Mentoring Mosaic
Overview
Postdoc Mentoring Mosaic is an institution-wide mentoring program designed to complement mentoring by primary advisors by connecting postdoctoral scholars with a broader network of mentors. Through peer-to-peer and faculty mentoring opportunities, the program supports postdocs in navigating career pathways, professional development, and the transition to their next career stage.
Purpose
The purpose of Postdoc Mentoring Mosaic is to provide postdoctoral scholars with access to multiple mentoring perspectives beyond their primary advisor. By engaging with experienced peers and faculty mentors across the institution, postdocs gain guidance, insight, broad perspectives, and support tailored to their individual career goals.
Goals
Postdoc Mentoring Mosaic aims to:
- Expand access to mentoring beyond the primary research advisor
- Support postdoctoral scholars’ career exploration and professional development
- Foster a sense of community and peer support among postdocs
- Encourage cross-disciplinary mentoring relationships across the institution
- Promote informed and intentional career decision-making
Eligibility
The program is open to all postdoctoral scholars at the University of New Mexico. Faculty mentors from all departments and disciplines, at any level, are invited to serve; PhD-holding staff are also welcome. If you are interested in volunteering, please email raqthomas@unm.edu.
Structure
Postdoc Mentoring Mosaic includes four components:
- Faculty Mentoring: In addition to the postdoc’s relationship with their primary advisor faculty mentors are available to support the scholars in areas such as career planning, professional growth, research/teaching, and long-term goals in a confidential and supportive setting. Scholars are able to contact faculty mentors from a list that includes the mentors’ strengths and ask for assistance in these specific areas. The intensity of the mentoring is decided by the mentor and mentee, ranging from a brief question answered by email to a long-term mentoring relationship.
- Peer Mentoring: Experienced postdoc volunteers (must be at UNM for no less than six months) are available to provide guidance on navigating the institution, managing postdoctoral responsibilities, and exploring career development opportunities. Similar to faculty mentors, mentees are able to contact mentors based on a list including the mentors’ strengths and the intensity of the mentoring can vary depending on what is most desirable for both parties.
- Individual Development Plans (IDPs): Individual Development Plans provide a structured approach to identifying career goals and plans to attain them and are most effective when discussed with a mentor. Many graduate and postdoctoral programs require their trainees to complete and regularly update IDPs. Additionally, the NSF and NIH both require postdocs who receive funding to complete an IDP annually.1,2
- Workshops: Additional program activities may include mentoring conversations, workshops, and panel discussions focused on career exploration and professional skill development. Workshops will be presented by peer and faculty mentors on professional development topics about which they are particularly passionate and/or skilled.
References
- National Science Foundation. Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 24-1) Chapter VII.B.7. https://www.nsf.gov/policies/pappg/24-1 accessed 7/24/26
- National Institutes of Health. Revised Policy: Descriptions on the Use of Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers Required in Annual Progress Reports beginning October 1, 2014. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not-od-14-113.html accessed 7/24/26
MENTORS (please cc raqthomas@unm.edu on your initial email to any mentor)
Bryce Chackerian, Professor, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
BChackerian@salud.unm.edu
Years at UNM: 22
Strengths: I think that I'm best suited for helping post-docs interested in careers in academia (i.e. research/teaching), but many of my mentees have also worked in industry/government.
Bio: I am an immunology/virologist who is interested in vaccine development. I came to UNM after training at the University of Washington and the National Institutes of Health. At UNM, my lab has focused on developing vaccines for infectious and chronic disease, but I also extensive mentoring experience with graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty members. I currently serve as the Director for Post-doctoral Affairs at the Health Sciences Center.
Dr. Nikki Maphis, Senior Scientist, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
NMaphis@salud.unm.edu
Years at UNM: 14
Strengths: Work/Life Balance, NIH grant writing across different funding opportunities, translational and regulatory science pathways, manuscript writing and revisions, reproducible data analysis, stats, IP and tech transfer, navigating academic/industry careers, Job Applications, and domain mentorship in neuroscience and neuroinflammation research.
