Graduate Student Committee

The ComSHER Division hosts a graduate student committee to support new initiatives that provide assistance and mentorship to graduate students within the division. The 2025-2026 graduate student committee members can be found below:

Co-Chairs

Luna Pittet Gonzalez
College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida
lpittetgonzalez@ufl.edu

Luna is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. Her research explores how strategic messaging shapes public behavior during periods of uncertainty and social disruption. She specializes in quantitative methods, with a focus on experiments, online surveys, and computational analyses. Her work has earned awards at AEJMC’s annual conferences and appears in The Social Science Journal and the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

Rudy Sunrin Kim
University of Maryland
rudykim@umd.edu

Rudy Sunrin Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, specializing in health and strategic communication. Her research interests center on mental health and well-being, exploring how communication, media, and technology influences these areas. Recent work includes investigations into message effects, framing, social support, and stigma, contributing to a deeper understanding of how communication can be used to enhance health outcomes. Her dissertation is on college students’  conversations about mental health and disclosure to AI chatbots. Her work has been awarded the first-place Student Paper Award from the AEJMC COMSHER division.

Committee Members

Eylül Yel
Purdue University 
eyel@purdue.edu

Eylül is a doctoral student in the Lamb School of Communication studying health communication and media effects. Her research revolves around health communication and media effects. More specifically, drawing from both qualitative and quantitative methods, she studies how different types of media impact people’s views, attitudes, and behaviors in health and risk contexts. Her work has been recently published in Journal of Health Communication, and New Media & Society.

Jinxu Li
Department of Communication & Journalism, Texas A&M University
ljinxu@tamu.edu

Jinxu Li is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication & Journalism at Texas A&M University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of mental health communication, persuasion, and emerging media. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Health Communication, Digital Health, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, and Health Promotion International. Moreover, she has received the top student-led paper award from the Kentucky Conference on Health Communication.

Mahedi Hasan
Texas Tech University
mahehasa@ttu.edu

Mahedi Hasan is a third-year Ph.D. student in the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on organizational crisis communication and the role of Communities of Practice within big science organizations. Mahedi is involved in NSF-funded projects like CI Compass and CI4resilience, exploring how large-scale scientific organizations manage crises and share innovations. In addition to his academic work, he is the student lead of the Innovation Diffusion Lab at Texas Tech University since 2024.

Xi Liu
Syracuse University
xliu123@syr.edu 

Justin C. Cheung

Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Justin C. Cheung is a fourth-year PhD student at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interest lies in the intersection of science communication and argumentation theory, with a focus on rational and informed decision-making and scientific citizenship building. His research work has appeared in Public Understanding of Science, Scientific Reports, Technology in Society, AI & Society, and more. In AEJMC, he has received top reviewer award at Mass Communication and Society (MCS) division.

Hannah (Hyunji) Kim

Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations, University of Texas at Austin

Hannah Kim is a second-year PhD student at the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, influence the physical and mental health of marginalized populations, including older adults and individuals with language barriers. Her recent work investigates how diverse communities engage with emerging technologies by observing seniors’ interactions with chatbots, examining the healthcare experiences of Asian populations in Austin, and exploring the emotional use of ChatGPT.

Isabel Iruani Villanueva

Department of Life Sciences Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Isabel is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Life Sciences Communication. Her research focuses on the intersection of science communication, public deliberation, and media effects. Her recent work focuses on engaging underserved publics to engage with climate change and environmental topics through deliberative events, as well as investigating public opinion surrounding emerging and contentious technologies. Her work in these lines of research have received top paper awards in AEJMC’s ComSHER division, Visual Communication division, and the Moeller Student Competition. Her work appears in a variety of journals, including Science Communication, Political Communication, and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 

Laine Kowalski

University of Arizona

Laine is a first year Science Journalism master’s student at the University of Arizona, holding dual degrees in both Astrophysics (B.S.) and Journalism (B.A.). As part of the VIP Science Communications for Social Good research group at U of A, her research will focus on addressing issues in and improving the effectiveness of science communications and dissemination through social science–based studies. Laine currently works for the U of A Office of Research and Partnerships, focusing on the engagement and production of science-related research stories. This past August, she presented undergraduate research on agenda-building during the 2024 presidential campaign at her first AEJMC conference and plans to contribute to future COMSHER division research.