PEOPLE
Principal Investigators & Key Personnel
Marise Parent (Principal Investigator)
Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology
Dr. Parent investigates how the brain uses memory to control eating behavior and the ways in which disruptions in these neural processes contribute to disordered eating. She also investigates how disordered eating, in turn, impacts brain function. Her research program is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She is also the Principal Investigator on an award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation that established the Beckman Scholars Program at Georgia State University, and currently serves as a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee for the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. Dr. Parent has a long-standing record of mentoring junior scientists in STEM and of being involved in initiatives to promote diversity in the STEM pipeline.
Jennie Burnet (Co-Principal Investigator)
Associate Professor, and Director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Dr. Burnet’s current research explores the long-term legacies of racialized violence in the U.S. South and the cultural and psychological aspects of mass violence and their impact on women, gender, and race. Dr. Burnet is Director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University. In 2019, she was a J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
Megan Connors (Co-Principal Investigator)
Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Dr. Connors studies the fundamental building blocks of nature by exploring the nucleus under extreme conditions and pushing the limits of our understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory describing the nuclear strong force. By colliding heavy nuclei at relativistic speeds, the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) in New York can create a hot dense phase of matter known as the quark gluon plasma (QGP). Under normal conditions, quarks and gluons only exist in bound states but at high enough temperatures and densities like those experienced immediately after the Big Bang, quarks and gluons can behave as free particles within a QGP phase. A new experiment called sPHENIX, on which Dr. Connors has held leadership roles, starts collecting data at RHIC in 2023 to study the QGP.
To support her research, Dr. Connors earned an NSF CAREER grant as well as over $3 Million in grants from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the Department of Energy as a Co-PI. She is the faculty advisor the Women in Physics Student Organization and has served on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committees for the Department of Physics and Astronomy as well as the RHIC/AGS Users Executive Committee at BNL.
Charlyn Green
Project Coordinator for ADVANCE-IMPACT, Research Coordinator for the Sustainable Futures Lab, and Project Manager for the Center for Urban Transformations
Charlyn Green is responsible for coordinating the activities of the ADVANCE-IMPACT initiative, the Sustainable Futures Lab at the Urban Studies Institute, and the transdisciplinary Center for Urban Transformations. She handles the logistics of executing the goals of projects involving multiple actors in academia, research institutions, and community organizations. Charlyn’s focus is on projects and initiatives that address the factors inhibiting happiness and actualization of potential by listening to those affected, challenging outdated ways of operating, and innovating new practices to build a happier and more exciting future.
Joan Mutanyatta-Comar
Principal Lecturer
Dr. Mutanyatta-Comar's research interests aim at investigating various local medicinal plants with a strong folkloric history of medicinal uses. This involves scanning plant extracts for antimicrobial activity targeting the most troublesome nosocomial opportunistic infectious agents referred to as “ESKAPE” pathogens. These organisms include: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter species, and represent the most 3 prominent causes of hospital-acquired infections today. She works in collaboration with Dr. Pascoe (Chemistry) and Dr. Nagy (Biology).
Carlos A. O. Pavão (Internal Evaluator)
Assistant Dean for Belonging and Placemaking
Dr. Pavão has more than 25 years of public health practitioner experience in substance abuse, mental health, and HIV/AIDS. His research interests have focused on the nexus between dissemination research and innovative public health programming, specifically for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ), and linguistic minority populations. Since the 1990s he has been involved in program evaluation activities with minoritized populations. Additionally, he is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Journal of Evaluation.
Aaron Roseberry (Co-Principal Investigator)
Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience
Dr. Roseberry’s laboratory studies how the brain controls feeding, metabolism and body weight, and how the brain is altered under conditions of disordered feeding or body weight. His lab focuses on ‘reward’ pathways in the brain that are involved in the pleasurable or rewarding aspects of food, including food addiction. This includes studying how food, especially pleasurable and appetizing foods high in fat and/or sugar, act on the brain’s reward pathways, and how these pathways are changed by conditions such as obesity, binge eating, and food restriction (i.e. dieting). Dr. Roseberry emphasizes diversity among his students and trainees.
