Doctoral Conferral Ceremony Spring 2025 Commencement

UTSA’S MISSION STATEMENT

The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property—for Texas, the nation and the world.

UTSA’S VISION STATEMENT

To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.

May Commencement

THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2025

Doctoral Conferral Ceremony

Spring 2025 Commencement

PROCESSIONAL

NATIONAL ANTHEM

“The Star-Spangled Banner”

REMARKS

Ambika Mathur, Ph.D.

Senior Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

CERTIFICATION AND CONFERRAL OF DEGREES

Heather Shipley, Ph.D.

Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

PRESENTATION OF THE GRADUATES

Carlos Alvarez College of Business

College of Education and Human Development

College of Liberal and Fine Arts College of Sciences

College for Health, Community and Policy

Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design

University College

CLOSING REMARKS College Deans

Ambika Mathur, Ph.D.

Senior Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

FIGHT SONG

RECESSIONAL

Lead by Mariachis

CARLOS ALVAREZ COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

Olufadeke Adewumi Adeniyi

Ph.D. in Accounting

Major Professors: Emeka Nwaeze, Ph.D., and Juan Mao, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Financial Reporting, Corporate Governance and Economic Consequences of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA)”

Maria Regina Gonzalez Ramirez

Ph.D. in Finance

Major Professors: John Wald, Ph.D., and Ivalina Kalcheva, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Essays in Corporate Finance”

Aojun Li

Ph.D. in Applied Statistics

Major Professors: Min Wang, Ph.D., and Keying Ye, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Bayesian Analysis and Parameter Estimation for the Generalized Exponential Distribution”

Reisa Febriani Widjaja

Ph.D. in Applied Statistics

Major Professors: Wenbo Wu, Ph.D., and Keying Ye, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Novel Methodologies for Spatial-Temporal Dependent Data”

Erika Zuloaga Cosme

Ph.D. in Marketing

Major Professor: Deepa Chandrasekaran, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Marketing in the Digital Age: Essays on Technology, Innovation, and New Venture Success”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Mary Dixon Bethel

Ph.D. in Culture, Literacy and Language

Major Professor: M. Sidury Christiansen, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Racial Literacy Professional Development Action Research with Secondary Literacy Teachers”

Colleen Bohrmann

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Curtis Brewer, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Exploring the Voices: A Case Study of the Experiences of Head Start Policy Council Members in a Large Urban Setting”

Taylor Catherine Brown

Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision

Major Professor: Devon Romero, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Integration of Spirituality and Religion into Counselor Education Programs”

Norma R. Carranza

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Juan Nino, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Latina Women Superintendents in Rural Texas Districts"

Saul Lee Cepeda

Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

Major Professor: Ann Marie Ryan, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Addressing Middle Grades Latino/a Students' Opportunity Gaps in Science”

Olga Estrada

Ph.D. in Culture, Literacy and Language

Major Professor: Lilliana Saldana, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “(De)colonial Autohxstoria-teoria: Exploring the Erotic, Nature, and Healing in Anti-Erotic Neoliberal Academia”

Crystal D. Hahn

Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision

Major Professor: Gerald Juhnke, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Developing Military Service-Related PTSD Training Curricula for Entry Level Counselors: A Delphi Study”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

Naderia Hartley

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Curtis Brewer, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Amplifying Voices: Honoring How Black Women Middle School Assistant Principals Navigate, Strategize, and Advocate for Educational Equity”

Kristen Leanne Henry

Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

Major Professor: Gilberto Lara, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Identity Construction of Bilingual Teacher Candidates Enrolled in a Bilingual Teacher Preparation Program”

Sahil S. Khoja

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professors: Betty Merchant, Ph.D., and Michael Denton, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Navigating Cultural Crossroads: A Critical Qualitative Study of Underrepresented Desi Administrators in Higher Education Leadership”

Justin Ross Lockhart

Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision

Major Professor: Priscilla Prasath, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Holding Out For A Hero: Examining the Impact of Psychological Capital Development on the Mental Health”

Javier Mateos Campos

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Claudia García-Louis, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Aztlân en Movimiento: An A/r/tographic Inquiry on M.E.Ch.A. as Sponsor of Thirdspaces for Identity Development of Student Activists in Higher Education”

Eloy Montalvo

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Betty Merchant, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Lived Experiences of Latinx College Students in the Texas Success Initiative”

