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Usha Iyer

Associate Professor of Art and Art History

Current Research and Scholarly InterestsFilm studies, South Asia, Caribbean, Gender, Diaspora, Race and ethnicity

BioGift Iyioku completed her bachelors degree in 2019 Nigeria, her country of origin, where she studied German language at the University of Ibadan. After her undergraduate studies, she completed a one-year internship at the UNESCO- Institute of African Culture and International Understanding (UNESCO-IACIU) and The Africa Progress Group (APG): Two initiatives under Former President of Nigeria, H.E. Olusegun Obasanjo. She moved to the U.S to earn her graduate degrees, and has since received a master’s degree in German Language and Literature with honors from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

She is currently in the German studies PhD program at Stanford University, and has a PhD minor in political science. Gift is also a student fellow at The Hoover Institution where she conducts research interrelated with her dissertation on human capital development, Africa-focused foreign policies and migration largely defined. Her dissertation focuses on the autobiographies of African migrants in Germany, their narrative sub-classification, migration policies and politics.

Sarah Izabel

Ph.D. Student in Neurosciences, admitted Summer 2022
SGSI Course Assistant, Vice Provost for Graduate Education

BioSarah was born and raised in Brazil where she attended law school before moving to the United States and shifting her interest to Neuroscience. She completed majors in Biology and Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 2020. At VCU, Sarah was part of the NIH-IMSD program and worked on uncovering mechanisms of axonal pathology in the lab of Dr. Jeff Dupree. She also worked with a clinical sample to identify the effects of income insecurity on decision-making in people with cocaine use disorder (CUD), in the lab of Dr. James Bjork. After graduating, Sarah went to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a UGSP Research Fellow and characterized a progranulin knockout mouse model in the lab of Dr. Alan Koretsky. She returned to her clinical research work in her second year at NIH in the lab of Dr. Vijay Ramchandani, where she worked to understand the relationship between neurological domains underlying Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). At Stanford, Sarah is interested in treating and managing neuropsychiatric disorders and increasing access to participation in clinical research studies. Sarah is a RAISE fellow, a NIDA START Fellow, and an intern project manager for the Recovery Incentives Program.