Recent Contributions by RLI Alumni
Dalal Alharthi
Assistant Professor, College of Information Science | Cohort '22-'23
Dalal Alharthi recently co-led a six-month cloud forensics training program for the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, translating academic expertise into operational capability for Navy bases across Hawaii and California. Through her involvement in RLI, she partnered with Ken McAllister to co-lead a workshop on AI ethics, supported by the University of Arizona Office of Research and Partnerships. She also served as one of seven principal investigators on a challenge-grant–funded University of Arizona project focused on student success and well-being. In addition, she was selected to collaborate with the intelligence community through the UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, contributing to a white paper published jointly with the National Science Foundation. She is currently working with national laboratories to secure scientific workflows and AI-driven discovery.
Alharthi's work explores fundamental questions about how intelligent systems reason, where they fail, and what it takes to trust them. Situated at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity and digital forensics, her research focuses on building trustworthy and secure AI by opening the “black box” of machine learning, large language models and generative systems. She also examines how AI is reshaping the job market and scientific practice, addressing issues of integrity, provenance and trust as these technologies become more deeply embedded in society. Guided by a philosophy that integrates research, teaching and mentorship, her work advances understanding of how to design, evaluate and rely on increasingly complex AI systems.
Joey Blankinship
Associate Professor, Microbial Biogeochemistry | Cohort '23-'24
In 2025, Joey Blankinship was recognized for his leadership and contributions to research with the Carl and Patricia Weiler Endowed Chair for Excellence in Agriculture and Life Sciences (University of Arizona College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences). The same year, he was named a Research Innovation and Impact Rising Star by the University of Arizona Office of Research and Partnerships.
Blankinship’s research centers on soil health and microbial ecosystems, where he combines biology, chemistry and engineering to better understand how soils function and support plant life. His work has important applications for improving agricultural productivity, restoring ecosystems and advancing sustainable practices in arid environments. As founding director of the Desert Agriculture Soil Health Initiative (DASHI), he leads collaborative efforts aimed at addressing environmental challenges in desert regions.
Heather Froehlich
Assistant Specialist, Digital Scholarship | Cohort '23-'24
Heather Froehlich continues to expand her research through international collaboration, including a recent visiting scholar appointment at the Australian National University. During her time abroad, she worked closely with librarians at the National Library of Australia, strengthening global research connections and advancing her scholarly work. She credits RLI, including its capacity-building grant, with making these opportunities possible and supporting her ongoing professional growth.
Froehlich’s work centers on advancing digital scholarship at the University of Arizona, with a particular emphasis on text and data mining across disciplines. Drawing on her background in applied linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, literary linguistics and digital humanities, she collaborates with researchers to apply digital methods to textual analysis and source discovery. Her expertise bridges the humanities and computational approaches, helping scholars use accessible software and tools to explore large bodies of text, historical materials and print history in innovative ways.
Philipp Gutruf
Associate Department Head of Biomedical Engineering | Cohort '24-'25
Philipp Gutruf was named a 2024 Da Vinci Fellow by the University of Arizona, an honor recognizing faculty who demonstrate exceptional innovation and interdisciplinary impact in research and scholarship. The fellowship highlights his contributions to advancing engineering-driven approaches to biomedical and technological challenges, and his commitment to developing transformative, cross-disciplinary research at the University of Arizona.
Gutruf is a biomedical engineer whose work focuses on developing next-generation wearable and implantable technologies that tightly integrate with the human body for continuous health monitoring and intervention. His research combines soft materials, electronics and photonics to create “biosymbiotic” devices that can track physiological signals in real time, including systems for neural activity monitoring, wireless implantables and long-lasting wearable sensors that operate without traditional adhesives or frequent recharging. Recognized for advancing personalized and remote medicine, his lab’s innovations have contributed to new approaches for monitoring disease progression and enabling medical care in resource-limited or remote environments.
Heather Haeger
Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies and Practice | Cohort '23-'24
Heather Haeger’s work has been recognized with the Paper of the Year Award from Scholarship and Practice in Undergraduate Research (Council on Undergraduate Research) for her article, "Claiming Space in the Academic Landscape: Negotiating Spatial Belonging in Undergraduate Research." The study examines how underrepresented students in summer research programs construct a sense of belonging and “claim space” through public blogs and reflective writing, analyzing physical, digital, relational and structural dimensions of academic environments.
As associate professor and research director of the STEM Learning Center at the University of Arizona, Haeger leads major projects, including the NSF-supported REEDS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Her research focuses on how undergraduate research improves student success and belonging in STEM. Her 2024 work on reducing opportunity gaps and her award-winning paper on students’ sense of belonging have contributed to national conversations on inclusive STEM education. She also co-authored the 2024 book Designing and Implementing a Successful Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Program. Haeger is active in national service, including NSF grant review panels and editorial work, and was nominated in 2024 to the NSF Advisory Committee for the Directorate for STEM Education.
Michael Johnson
Associate Professor, Immunobiology | Cohort '22-'23
Michael Johnson serves as associate dean for Basic Science and Graduate Studies at COM-T (since 2023) and the Keating Family Endowed Professor for Interdisciplinary Research at BIO5 (2023–2025). He was elected to the ASM Board of Directors (2025) while also serving as Senior Editor of mSphere. His research is supported by a renewed NIGMS R35 MIRA ($1.89M, 2024–2029) and multiple R01 awards totaling over $6.2 million, advancing work on bacterial copper toxicity, airway immunity and coccidioidomycosis.
