2016-2018 Cohort

Orubba Almansouri

Orubba Almansouri is a native of Yemen. In 2016, she graduated with Honors as Salutatorian of the City College of New York with a B.A in History and English. As a Mellon Mays Fellow she worked on researching the intersection of oral traditions and literature in the works of Yemeni author Nadia Al-Kokabani and the importance of oral poetry and folklore in Yemen. Orubba aims to continue her journey in learning how Muslim women plot themselves into history and their contributions to and roles in oral traditions and cultures of the Middle East. Going through this journey as a scholar and creative writer she aspires to discover her inner stories in the process of documenting and preserving the rich Yemeni folklore. Orubba graduated with an M.A in Near Eastern studies from NYU's Kevorkian center. She aspires to continue writing, researching, and advocating for girls education and social justice.

Jennifer Zelmer

Jennifer Zelmer is a first-generation student from Snohomish, Washington, who has spent most of her adult life studying and working in Vancouver, Canada. Jennifer is a Master of Arts graduate from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and completed her degree as a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow studying Quechua. Connecting her interests in Latin America and Public Health, Jennifer’s research addresses how disproportionate maternal and infant mortality rates amongst Bolivian Andean indigenous communities may be the result of linguistic and epistemological miscommunications related to reproductive health. During her last semester, Jennifer has worked as an intern at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) working with the Child Protection Section. She aims to pursue a career in the United Nations or International Reproductive Health organizations as a policy analyst and advocate for women and children around the world.

Vanesa Lerma

Vanesa Lerma was a GSAS Master’s Fellow in the General Psychology Program and her main research interests focused on the neuropsychological deficits in neurological populations. She completed her thesis research project through NYU Langone Medical Center on the neurological changes induced by a computerized cognitive rehabilitation program in patients with traumatic brain injury. She also conducted research at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she investigated the effect of positive psychological traits on the cognitive, emotional, and functional recovery of patients after neurosurgery. Outside the classroom and research labs, Vanesa was president of the Rehabilitation Psychology Club at NYU and worked as a part-time academic adviser at the NYU College of Arts and Science. Her future aspiration is to partake in the interplay of research and clinical practice by pursuing a career in clinical neuropsychology. She hopes to contribute to our understanding of brain-behavior relationships in order to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurological populations. Vanesa is a first-generation Latina from Mexico that grew up in Texas and loves to dance.

Lisa Caraballo

Lisa Caraballo is a Puerto Rican Bronxite who was accepted to the Macaulay Honors Scholarship Program—a full-tuition, merit scholarship in the CUNY system—in 2012. During her time as an undergraduate student, she participated in several paid research internships, including Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and was chosen to present her research at the REU Symposium in Arlington, Virginia in October 2015. She was also part of the CUNY Pipeline to Ph.D. Fellowship during 2015-2016 and presented her research at the CUNY Graduate Center in May 2016. After graduating from Lehman College with a double major in Honors Psychology and Anthropology in 2016, she was accepted in NYU's M.A. in General Psychology program with a full scholarship. Her research interests include clinical neuropsychology, such as depression in women, and the epigenetics of the intergenerational transmission of depression. Her career goal is to be a psychology professor, and to continue research into the neuropsychology of depression. 

Ehimamiegho Idahosa-Erese

Ehimamiegho Idahosa-Erese graduated as a Master's Fellow in the GSAS General Psychology program. As a graduate research assistant in Dr. Knowles’s Politics and Intergroup Relations Lab (PIRL), she investigated psychophysiological responses to economic inequality. She wrote her thesis on the interaction of political ideology and subjective status. Outside of the classroom and lab, she served as an International Council of Psychologists graduate intern at the United Nations and the president of the Social Psychology Club. As a first-generation Nigerian-American, Ehi is a lover of the global community and an arts enthusiast. 

