College Research and Creative Activity Awards

Award Description 

College of Arts and Sciences 

Lana Obradovic, Professor

Political Science

Dr. Lana Obradovic received her PhD in political science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and began at UNO as an assistant professor in 2014 receiving her tenure in 2019. Lana currently is the Goldstein Family Community chair in human rights and director of the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence. She also serves as research director for the USSTRACOM Strategic Leadership Fellows Program in UNO’s College of Business and is principal director of the BOLD Institute, a $2.3 million multicountry grant project, which over the past five years to has developed a robust network of over 100 young Balkan leaders who create innovative solutions to their country’s issues and problems.

Lana came to UNO with numerous articles, book chapters, and one book, Gender Integration in NATO Military Forces, which was the winner of the Best Book on Civil-Military Relations Award by ERGOMAS, the European Research Group on Military and Society.

Lana’s research interests are both broad and deep and include, to name just a few, gender integration in the military, technology within homeland security, deterrence, cybersecurity, and global affairs, with special expertise on Russia, the Ukraine, and the Baltic States.

Since her arrival at UNO, Lana has remained prolific. She’s authored one book chapter with two other chapters under contract or forthcoming, co-authored another book chapter, is sole author of two other articles and two encyclopedia entries, and has worked with colleagues to co-author eight additional articles.

In addition to her $2.3M BOLD grant participation, Lana has been co-investigator with Dr. Gina Ligon and Dr. Matt Hale in the awarding of $2.7M in 2021 for the Big Idea Initiative “Intelligence and Security” to build Department of Homeland Security National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center of Excellence (NCITE). She was also co-investigator for three different Multi-Actor Deterrence Analysis Methodology grants totaling $325K, and was primary co-investigator for two additional grants totaling $90K.

Lana’s expertise has been featured in print, radio, and television features, and she has been the keynote or invited speaker to 12 different events and conferences. She has moderated the Chuck Hagel Forum in Global Leadership twice, including serving as its inaugural moderator in featuring Chuck Hagel’s first guest: former president Joe Biden in 2018.

Lana’s research is of vital importance. As United States Air Forse Academy professor Damon Coletta states, “Lana takes priority research topics identified by the Command and helps the Fellows refine them into persuasive, policy-relevant papers. This process is a masterclass in research application as she mentors professionals so they can produce work that commands attention at the highest levels of military leadership.”

College of Business Administration 

Sona Klucarova, Associate Professor

Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Sona Klucarova, Ph.D. earned her doctoral degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL and completed her postdoctoral work at MBS School of Business in Montpellier, France. She was a fellow at the prestigious AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium in 2019. Dr. Klucarova is a behavioral researcher studying conspicuous consumption, luxury retailing, influencer marketing, societal issues, and advertising. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Letters, Psychology & Marketing, and others. She is a recipient of the 2024 and 2026 College of Business Administration Summer Research Fellowships. Apart from serving as an associate editor and editorial review board member for multiple journals, she is currently a vice chair of research at American Marketing Association's Marketing for Higher Education Special Interest Group. 

College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences 

Ren Mendoza, Assistant Professor

Teacher Education

“Ren” Rende Mendoza (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of STEM Education and a STEM TRAIL Faculty Fellow at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Their research investigates how people learn and form identities in museums, community organizations, and other informal STEM environments. Drawing on critical and justice-oriented frameworks, Dr. Rende Mendoza’s work examines how structural inequities shape participation and belonging in science, with a focus on workforce equity, the professional learning of informal educators, and the sociocultural dimensions of STEM engagement.

At UNO, Dr. Rende Mendoza leads the development of an emerging ecosystem for informal STEM educator preparation that integrates service learning, community-engaged research, and partnerships with local organizations. Prior to academia, they coordinated youth and public programs at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and City of Raleigh Parks and Recreation. Dr. Rende Mendoza currently serves as Program Chair, and was recently elected Chair, for the American Educational Research Association’s Informal Learning Environments Research (ILER) Special Interest Group.

College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media 

Caitlin Cass, Assistant Professor

Illustration

Caitlin Cass is the artist and author of the Eisner award-winning graphic history Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the U.S.. She started the Illustration concentration in the UNO School of the Arts. For the past fifteen years Caitlin has self-published a bimonthly comic periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent. Her comics and cartoons have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Lily, and The Nib. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Nebraska Arts Council. Suffrage Song will soon be published in French by Delcourt books, and an updated English edition will be published by Fantagraphics in March 2027. Caitlin is currently at work on a collection of her short comics (forthcoming from Fantagraphics Underground) and a new book about her personal experience with medical sexism and the history of ecofeminist movements. Caitlin holds an M.F.A. in Visual Studies and is working on a master's degree in history. She is a co-founder of Alt Pub Omaha and serves on the community advisory group at Amplify Arts.

College of Information Science & Technology 

Matt Germonprez, Professor

Information Systems and Qualitative Analysis

Matt Germonprez is the Mutual of Omaha Distinguished Chair of Information Science & Technology and Professor of Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis in the College of Information Science & Technology at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He uses qualitative field-studies to research organizational engagement with open communities and the dynamics of work found in these engagements. His lines of research have been funded by numerous organizations including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Mozilla. Matt is the co-founder of the Linux Foundation Community Health Analytics OSS Project (CHAOSS). He has had work accepted at ISR, MISQ, JAIS, JIT, ISJ, I&O, CSCW, OpenSym, Group, HICSS, IEEE Computer, and ACM Interactions. Matt is an active open source community member, having presented design and development work at LinuxCon, the Open Source Summit NA, the Linux Foundation Open Compliance Summit, the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, and the Open Source Member Summit.

College of Public Affairs and Community Service 

Erin Kearns, Associate Professor

Criminology and Criminal Justice

Dr. Erin M. Kearns is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Director of Law Enforcement Partnerships at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center. Her research focuses on terrorism, law enforcement, and public perceptions of security threats, with an emphasis on informing policy and practice. She has secured more than $10 million in external funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and leads projects that support threat assessment, law enforcement decision-making, and community safety. Her work is translated into policy reports and practitioner tools and is regularly featured in outlets such as CNN, The Economist, and The Washington Post, contributing to public understanding of complex security issues. She also actively mentors students in applied research that bridges scholarship and practice.

UNO Library 

Claire Dunker, Associate Professor

Archives and Special Collections

Claire Dunker is an Associate Professor and the Outreach Archivist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the department of Archives and Special Collections. She earned her MA in Public History from North Carolina State University in 2018 and her MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019. Her work at UNO includes exhibit creation, archival instruction sessions, and facilitating primary source access and research to the campus and community. Claire is an active member of several professional organizations including the National Council on Public History, the Teaching with Primary Sources Collective, and the Journal of New Librarianship