Neethu Paul

Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

Major Professor: Samuel DeJulio, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Power of Presence: Indian-American Educators in PLNs and the Quest for Inclusion”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

Doctor of Philosophy Degrees

*Ngoc Que Anh Pham

Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

Major Professor: Crystal Kalinec-Craig, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching and the Torres's Rights of the Learner: Exploring Vietnamese Elementary Teacher's Experiences”

*Jerry Romero

Ph.D. in Culture, Literacy and Language

Major Professor: Bedrettin Yazan, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Semiotics and Discourses of Erasure: Necropolitics, Transmisogyny, and the Linguistic Marking of Trans and Queer Embodiments”

Ravae Villafranca Shaeffer

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: Curtis Brewer, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Elevating Latina Voices and Experiences in the STEM High School Ecosystem”

William Hunter Shelby

Ph.D. in Educational Leadership

Major Professor: David Thompson, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Effectiveness of Military Family Life Counselors in Public School Settings: A Case Study”

Swathi Weaver

Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision

Major Professor: Devon Romero, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Between Curry and Kale: Eating Disorder Risk Among Adult Women of Indian Descent Living in the United States”

Mary Katherine Whiting

Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision

Major Professor: Priscilla Rose Prasath, Ph.D., and John J. S. Harrichand, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Beliefs and Boundaries: A Phenomenological Study of Adult Religious Clients' Views on Religiously Integrated and Affirming Care in Counseling”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

KLESSE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND INTEGRATED DESIGN

Protik Banerjee

Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering

Major Professor: Saugata Datta, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Geochemical and Microbiological Factors Controlling the Mobility of Phosphorus in Soils from Prairie Grassland and an Agricultural Land in Kansas"

Pankaj Chhetri

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Ram Krishnan, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Combining Traditional and Machine Learning Based Access Control Systems"

Gennifer N. Chiou

Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering

Major Professor: Teja Guda, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Matrix Mechanics and Stromal Niche Direct Vascularization During Tissue Engineering”

Alireza Ghavidel

Ph.D. in in Civil Engineering

Major Professor: Ao Du, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “AI-Informed Risk-Based Multi-Threat Decision-Support Methodology for Long-Term Bridge Asset Management”

Layla Iskandar

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering

Major Professor: Saadet Beeson, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Energy Performance and Preservation in Historic Buildings: Evaluation and Optimization of Passive Cooling Strategies in Hot and Humid Climates”

Halah Jaber

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Clair Walton, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Compositional Orthogonal Polynomial Network: COPNet”

Franak Khosravi

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Mehdi Shadaram, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Machine Learning-Based Traffic Prediction for Performance Enhancement of Elastic Optical Networks”

Elijah James LaLonde

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering

Major Professor: Christopher Combs, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Experimental Measurements of Hypersonic Separation Events”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

Doctor of Philosophy Degrees

Hazem Mahmoud

Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering

Major Professor: Hongjie Xie, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Glacier Mass Balance and its Impacts on Glacial Lakes in Sierra Del Brujo, Central Chile”

Sergio Montufar Chavez

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Chunjiang Qian, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Design and Control of an Autonomous Wheel-Legged Biped Robot”

Shiqi Nan

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Chunjiang Qian, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Neural Network-Based Modeling and Control Approaches for Nonlinear Systems”

Tej Niranjan Pandit

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Dhireesha Kudithipudi, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Scalable Continual Learning Using Cascading Hypernetworks and Cellular Automata”

Karla Daniela Paniagua Rivera

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Mario Flores, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Investigate Cell Type Identification with scRNA-seq and Spatial Transcriptomics”

Luis Arturo Valdez

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Miltiadis Alamaniotis, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Radioactive Gamma Signature Pattern Recognition in a Urban Search Campaign with Hopfield Neural Network and Quantum Computer Algorithms”

Mingkang Wu

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Yongcan Cao, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Human-Guided Reinforcement Learning From Failure”

Yu Zhang

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Major Professor: Yuanxiong Guo, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Quantum-Assisted Optimal Resource Allocation for Next-Generation Wireless Networks”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

COLLEGE FOR HEALTH, COMMUNITY AND POLICY

Kaitlin Marguerite Brunett

Ph.D. in Psychology

Major Professor: Shelby Scott, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Influence of Biases on Perceptions of Same-Gender Sexual Assault Among Sexual Minority Women: The Examination of Heterosexism, Sexism, and Heteronormative Sex Beliefs as Mediated by Rape Myth Acceptance”