Bio: Hi, I'm Dr. Nikki Maphis, a senior scientist interested in the brain and Alzheimer's disease. I've been at UNM since 2012 and have held many roles and responsibilities over that time. I was the lab manager for a lab I started in 2012 until I started graduate school in 2016. I finished my PhD in May 2021 and shortly thereafter started my postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the ASERT/IRACDA program (a training program meant to offer experience with undergraduate science pedagogy and experience teaching at an undergraduate institution) in the department of Neurosciences at UNM. From 2021-2024 I helped found the Postdoctoral association (and write it's charter), complete my education experience at CNM, planned and hosted a national meeting for IRACDA, Hosted multiple PDA events, travelled to my first international meeting, and wrote and published 2 manuscripts and one book chapter exploring alcohol's impacts on Alzheimer's disease. In 2024, I was supported on a different postdoctoral fellowship focused on clinical psychology with a focus on alcohol use disorder and was exposed to different researchers working alongside human patients. In 2025, I completed a second technical postdoc in a different lab in the department of Neurosciences exploring how the integrated stress response impacts memory formation. I was recently promoted in June 2026 to the role of senior scientist where I will be instrumental in launching a clinical trial aimed at testing the safety and efficacy of my vaccine in human patients! This will be the first drug developed at UNM (see my graduate work) and tested at UNM in a clinical phase 1a trials.
I swear I also have hobbies: my dogs, traveling to all the random places in New Mexico, camping, hiking, and seeing live music, especially Death Cab for Cutie, the Decemberists, and EDM artists like Ben Bohmer and Rufus du Sol.
Eric Bartee, Professor, Internal Medicine
EBartee@salud.unm.edu
Years at UNM: 6
Strengths: Teaching, research, grantsmanship, project development
Bio: I obtained my PhD from Oregon health and sciences university in the general area of cell biology. I subsequently did a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Florida working in the area of molecular poxvirology using he model leporipoxvirus myxoma.
Currently, my long-term expertise involves the study of virus-host interactions with particular interest paid to how these interactions can be used to improve therapy for cancer patients, a field known as oncolytic virotherapy. In the initial steps of oncolytic therapy, a patient is intentionally infected with a virus which preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. Newly replicated virus subsequently spreads to adjoining cancer cells where the process repeats resulting in a tumor localized cascade of viral infection. This process, known as direct oncolytics, causes the elimination of virtually all directly infected cancer cells resulting in a swift reduction in tumor size. During this process, oncolytic viral infection also induces localized inflammation and the recruitment of an adaptive T cell response. While this T cell response is initially generated to combat the viral infection, once begun, tumor infiltrating T cells also respond to non-viral peptides within the tumor, including tumor specific antigens, through the process of epitope spreading. This results in the generation of not only a primary anti-viral immune response, but also a secondary immune response against the tumor itself. The generation and propagation of this anti-tumor immune response, a process known as oncolytic immunotherapy, can have powerful clinical benefits including the complete eradication of both local and metastatic disease.
Unfortunately, while these treatments show significant promise in preclinical trials, they are often not curative, necessitating that methods be identified to improve the clinical potential of this agent. To this end, our lab is currently working on projects designed to: understand the basic biology of myxoma virus and improve its oncolytic potential in order to initiate first in man clinical studies.
Sumira Phatak, IRACDA fellow, PharmSci
SPhatak@salud.unm.edu
Years at UNM: 2.5
Strengths: teaching, professional development, SciComm
Bio: Sumira Phatak pursued a doctorate in toxicology at Utah State University; the focal point of her dissertation was to understand the transgenerational impact of the Western dietary pattern on colorectal cancer, the epigenome, and microbiome. Other work included investigating dietary interventions with functional foods or micronutrients and evaluating the fermentation potential of whole food powders with probiotics. She then screened proposed environmental obesogens during a postdoctorate at the University of California at Irvine, followed by a regulatory toxicologist role in nutraceuticals. Sumira returned to academia as an IRACDA Fellow in the Campen Laboratory where she is aligned with the group’s mission to investigate the impact of common environmental insults on health and aging. Her 25% teaching appointment is completed at NMSU and SIPI, in addition to an assortment of community outreach and engagement events. Having an appetite for adventure, she also an avid outdoor enthusiast, experimental foodie, and aspiring artisan.
