Unit 18 Faculty Professional Development Fund Awards

The Professional Development Fund is dedicated to providing funding support for the professional development of Unit 18 Faculty engaged in professional development activities that will enhance their effectiveness and development as scholars/teachers in their field. 

The Following Unit 18 Faculty Received Funding from the Spring Award Cycle.

Seven faculty members named 2022-2023 Hellman Fellows

Seven assistant professors at UCR will receive Hellman Fellowships, which are bestowed annually to support research by junior faculty. They join an elite group of 74 UCR Hellman Fellows since 2011, when the Hellman Fellows Fund established the program here. The program began in 1995 at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego and has since expanded organically to all UC institutions. In 2020, after 25 years of funding the Program, the Hellman family generously established an endowment to allow the program to continue in perpetuity across UC’s 10 campuses.

The 2022-23 awardees, representing a cross-section of disciplines, are:

• Elizabeth Berger, Assistant Professor in College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences for her proposal “Climate change and violence in the Chinese bronze age.” 
• Diogo Ferrari, Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences for his proposal “The causes of support for authoritarian populism.”
• Dana Kaufman, Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences for her proposal “Opera Kardashian”: A production with synchromy.”
• Jasmin Young, Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences for her proposal “Black power digital archive.”
• Heyrim Cho, Assistant Professor in the College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences for his proposal “Modeling heterogeneous cell state dynamics from single-cell RNA sequencing data and its application to oncology”.
• Vasileios Christopoulos, Assistant Professor in the Bourns College of Engineering for his proposal “Understanding the mechanisms of spinal cord stimulation for chronic pan treatment.” 
• Elaheh Sadredini, Assistant Professor in the Bourns College of Engineering for her proposal “Enabling energy-efficient and high-performance crypto engine with in-cache computing.”