Supported by a grant for Advancing Faculty Diversity from the UC Office of the President (PIs: Professors Ilona Yim and Nina Bandelj), the Inclusive Excellence Professors are appointed as Faculty Assistants to the Provost and work directly with the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development to organize and run faculty development activities.
They also serve in mentoring roles for faculty who participate in grant sponsored activities. To be matched for a mentoring conversation, please contact Nina Bandelj, nbandelj@uci.edu.
| Name | Introduction | Mentoring Topics |
|---|---|---|
 Annalisa Coliva | I am a Philosophy Professor. I specialize in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and history of analytic philosophy. Currently, I am working on several issues in social epistemology, having to do with forms of epistemic injustice perpetrated against women and underserved groups. I am also interested in so-called “conceptual engineering”. My Wittgenstein-inspired model is designed to help develop more inclusive gender concepts. In the history of analytic philosophy, I have published widely on Wittgenstein and George Edward Moore. Lately, I have been working on Susan Stebbing, the first woman Philosophy Professor in the UK, and on the too often neglected contribution of women philosophers to the rise of analytic philosophy across the two sides of the Atlantic. At UCI I have been chair of the Philosophy department, where I have strenuously worked to achieve more gender balance among faculty, and graduate students, and to create more opportunities for under-represented groups. To that end, I have designed and directed a “Mentoring women and under-represented groups in philosophy” program. I am a strong supporter to the President/Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellowship program, that I have served in various capacities, most notably as mentor of two fellows. I have fostered inclusive excellence also by supporting the AICRE + Philosophy pivot, meant to raise awareness among faculty and graduate students of themes in Africana and Black Philosophy. |
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 Solmaz Kia | I am an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Computer Science Department. My specialty is in decentralized algorithm design for networked systems (cyber-physical systems), control theory, and probabilistic robotics. My research involves navigation in GPS-denied environments, sensor fusion, integrity monitoring, in-network coordination, distributed optimal decision-making, and multi-robot motion planning. Intuitively speaking, the essence of my research work is the analysis/synthesis of local interactions in networked multi-agent systems to produce global behaviors/solutions. My research is at the intersection of engineering, computer science, and mathematics. I am most intrigued by the mathematics behind system models and algorithm designs. I enjoy collaborating with experimentalists and application engineers to create mathematically rigorous solutions for engineering problems. I completed my Ph.D. at UCI and was a UC president postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego before joining UCI as a faculty. As a faculty member, I have served on faculty search and graduate student admission committees and as a chair of the research committee in the school of engineering. In all these different roles, I have closely appreciated the UC system's commitment to inclusive excellence and genuine effort to promote it. I am pleased to be part of this ongoing effort, which has made the UC system, particularly UCI, a leading institution in defining and implementing best practices for inclusive excellence. As an Inclusive Excellence Professor, I plan to work on eliminating invisible burdens and implicit biases that may hinder creating a thriving collaborative environment on campus where students and faculty can bring their diverse experiences and expertise to address grand challenge research. As a mid-career and a female faculty with young children, I have an intimate understanding of some of the challenges that junior and under-represented faculty can face at the start of their careers. Therefore, I plan to work on issues related to work-life balance and faculty retention. |
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 Alessandra Pantano | I am a Professor of Teaching in the Mathematics Department at UCI, where I am also serving as Undergraduate Vice Chair and DECADE Mentor. My original training is in Unitary Representation Theory, but over the years my interests have evolved towards Mathematical Education, in particular, active learning and culturally responsive pedagogy, both in the classroom and in after-school settings. I really enjoy teaching and mentoring students, and I constantly strive to promote diversity and inclusion in education - at all levels! I am excited to mentor junior faculty across campus on inclusive teaching practices, community outreach, and diversity efforts within (and beyond) their departments and schools. I would also like to leverage my personal experience to mentor junior women faculty and teaching faculty in STEM. I am proud of UCI's commitment to inclusive excellence, and I look forward to contributing to UCI's efforts to recruit and support a diverse faculty body, and to improve climate for all members of our campus. |
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 Rocío Rosales | I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. My research lies at the intersection of immigration, economic sociology, sociology of work, race and ethnicity, and law and society. Focusing primarily on Latinos, I examine informal practices of survival, community building, and engagement with local and federal state actors. My first book, Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community in Los Angeles, draws from six years of ethnographic field work with a community of immigrant fruit vendors in Los Angeles. The book documents how immigrants' social networks evolve and transform as vendors struggle to get by while working on street corners throughout the city. I am currently conducting research on two projects: one focuses on immigrant detention and the other on banking practices in Black and Latino communities. Throughout my career, I have been mentored by gracious colleagues and benefited from URM-serving fellowships (e.g. Mellon Mays, Ford Foundation) invested in diversifying the professoriate. I hope to pay this forward by mentoring faculty of color and ensuring that UCI's mission of equity and inclusive excellence is sustained. As an Inclusive Excellence Professor, I am very happy to enhance our campus climate and support our junior faculty. |
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