The University of Texas Libraries (UTL) has selected five individuals to receive prestigious Scholars Lab Fellowships for 2026. This competitive fellowship supports graduate students whose work leverages innovative digital tools and methodologies to address complex academic questions. By providing funding, training and access to state-of-the-art resources, the fellowship fosters interdisciplinary research and highlights the transformative potential of digital scholarship across fields.
This year’s fellows represent a variety of departments and areas of study across UT Austin. They will present their ground-breaking research at the Scholars Lab Fellows Research Showcase on May 1.
Abdulla Al Kafy
Geography and the Environment
Abdulla Al Kafy is a Ph.D. student whose research focuses on developing spatially adaptive Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) frameworks that transform planetary-scale remote sensing data into actionable intelligence across geographic scales. Through his fellowship, he will use thermal cameras, weather meters and air quality sensors to complete a four-season field validation campaign across Texas ecoregions. By addressing challenges in multi-scale analysis, his work links raw geospatial data with operational intelligence, offering high-performance solutions to government agencies, research institutions and commercial enterprises that require robust spatial analysis capabilities for mission-critical tasks.
Alexis R. Velazquez
Ethnomusicology
Alexis R. Velazquez is a Ph.D. candidate whose research interests include Latin American and Caribbean traditional music, Spanish-language opera and art-songs, and applied ethnomusicology. With her fellowship, she will launch her dissertation initiative, Beyond the Batey: Building a Digital Community Archive for Bomba — the first archive dedicated to Puerto Rico’s oldest musical tradition. Work will include building the platform; curating interviews, photographs, performances and other cultural records; continuing to annotate acquired audiovisual materials; and designing virtual exhibits for the Texas Data repository.
Eliane Quintiliano Nascimento
African and African Diaspora Studies
Eliane Quintiliano Nascimento is a Ph.D. student whose doctoral research explores how Black feminist thought and lived experience shape Afro-Brazilian women’s entrepreneurship and collective strategies of empowerment. She leads “Coletivo Negrada: Memories of Black Student Joy and Resistance,” a collective digital archive that documents and preserves the history of Black student organizing and cultural expression in Brazil. With her fellowship, she will curate photographs, flyers, videos, and interviews that focus on 2014, a landmark year marked by major student mobilizations against racism.
Rachel Caldwell Hill
Sociocultural Anthropology
Rachel Caldwell Hill is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a Ph.D. student specializing in Native American Indigenous Studies. Her research explores ecological knowledge, experimental ethnography, and community-based art and craft practices. She integrates intermedia storytelling, material culture and Indigenous approaches to environmental care into city, state and national programs aimed at fostering community resiliency and sustainability. Through her fellowship, she will promote the significance of Austin’s urban trees and foster environmental stewardship by producing a guided StoryMap of the city’s native trees surrounding the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail.
Soyon (Michelle) Choi
Advertising and Public Relations
Soyon (Michelle) Choi is a Ph.D. student whose research examines how individual identities — such as fandom and demographic traits — shape responses to persuasive messages, particularly within sports communication. She currently leads and collaborates on projects exploring student-athletes’ Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships, privacy perceptions in social media content from sports events, and narrative advertising effectiveness in mega-event advertisements such as the Super Bowl. Her fellowship will investigate how athlete ranking and brand type jointly shape fan evaluations of NIL sponsorships in collegiate sports.
Scholars Lab Fellowships are open to all currently enrolled UT Austin graduate students. Applications for the 2027 cohort will open in August 2026.