Women Faculty Network

April R. Wiechmann, PhD, FNAP is the Chief Behavioral Health Officer and Clinical Medical Director for Geri-Psych within the Health Pavilion. She is a Neuropsychologist and works within the Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. She is an Associate Professor for TCOM. Alumni of UNT and UNTHSC, she re-joined UNTHSC in 2011 after her internship at the VA and postdoctoral work at UT Southwestern. She teaches first and second-year medical students in Clinical Communication and Clinical Integration courses. She serves as a Faculty Advisor to TCOM medical students and Champion to the M.I.N.D group on campus. She has served on admissions committee, Faculty Senate executive committee, presidential search committee, UNT system Mental Health Task Force Committee, and Whole Health Committee for HSC. In 2023, she was awarded the Distinguished Practitioner and Fellow award in Washington, DC at the annual National Academies of Practice conference.

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/april-wiechmann
Email: April.Wiechmann@unthsc.edu

Dana M. Litt, PhD – Women Faculty Network Past-Chair
Associate Professor
Population and Community Health, School of Public Health

Dana M. Litt, PhD is the Director of the MS and PhD Program in Public Health Sciences  and an Associate Professor within the Department of Population & Community Health in the School of Public Health.  Dr. Litt’s research examines both offline (parents, college environment) and online (social media) social influences on adolescent and young adult alcohol use with the aim to develop, test, and implement theoretically sound and efficacious alcohol use and related risk interventions.  Dr. Litt has been the PI of 4 and Co-I on 10 studies funded through NIH/NIAAA. She currently serves as Faculty Senate President-Elect.

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/dana-litt
Email: Dana.Litt@unthsc.edu

Kenya Samuels, PA-C
Assistant Professor
Department of Physician Assistant Studies, School of Health Professions

Kenya Samuels, MPAS, PA-C, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physician Assistant Studies within the School of Health Professions.  She graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2002 with a BS in Kinesiology. She later continued her studies at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and graduated in 2008 with an MS in Physician Assistant Studies.  Upon graduation, she joined both Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital as faculty and a Pediatric Critical Care Physician Assistant, respectively.  She also worked part-time at a primary care clinic servicing the underserved and uninsured. Her academic journey started more than eight years ago, with six of those years at HSC. Currently, she serves as the chair of the PA Department Admissions Committee; PA Department Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee; and Early Career Development Council. In addition, she serves as the faculty advisor for the PA student government association (Physician Assistant Student Association). Her research interests are in the areas of health and well-being, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has been the co-investigator on a Physician Assistant Education Association Grant and has two research proposals in the works.

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/kenya-samuels
Email: Kenya.Samuels@unthsc.edu

Jin Liu, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UNT System College of Pharmacy

Jin Liu received her BS and PhD in Chemistry from Peking University and The Ohio State University, respectively. She completed her postdoctoral training at National Cancer Institute-Frederick, NIH. She is currently an Assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UNTHSC. Her lab is interested in protein allostery study, computer-aided drug design, CRISPR-Cas9 technology improvement, artificial intelligence for drug discovery, and big data analysis of health disparity diseases.

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/jin-liu
Email: Jin.Liu@unthsc.edu

Malinee Neelamegam, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health

Dr. Caroline Rickards received her PhD from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia in 2005. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the US Army Institute for Surgical Research, and a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio before joining UNTHSC in 2012. Dr. Rickards’ research focuses on the development of novel therapies to improve vital organ perfusion under stress (including hemorrhage, cardiac arrest, and stroke). Her team has received funding for this research from the Department of Defense, the American Heart Association, the NIH, private foundations, and industry contracts. Dr. Rickards is an active member of the local UNTHSC community, and within her professional societies, including service as Chair of the American Physiological Society (APS) Women in Physiology Committee (2015-2017).

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/malinee-neelamegam
Email: malinee.neelamegam@unthsc.edu

Jennifer Cihlar, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics, School of Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Jennifer Cihlar is an Assistant Professor in the Microbiology, Immunology, and Genetics Department at UNTHSC and a member of the UNTHSC Center for Human Identification’s Research Unit, where her efforts focus on improving the forensic community’s ability to identify humans associated with crime, missing persons, and human and wildlife trafficking victims through forensic genomic research.  With these goals in mind, Jennifer’s current research efforts include the development of molecular biology technologies, optimization of SOPs for massively parallel sequencing and Rapid DNA technologies, bioinformatic assessment of the performance and noise in mitochondrial genome analyses that can help guide thresholding strategies for forensic laboratories, identification of novel genetic markers for human and wildlife identification, and investigation into the use of portable genetic technologies to aid law enforcement efforts in curtailing wildlife trafficking

Professional Profile: https://experts.unthsc.edu/en/persons/jennifer-cihlar
Email: Jennifer.Cihlar@unthsc.edu