Kiara Hunter Buccellato

Ph.D. in Psychology

Major Professor: Alan L. Peterson, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Cortisol Response as a Predictor and Correlate of Treatment Outcomes for Service Members with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Secondary Data Analysis”

Selene Melissa Gomez-Garcia

Ph.D. in Applied Demography

Major Professor: Rogelio Saenz, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Democracy and Demography: The Racialization of the Latine/x Vote”

Kaitlin Grelle

Ph.D. in Psychology

Major Professor: Rebecca Weston, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “A Longitudinal Evaluation of Healthy Relationship Education: How Self-Efficacy Influences Adolescent Dating Violence Among Former Foster Youth”

Claire Isabelle Groves

Ph.D. in Psychology

Major Professor: Joseph Houpt, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Bi-directional Associations Between Movement Behaviors and Internalizing Symptoms in Adolescents: A Cross Lagged Panel Model with Compositional Data Analysis”

Joseph Adedayo Jaiyeola

Ph.D. in Applied Demography

Major Professor: Raymond Swisher, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Opportunity Youth's Journey: Exploring Early-Life Factors and Health Implications in Transition to Adulthood in the United States”

Camerino Ignacio Salazar

Ph.D. in Applied Demography

Major Professor: Johnelle Sparks, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Trends and Disparities in ‘Deaths of Despair’ in Texas, 2000 to 2020”

Bryanna Le Scheuler

Ph.D. in Psychology

Major Professor: Joseph W. Houpt, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Trading the Tractor for a Spade: A Psychometric Approach to Cancer-Related Cognitive Decline Assessment”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

COLLEGE OF SCIENCES

Abdalwahab Almajed

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Peyman Najafirad, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Evaluation of Machine Learning Fairness in Regression Domain”

Sunzhou Huang

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Xiaoyin Wang, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Addressing Inconsistencies Across Software Environments”

Jurdana Masuma Iqrah

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Sushil K. Prasad, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Polar Sea Ice Classification and Prediction Over Remote Sensing Datasets Using Spatio-temporal and Machine Learning Techniques”

Tanjila Islam

Ph.D. in Chemistry

Major Professor: Kirk Schanze, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Photophysical Studies of Gold(I) NHC Acetylide-Functionalized Polystyrenes and Complexes, Fluorescent Chemosensors, and Ion Radicals for Optoelectronic and Sensing Applications”

Morgan Paige Johnston

Ph.D. in Neuroscience

Major Professor: Matthew Wanat, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: "Effects of Stress and EstrousCycle on Reward Learning and Striatal Dopamine Release"

Shahidullah Kaiser

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor:  Turgay Korkmaz, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Benchmarking Container Technologies for ARM-powered Edge Computing”

Won-Haeng Lee

Ph.D. in Neuroscience

Major Professor: Hyoung-gon Lee, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Regulation of PKCθ and its Role in the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease”

Hasanul Islam Mahmud

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Sushil K. Prasad, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Toward Lightweight, Energy-Efficient, and Secure DNN Inferencing on Edge Devices”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.

Doctor of Philosophy Degrees

Karina Kaisha Meyer-Acosta

Ph.D. in Neuroscience

Major Professor: Jenny Hsieh, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Apolipoprotein E4 in Human Brain Organoids”

Romie Nguyen

Ph.D. in Chemistry

Major Professor: Aimin Liu, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Probing Heme-Dependent Oxidations in C-C Bond Forming and Oxygen Insertion Reactions”

Sean Michael Soderman

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Matthew Gibson-Lopez, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Terrains and Staircases: Realizability of Visibility Graphs and Approximation of Vertex Guarding”

Kylie Melissa Sullivan

Ph.D. in Physics

Major Professor: Stephen Fuselier, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “A Study of Far-Flank Reconnection at Earth’s Magnetopause Using MMS”

Ephrahime S. Traore

Ph.D. in Chemistry

Major Professor: Aimin Liu, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Heme Adventures: Roles in Catalysis and Structural Insights”

Nisha Vinayaga Sureshkanth

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Major Professor: Murtuza Jadliwala, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: “Pedestrian Safety, Security and Privacy in the Era of Pervasive Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing”

*Candidates who will graduate in August 2025. All other candidates are expected to meet their requirements in May 2025. ∞ Degree awarded posthumously. +Honors College students.