Our newest NCIS members, who hail from or live in Argentina, Colombia, Germany, India, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, hold expertise in a broad range of scholarship. Their specialties include modeling and simulation of complex energy systems; race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality/LGBT; public parks, therapeutic landscapes and ethnography; library and information science; and the history of modern science.
Michael Becerra has worked for more than ten years as an educator and mental health counselor. He currently is employed as an editor and writer while building an online digital media company in Barranquilla, Colombia. With his company, Barranquilla Life, Becerra seeks to create content for an English-speaking tourism market on Colombia's Caribbean and has produced a variety of videos on local arts, culture, music, sports, and business. He remains active in independent research with local interests in men’s issues, technology, and family systems through community research. Becerra holds a Ph.D. in counselor education and supervision from Texas A&M University at Commerce and a Master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
Ankit Bisen, an independent scholar and a review writer from India, researches mental illnesses and ethnic medicines from India and other parts of the countries. His research areas include: neuropsychopharmacology-cognitive science, and non-progressive disorders; computational biology-molecular modelling and docking, computational neuroscience; cancer genomics and structural bioinformatics; Enzyme Engineering and clinical research/metanalysis. His website is http://www.morningsipblog.com
Mark Brinkman recently retired after working 38 years in technology. In 2009, he completed an M.A. in Humanities. A nearly life-long resident of northern California, Brinkman currently is exploring research possibilities in the field of twentieth century far West history.
Gustavo Carrera, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, completed an M.A. in Teaching American History and Government from Ashland University. He holds a B.A. in History from Columbia University and has completed additional graduate work in Latin American and Latino History at Rutgers University. Carrera has worked at three independent schools in admissions and as coordinator of a middle school history program and diversity and inclusiveness programs. Currently, Gustavo chairs the History and Social Sciences Department at Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At BB&N, he has led the development of a high school Global History program that includes a course sequence on American and Global History as well as an innovative U.S. History Seminar. In addition, he is responsible for co-leading the new faculty program. For his work in the classroom, Gustavo earned the American Historical Association’s 2017 Beveridge Family Teaching Prize.
With a focus in computer science and mathematics, Atiyah Elsheikh works in R&D in sensitivity analysis applications at Modelon AB, in Lund, Sweden. Elsheikh has served as a staff scientist at United Technologies Research Center in Ireland, an assistant professor at the International University of Sarajevo, and project engineer at Telemotive AG. He also has researched modeling and simulation of complex energy systems and supervised graduate students at the Austrian Institute of Technology. He has published on equation-based algorithmic differentiation technique for differential algebraic equations (Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics) and “Derivative-based hybrid heuristics for continuous-time simulation optimization” (Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory), among many other topics. Elsheikh is fluent in Arabic, English and German.
Wayne Medford, a postdoctoral researcher with experience in North-East England and northern Scotland, has gained an extensive background in health education, knowledge transfer, community engagement, and participatory mapping through his work in the public and the voluntary and community sectors. Medford’s Ph.D. thesis examined the everyday therapeutic qualities found in Saltwell Park, in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear. His doctoral research considered how individuals and groups interact with Saltwell Park, and how those interactions aid health and well-being. Medford gathered empirical data through a unique mixed methodology that gathered perspectives and experiences from park users along with observation, interview and textual analysis, using participatory mapping and photovoice. He has also researched in health care settings, and studied education within healthcare settings, most notably, co-production projects within NHS Scotland encompassing health-promoting changes to hospital environments. He is also a tutor at Durham University’s International Study Center.
Christian A. Nappo teaches at the Lee County (Florida) School District and holds an M.A. in library and information science from the University of South Florida. He also holds an M.S. in criminal justice from the University of Alabama and an M.A. in history from the University of Nebraska-Kearney. His is author of The Librarians of Congress (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Sandra Rebok worked for many years at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid and has recently finished a two-years Marie Curie Fellowship at the Huntington Library. Her research and publications focus on Alexander von Humboldt, Atlantic history, exploration voyages and transnational scientific collaborations during the nineteenth century. Her research analyzes the networks of knowledge Humboldt established in the United States and his impact on its scientific development. Her most recent book Jefferson and Humboldt: A Transatlantic Friendship of the Enlightenment (2014) is being translated into Spanish. She has just completed a new manuscript, Humboldt’s Empire of Knowledge: From the Royal Spanish Court to the White House. Trained as an anthropologist and sociologist with a focus on the history of modern science, Rebok completed her Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg. She also has studied at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in Madrid and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Nathan Reed holds a B.A. in American Studies and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, and a second M.A. from the University of Notre Dame. Reed’s areas of interest include race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality/LGBT, as well as social inequality and social movements. His populations of focus are intersectional (LGBT-POC) and biracial (black/white) Americans. His M.A. thesis (unpublished) examined the intersection of race and sexuality, utilizing the first and largest survey of its kind (sampling more than 5,000 LGBT-POC) and quantitatively demonstrated subjects experience Du Bois's (1903) phenomenon of “double-consciousness” in that they tend to live in their respective communities of color yet travel out of these for activities related to their sexual identity and therefore struggle to combine seemingly incongruent identities.
Angelic Rodgers holds a Ph.D. in American Literature (1865-1914) from the University of Southern Mississippi, an an M.A. and B.A. in English from the University of Central Arkansas. Rodgers has taught at Auburn University before transitioning to online teaching in 2004. She retired from teaching in October of 2017, leaving her post as Program Director of Interdisciplinary Studies for Baker College Online to research and write full time. She is an active member of the AMA Alliance, a blog editor for the national publication Physician Family, and a regular contributor to its print publication. Rodgers’s research areas include Octave Thanet, feminist science fiction, Joanna Russ, Mizora, and nineteenth century utopias (literal and literary). Her website is: http://www.angelicrodgers.com
Shari Zimmerman has been teaching and leading schools in public school systems for thirty years, in Kansas, California, Oklahoma and now Tennessee. Her focus is English, Spanish, and English as a Second Language. Zimmerman has served as an elementary school principal and assistant superintendent. She completed my Ph.D. in social foundations of education at Oklahoma State University in 2017 and enjoys researching the experiences of women and youth in nonprofit and educational settings.