“In both cases, you are trying to pursue a positive future not just for yourself, but also for other people,” Freund said.

This fall, he will be enrolling in at the University of Cambridge. Freund is to be selected as part of the 2026 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars. The prestigious scholarship program fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge.

During his four years there, Freund, who majored in psychology and minored in German and history in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences, plans to research the changing role of judicial discretion at sentencing. It will bring him closer to his ultimate career goal of becoming a professor of criminology. 

After graduating from Georgetown in 2023, Freund worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Berlin and earned a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Oxford. He is currently serving as program coordinator for the Prison Education Project (PEP) at Washington University in St. Louis. 

“I think I have always been interested in justice and using the privilege that I have in service of other people,” Freund said. 

Psychology and the Legal System

Born in New York, Freund and his family moved to San Diego when he was around the age of 4. His parents still live there.

Freund did not think he would move more than 2,600 miles across the country to DC for college, but attending a for admitted students swayed his decision. 

“I feel like among the schools I got into, Georgetown presented the most compelling vision of attending to its students,” he said. “The whole concept of cura personalis really came through to me.”

Initially, Freund thought he would major in government on the Hilltop. His main interest in high school, he said, was competing on the mock trial team, and Freund figured law school would be in his future. 

But he discovered that it was his psychology courses at Georgetown that he enjoyed the most. The class Psychology and the Legal System with , a professor of psychology and vice dean for faculty affairs in the ������̳, helped him learn how to apply psychology and social sciences to the operations of the legal system, Freund said.

That led him to propose an honors thesis that combined concepts from that class and his Cultural Psychology class with , an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. 

Freund’s thesis compared two different video layouts for videoconferencing during pretrial hearings in the courtroom. He consulted with a judge and faculty members at Georgetown to videotape a simulated courtroom hearing, then used an eyetracker and surveys to examine self-assessed recall, self-assessed understanding, procedural fairness and outcome fairness between the two video layouts.

Woolard called it “one of the most interesting undergraduate thesis projects I have supervised.” 

“Rafi has a very active mind,” Chentsova Dutton said. “It is clear that his goal is not just to get a good grade but to understand human complexity better.”

A Passion for Education

Freund also developed his passion for education at Georgetown. 

He spent three years as a teaching assistant for the Probability and Statistics course with , a teaching professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. That experience helped him realize that he loved teaching and standing in front of a classroom. Freund was also involved in the and as a tutor for the . 

“Rafi has all the qualities that make for an excellent TA,” Meyer said. “What distinguished Rafi was his attention to detail and sensitivity to his students’ needs as learners. He always paid close attention to students’ common mistakes and misconceptions while grading the assignments and interacting with students during labs and office hours.”

To Freund, his interests in criminal justice and teaching are not distinct. 

“They coalesce in a belief that all people should be able to benefit from a high-quality education,” he said.

At the University of Cambridge, Freund plans to research how sentencing operates and how the role of judicial discretion has changed over time. In his research and work experience, Freund has found that rigid approaches to sentencing can leave people doubting procedural and outcome fairness. 

The limits on discretion, he said, are being placed faster than the field is considering the potential consequences of those limits, particularly as many anticipate the integration of artificial intelligence in sentencing decisions. 

Freund wants to take a step back and ask: Is there something lost alongside the human judge? What happens when judges are prevented from being able to engage with the people they’re sentencing?

“This is a really urgent thing to think about,” he said.

(Top photo courtesy of Rafi Freund, taken at Washington University in St. Louis)

It was May of 2017, and she had just graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Spanish and justice and peace studies. Niebanck planned to spend the summer relaxing, traveling and enjoying her time with friends before moving to Boston for a job in technology sales. The post-college life she envisioned for herself was just beginning. 

But 10 days after she walked across Healy Lawn as part of the , Niebanck had a stroke during a scheduled brain surgery. She woke up paralyzed on the left side of her body and couldn’t speak or swallow. Suddenly, Niebanck’s full-time job became rehabilitation.

“I had to learn how to walk, how to sit up in a wheelchair, how to speak, how to swallow,” she said. “I had to do everything all over again.”

Niebanck watched her friends move to different cities, launch their careers and live what seemed like glamorous lives in her mind. The sense of being left behind grew. But conversations with her mentors, including a Georgetown professor, shifted her perspective and gave her a new mantra: Obstacles are opportunities.

