr. Lung-Chang Chien is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health. His research focuses on investigating spatial vulnerability and geographic disparities on human health. His research topics cover socioeconomic deprivation in cancer incidence and mortality, modifying effects of location in geo-survival analysis, the impact of Asian dust storms on children’s health, geographic disparities of asthma and diabetes, spatiotemporal impacts of meteorological factors on dengue fever, and high risk areas in elderly mortality due to heat waves. Dr. Chien has also collaborated on publications in Nursing research, global health, physical therapy, and nutrition.

Barb Brents

I apply research on sexual commerce to understand the politics of sexuality; the intersections of culture and economics; sexual markets and consumption; and the emotional and bodily labor of selling sex. My recent research compares the affects of different legal structures on the experiences of sex workers, and has compared the demand for sexual services in the US and UK.