Acton, Mancini, Soulliard, and Sutton receive Junior Faculty Scholar Awards
They were honored in recognition of great potential in research
Acton, Mancini, Soulliard, and Sutton receive Junior Faculty Scholar Awards
They were honored in recognition of great potential in research
Miami Junior Faculty Scholar Awards for 2026 have been presented to Riley Acton, assistant professor of Economics; Rock Mancini, assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Zachary Soulliard, assistant professor of Psychology; and Jazma Sutton, assistant professor of History.
University Junior Scholar Awards honor faculty members who have demonstrated great potential in research or artistry and have achieved significant standing in their field.
University Faculty Scholar Awards were presented to Katia Del Rio-Tsonis, professor of Biology, and Ganiva Reyes, associate professor and chair of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry. Read the story.
Riley Acton
A rising leader in the field of the economics of higher ed, Acton’s research has earned recognition from both policymakers and academics.
A nominator called Acton an exceptional researcher whose work “explores critical policy-relevant questions, such as how students choose community college programs, the impact of school funding in rural areas, and how access to different types of colleges shapes student decisions and outcomes. With a focus on diverse populations, her research examines how these factors influence students of varying racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Using data sources ranging from education records to public data on school finances, she applies rigorous econometric analysis to uncover the causal effects of policies and programs.
“Dr. Acton’s ability to tackle these important issues ensures that she will continue to produce meaningful and influential work,” the nominator wrote.
Acton joined Miami in 2020 after earning her Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University that year. Since that time, she has received six grants, including from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Since last year, she has secured major external funding as Co-PI on a $397,239 NSF grant, a $50,000 Spencer Foundation grant, a $44,546 J-PAL North America grant, and a $50,000 Russell Sage Foundation grant, along with additional funding from the Texas Higher Education Foundation.
“This level of success, well over half a million dollars in new competitive awards in a single year, would be impressive for any economist, but it is truly exceptional for a junior scholar,” a nominator wrote.
Another nominator described her as a dedicated and innovative teacher who advises many honors and M.A. theses. “She is an excellent mentor to our more recently hired assistant professors and to many students.”
Acton has published seven articles in highly ranked peer-reviewed economics journals and contributed two book chapters, including one with the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics and the College Crisis Initiative.
Her research is regularly featured in media including the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Economist, and she has been interviewed by media outlets including the New York Times, CNN Business, and Fortune magazine.
Rock Mancini
Mancini is a medicinal chemist who is developing new medical treatments using the tools of organic chemistry, biochemistry, and polymer science. A nominator said Mancini has demonstrated excellence in research since joining Miami in 2022.
“Rock’s achievement in research is at the highest level, whether one considers: the number of publications in his independent career (16), submitted and issued patents (3), quality of the journals his group publishes in, research funding during his independent career (over $1.75 million), or citations of his work (953 to date),” the nominator wrote.
Two other aspects make him an outstanding candidate for this recognition: how interdisciplinary his research is and the importance of his research.
“Ultimately his research will make a significant impact on human health and will find mechanisms to treat otherwise challenging diseases,” the nominator wrote.
Mancini’s research group works on two main projects:
- Developing new cancer treatments based on “bystander-assisted immunotherapy” (BAIT), a strategy he pioneered. This approach aims to treat chemotherapy-resistant cancers by weaponizing their mechanisms of drug resistance.
- Developing strategies to increase the efficacy of and lower the side effects from vaccines. This project merges medicinal chemistry with polymer science to design vaccines that respond to body temperature.
Mancini earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012 and was a postdoctoral researcher in synthetic immunology at University of California, Irvine from 2012-2015. Prior to joining Miami University in 2022, he was assistant professor of Chemistry at Washington State University.
Mancini’s work at Miami has yielded a patent application, “an important contribution to broadening the research profile of our department, which has not traditionally emphasized the development of intellectual property,” another nominator wrote.
Mancini’s research projects are “multidisciplinary in the truest sense of the term,” another nominator wrote, adding that they are all grounded in basic concepts of organic chemistry, “but require deep expertise in biochemistry, polymer science, and medicinal chemistry.
“Rock does much of this in-house; the breadth of the work done daily in the Mancini group is remarkable. That said, their work is also highly collaborative, with the vaccine adjuvants developed as part of a long-running collaboration with the Aguilar group at UCLA (formerly Cornell).”