Faculty Collaborators
Michael Beran
Professor of Psychology
Dr. Michael Beran is Professor of Psychology and co-Director of the Language Research Center. His research is conducted with human and nonhuman primates, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, capuchin monkeys, and rhesus monkeys. His research interests include perception, numerical cognition, metacognition, planning and prospective memory, self-control, and decision making processes.
Nancy G. Forger
Professor of Neuroscience and Associate Director of the Neuroscience Institute
Dr. Forger is a neuroscientist who studies development of the nervous system. Her research interests include the development of sex differences in the brain, the effects of birth on the brain, and the influence of the microbiota on the neonatal brain.
Chavez Phelps
Assistant Professor - School Psychology
Chavez Phelps is an assistant professor of school psychology at Georgia State University. His research interests include examining culturally responsive trauma strategies and supports for children, families, and teachers. He has conducted several trauma-informed care and crisis prevention and intervention workshops for school districts and educators. Before entering academia, Chavez was a school-based practitioner in New Orleans, Louisiana. He also worked with the Louisiana Public Health Institute to ensure youth had access to quality community behavioral health services. Currently, he serves as a member of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Government and Professional Relations (GPR) Committee.
Sergey Plis
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Neuroscience
Dr. Plis’s educational background is in engineering (MS), artificial intelligence (MS) and computer science (PhD). His research goals lie in developing computational instruments that enable knowledge extraction from observational multimodal data collected at different temporal and spatial scales. His focus is on understanding systems and processes formed by interactions of multiple “agents.” The human brain, his main application area, is an example of such system: neurons (or measured voxels) are the agents that interact and form networks that themselves are entities of interest with influence structure indicative of mental state, disorder, and differences between individuals. Understanding the patterns, networks and interactions can improve our understanding of how the brain works but the data are complex, multidimensional, and neither modality alone carries enough information.
Russel White
Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
Dr. White is an astronomer interested in understanding how stars and planets form and how they structurally and dynamically evolve over time. He investigates these processes using telescopes to observe stars.
Adaptation Partners at Florida International University
Caroline Simpson
Professor of Physics; formerly Associate Director, Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity (AWED)
Dr. Caroline Simpson holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy and is a Professor in the Physics Department at FIU. Although her research specializes in star formation in dwarf galaxies, as a woman in the physical sciences, she has been interested in gender equity issues for the last thirty years. She has served as a member of the American Astronomical Society's National Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, and began working with FIU's Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity in 2018, where she was an Associate Director from 2020-2024.
Jeffrey Steiger
Creative Director, FLS Theater
Jeffrey Allen Steiger is the Creative Director of Faculty Leadership & Success Theater and the Artistic Director of The New Theater of Medicine at Florida International University. He is also an adjunct psychiatry and behavioral sciences instructor at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the founding/former artistic director of the CRLT Players at the University of Michigan.
Kirsten Wood
Associate Professor of History; formerly Associate Director, Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity (AWED)
Professor Wood is a specialist in the history of the Early American Republic. Her works span many subfields, including gender and women‘s history, the history of the American South and slavery, economic history, and politics and political culture. Her Accommodating the Republic: Taverns in the Early United States (2024) examined disputes within and about public accommodations as a means to understand contests over citizenship in the early decades of the United States. In previous work, she examined disputes about white women's access to economic power and political influence, among other topics. She is developing a new research project about finding joy and pleasure in unlikely historical spaces.