In the years since Niebanck’s stroke, she has published two books — Fashion Fwd: How Today’s Culture Shapes Tomorrow’s Fashion and Fast Fwd: The Fully Recovered Mindset — and has become a public speaker and advocate for stroke survivors. In 2023, the World Health Organization invited Niebanck to speak about her rehab journey at its in Geneva, Switzerland. 

“We all experience obstacles in our lives,” she said. “It’s about how we respond to it and decide how to turn that into something positive for ourselves and for our communities.”

Finding a Place to Thrive

Niebanck grew up in Chatham, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, as the oldest of three siblings. 

She knew from a young age that she wanted to study languages, and came to Georgetown because of its and location in Washington, DC. 

“It just seemed like a place where I could thrive,” Niebanck said. 

At Georgetown, she joined an investment club at Georgetown Collegiate Investors, where she rose to a leadership position. She volunteered as an English language tutor for low-income immigrant families in DC through the and participated in the and . Niebanck also worked as a front desk clerk for the .

In her sophomore year, she became an Entrepreneurship Fellow through the McDonough School of Business. 

“One of the things that I loved the most about Georgetown was that everyone was so driven and passionate about something,” Niebanck said. “I found it really refreshing that everyone was motivated and hard working and had diverse areas of interest, and we could all collaborate together.”

As a senior, she took the Launching the Venture course with , an adjunct professor in the McDonough School of Business who would become one of her closest and most influential mentors.

Niebanck looked forward to the path she thought lay ahead after graduation. She didn’t even stress or think about her upcoming brain surgery. 

Since childhood, Niebanck had dealt with migraines, culminating in a series of migraines that lasted more than 20 days during high school. Doctors her with a in the right occipital lobe of her brain. She elected to have brain surgery after college to remove the risk of a potential rupture.

“In my mind, it was just like, oh, this is just a thing that’s gonna have to happen, and then, you know, I’ll rest for a month, and I’ll be fine,” she said.

‘What Really Matters’

Before surgery, Niebanck had a pre-operative procedure. It caused a blood clot in her brain that burst, leading to a brain hemorrhage. She was rushed into emergency surgery. 

After her stroke, Niebanck spent 15 days in the intensive care unit, five weeks as an inpatient and two and half years as an outpatient.

Niebanck stayed in touch with Koester after graduation, and during one of their conversations while Niebanck was struggling with the constant physical and cognitive and speech therapy, Koester encouraged her to view the stroke as an opportunity to explore her interests and dive into her passions. 

“He was like, if you could do anything and work any job, what would you do?” Niebanck said.

For Koester, Niebanck embodies the idea of cura personalis, or care of the whole person, through her willingness and ability to inspire others with her story.

“Maddi is one of those people who never sought recognition, but her actions day in and day out brought people hope, joy and lessons for their own journeys,” Koester said. “I think what’s amazing about her is she never once let any limitations she faced as a stroke survivor slow her down. In fact, quite the opposite. She was the one who wouldn’t let others slow her down.”

Niebanck describes Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., as another influential figure in her recovery journey. Carnes, the vice president for mission and ministry who taught in Georgetown’s Department of Government and School of Foreign Service from 2009 to 2024, met Niebanck through her work for CLAS. Carnes said that Niebanck “points us to what really matters.”

“She kept her eyes on what was possible, and this has allowed her to make such amazing progress, and eventually to succeed in her career, and as an author, and in so many other ways,” he said. “But it’s not the success or the stroke that defines her. It’s the spirit that beats in her heart and has nourished her to this point, and the way she shares that spirit generously with others.”

Building a Supportive Community

When Koester challenged Niebanck to think of her dream job, she thought back to a self-published fashion magazine — Passion for Fashion — she designed in eighth grade. 

On the cover is her younger sister, Bridget, striking a model pose. Colorful headlines coat the page: “What’s in Style?”, “A Day in the Life of Model Bridget Niebanck”, “Fashion Advice: Just Be Yourself!”

Niebanck’s first job after her stroke was as a reinsurance underwriter for a Spanish company. But while she was rehabbing, Niebanck reached out to her network and cold emailed people for connections in the fashion industry. This time would eventually lead to her first book, Fashion Fwd, published in 2018, which explored fashion trends and how the fashion landscape was evolving.

“I interviewed everyone from small business owners to fashion executives to the [former] Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan,” Niebanck said.

She also worked for three years as the client relations coordinator for Hermès, a French luxury goods company, and is now a marketing manager for Cionic, a biotechnology startup that makes clothing to aid mobility. 

Today, Niebanck lives independently and works full-time in New York City, but still struggles with her vision. She lost half of her peripheral vision on the left side of both of her eyes. She does not drive.

