Meet Our New Faculty
The College of Humanities and Sciences is full of talented faculty—an amazing group of educators, academics and researchers. We invite you to meet our newest faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year. Their disciplines and backgrounds are varied, and we have no doubt they will make their mark on the College, VCU and beyond.
Chemistry
Adam Cook, Ph.D.
Cook’s research interests span synthetic chemistry, catalysis, chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and drug delivery, with a particular emphasis on using chemistry to address major unsolved problems of global significance.
Focused Inquiry
Rachel Brown
Brown was born in Winchester, Va., moved to Norfolk, Va., and then to Hampton, VA as a teenager where she still lives with her husband and cat.
Kinesiology and Health Sciences
Brandon Nabors, DrPH
Through teaching, research, and community engagement, Nabors is committed to advancing health equity and mentoring the next generation of health professionals.
Alexander Lucas, Ph.D.
Alexander Lucas joins the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences from VCU’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health and the Pauley Heart Center in the Division of Cardiology.
Life Sciences and Sustainability
Jeff Atkins, Ph.D.
Jeff Atkins, who grew up in southern Appalachia, always had a deep love of the outdoors and nature. He pursued a career helping to preserve those places while also seeking to understand them better. His research focuses on forest structure, forest disturbance, and applied remote sensing for forestry applications.
Aliza Ehrlich, Ph.D.
Aliza Ehrlich is a neuroscientist and cell biologist whose work examines how dopamine, opioid, and other neuromodulatory receptors are organized within specialized cellular compartments to regulate neuronal signaling and behavior.
Abigail “Abbey” Hayes, Ph.D.
Abigail "Abbey" Hayes is passionate about arthropods, ecology, and student instruction.
Mathematics and Statistics
Linxi Li, Ph.D. (Ph.D.’26)
Linxi Li is an ardent practitioner of active learning and pedagogy, and she is dedicated to creating an approachable, engaging, and student-centered environment for undergraduate learners.
Physics
Jonathan Cohn, Ph.D.
Jonathan Cohn is an extragalactic astrophysicist with experience researching ethics, multidimensional poverty, and the worldwide history of astronomy.
Psychology
Molly Bowdring, Ph.D.
Molly Bowdring is a researcher and clinician dedicated to reducing high-risk substance use, with a primary focus on alcohol.
Robertson School of Communication
Brian G. Smith, Ph.D.
Brian Smith has built a research program on public relations management and social media, with a particular focus on how people use social media for social advocacy.
Staci Smith, Ph.D.
Over the past six years, Staci Smith has earned grants and awards, including a Fulbright Award to Slovenia in 2023 and two Arthur W. Page Center Legacy Scholar awards; one to study refugee communication and crisis management in communities and the other to identify imperatives for minimizing misinformation spread on social media for government communicators in which she worked with NATO.