Announcing the Fall 2026 Cohort of Early Career Scholars

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June 1, 2026
A group of fellows sit around a table for an activity.

Congratulations to the 2026 Cohort of Early Career Postdoctoral Scholars! 

This year, 26 postdoctoral scholars across 16 academic disciplines will join the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs for a comprehensive training program to prepare for the academic job market. 

Now in its sixth year, the Early Career Scholars Program enables fellows interested in exploring academic careers to build a strong professional network of future academics, develop healthy mentoring relationships and gain a better understanding of an academic career. As part of the program, fellows will create a competitive academic application package, prepare for academic interviews, learn to negotiate job offers and more alongside a campus-wide community of scholars pursuing similar goals. 

Since 2021, the program has served 140 postdocs, helping them develop transferable skills to successfully embark on competitive careers not just in academia, but in nonprofits, government, consulting and other industries. 

Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Andrey Vulfovich 

Bokun Wang 

Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics 

Deepika Gupta 

Department of Astronomy 

Archana Aravindan 

Department of Biomedical Engineering 

Kanika Verma 

Department of Chemistry 

Raiza Nara Antonelli Maia 

Department of Communication Studies 

Karissa Hernandez 

Department of Germanic Studies 

Ellen Schoedler 

Department of Integrative Biology 

Morgan Muell 

Department of Marine Science 

Christopher Peterson 

Hairong Xu 

Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences 

Lucia Fernandez Romero 

Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering 

Junghyun Chae 

Yifan Huang 

Byunghyun (Sean) Kim 

Gautam Kunwar 

Brandon Li 

Shivashankar Peruvazhuthi 

Meng Wang 

Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering 

Gideon Dordzie 

Materials Science and Engineering Program 

Alem Hailu 

Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences 

Frimpong Baidoo  

Richard Schussnig 

Texas Materials Institute 

Lin Hou 

UT Institute for Geophysics 

Chen Xing 

Leyuan Zhang 

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