Victor León

Victor León graduated from the Department of Biology at NYU. He studied Dentistry at San Martin de Porres University and then migrated to the United States and studied Biology at New Jersey City University. During his undergraduate studies, he performed research in plant genomics at Dr. Terry Kamps ‘s lab and utilized bioinformatic tools in silico to identify apomictic/parthenogenetic genes expressed during development in buffelgrass. His research presentations won several awards in multiple regional competitions in STEM and genetics and developmental biology. After graduation, he was invited to join Dr. Yufeng Wei’s lab, where he studied apoptotic proteins and its molecular dynamics as implicated in cell death. He identified strong conformational changes in a protein involved in the assembly of the Death Inducing Signaling Complex via Biomolecular Nuclear Magnetic Resonance studies. During his biophysical research, NYU GSAS offered him a full tuition fellowship to the M.S. in Biology program. While he was a master’s student, he joined the Hochwagen lab, where he concentrates in reproductive biology mechanisms using yeast as a model and investigates epigenetic mechanisms collaborating with NYU Langone Medical Center. Currently, he is the President of “Fundación Peruana de Ciencias“, a nonprofit institution based in Peru dedicated to boost scientific production in Lima, Peru and to give scientific opportunities to Peruvian undergraduates pursuing a scientific degree. He will be a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at NYU beginning in Fall 2018.

Timothy Lai

Originally from South Africa, Timothy was the first in his family to go to college or graduate school. Timothy’s research interests at NYU were in political behavior, comparative politics, and the intersection of social identity and electoral politics. His research focused on comparing partisanship and political cohesion of lesbian, gay, and bisexual voters in the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Prior to joining New York University, Timothy attained his Bachelors of Arts with Honors in Politics at the University of Cape Town. He also attended Bard College through its program in international education scholarship. 

Timothy now works as an analyst in digital marketing. His plan for the future is to continue to grow his technical skill set in the industry such as learning R and Python.

Meer Mustafa

After graduating with a M.S. in Biology at NYU, Meer continued his research work in Dr. Neville Sanjana's lab for some time until deciding that he wanted to have a more direct impact on the lives of people with genetic diseases. He became a Bioinformatics Scientist at Alector in San Francisco in order to develop immuno-therapeutics for people with neurodegenerative diseases & cancer. 

June Wu

June Wu completed her MS in Scientific Computing at Courant Institute, New York University.  Her master’s thesis, advised by Dimitrios Giannakis, was on extracting coherent patterns in stratospheric flow. Her research interests lie at the intersection of numerical methods, geophysical fluid dynamics and high-performance computing.

Logan Jacobs

Logan Jacobs currently works at NYU CMEP as a Program Coordinator, working to engage Native American and indigenous students at NYU. Growing up in Florida and North Carolina, she attended the University of North Carolina to earn her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. Logan then attended NYU, where she received her Master’s degree in Politics in December of 2017.  Logan's research focuses on indigenous politics, and she plans to continue work furthering tribal sovereignty, indigenous representation, and decolonization.

Eduardo González

Eduardo González completed his MA in the Politics Department at NYU. He is interested in political communications, transnational media flows, political economy, and democratization. González is now a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His research focuses on political representations of immigrants and ethnic and religious minorities in U.S. and Mexican political media. Gonzalez’s previous research has sought to understand how rhetoric used in popular and political media outlets depict minorities, affect political participation and violence, democratization, and censorship.

Imani Radney

Imani Radney received an MA in Social and Cultural Analysis from New York University in 2018. In 2014, she graduated from Harvard University with an AB in African American Studies. She currently works as the editorial assistant at Public Books and Public Culture.

Nora Rowland

Nora Rowland has just completed her Master’s thesis project on early modern pamphlets. This study that elucidates the relationship between Martin Marprelate, collaborative authorship, and pamphlets, focuses primarily on early modern identity formation. She intends to expand her thesis research from Marprelate to study the intersection of print culture and poverty in early modern England: moments where poverty and vagrancy unsettle what is often understood as exclusively stationary, the privileged artifact of print culture—the book. In March 2018, she will participate in a cross-disciplinary conference in New York that includes speakers from underrepresented backgrounds in their fields. This research will be followed by a second conference on Thomas Nashe and his contemporaries in July 2018.