“When I’m walking down the busy streets of New York City, I have to constantly scan and turn my head to make sure I’m not missing anything,” Niebanck said. “I get bumped into all the time.”

For a while, she said, the challenges of her recovery left her dejected and questioning, “What did I do to deserve this?”

But while writing her second book, Fast Fwd, published in 2020, Niebanck started to build a community of stroke survivors. She decided to share her journey with the public in hopes of meeting others with similar stories.

Since then, she has chronicling her experiences and co-hosted a live video every Sunday with another stroke survivor on . Niebanck has also given talks about her journey to college students. 

More recently started hosting , where stroke survivors and caregivers get together in person to “connect with others who share similar experiences and build a supportive community.” Niebanck has hosted four so far, with the first summit taking place in New York City in April 2024 and the most recent in Birmingham, Alabama, this October.

“Real life events are super impactful for people to be able to connect with the community and meet other people who are like them,” she said.

Embracing New Opportunities

There is a specific moment that Niebanck remembers as an inpatient.

She was walking up and down the hall in the hospital with her cane, trailed by her mother pushing her wheelchair. She passed the rooms of other patients and thought to herself, “I am so lucky and fortunate that I have this opportunity to work hard.”

Niebanck credits her family members, friends, New Jersey network, Georgetown community and the people she met in rehab for keeping her motivated. By working on her recovery, she wanted to show herself and her supporters that there is life after a stroke, Niebanck said.

“I don’t let my disability stop me or hold me back from achieving the things that I want to in my life,” she said. “Obviously I had a stroke, but I view it as a testament to my resilience and my ability to adapt and overcome and take a different step — literally and figuratively.”

Niebanck thinks back to when she was on the Hilltop and wants students to remain open minded to opportunities they might not have considered in school. If she hadn’t, Niebanck said, she would never have written one book, let alone two, or become a public speaker and disability advocate. The unexpected things that happen in life aren’t necessarily an ending, she said. They can also be a new beginning. 

“Your path can change,” Niebanck said. “It will change, actually, and that’s okay.”

“The stadium exploded,” she said in American Sign Language through an interpreter. “The stadium went wild, and everything else just disappeared.” 

Team USA won the match, 4-0, and took home gold – the first of four gold medals that Offreda would win with the , which has Offreda also won gold at the 2013 Deaflympics and at the Deaf World Cup in 2012 and 2016. She officially retired from competitive soccer in 2016.

Offreda was “born with a soccer ball” at her feet and started playing soccer around age 3, she said. Sports have always been a part of her story.

This fall, Offreda joined the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences as an assistant teaching professor in the disability studies program. She currently teaches Introduction to Disability Studies and Deaf Culture and Literature. Next semester, she will be teaching Disability in Sports, which will “challenge traditional narratives of ability” and explore how access and representation transforms communities, she said. 

Prior to Georgetown, Offreda served as the head women’s soccer coach, senior woman administrator and Title IX coordinator for ’s athletic department, as well as an and a middle school English teacher. 

“We are extremely lucky to have Professor Offreda join Georgetown and the disability studies program,” said , who is the director of the program. “She brings a wealth of not only scholarly and lived knowledge, but also leadership.”

Creating an Accessible Space

The disability studies program at Georgetown is one of the first of its kind.

The program was launched in 2017 by English professor and has grown to include a minor, a graduate certificate and now a major. This fall marks the first opportunity for students to declare a major in disability studies. 

In addition to the program, Georgetown’s Disability Cultural Center (DCC) opened on the ground floor of the New South building in 2023, which is an accessible space for disability cultural events and meetings. 

Georgetown’s commitment to the community and investment in disability studies attracted Offreda to the university, she said. 

“I was drawn to the opportunity to contribute to a space where disability is approached as a form of knowledge and culture, not simply as a medical condition,” she said. 

Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field, as much connected to the humanities as it is to sports. The discipline also greatly overlaps with the Jesuit commitment to cura personalis, meaning “care of the whole person,” and faith that does justice, said Reynolds. 

“At the core of disability studies is an appreciation that we are complex, embodied creatures that rely upon one another to flourish,” Reynolds said. “Without education, faith and justice, it’s hard to see how one could flourish. In so many ways, [disability studies] and Georgetown are a perfect fit.”

A Love of Storytelling

Offreda is a storyteller, and she incorporates this love for storytelling into her classes. 

Going from teaching, to coaching and then to working within athletic administration, Offreda sees athletics and teaching as being connected. For Offreda, athletics are simply an extension of the art of storytelling. 