Zachary Soulliard
The research that Soulliard conducts focuses “broadly on body image and the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ people,” a nominator wrote. “More specifically, his research program examines how stigma shapes body image and eating behaviors of LGBTQ+ individuals and how protective factors can buffer against these effects.”
Another nominator said Soulliard’s research “has the potential to save lives, is pushing the field in unique ways, embodies the teach-scholar model, and is being recognized by other scientists for its importance.”
Soulliard’s research has tested novel theoretical and strength-based constructs “to more comprehensively identify risk and protective factors of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating among LGBTQ+ populations,” the nominator wrote. “And Zach’s work is really pushing the field into new directions.”
The nominator called him a “phenomenally productive junior scholar, having authored 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters (17 of which have come in his three years at Miami) with numerous others submitted or in preparation.”
Soulliard, who joined Miami in 2022, earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from St. Louis University in 2020 and was a postdoctoral associate in the Yale School of Public Health from 2020-2022.
The nominator wrote that Soulliard publishes in journals such as Clinical Psychological Science, Journal of Affective Disorders, and Behavior Research and Therapy as well as in “more ‘niche’ journals that actually have a higher likelihood of reaching the people that need to be the audience for this research (i.e., other researchers in this subarea and, more importantly, in the communities themselves for whom this research matters most).”
He has secured more than $1 million in external funding as a Training Team Member, including $876,321 from the National Institute of Mental Health and $200,000 from the Gill Foundation and has presented his work at national and international conferences over 55 times in his career. His Google-scholar profile lists 1,053 citations to his work.
A nominator said Soulliard provides students with “invaluable professional experiences” as co-presenters at conferences and co-authors on scholarly publications.
“He creates exciting and meaningful student learning opportunities. For example, this past spring, he organized and facilitated the extremely well-attended ‘Trans-Affirmative Mental Healthcare Speaker Series,’ featuring clinicians and researchers from across the U.S. doing cutting-edge work.” He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of LGBTQ+ Mental Health and Body Image: An International Journal of Research.
Soulliard is part of a large team of researchers from Yale School of Public Health, Arizona State University, and University of Miami testing the implementation of LGBTQ-affirmative cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in a hybrid type III effectiveness-implementation trial with 90 LGBTQ+ community centers in the United States.
Jazma Sutton
Sutton is a rising scholar in the field of 19th century African American history, with her work focusing primarily on the lives and experiences of Black women in the Midwest. A nominator said her research focuses on their migration from the South and slavery, to the Midwest and freedom, during the antebellum period (before the Civil War).
“What makes her contributions so unique and impactful is the research process she has pioneered and named: descendent archival practices,” a nominator wrote.
“Because so little information about these families and their contributions has been preserved in traditional archives, Jazma sought to document the lives of Black Midwesterners by reaching out to their descendants, scattered across the Midwest and indeed the country, to see what materials they had stored in their garages, attics, family Bibles, and scrapbooks.”
Sutton also enlists family and community members as co-creators of this new knowledge and of her work. “This is cutting-edge and game-changing methodology in the field of history,” the nominator wrote.
Another nominator said Sutton stands out for her “methodological sophistication and innovative spirit.” She joined Miami in 2022 after earning her Ph.D. in History from Indiana University – Bloomington.
She regularly hosts community members in her classes, brings her students with her to conferences and research visits, organizes public events showcasing her classroom projects, the nominator said, “and has digitized a tremendous amount of Miami University’s archival collections that relate to her interest in the history of Black men and women at Miami and in Oxford.”
Sutton has presented more than 10 papers at academic conferences since arriving at Miami. This year, she is one of three Humanities Center Altman Fellows directing a yearlong, campus-wide exploration of “The Midwest.” She has become a sought-after keynote speaker, delivering keynote addresses at the Society of Indiana Archivist Annual Meeting in 2023 and at Indiana University’s Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities 2023 Spring Symposium.
Her record of awards and fellowships “is nothing short of extraordinary,” the nominator wrote, adding that she received several in 2024, including the Newberry Library’s 2024-2025 Long-Term Fellowship sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“The Newberry Library Fellowship is one of the most competitive in the country for humanities scholars — it is a real accomplishment to have received this award on one’s first try and at this early career stage,” the nominator wrote, adding that Sutton spent nine months in Chicago researching and revising her dissertation into a book manuscript.
Her book, “Moving Toward Freedom: Black Women, and Early Migration in Antebellum Indiana,” is under review for inclusion in the Black Women in America series published by University of North Carolina Press, and she has already published four peer-reviewed articles while at Miami.