The University of Georgia has named 11 faculty members to the 2025-2026 Aspire Fellows cohort, including the law school’s Amy Taylor. The Fellows represent seven UGA schools and colleges as well as the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Established in 2017, the Aspire Fellows program is designed for mid-career and senior faculty on any career track to complete a signature project that extends their professional impact. This interdisciplinary cohort will engage in a series of workshops that augment skills including project management, leadership and team building. The program fosters strong community connections across the university and empowers seasoned faculty to navigate their role in the complex higher education landscape.
“We congratulate these highly accomplished faculty who exemplify the University of Georgia’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research and service,” said Elizabeth Weeks, interim vice provost for academic affairs and associate provost for faculty affairs. “We look forward to seeing how their significant projects and engagement with this energizing cohort program will enrich their professional journeys.”
The 2025-2026 Aspire Fellows are:
Drew Abney, associate professor ad associate department head, department of psychology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and faculty affiliate, UGA’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Abney is the lab director of the Developmental Dynamics Lab, which focuses on how behaviors and social interactions impact developmental trajectories throughout infancy and into childhood. His studies apply existing techniques from applied computational social science and dynamical systems theory. Additionally, his work employs new computational and analytic methods to understand the dynamics of human development. Abney’s work has been funded by governmental organizations and private foundations.
Andrew Karl Barnett, associate professor of emergency medicine, Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership. Barnett has been recognized for his exceptional instruction by the AU/UGA Exemplary Teaching Award and the Emergency Medical Faculty of the Year Award. He has worked in academic medicine since 2012 and was an attending physician in the emergency department at Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center for two decades. Barnett is the immediate past chair of the Clarke County Hospital Authority and served on the PARMC board of trustees. He was the medical student clerkship site coordinator at PARMC for a decade. Barnett received his medical degree from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and completed his emergency medicine residency and a chief resident year at the University of Massachusetts.
Lilong Chai, associate professor and engineering specialist, department of poultry science, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and affiliate faculty and steering committee member, Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture. Chai’s research focuses on the animal environment and precision poultry farming. Since joining UGA, he has served as the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on 40 grants or contracts totaling $5.5 million. He has authored over 200 publications, coordinated 20 University of Georgia Cooperative Extension events, delivered more than 100 research/extension talks and received 20 professional awards/honors. Chai serves as the coordinator of the Georgia Precision Poultry Farming Conference and the Georgia Layer Conference, two annual UGA Extension training programs that have reached more than 2,500 attendees over the past five years. In addition, he is the chair of the 4th U.S. Precision Livestock Farming Conference.
Rabindranath De La Fuente, professor of reproductive biology/epigenetics, department of physiology and pharmacology, College of Veterinary Medicine. De La Fuente leads an active research program that is focused on the molecular mechanisms that regulate chromatin structure and chromosome instability in mammalian germ cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. Previously, he conducted research on epigenetics at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, funded by a Lalor Foundation Post-Doctoral Scholarship. His laboratory pioneered the analysis of the role of chromatin remodeling proteins during meiosis and the unique mechanisms regulating epigenetic reprogramming in the mammalian oocyte. His research program is funded by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
Jennifer Eimers, assistant director for the scholarship of teaching and learning, Center for Teaching and Learning, Office of Instruction. Eimers provides leadership in the design, facilitation and advancement of university-wide educational development initiatives. Her programs foster interdisciplinary collaboration and cultivate generative communities for researchers exploring diverse methodologies and pedagogical innovations. She joined UGA with 15 years of experience as an administrator and faculty member. Eimers previously served as senior associate director of curriculum and instruction for undergraduate programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. Other leadership appointments include chairing the division of languages and humanities at Missouri Valley College.
Julie Grainy, senior lecturer and undergraduate assistant coordinator, department of microbiology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. With a focus on instruction and curriculum development, Grainy enriches undergraduate education through innovative curriculum design, such as implementing project-based learning and emphasizing transferable career skills. Grainy’s leadership responsibilities include directing a Study Away program in Munich, Germany, and coordinating the recruitment and mentoring of peer assistants for both lecture and lab courses to ensure collaborative and supportive learning environments. She serves on the executive committee of Scientists Engaged in Education Research Center. She previously co-chaired the Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Learning Community. She was recognized with a university-wide creative teaching award, as well as acceptance in the Active Learning Summer Institute and the Teaching Academy Early Career Fellows Program.
James Huff, associate professor of engineering education, College of Engineering. Huff is a qualitative researcher whose work lies at the nexus of engineering education and applied personality and social psychology. A National Science Foundation CAREER Awardee, he promotes care as a core mindset of engineering and other professions through his research. As principal investigator of the Beyond Professional Identity Lab, Huff has mentored undergraduates, doctoral students and professionals from more than 15 disciplines in conducting in-depth qualitative investigations on psychological phenomena. He further contributes to qualitative research through publications on interviewing and using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Huff serves as deputy editor of the Journal of Engineering Education and on editorial boards for Personality and Social Psychology Review and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
Sharina Maíllo-Pozo, associate professor, department of Romance languages, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Maíllo-Pozo also serves as faculty director of the Spanish Residential Community at Mary Lyndon Hall. Her scholarship centers on Latinx and Caribbean literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on the cultural production of the Dominican Republic and its diaspora in the United States. She is the author of “Bridging Sonic Borders: Popular Music in Contemporary Dominican/Dominicanyork Literature” and co-editor of several published and forthcoming special issues. Her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Maíllo-Pozohas held fellowships from the City University of New York’s Dominican Studies Institute and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, among others. She is the recipient of several teaching awards including the 2025 CLASP Faculty Teaching Award. Currently, Maíllo-Pozo serves as co-chair of the LASA Haiti/Dominican Republic section of the Latin American Studies Association.
Assaf Oshri, Samuel A. and Sharon Y. Nickols Endowed Professor, department of human development and family science, College of Family and Consumer Sciences, and director of the Georgia Center for Developmental Science. Oshri’s interdisciplinary research examines how adversity and environmental contexts influence risk and resilience across development, with a focus on neurocognitive and social processes shaping behavioral and emotional outcomes in youth. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed articles and leads multimillion-dollar federally funded projects that have engaged more than 1,000 families and youth across Georgia. His work integrates advanced methodologies including neuroimaging, physiological monitoring and analyses of large-scale national datasets. At UGA, he fosters cross-college collaboration with the Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the College of Engineering to advance interdisciplinary research addressing critical challenges in human development and well-being.
Amy Taylor, clinical services and research librarian, Alexander Campbell King Law Library, School of Law. With a Juris Doctor and a master’s degree in library science, Taylor leads the Law Library’s outreach to clinical programs and teaches legal research courses. Her recent peer-reviewed article studies the relevance of different types of searching in the legal research databases. Previously, she worked as a research librarian at Crowell & Moring where she conducted business, legal, legislative and regulatory research for attorneys. She also worked at the law libraries of Duke University and Georgetown University, and she was an intern for the U.S. Supreme Court Library.
Hui (Iris) Zhang, associate professor, department of physiology and pharmacology, Isakson Center for Neurological Disease Research, College of Veterinary Medicine. Zhang’s laboratory has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for more than 15 years, and her team pioneers the recording of dopamine neurotransmission and mitochondrial function using cutting-edge two-photon imaging. Zhang’s research focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of dopamine neuron degeneration in Parkinson’s disease, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets. She is passionate about translational neuroscience and fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations to accelerate discovery. Since 2019, she has served as a senior editor for Molecular Neurodegeneration.
The Aspire Fellows program is coordinated by the Office of Faculty Affairs, a unit of the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.
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Contact: UGA Media Relations, media@uga.edu