Sports are a “language, a form of expression and an expression of identity,” she said. “When I’m on the field, when I’m coaching on the field, I feel like I’m bringing my true self.” 

Offreda’s father was born in Italy and introduced soccer to her at a young age. He told that he saw her potential in the sport by the time Offreda was 5 or 6 years old.

“The way she ran, the way she moved, anybody that knew soccer, you could tell, she had the potential to be something, to be somebody,” he said.

Soccer allowed Offreda to travel internationally, and in 2016, Offreda was named one of the top deaf soccer players in the world. She was “thrilled,” but the moment was bittersweet, as she knew she was about to retire. When she got the news, the first thing she thought about was her gratitude for the people she had met on her athletic journey. She also thought of her dad, who taught Offreda “so much about resilience and never giving up.”

Offreda encourages students to consider the power of narrative and how language shapes our understanding of the world and of each other. In her classes, students explore the narratives and perspectives of people who have disabilities and come from a wide range of backgrounds. 

Her students consider how their definition of disability changes over time, and many credit these narratives for expanding and shifting their perspective. Storytelling becomes a way to “redefine disability,” Offreda said. She believes sharing stories is a way of bridging the gap to understanding. 

It connects people and brings them together, Offreda said.

Ortiz, a beloved faculty member in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences and celebrated scholar of Latinx literature, queer theory and gender studies, died Aug. 18 in DC. He was 63.

For many, Ortiz, who worked at Georgetown for over 25 years, was more than a colleague or professor, he was their lifeline on campus. Ortiz exuded positivity and built community wherever he went. And his laugh lit up rooms. His friends have described it as loud, resonant, jovial, contagious and inclusive.

“He had this chuckle that he did, sort of like a, ‘ha, ha, ha,’ almost like Santa,” , an associate professor of English, said of Ortiz’s laugh. “He had dimples, and he was a good looking person. It was like all of his features were oriented towards joy.”

“There were different versions of the Ricardo laugh but all of them were part of the same jovial, generous outlook on life,” said , the Hubert J. Cloke Director of American Studies. “He was an immensely positive person, which I think rubbed off on a lot of us.”

It was among the ways that Ortiz sought to bring people together. 

“Whatever he was laughing at, we were included in that laughter,” said , a professional lecturer in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

“I think a lot about his laughter, because he was so joyful,” said Sonia Valencia (G’12), one of Ortiz’s former students in the who graduated with a Master of Arts in English. “He just had a unique laugh and it was infectious, and he brought light and joy into every space.”

‘A Huge Presence’

It’s hard to find a pocket of Georgetown where Ortiz wasn’t involved. 

At the time of his passing, he was the director of the , which he took over in July 2022. Ortiz began teaching at Georgetown in the fall of 1998 and served as the chair of the English department from 2015 to 2021. He taught courses across departments and programs in English, American studies, comparative literature, performing arts and women’s and gender studies. 

Ortiz also regularly taught in the Community Scholars Program for first-generation students and was a member or chair of several committees. He won numerous faculty awards. Georgetown recently set up the to honor his memory and support the work to which he dedicated his life. 

“In many ways, I think he was a model ������̳ faculty member,” said , the dean of the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences. “People aren’t going to forget that, and I think they will draw upon that memory to inspire themselves going forward in terms of how they’ll teach our students and act towards each other within our community.”

As a first-generation college student, Ortiz, who was born in Cuba and immigrated to Southern California with his parents at a young age, was particularly drawn to serving underrepresented and fellow first-generation students. 

He was affiliated and allied with programs, clubs and initiatives like the Georgetown Scholars Program, La Casa Latina, MEChA de Georgetown, the LGBTQ Resource Center, the , and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. 

“Ricardo was a huge presence at Georgetown, because he loved this institution and its students, and he believed in – and enjoyed – being involved in academic programs,” said , a professor of English and American Studies. 

Ortiz found connections across the university.

“Professors in departments, we stay in our own lanes,” Velez said. “But Ricardo created overlapping spaces … I think he took Georgetown’s mission [of cura personalis] as seriously as anyone ever has at Georgetown.”

‘A Fierce Advocate’

Students often turned to Ortiz for mentorship and colleagues looked up to him as a role model. 

Angie Bonilla (C’09), one of Ortiz’s former students who graduated from the ������̳ with a major in English and minor in Spanish, said she is the researcher, educator and scholar she is today because of Ortiz. 

