UTA trio among inaugural HSRU Postdoctoral Fellowship Program cohort

Thursday, Jun 12, 2025 • Greg Pederson :

The University of Texas at Arlington is playing an important role in a new initiative designed to prepare postdoctoral researchers for impactful careers as university faculty.

The Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU) is launching its inaugural Postdoctoral Fellowship Program with a cohort of 31 fellows from 15 HSRU member institutions. Three of the fellows are from UTA: Benoit Bechade, postdoctoral research associate in biology; Silvia Jessica Mostacedo Marasovic, postdoctoral research associate in the Higher Education, Adult Learning, and Organizational Studies department; and Derek Falk, postdoctoral research associate in social work.

The cohort is comprised of emerging scholars whose research, teaching, and leadership reflect a deep commitment to serving students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Fellows will have access to a robust support system, including mentorship from senior faculty, a community of peer scholars, and engagement with public and private partners committed to excellence in research. The program creates a unique platform to share data, measure impact, and amplify effective strategies across institutions.

Robin Macaluso, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and UTA director of postdoctoral success, served on the cohort selection committee and headed UTA’s internal selection process.

“The HSRU Postdoc Fellowship Program is an exceptional opportunity for talented postdocs to advance their future faculty careers,” Macaluso said. “I am excited that UTA postdocs were selected to experience professional development workshops and exchange program as part of this fellowship.”

Over the course of the year, fellows will participate in webinars, site visits to Alliance institutions, and immersive learning focused on the HSRU Alliance’s four core pillars: research excellence, inclusive teaching, community engagement, and career development.

“We’re thrilled to welcome this remarkable inaugural cohort,” said James Holloway, HSRU postdoctoral program chair. “Each fellow brings a depth of insight and commitment that will enrich our campuses and broaden the path to academic leadership.”

Benoit Bechade

Bechade earned his Ph.D. in biology at Drexel University and said he was drawn to UTA for his postdoctoral work by the opportunity to join the team of Alison Ravenscraft, assistant professor of biology. He previously worked with Ravenscraft on developing a new research project focused on the microbes associated with fireflies. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship through UTA’s Recruiting Innovative Scholars for Excellence (RISE) 100 initiative.

“I felt that continuing to work under this mentorship would be perfect for me,” he said. “Additionally, UTA offers a robust research infrastructure, including easy access to state-of-the-art sequencing facilities that are essential to my work. The institutional support has also been exceptional.”

Bechade’s research identifies how microbial partnerships emerge, function, and persist in ants and fireflies through next‐gen sequencing, bioinformatics, and lab and field experiments.

“My research focuses on how microbes interact with animal hosts,” he said. “While some microbes are harmful, others can be beneficial, and I’m interested in understanding what causes a microbe to go from being a parasite to a helpful partner, and vice versa. This work is important because it can help us better perceive how infectious diseases emerge.

Bechade is studying the microbes associated with fireflies, which he notes is a relatively understudied insect family when it comes to their microbiome. Fireflies are a host of Mollicutes, a class of bacteria with no cell wall that includes known vertebrate pathogens responsible for conditions like walking pneumonia and urinary tract infections. Mollicutes are resistant to conventional antibiotics.

“Our goal is to determine whether the Mollicutes associated with fireflies play harmful or beneficial roles in their host biology, and whether specific factors can affect the nature of this relationship,” he said.

Silvia Jessica Mostacedo Marasovic

Mostacedo Marasovic earned her Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences with a focus on discipline-based education research (DBER) from UTA in 2024. Her faculty mentor was Cory Forbes, professor of EES and associate dean for research in the College of Education’s Department of Higher Education, Adult Learning, and Organizational Studies. She received a RISE 100 postdoctoral fellowship at UTA last fall and is continuing her work in education research, grant writing, and mentoring graduate and undergraduate students.

“This role allowed me to build on the work I began during my Ph.D. while also gaining valuable opportunities to collaborate on interdisciplinary research across different departments at UTA,” she said.

Before transitioning into education research, Mostacedo Marasovic spent over a decade working on agricultural production, water resource management, and local economic development projects across Latin America and Florida. Since 2020, her research has been focused on DBER with an emphasis on socio-hydrologic systems, water and climate education, and sustainable development in formal education.

Her current work centers on developing innovative educational strategies at the K-16 level and supporting faculty and teacher development programs that integrate data, modeling, and visualization tools to inform water-related decision-making.

“I am currently contributing to the design and implementation of environmental science modules for elementary pre-service teachers, incorporating translanguaging approaches to leverage students’ linguistic assets in learning science,” she said. “Additionally, I support projects involving FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) data principles and cyberinfrastructure training, and I am involved in evaluating workforce development initiatives in the semiconductor sector in North Texas.”

Derek Falk

Falk earned his Ph.D. in Social Work from UT Austin in 2018 and then spent several years training in academic medicine. He decided to return to social work and when he learned that Kirk Foster, a former instructor of his at Washington University in St. Louis, had been named dean of the UTA School of Social Work, he elected to come to UTA for a postdoctoral position.

“I knew that Dr. Foster would provide transformational leadership to the school,” Falk said. “I also wanted to learn how to develop a successfully funded portfolio in a school of social work from my former doctoral program colleague, Dr. Christian Vazquez. The addition of my current mentors, Drs. Melissa Lewis and Dana Litt, as faculty in the school was an unexpected bonus aligning with my current research interests in alcohol and substance use prevention.”

Falk’s research examines the implementation of multilevel prevention strategies, such as just-in-time adaptive interventions, for alcohol use and polysubstance co-use. The goal of his work is to reduce the short- and long-term consequences of alcohol and polysubstance co-use by shaping health behaviors at the critical developmental stage of adolescence and young adulthood.

“The burden of these consequences is not evenly distributed in the population, and my work also aims to improve the well-being for heterogenous populations, particularly those most at risk for substance use disorders due to comorbid mental health conditions, epigenetic determinants, and/or contextual factors,” he said. “Developing these health behaviors translates to primary prevention of a spectrum of leading causes of mortality in the U.S. from injuries and accidents to cardiovascular disease and cancer.”
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