Core Fellows

Courtney Humphries is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on connections between urban infrastructure history and current adaptation planning for climate change, particularly around the governance of waterfront development. During her PhD program, she was a fellow in UMass Boston’s National Science Foundation-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) focused on Coasts and Communities, and a Public Research Fellow with the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. Courtney is also an award-winning science writer, journalist, and author who has written about science and urban issues for numerous publications such as the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Science, Nature, Technology Review, Harvard Magazine, and Nautilus. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Washington and an M.S. in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is also a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

Vena Offen is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Connecticut. Her research examines the interactions between humans and the coastal environment, focusing on marine pollution and commercially important shellfish. During her Ph.D. she was an EPA STAR Fellow and a Chateaubriand STEM Fellow in France for her work on emerging contaminants, including the effects of nanoparticles on the development of oyster larvae. Current projects include the impact of plastic pollution on the physiology of oysters and mussels. Vena also holds a B.S. in Biology from Pacific University, and a M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Oregon Health and Science University.

Luke Perreault is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Tufts University (2021), and a B.S. (2015) and M.Eng. (2016) in Biomedical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research intersects biomedical engineering and cellular agriculture, through development of sustainable, plant-based biomaterials for engineered tissues. During his Ph.D. he was an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellow, studying how age-related changes in cardiac tissue remodeling might inform therapeutic development. He was also a fellow of the Tufts Graduate Institute for Teaching (GIFT), training in interdisciplinary teaching and pedagogy. 

Luke previously worked as a postdoctoral associate in the BC Department of Engineering, under Department Chair Prof. Glenn Gaudette, developing methods to repurpose agricultural waste as edible scaffolds for cultured meat production. An advocate for the department’s dedicated approach to human-centered engineering, he enjoys helping students to pursue their own ideas and scientific questions, while emphasizing the importance for engineers to consider the broader impacts of their work within an interconnected global community.

Héctor E Rodriguez-Simmonds is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Engineering. Hector received his PhD in Engineering Education at Purdue University. Hector has worked on a variety of research projects in the areas of computer engineering to student’s engineering identities to the values that inform students' choice of engineering major. Hector is driven by the tension between human & social concerns and the technological focus traditional to engineering problem solving approaches. Hector taps into critical methodologies and methods for conducting and analyzing research, and exploring embodied cognition.

Hongyan Yang (杨鸿雁) is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in History, (Digital) Humanities, Comparative Migration and Ethnic Studies. Trained as an urban planner, cultural geographer, and architectural historian, her interdisciplinary research considers the underexplored spatial and material dimensions of Asian American experiences. Intellectually invested in ethnic foodways and immigration history, she explores how Asian immigrants’ culinary traditions, cultural sensibilities, and complex identities invest new meanings to the cultural landscapes in the United States. She is currently working on several research projects, including her first book manuscript Landscapes of Resistance: Chinese Placemaking across the Pacific, a museum project that documents the contributions of American architects of Chinese descent in collaboration with the Society of Architectural Historians and the Copper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and an oral history project, “Places of Their Own,” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Oral History Association. In addition to her research, she has developed community-centered teaching in Asian and Asian American architecture, as well as professional practices in historic preservation. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Sophie Coe Prize Honorable Mention, the Vernacular Architecture Forum Ambassadors Award, and the American Pacific Coast Geographers Committee Award for Excellence in Area Studies. Her recent work is featured in American Chinese Restaurants (2020) and Routledge Handbook of Food in Asia (2019). She holds a Ph.D. in Architecture in the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Program from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

John Yargo is a Core Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities. His dissertation, Saturnine Ecologies: Environmental Catastrophe in the Early Modern World, a study of literary and artistic representations of sea storms, earthquakes and forest fires during the little Ice Age, won the 2023 J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize. John received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his BA in Classical Studies and English from Millsaps College. His scholarship has been published in Shakespeare Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and the Journal for Early Modern Studies. Before receiving his PhD, John served as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Jordan University of Science and Technology and a lecturer at Chiang Mai University.