Fresh Perspectives: LAS Introduces New Faculty This Fall

Professor Boergens joined UIC in 2022 as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics. He received a PhD in Biology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany in February 2018, after which he worked as the Director of Research and Hardware Development Lead at Paradromics, Inc., a neurotechnology development firm. During his time at Paradromics, he worked on the development of a long- lasting and efficient brain machine interface for patients with quadriplegia and ALS. He has published fourteen scientific articles in journals such as Nature, Science, and Nature Methods. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (including the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Mental Health) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, among others.

• Physics Department
• Biological Sciences Department

Professor Gul joined UIC in 2023 as a Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow. He specializes in medical anthropology, anthropology of law, and science and technology studies. He completed a PhD in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University in 2023 with a dissertation entitled “Silicosis Trails: Law, Medicine and the Corrosion of the Laboring Body in Turkey.” His work has been published most recently in Medical Anthropology Quarterly and Science, Technology, & Human Values, and he has presented at numerous conferences and workshops. At UIC he has taught courses on medicine, culture and society and the anthropology of toxic exposures.

• Anthropology Department

Professor Lee joined UIC in 2024 as a Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research examines how online cultures and associated mechanisms such as algorithms and datafication shape and perpetuate inequalities along the lines of gender and race. She completed a PhD in communication at the University of Washington in 2024 with a dissertation entitled, “Korean Woman Go Global in Social Media: Representation, Algorithms, and Audiences in Transnational Content Creation.” She has numerous publications, most recently in Feminist Media Studies, Surveillance and Society, and the International Journal of Communication, and she taught a section of COMM 270 on Digital Influencers last spring.

• Communication Department

Professor Macari joined UIC in 2023 as a Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow. His research explores the relation between Mexican literature and the formation of the Mexican system of public education. He completed a PhD in Romance languages and literatures at the University of Chicago in 2022. His work has been supported by Letras Libres, a Mexican literary magazine,  and he has published numerous pieces of cultural journalism. He has a chapter on the Mexican writer Elena Garro’s short story “La Culpa Es De Los Tlaxcaltecas” forthcoming in a scholarly anthology entitled A Game of Mirrors: Colonial Culture and the Latin American Imagination. He taught a course on literature and school in Latin America at UIC in spring 2024.

• Hispanic and Italian Studies Department

Professor Mendoza joined UIC in 2023 as a Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow. He is a historian of indigenous peoples of the Americas and of the Nahuatl language. His research focuses on the period of the “Long Conquest” (1519-1580) in what is now Mexico, chronicling the indigenous reaction to Spanish colonization. He received a PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2023 and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2017. He has published several articles and book chapters in journals and anthologies and has presented at numerous conferences, including most recently at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory in Fargo, North Dakota, and the congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Bogotá, Colombia. He taught a 400-level course at UIC in Spring 2025 entitled “CONQUEST! Spanish-Indigenous Wars of Conquest in Sixteenth-Century Latin America.”

• History Department

Professor Nguyen joined UIC in 2023 as a Bridge to Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow in MSCS and the Learning Sciences Research Institute. Her research interests lie at the intersection of mathematics education and education policy and leadership. She finished a PhD in mathematics education at the University of Missouri in 2023 and received her BS in mathematics and economics at the University of California, San Diego in 2018. She has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, most recently in School Science and Mathematics, Educational Studies in Mathematics, and the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. She has taught 100-level mathematics courses as well as doctoral level courses at UIC.

• Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Department

Professor Oktawiec joins the Department of Chemistry from Northwestern University, where she was an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Research Scholar. She completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2019, with a thesis on cooperative interactions in redox-active metal-organic frameworks for gas adsorption. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She has been an author on 38 journal articles and has an h-index of 23, and she is part of two patents. She has given numerous presentations, including invited talks at Washington University in St. Louis, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Minnesota.

• Chemistry Department

Professor Pruss brings a specialization in the ethics of AI and general philosophy of science to UIC’s philosophy faculty. Prior to coming to UIC, Professor Pruss was a faculty member in the departments of Philosophy and Computer Science at George Mason University. She is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and was a fellow there in 2023-2024. She completed her PhD in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2023 with a dissertation entitled, “Carceral Machines: Algorithmic Risk Assessment and the Reshaping of Crime and Punishment.” She also completed an MA in the history and philosophy of science at Pittsburgh and holds a BS in computer science from the University of Utah. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, among others, and she has co-authored articles in PLOS One and Nature: Molecular Psychiatry. She has given numerous talks across the country and the world, including invited talks at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the University of Missouri, and Carnegie Mellon University.

• Philosophy Department