Ruben Trujillo, ASERT-IRACDA Postdoc Fellow, Chemical and Biological Engineering
RTrujillo9@salud.unm.edu
Years at UNM: 1.5
Strengths: Teaching (especially strong/passionate), mental health, interpersonal skills
Bio: I graduated with my B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UNM in 2019, my PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell in 2024, and have been a postdoc at UNM since April of 2025. I currently study acoustophoresis, which is a fancy way of saying I manipulate particles using acoustic waves. I have learned first-hand how important having great mentors and a support group are to success, and I want to give back any way that I can. I am always happy to chat about literally anything and everything, so feel free to reach out!
Shiv Desai, Associate Professor, TEELP
sdesai@unm.edu
Years at UNM: 14
Strengths: community engaged scholarship
Bio: I was born on the beach and taken by the waves. I am the son of immigrants, and an English Learner who proudly reps Hudson County New Jersey. I grew up in a predominately immigrant, multilingual community that represented various Diasporic communities. I am a former elementary and high school teacher who taught primarily in Watts and South-Central Los Angeles. I was also co-director of Project ASPIRE at the Ohio State University where I worked with faculty to help train student teachers to be successful in urban schools because they had a solid foundation in culturally sustaining pedagogies, anti-racist/anti-oppressive practices and socio-cultural literacies. I came to UNM because I wanted the opportunity to conduct more research, but more importantly, be in a place where my work can make a difference. For the last several years, I have been working with the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS)-UNM Ethnic Studies Education and Health Research Practice Partnership to study how ethnic studies teachers promote equity, healing and wellness, engage in decolonizing practices, foster ancestral knowledge, and affirm students’ identities. This project was funded by the WT Grant Foundation and Hewlett Foundation to support a mixed-methods, cross-site study to examine whether and how ethnic studies courses mitigate academic and socio-emotional inequalities experienced by BIPOC students. My other research area focused on a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project with LOUD (Leaders Organizing 2 Unite & Decriminalize), which is comprised of allies, formerly incarcerated youth, and youth on probation. Through LOUD, we conducted focus group interviews in detention centers as well as created a survey that was completed by system-involved youth. LOUD presented our research to the local juvenile justice system as well as other national justice systems. LOUD youth even presented at national conferences. My last area of research is hip hop where I examine how it can serve as a tool for empowerment and liberation. I strongly advocate for community engaged scholarship and service. An example is the work with the Cuba Independent School District that I did with colleagues to provide anti-racist and Indigenous education trainings for administrators, teachers and staff. At the heart of these trainings, we discuss anti-Blackness, erasure of Indigenous peoples, and xenophobia and linguicism against Native and Latin@/x youth. In sum, I utilize my research and scholarship to fight for the oppressed and uplift marginalized voices.
Selena Connealy, Associate Director, NM EPSCoR
connealy@unm.edu
Years at UNM: 14
Strengths: Acquiring and managing funding, team science, professional skills for postdocs
Bio: Selena Connealy, Ph.D., is the Associate Director for the NM EPSCoR State Office. In
that role, she supports the NSF-funded RIO-NM E-CORE project. She is the NM lead for
the NSF INCLUDES CIRCLES Alliance, promoting STEM education for Native students
across six western states. Dr. Connealy began her career as a middle school teacher in
Texas and was a Project Associate at the Council of Chief State School Officers in
Washington, DC. For more than twenty years, she has worked at the intersection of
formal and informal education, supporting researchers, educators, and learners in New
Mexico.
Julianne Newmark, Assistant Professor of English, Director of Technical and Professional Communication Program, English
newmark@unm.edu
Years at UNM: 10
Strengths: Teaching; non-tradition career paths; local engagement and community building
Bio: Julianne Newmark teaches Technical & Professional Communication (TPC) and serves as the Director of the TPC program. Her research interests concern the school-to-work transition, multimodal community-creation in online classrooms, and usability/user-centered design. Newmark also publishes, teaches, and conducts research in an area of Indigenous Studies that concerns early-twentieth-century Native activist writers’ rhetorically impactful navigations of bureaucratic writing conventions, particularly in Bureau of Indian Affairs contexts
Stephen Bishop, Professor, Africana Studies and Languages, Cultures & Literatures
Years at UNM: 26
Strengths: teaching, interpersonal skills, acquiring and managing funding, finding and gaining new employment, and mental health
Bio: I work primarily on African literature and culture in the areas of Law and Literature, representations of guilt and shame, comparative feminisms, and narratives of violence in Africa. My current research focuses on popular literary representations of violence in Africa and their reception in the West as well as on African authors’ evolving engagement with homosexuality in the context of colonial and postcolonial legal and religious surveillance of sexuality and society.