A chancellor’s postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Bonilla wants people to remember Ortiz’s advocacy work for first-generation students and contributions to Latinx studies as a queer and Cuban literary and cultural critic.

“I want people to remember the fierce love he had for his many homelands – California, the Caribbean and DC,” Bonilla said. “I want people to remember how he was a humanist at the core, a fierce advocate for the unfinished and necessary work of protecting and cultivating the humanities in higher education.” 

Ortiz saw potential in each student, regardless of their background. 

At one point while writing her master’s thesis, Valencia told him that she didn’t belong at Georgetown. She compared herself to her peers who had already finished their work and felt her classmates were smarter than her. 

Ortiz quickly and gently shut down those thoughts.

“I didn’t have the language for this at the time, but I was, at moments, struggling with imposter syndrome,” said Valencia, who is the director of the TRIO Scholars Program at UC Irvine. “And he reassured me of the fact that I did belong there, and that I had great ideas.”

He treated colleagues the same way. 

, an associate professor in the Department of History and the American Studies Program, knew a lot about Ortiz and his work with Latinx literature before she arrived at Georgetown in 2020. She had read his writing and taught it in her classes.

Ortiz, Loza said, was a brilliant literary scholar who oozed generosity. He constantly uplifted others through compliments and wanted the people around him to feel valued.  

“He had a lot more experience at Georgetown than I did and had a large profile as a scholar,” she said. “And I just remember countless interactions where he not only made me feel like we were peers, but he also, at times, made me feel like I was teaching him something.”

‘A Sense of Mission’

As a scholar, Ortiz wrote two books on Latinx studies and dozens of academic works that covered topics in the humanities. He was an expert in Latinx literature and cultures and often analyzed it through the lenses of gender and sexuality.

“He was knowledgeable about all Latino literature,” Loza said. “In ethnic studies, especially for communities that are very large and complex, it’s hard to find scholars that actually understand the complexity of entire swaths of people, not just like one corner or one group, but he was one of those people.”

Joshua Javier Guzmán (SFS ’10), an associate professor in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA, said that he is an academic because of Ortiz. Guzmán first met Ortiz the summer before his first year at Georgetown as a Community Scholar, and Ortiz was one of the program’s instructors.

Guzmán took Ortiz’s Testimonial Fictions course as his first elective at Georgetown, and learning from Ortiz inspired Guzmán to become a professor himself.

“What Ricardo made me realize early on about the profession was that it was a social world, and that these were not just like dead writers that were scholars that we were reading in class, but actually alive,” Guzmán said. “A lot of them were his friends or he knew them and that you can know them too.”

As a professor, Ortiz fostered curiosity, Guzmán said. He taught with rigor and emboldened students to expand their worlds.

“When he gets you, he’ll give you these little nuggets, something to latch on, and when you latch on, he pushes you: Go read this. Go look at that thing. Go look that up,” Guzmán said. “It was sort of like pushing you out in the world.”

More recently, Ortiz devoted much of his time to the Master of Arts in Engaged & Public Humanities program, where he served as director.

, a professor of law and humanities in the Department of English and the founding director of the master’s program from 2019 to 2021, credits Ortiz with increasing the program’s impact by managing real, high impact internships, developing a core faculty and recruiting students interested in the humanities to join.

“The year we launched the program, we were coming out of COVID and dealing with all the issues everyone was dealing with,” Temple said. “After that, everything that I had dreamed and hoped for regarding that program, he brought into being.”

“He immediately came into that leadership role with a joy and eagerness to grow it,” said , core faculty for the master’s program. 

Ortiz was a program builder, said , the chair of the English department. 

“I think that it was in part his belief in the value and the importance of the work,” O’Malley said. “He deeply believed in the importance of the humanities, of English studies, of Latinx studies, of queer studies, of graduate studies, and he had a sense of mission for those that he thought that if no one else was doing it, it had to be done, and so it would be him.”

‘Unashamed Joy’

Ortiz loved talking about films, books and television shows – particularly reality TV. 

“We’d talk about pop culture as well as high brown literature in the same breath and with the same seriousness,” Valencia said.

And he enjoyed all of those things equally and unironically. 

“There was a kind of open and unashamed joy in what he did, in what he was reading, in what he was writing, in what his students were doing,” O’Malley said. “We’d have conversations where he would be totally fascinated and interested and enthusiastic in reality television or the novels of Jacqueline Susann – some things you might think that academics would brush off, but Ricardo had a real, authentic, totally unironic pleasure in these.”