External Evaluator
Kelly Feltault
External Evaluator
Kelly Feltault, Ph.D., has over twenty years of experience as a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) professional specializing in multi-sited evaluations and organizational capacity building for MEL. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and International Development from American University and a BFA in painting and contemporary art history from Virginia Commonwealth University. As a Senior Program Evaluator with several federal government agencies, she designed and led summative and formative evaluations and was a member of the Obama White House Evaluation Working Group for the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Strategy. She was awarded several Distinguished Service Awards for her evaluation work. As a Program Director and Senior Program Officer, Dr. Feltault designed and managed multi-million-dollar federal grants and programs for non-profits and institutes of higher education and was Director of Institutional Research for a small university. As a consultant, Dr. Feltault evaluates multi-sited, multi-year programs and specializes in arts in health programs, international development and cultural exchange programs, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. She also provides workshops and training to organizations to build their capacity in MEL. Dr. Feltault has numerous publications and recently presented her evaluation work on social bias bystander intervention training in STEM workplaces at the Action Collaborative for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Internal Advisory Board
Collins Airhihenbuwa
Professor, School of Public Health
Dr. Airhihenbuwa leads the interdisciplinary team known as the Global Research Against Non-communicable Disease (GRAND) Initiative at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. He is also a Professor of Health Management & Policy.
Elisabeth Burgess
College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Professor
In 1997, Dr. Burgess started working at Georgia State as an assistant professor of sociology with an affiliate appointment in gerontology. As the Gerontology Institute grew, she shifted more of her effort to gerontology and in 2009, Dr. Burgess became Director of the Gerontology Institute. She continues to hold joint appointments as Professor of Gerontology and Sociology. She also is an affiliate of the Institute of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Suazette Mooring
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Mooring is an organic chemist with a research focus on chemistry education. Her work aims to inform and improve the teaching and learning of chemistry. In addition to NSF funding for her research, she is also the PI of an S-STEM grant that has provided scholarships, mentoring, and professional development for undergraduate and graduate students majoring in Biology, Chemistry, and Neuroscience. She has mentored 12 graduate students of which 10 have been women. Several of her mentees have gone on to faculty positions at various institutions. She continues to mentor women faculty across the United States.
Donald Hamelberg
Interim Vice President for Research and Economic Development, University Research Services and Administration
Dr. Donald Hamelberg (Ph.D. ’01) is interim vice president for research and economic development at Georgia State University. He previously served as the associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Before joining the dean’s office, Dr. Hamelberg led the Department of Chemistry as chair for three years. He also served as associate chair, director of graduate studies, associate director of graduate studies and professor of Chemistry. He has been a faculty member at Georgia State for 15 years.
External Advisory Board
Meg Bond
Director of ADVANCE, Office for Faculty Equity and Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Dr. Bond focuses on the interrelationships among issues of diversity, empowerment, and organizational dynamics.
Jennifer Linderman, Ph.D
Dr. Linderman has served as Director of the University of Michigan ADVANCE Program since 2016. Her research interests include mathematical and computational modeling with applications to cell signaling pathways, cancer, tuberculosis, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, and drug delivery.
Beth Mitchneck
Professor Emerita, School of Geography, Development and Environment, University of Arizona and previous NSF ADVANCE Program Officer
Dr. Mitchneck is leading a National Science Foundation project, to develop metrics to assess institutional transformation at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. She continues to write about human displacement, violent conflict, and social networks.
Isis Settles
Associate Director of ADVANCE and Professor of Psychology and Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan
Dr. Settles focuses on two related processes: 1) the experiences, perceptions, and consequences of unfair treatment directed at devalued social group members, especially Black people and women; and 2) protective factors and coping strategies used by members of devalued social groups to counteract experiences of mistreatment, especially those protective factors related to group identity (e.g., racial identity). Two major research projects she is currently working on are an examination of the experiences of faculty of color in academia and the role of diversity in interdisciplinary team dynamics.
Management Chart
Office Hours
Monday - Friday
8:30 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
ADVANCE-IMPACT at Georgia State is supported through a generous grant by the National Science Foundation (Award #2204559). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