Johnson is a microbiologist and translational researcher focused on bacterial metal stress, particularly copper toxicity, and its use as a strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance. His work explores how pathogens respond to metal-driven immune defenses and how these mechanisms can be leveraged to develop new therapeutics against drug-resistant infections such as MRSA. He also studies airway immunity and coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever), connecting basic microbial physiology to clinically relevant disease outcomes. His lab has produced patented antimicrobial and diagnostic innovations and published extensively, including recent recognition for developing a “Trojan horse” strategy to combat drug-resistant MRSA.
Diego Leal
Associate Professor, Sociology | Cohort '23-'24
Diego Leal is co-principal investigator (with J. Thrasher) on a 2024–2029 National Cancer Institute/NIH R01 grant (CA290828) totaling over $2 million. The project, "Building Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models to Investigate Social Network Influences on Youth Nicotine Product Use Transitions and to Simulate Different Intervention Effects across Contexts," develops advanced modeling approaches to examine how social networks shape youth nicotine use behaviors and to simulate intervention strategies across contexts. This award expands his research by enabling large-scale computational modeling of health behavior and strengthening his work on evidence-based intervention design.
Leal is a sociologist at the University of Arizona whose research focuses on social networks, international migration and how social relationships shape health and inequality. Using a combination of interviews, network analysis and computational modeling, his work connects everyday social interactions to large-scale patterns of behavior and policy-relevant health outcomes.
Charlotte Pearson
Associate Professor, Dendrochronology | Cohort '23-'24
Charlotte Pearson is actively involved in interdisciplinary research through the University of Arizona’s TIME Lab and the BIG Ideas Challenge. Her work brings together scientific and historical perspectives to better understand past events and their relevance to today’s global challenges, including recent research using tree-ring data and radiocarbon analysis to identify ancient solar storms and refine earthquake timelines. She credits RLI with playing an integral role in advancing both initiatives and supporting their continued impact.
Pearson’s research is distinguished by its precision and innovation in chronological modeling, using advanced radiocarbon calibration techniques to anchor environmental and geological events in exact calendar years. By integrating dendrochronology with high-resolution isotope analysis, her team is able to detect subtle atmospheric changes preserved in tree rings, offering new insight into the timing and intensity of past solar activity and seismic disturbances. This approach not only strengthens historical records but also provides a more reliable scientific foundation for assessing future environmental hazards.
Greg Pierotti
Associate Professor, Theater, Film and Television | Cohort '24-'25
Following the publication of his book Affect Ethnography: Exploring Performance and Narrative in the Creation of Unstories on June 14, 2024, Greg Pierotti launched a series of international book talks and workshops that expanded and refined his collaborative research practice, Affect Theater, alongside collaborator and co-author Cristiana Giordano. These engagements included invited talks and workshops at the University of Toronto, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the University of Manchester and New York University, as well as a weeklong workshop in the Netherlands with the European Association of Social Anthropologists and the Creative Anthropology Network’s Theater from the Field Group. In addition, he contributed as a consultant to Art é Fact, a four-year interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the French government through L’Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Awarded approximately $600,000 in the spring of 2025, the project will support workshops Pierotti is leading over the next four years.
Pierotti’s work bridges theater, ethnography and affect theory through a collaborative research and performance methodology he calls Affect Theater. Situated at the intersection of theatrical devising, anthropology and cultural studies, his research develops new forms of ethnographic inquiry that integrate performance-making with social analysis. His work provides ethnographic writers with innovative approaches to research design and presentation while encouraging theater makers to engage political and cultural contexts with greater nuance and complexity. A longtime teacher of collaborative playmaking and dramaturgy, Pierotti is also co-writer of The Laramie Project, Laramie: 10 Years Later and The People’s Temple, as well as the HBO teleplay adaptation of The Laramie Project. Across his creative practice and mentorship, Pierotti challenges artists, writers and researchers to attend more deeply to the emotional and social dynamics that shape contemporary life.
Martin Reimann
Associate Professor, Marketing | Cohort '23-'24
Martin Reimann’s recent research explores how trust operates in modern social and technological contexts. His work has led to three recent publications in academic journals: "Hippocampal Blood Oxygenation Predicts Choices About Everyday Consumer Experiences: A Deep-Learning Approach," "Trust in Social Relations" and “The Transparency Dilemma: How AI Disclosure Erodes Trust." Together, these contributions offer timely insights into trust, technology and human behavior.
Martin Reimann’s research explores how emotion, memory and emerging technologies shape consumer behavior and decision-making. As director of the Arizona Think Tank for Behavioral Decision Making, he studies how individuals form judgments of value beyond monetary factors, with a particular focus on trust, experience and the growing role of AI in everyday choices. Using methods such as behavioral experiments and neuroimaging, his work bridges marketing, psychology and neuroscience to better understand how people interact with brands, products and intelligent systems in an evolving technological landscape.
Judith Su
Associate Professor, Optical Science | Cohort '22-'23
Judith Su’s recent publication, "Accelerating GPCR Drug Discovery Through Computation and Experiment Integrated with Direct Detection of Ligand Binding Events," (Su, Liggett, S.B., Kim, S-K, Kim, D., III Goddard, W.A.) appears in npj Drug Discovery (in press 2026). The study advances computational and experimental approaches to drug discovery by integrating simulation-based modeling with direct measurement of ligand–receptor binding events to improve understanding of G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) interactions.
Su's work integrates computational modeling, cell-based experiments and a highly sensitive optical biosensing platform (FLOWER) to directly measure how drug molecules bind to receptors. This approach enables faster and more precise identification of promising therapeutic compounds, addressing a major challenge in early-stage drug discovery. Su’s research bridges engineering, biology and medicine, contributing to more efficient development of drugs targeting diseases where GPCRs play a central role and demonstrating the potential of combining advanced sensing technologies with AI-driven modeling.