Leadership & Org Chart

JoAnn Browning most recently served UTSA as the Dean of the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design and David and Jennifer Spencer Distinguished Chair. She is also a Professor of Civil Engineering with expertise in reinforced concrete structures, performance-based design, natural hazards engineering and engineering education.

Browning holds the following degrees: Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Purdue University, M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky. Her awards include: Purdue University Distinguished Woman Scholar; Inspiring Women in STEM Award, INSIGHT Into Diversity; ACI Fellow, American Concrete Institute; ACI Young Member Award for Professional Achievement, American Concrete Institute; Woman’s Leadership Award, San Antonio Business Journal; Miller Scholar, University of Kansas; Henry E. Gould Award for Distinguished Service to Undergraduate Education, University of Kansas. She is a registered Professional Engineer in Kansas and Texas.

Lori Schultz has worked in research administration for nearly 30 years. Her career spans the lifecycle of research management from pre-award through post-award and compliance. She works on evidence-based policies, marshaling research data in the service of the institution and the faculty who do research, and using data to forecast and plan strategies for a resilient future for research.

Lori has conducted presentations and training on research, data, and technology topics at the AAU, APLU, NCURA, SRAI, FDP, COGR, and Educause. Lori is on the Board of Directors of ORCID and NCURA.

Lori has many years of experience in research, software development, non-profit board leadership, and data management and analysis. She has a particular passion for using data to improve the working lives of the researchers who help us understand the world.

Lori received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Arizona.

Diana Huffaker most recently served as the associate vice president for research at The University of Texas at Arlington. She also served there as the chair of the Electrical Engineering Department from 2020 to 2023. Prior to her time at UT-Arlington, Dr. Huffaker worked at Cardiff University in the U.K. for five years.

Dr. Huffaker worked as founding director of the Institute for Compound Semiconductors (ICS), a roughly $150 million project. She also held the prestigious EU/Welsh Government Sêr Cymru chair in advanced materials and engineering, overseeing a portfolio of $16 million.

Dr. Huffaker first became engaged in research leadership at UCLA, where she served as professor of electrical engineering for over nine years. Throughout her career, she has attracted more than $30 million in research dollars, co-authored over 300 refereed journal publications with more than 13,000 citations, and obtained nine U.S. patents and one U.K. patent.

She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Security and Science Engineering Faculty (Vannevar-Bush Faculty Fellowship) and the Humboldt Society. She is an active participant in the technical community, having served in leadership roles for many international societies including the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, the American Society for Engineering Education and Women in Science.

Nicole Lang Beebe, Ph.D. is a Professor of Cyber Security, at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She is currently dual-hatted, serving as the Interim Associate Vice President for Research Special Projects and Assistant Vice President for Faculty Research Development in the Office of Research. She previously served for five years as the Director of The Cyber Center for Security and Analytics at UTSA. Dr. Beebe’s research interests relate to cybersecurity, cyber analytics, digital forensics, and data analytics with applications to insider threat detection and analysis, IoT security and forensics, and cyber threat hunting. She has published approximately 50 peer-reviewed articles in top journals and conferences that have been cited over 1,700 times. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, various Department of Defense agencies, and several industry partners, and has resulted in a patent-pending cyber search algorithm and multiple software platforms.

Dr. Beebe received her Ph.D. in Information Technology from UTSA, an M.S. degree in Criminal Justice from Georgia State University, and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. She has over twenty years of experience in cybersecurity and digital forensics, in both the commercial and government sectors. She was a computer crime investigator for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations from 1998-2007. She worked in the industry as a senior network security engineer for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). She obtained her Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification in 2001. She has served as a board member on several national-level professional associations and consortiums. She serves as an Associate Editor (AE) for Computers & Security and previously served as AE for Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, in addition to serving on the board of referees, reviewers, and/or technical program committees for approximately ten peer-reviewed journals and conferences dedicated to advancing the state of the art and knowledge in digital forensics and cybersecurity.

Rod McSherry is the Associate Vice President for Innovation and Economic Development at UTSA. McSherry oversees the Institute for Economic Development and the Office of Commercialization and Innovation and manages a staff of over 140. McSherry has over 35 years of experience in global economic, community, and business development. He has held a variety of positions, most recently as the Associate Provost, International and Border Programs, at New Mexico State University.

He has over 30 years of service in the United States Department of Agriculture culminating in his service as a Senior Foreign Service Officer. Additionally, he held postings in Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Thailand, Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia. He is fluent in both English and Spanish and is proficient in Russian, Thai, and French.

Dr. Howard Grimes serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), led by The University of Texas at San Antonio. As a noted research scientist and author with 25 years of success in directing complex university and national laboratory research programs and entrepreneurial start-up initiatives, Dr. Grimes also serves as the Associate Vice Provost and Vice President for Institutional Initiatives at UTSA and was formally the director for Innovation and Industry Partnerships (3 years) at INL’s Idaho CAES.

Dr. Brown is a trusted, well-connected leader in civilian and military communities nationwide who has especially strong relationships within U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) organizations, laboratories, and commands and has gained national recognition for his transformative leadership in federal research and development (R&D) initiatives and projects.

In Fall 2019, Dhireesha started as a Robert F McDermott Endowed Chair in Engineering and professor with joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is also the founding Director of the MATRIX AI Consortium for Human Well-Being. She is interested in designing the next-generation AI systems that can solve problems similar to humans in the most energy efficient way. Her team has been paving a path for bio-inspired AI systems and accelerators over the past decade. Her current research interests are in neuromorphic computing, brain-inspired algorithms, novel computing substrates (e.g., memristors), energy efficient machine intelligence, and AI accelerators.

Dr. Jenny Hsieh is a Professor and Chair of Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology in the College of Sciences, the Semmes Foundation Distinguished Chair in Cell Biology, and Director of the UTSA Brain Health Consortium. The UTSA Brain Health Consortium is a campus-wide transdisciplinary research initiative that spans stem cells/precision medicine, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, psychology, and behavior with over 40 participating full-time faculty members.

Dr. Hsieh comes to UTSA from UT Southwestern, where she and her team made a significant contribution to understanding the role of epigenetic and transcriptional regulation in adult neurogenesis. A major focus of her work was to understand the transcriptional/epigenetic regulatory circuitry that guides neural stem cell fate decisions in both normal and pathological states, and this work continues at UTSA through the Brain Health Consortium. Beyond her role at UTSA, Dr. Hsieh serves as a study section member for the National Institutes of Health and the American Epilepsy Society. She is also on the editorial board as a Reviewing Editor for The Journal of Neuroscience.

Areas of Teaching Interest

• Cloud computing for engineering and science
• Control systems
• Systems theory
• Intelligent controls
• Non-linear controls
• Power management of cloud systems

Areas of Research Interest

• Advanced control mechanisms for cloud computing
• Quantum cloud computing
• Distributed computing architecture
• Power management techniques in cloud computing
• HPC in cloud