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Academics
2025 Public Engagement Project Faculty Fellows Announced
The Public Engagement Project (PEP) has announced the six 2025 Public Engagement Faculty Fellows from across campus who will draw upon their substantial research records to impact policy, the work of practitioners and public debates.
The PEP Fellows Program, of which this group constitutes the 11th cohort, facilitates connections between fellows and lawmakers in the U.S. Congress and Massachusetts State House, journalists, practitioners and others to share their research beyond the walls of academia. The faculty fellows will receive a stipend and technical training in communicating with non-academic audiences.
“For more than a decade, the expanding network of PEP Faculty Fellows has made significant impacts,” says Lisa M. Troy, director of the Public Engagement Project and associate professor of nutrition in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the Commonwealth Honors College. “By training UMass faculty members to translate their scholarship to an audience beyond academia, they are having broader impacts locally, nationally and internationally. PEP Fellows have been invited to governor task forces, onto the National Academy of Sciences committees, and for congressional testimony, as well as informing the general public through various media outlets. In this way, PEP Fellows are facilitating the mission of UMass Amherst as a land grant university, ‘to advance knowledge and improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, the nation and the world.’”
The Public Engagement Project is a faculty-driven initiative building on a collaboration of the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), the Center for Research on Families (CRF) and the Transportation Center (UMTC). The PEP Faculty Fellowship has been made possible by funding from the College of Education, College of Engineering, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, College of Natural Sciences, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Public Health and Health Sciences, Office of the Provost and University Relations.
2025 PEP FACULTY FELLOWS
Carrie-Ellen Briere – Associate Professor, Elaine Marieb College of Nursing
Carrie-Ellen Briere is a neonatal nurse who studies human milk. Her research aims to understand how hospital practices, like refrigeration and freezing, impact the components of milk and ultimately infant health. As a PEP fellow, she will create short videos and infographics to use on social media to help educate parents and healthcare providers.
Tania DoCarmo – Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science
Tania DoCarmo studies the unintended consequences of human trafficking and migration policies on disadvantaged populations. Drawing on decades of experience working with NGOs in Cambodia, Brazil and the U.S.. As a Public Engagement Fellow, she will leverage her expertise to write op-eds and reach out to policymakers about the impacts of human trafficking law and harmful ramifications of immigrant detention.
Eleni Christofa – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Eleni Christofa studies transportation systems where cars, buses, bicyclists, and pedestrians interact with each other. Her research focuses on the impacts of transportation system design on efficiency, safety, and society. As a PEP Fellow she will focus on sharing her work on bicycle safety with non-academic audiences and develop educational materials to explain expected driver and bicyclist behavior under different infrastructure designs.
John Francisco – Associate Professor, College of Education
John Francisco studies how students learn with a focus on how they build knowledge and reason in mathematics. His research examines the conditions and interventions that support learning mathematics in the classroom. The goal of his research is to inform teaching and learning Mathematics in secondary schools. As a PEP fellow, Francisco will share insights into best practices for teaching mathematics and preparing mathematics teachers through media interviews and policy briefs.
Airín D. Martínez – Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Policy; Faculty Affiliate, Center for Community Health Equity Research
Airín D. Martínez studies how social policies and institutional practices produce health inequities in U.S. Latinx populations. Her goal is to destigmatize public health issues like suicide and obesity as individual-level problems and advocate for policies that address these inequities. During her PEP fellowship, she will develop policy briefs for state legislators and public health officials and engage in podcasts and radio communication to reach a wider audience.
Beaudelaine Pierre – Assistant Professor, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
Beaudelaine Pierre’s research focuses on how African descended people narrate gender, politics, care and accountability to address human rights and immigrant and refugee justice. As a Public Engagement Fellow, she will develop written materials on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders in the U.S. to share with legislators and human rights advocates for permanent protection of TPS holders.