Heather Edgar, Professor, Forensic Anthropologist, Anthropology, Office of the Medical Investigator
Years at UNM: 26
Strengths: acquiring and managing funding, interpersonal skills, balancing work responsibilities, creative research
Bio: My research is in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. I have a split position, 50% academic in anthropology and 50% clinical at the OMI. I started at UNM as a staff member and switched to the tenure track in 2010. I've had several grants from NIH, NSF, NPS, NIJ, NIST, and the BJA. I currently have one postdoctoral researcher working with me, and I've previously worked with three others.
Bernadine Marie Hernández, Associate Professor, English
berna18@unm.edu
Years at UNM: 26
Strengths: Chicana feminism, Latinx Studies, Queer Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Marxist Theory, 19th and 20th century American literature and culture, teaching and pedagogy, grant writing
Bio: Dr. Bernadine Hernández is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in transnational feminism and sexual economies of the US-Mexico borderlands, along with American Literary Studies and Empire, border and migration history, Marxist theory, and Chicana/Latina Literature and Sexualities. Dr. Hernández’s 2022 book Border Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth Century Borderlands (UNC Press) has won the 2024 NACCS (National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies) Book of the Year Award, the 2024 AAHHE (American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education) Book of the Year Award, and the 2023 Honorable Mention for the NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association) Gloría Anzaldúa Book Award. She is also the co-editor of the first edited collection on Ana Castillo titled New Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo, published with the University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring 2021. Her other publications appear in Comparative Literature and Culture, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others.
Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, Associate Professor / Special Adviser to the Vice President, English / Division for Change and Empowerment
Years at UNM: 8
Strengths: I can mentor on all the areas listed above in different capacities [teaching, interpersonal skills, acquiring and managing funding, finding and gaining new employment, and mental health]. I do think that one of my strengths is my ability to be strategic so that I can get the work done and find ways to be in community with colleagues. In my capacity as Special Adviser, I work a lot with professionalization, helping faculty gain tools to help them succeed.
Bio: Nahir I. Otano Gracia serves as the Special Advisor to the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Associate Professor of English. Her theoretical frameworks include translation theory and practice, Critical Identity Studies, and the Global North Atlantic—extending the North Atlantic into the Mediterranean. Her book, The Other Faces of Arthur: Chivalric Whiteness in the Global North Atlantic (RaceB4Race Series at Penn Press 2025), reveals the role of Arthuriana in the racial logics of medieval Europe through an analysis of the construction of chivalric whiteness. She is a proud member of United Academics of the University of New Mexico (UA-UNM).
Erin Shortlidge, Executive Director of CTL, Professor of Biology, Center for Teaching and Learning/Biology
Years at UNM: 1
Strengths: teaching, work-life balance, general career advice
Bio: Erin Shortlidge, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, an AS in Biology from Harold Washington College, and a Ph.D. in Biology from Portland State University, where she later founded the Biology Education Research Group after postdoctoral work in Biology Education at Arizona State University. After her ten years at Portland State—including a stint as Interim Vice Provost for Student Success—she is excited for the next step in her career at the University of New Mexico where she can continue her academic quest in responsive and evidence-based leadership, best practices in teaching and professional development, and education research at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Shortlidge has developed and taught courses ranging from large introductory biology classes, to small, graduate courses, to an undergraduate/graduate-level Scientific Teaching course. At UNM, Dr. Shortlidge continues her commitment to evidence-based leadership, teaching, and education research, leading an active group that uses quantitative and qualitative methods to advance inclusive, effective STEM education. She also designs, hosts, and evaluates professional development programs for graduate students and faculty and collaborates across institutions on grant-funded projects that strengthen training and capacity for inclusive STEM teaching and learning.
