Social Sciences

Claudia Ziegler Acemyan, Ph.D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences
Research areas: human factors and human-computer interaction, system usability, user-centered design, environment design, safety, product/system/environment evaluations using scientific methods, advanced statistics, measurement development, trust, medical human factors, transportation human factors, application of industry practice and safety standards, human error, incident analysis, and warnings

Rossella Calvi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Economics
Research areas: development economics, applied microeconomics, and labor

Flavio Cunha, Ph.D.
Ervin Kenneth Zingler Professor of Economics
Research areas: inequality and poverty, investments in cognitive and noncognitive skills

Patricia DeLucia, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychological Sciences
Research areas: perception of collision, motion, depth, and multisensory integration in normal and impaired vision; Human factors in transportation (e.g., manual and automated driving; aviation), health care (minimally-invasive surgery, telehealth, medication administration, patient safety), and military (e.g., UAVs, night vision goggles)

Bryan Denny, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences
Research areas: social cognitive and affective neuroscience, emotion regulation, translational affective science

Elaine Howard Ecklund, Ph.D.
Herbert S. Autry Chair in Social Sciences
Professor of Sociology
Director, Religion and Public Life Program
Research areas: religion, science, immigration, and culture

Hulya Eraslan, Ph.D.
Ralph O'Connor Professor of Economics
Research areas: bargaining and voting with applications to political economy and corporate finance, both theoretically and empirically

Mikki Hebl, Ph.D.
Martha and Henry Malcolm Lovett Chair of Psychology
Research areas: diversity and discrimination

Danielle King, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences
Research areas: workplace resilience, identity intersectionality and authenticity, workplace citizenship behavior

Eden King, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences
Research areas: diversity & inclusion, work-family

Philip Kortum, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences
Chairman of the Undergraduate Committee
Research areas: usability, medical human factors, voting human factors, transportation human factors

Ted Loch-Temzelides, Ph.D.
George and Cynthia Mitchell Professor in Sustainable Development
Research areas: energy transition towards a sustainable economy, conservation agreements, global health, and non-standard models of individual decision-making. His current focus is in quantifying the economic and health consequences resulting from climate change, pollution, deforestation, and zoonotic pathogen transmission.

Fred Oswald, Ph.D.
Professor and Herbert S. Autrey Chair of Social Sciences
Research areas: developing, evaluating, and implementing psychological measures (motivation, personality, interests, knowledge, memory); machine learning applications; COVID pandemic effect on educational access and success, unemployment, job search, and recruiting and hiring processes.

James Pomerantz, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychological Sciences
Governing Board Chair of Psychonomic Society
Research areas: perception, visual attention, perceptual organization, emergent features in vision

Robert Stein, Ph.D.
Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science
Research areas: state and urban politics, public policy, elections, voting behavior

Ruth Turley, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Director, Houston Education Research Consortium
Research areas: educational inequality/equity, research-practice partnerships

Rick Wilson, Ph.D.
Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science
Research areas: historical evolution of Congressional institutions, experimental studies of strategic behavior