2026 Scholars Lab Fellows

Abdulla Al Kafy

About Abdulla: My name is Abdulla Al Kafy, a Ph.D. student in Geography and the Environment. My research focuses on developing spatially adaptive Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) frameworks that transform planetary-scale remote sensing data into actionable intelligence across geographic scales. By addressing challenges in multi-scale analysis, my 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.

Project Overview: My project validates a scale-adaptive environmental exposure model that integrates street view imagery, air quality, surface temperature, and land cover data to measure micro-variations in environmental quality and their impacts on vulnerable communities. Understanding how these conditions vary across different geographic scales is essential for improving public health outcomes and urban planning decisions. For this project, I will use thermal cameras, weather meters, and air quality sensors to complete a four-season field validation campaign across Texas ecoregions, building upon data already collected from Spring 2024 through Fall 2025. Methods such as machine learning algorithms and spatial analysis will test whether the model remains statistically accurate when scaled from individual neighborhoods to county and regional levels. The findings will be shared through an interactive web platform that allows users to explore seasonal patterns and identify areas with concerning exposure levels. This research addresses the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MUAP) in environmental assessment, with results supporting urban planners and policymakers in making evidence-based decisions for healthier communities.

Alexis R. Velazquez

About Alexis: Alexis R. Velazquez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ethnomusicology. Her research interests include Latin American and Caribbean traditional music, Spanish-language opera and art-songs, and applied ethnomusicology. She researches bomba and is also a volunteer grant writer and assistant event organizer for La Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda. She holds a BA in Music and a minor in Spanish from the University of New Mexico (2020).

Project Overview: This project will launch my dissertation initiative, Beyond the Batey: Building a Digital Community Archive for Bomba—the first archive dedicated to bomba, Puerto Rico’s oldest musical tradition. I am collaborating with two nonprofit organizations—La Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda and Doña Caridad Brenes—among others, whose founders have stewarded bomba for eight generations. With support and consultation from bomba practitioners in Puerto Rico and the diaspora, we’ve identified initial materials for digitization, including songs, journals, artifacts, and oral histories. During the fellowship, I will begin building the platform, curate interviews, photographs, performances, and other cultural records, continue annotating audiovisual materials in my possession, and design virtual exhibits for the Texas Data repository. While the full archive will likely take 12–18 months to complete, an initial launch of the platform and related virtual exhibits will debut at the fellowship’s conclusion.

Eliane Quintiliano Nascimento

About Eliane: Eliane Quintiliano Nascimento is a Ph.D. student in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an M.A. in African and African Diaspora Studies from UT Austin (2024), an M.A. in Social Sciences (2020), and both a B.A. and Licentiate in Social Sciences (2014 and 2017) from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Brazil. Her doctoral research explores how Black feminist thought and lived experience shape Afro-Brazilian women’s entrepreneurship and collective strategies of empowerment. Committed to education, student activism, and community building, Eliane also leads the “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.

Project Overview: “Coletivo Negrada: Memories of Black Student Joy and Resistance” documents the history and lived experiences of Coletivo Negrada, a Black student collective at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Brazil, active since 2012. The project transforms an informal community archive into a digital collection that honors Black student leadership, creativity, and resistance. Rooted in Black feminist theory and epistemologies of resistance, it centers lived experience as a form of knowledge production. Since 2021, Eliane has collaborated with former members of the collective to curate photographs, flyers, videos, and interviews. The current phase focuses on 2014—a landmark year marked by major student mobilizations against racism. In the long term, the digital archive will expand to include the full 2012–2022 collection and serve as the foundation for a book project, preserving and amplifying Black student memory and cultural activism.

Rachel Caldwell Hill

About Rachel: Rachel Caldwell Hill is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a PhD Student in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. 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.

Project Overview: Scholarship shows that increased awareness of and access to urban green spaces boost mental health and well-being. This project seeks to 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 & Bike Trail. I will use a combination of traditional and experimental ethnographic methods to explore 20 tree species, layering oral histories, archival research, and contemporary ecological data to create an engaging digital resource that connects environmental knowledge with community life. Moreover, I will produce a set of accompanying zines to provide a physical, multimodal iteration of the research that encourages readers to engage in tree identification.

Soyon (Michelle) Choi

About Soyon: Soyon (Michelle) Choi is a Ph.D. student in the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Her 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’ NIL sponsorships, privacy perceptions in social media content from sports events, and narrative advertising effectiveness in mega-event advertisements such as the Super Bowl.

Project Overview: This research investigates how athlete ranking and brand type jointly shape fan evaluations of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships in collegiate sports. NIL policies have legitimized athletes’ commercial opportunities, thereby transforming how fans interpret authenticity, professionalism, and commercialization in sport. Guided by Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT), the study explores how athlete–brand pairings confirm or challenge fans’ predictive and prescriptive expectations, influencing perceived trustworthiness and expertise. Beyond mapping message effects, the research examines how NIL sponsorships reshape fan expectations about athlete branding and blur the boundaries between fandom and consumerism in digitally mediated environments. It also considers how media affordances amplify these effects. Theoretically, this study advances persuasion and endorsement scholarship by explaining how expectancy alignment shapes credibility in athlete advertising. Practically, it provides strategic insight for brands and athletic departments on optimizing sponsor–athlete fit, tailoring messages to diverse fan segments, and sustaining authenticity in the evolving sport media landscape.