When not at work she enjoys being outdoors in any way, hanging out with her partner and cats, exploring various landscapes, and eating and drinking the delicious offerings of New Mexico and her kitchen.
Alok Bohara, Professor Eneritus, Economics
Years at UNM: 1987-2025
Strengths:
*Career and research development: Developing an independent research identity, publication strategy and interdisciplinary collaboration.
*Community-engaged and international research: Designing research that connects rigorous scholarship with communities, policy institutions, and international partnerships.
Also comfortable mentoring in work-life balance.
Bio: Alok K. Bohara is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of New Mexico, where he taught for nearly four decades. His work spans environmental and health economics, development, sustainability, and community-engaged research. Founder of the Nepal Study Center, he has mentored approximately 40 PhD students and developed international research and study-abroad collaborations linking universities, communities, and policy institutions.
Dr. Jessica Miguel, Senior Research Scientist, Cradle to Carreer Policy Institute
Years at UNM: 1
Strengths: Topics related to research (entering research as a field, finding funding, navigating policies under trump, managing research), finding and gaining new employment, non-tenure track roles, navigating academia as a first-gen and women of color*.
Bio: Dr. Jessica Miguel is a Senior Research Scientist at UNM's Cradle to Career Policy Institute. Her research broadly focuses on Spanish-speaking, Latine children, families, and communities employing critical and sociocultural frameworks to examine how dis/abilities, culture, and language impact access to education and educational spaces with a focus on early childhood settings. Jessica received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California San Diego and most recently, was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Erikson Institute, supporting home-based child care research and focusing on Spanish-speaking communities. She brings to her research agenda over 10 years of experience in the classroom as a teacher and paraeducator and is also a proud first-generation college student raised by Mexican-immigrant parents.
Tomasz Falkowski, Assistant Professor, Honors College
Years at UNM: 3
Strengths: Teaching, community engaged field research
Bio: Tomasz Falkowski is an applied ecologist studying restoration through a socioecological lens to better understand how we can restore reciprocal relationships between ecological and human communities, for the benefit of both. He earned an M.S. in Environmental Resources Engineering and Ph.D. in Environmental Forest Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry before completing two postdoctoral appointments at Cornell University. His research spans diverse ecosystems, disciplines, and cultures, including projects investigating socioeconomic barriers to biochar adoption among land managers in northern New Mexico, quantifying the ability of herbaceous cover crops to restore soil health in high severity burn scars, and studying the ecocultural impacts of shifting swidden management practices in traditional milpa agroforestry in Chiapas, Mexico, among others. Most of these studies highlight how traditional and community-based ecosystem management not only enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions but also sustain local communities over generations without degrading the environment.
Karen J. Leong, Associate Professor, History
Years at UNM: 4
Strengths: *Navigating the academy as a woman of color (co-founded and facilitator of the women of color caucus at ASU for three years, to support tenure-track faculty women of color; have mentored new faculty in Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Queer Studies; have provided assistance for graduate students and junior faculty through promotion and tenure and job searches); mapping out one's academic trajectory while staying sane (saying no; creating priorities and finding multiple mentors; turning obligrations into opportunities; turning one's dissertation into a book demystified)
Bio: Karen J. Leong is an associate professor of History at the University of New Mexico. She received her PhD in U.S. History at UC Berkeley, was a pre-doctoral fellow at Mount Holyoke, and then spent 25 years teaching at Arizona State University in Women and Gender Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, and the School of Social Transformation. Her scholarship and teaching addresses questions of citizenship and belonging at the intersections of race, gender, class, nation, and other social factors. She published a monograph, The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Mayling Soong Chiang, Anna May Wong and American Orientalism (University of California Press, 2005) and co-authored Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Recognition, Equity, and AANHPI (Routledge, 2025). She has co-edited special issues of Feminist Teacher on Critical Community Engagement (2012); Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies on Transnational Feminism (2015); Amerasia on Asian American and American Indian experiences of Carceral States (2016); and Journal of Asian American Studies on AAPIs and COVID-19 (2020). She has collaborated community organizations and academic colleagues on numerous projects, including the Japanese Americans in Arizona Oral History Project, and is currently co-authoring a book manuscript about overlapping U.S. federal policy relating to American Indians and Japanese Americans from the 1940s to the 1960s.