Ortiz could also be playful – in his personality but also with his writing. “Like the way he played with words,” Valencia said. “The way he stretched language to really invite you to have that relationship with language where you know that it’s something that’s alive, something that can be stretched with multiple meanings.”

He noticed things about the world around him and took time to soak it in. Even walking to the bus stop after class, Ortiz would sometimes stop and take a picture of the sunset on campus to post on social media. 

“I think his capacity for being alive was profound,” Velez said. “Every experience mattered to him.”

Ortiz is survived by his partner, Paul O’Neill; sisters, Ana and Ana; nephews, Colin, Andrew and Daniel; and niece, Isabella.

In remembrance of Ortiz, gifts may be sent to:

The Ricardo L. Ortiz Humanities Fund
The ������̳ of Arts & Sciences
Georgetown University
Department 0734
Washington, DC 20073-0734

Gifts may be made online at:

“I am an educator at heart,” said Kohno, whose first day was August 1. “I have been an educator throughout my adult life, and I am deeply impressed by Georgetown University’s commitment to the education of the undergraduate and graduate students.”

Prior to Georgetown, Kohno taught at the University of Washington as a professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. He was also the associate dean for faculty success for the university’s ������̳ of Engineering and held adjunct professor positions in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the School of Information and the School of Law. 

Kohno’s research spans different areas of security and privacy and has had a wide range of real-world impact. His areas of study have included , , and artificial intelligence , and . 

At Georgetown, Kohno plans to continue exploring computer security and emerging technologies while building on his appetite for interdisciplinary research. 

David Edelstein, the dean of the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences, called Kohno the “ideal scholar and teacher” for the McDevitt Chair position. 

“Through his research and teaching, Professor Kohno is committed to understanding both the underlying technology driving change in our society and the effect that it is having on our society,” Edelstein said. “In addition to his deep commitment to appreciating the ethical dimensions of the technology he studies, Professor Kohno’s passion for not just researching but also teaching our students about how to understand this technology and its implications exemplifies our own commitments as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”

An Early Passion

Kohno has always been interested in math and science.

His grandfather, an electrical engineer, inspired Kohno to pursue computing and he spent many hours in front of a computer learning how to program while growing up in a small town just outside of Boulder, Colorado. His parents gave him an introduction to computer programming book as a present before he was in first grade.

Kohno said he also had a strong desire to become a biologist as a child, but computer science ultimately called to him.

Kohno graduated from the University of Colorado with a Bachelor of Science in computer science and received his master’s and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California at San Diego. 

After two brief stints as a computer security consultant, he moved to Seattle to start his faculty career at the University of Washington in 2006 and has won multiple research and teaching awards. Once he became a professor, Kohno couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

“I take great joy in helping students uncover, embrace and grow in directions that support and align with their passions,” he said. 

Kohno also believes in the value of a strong liberal arts education and the essential role it plays for computer scientists in understanding the broader world in which computing technologies exist. 

“I am deeply, deeply excited to be at an institution that prioritizes not just strong and rigorous computer science as a discipline but the interplay between computer science and society,” he said.

Identifying Future Problems

One of Kohno’s expertise areas as a researcher is identifying cybersecurity risks with future technologies and mitigating them before they happen. 

Kohno explained it another way: If his research is successful, the general public will likely never hear about it.

“Because we would have done our job at identifying and then mitigating those threats,” he said. “I really do try to think five, 10, 15 years into the future, and understand what the next generation of technologies might be, and then try to proactively develop security solutions before those technologies become widespread.”

, the inaugural endowed chair in Technology, Ethics and Society and the director of the Center for Digital Ethics, said that Kohno is ideally positioned to advance the center’s mission to bring about a more ethical digital future for the good of humanity through teaching, research and public engagement.

DeNardis, who is also a professor in the Department of Communication, Culture and Technology, praised Kohno’s cutting-edge research on .

“Cybersecurity is a human concern as much as a technical one, shaping the future of human rights, the economy and national security,” she said. “Dr. Kohno’s research on cybersecurity, privacy and human safety resides at the cutting-edge ethical frontiers of emerging technologies.”

Kohno said that ideally those who create new technologies put the considerations of people and society first. That includes technological advances with artificial intelligence.

“In the modern AI space, companies seem to be asking, ‘What can we do?’” Kohno said. “The most important questions in my mind are: ‘What are the negative consequences if we do what we can do?’ ‘What should we not do?’”

A Way of Life

Georgetown’s tradition of cura personalis or care of the whole person, resonates with Kohno, a sixth-degree black belt, karate and aikido instructor and former yoga teacher who infuses martial arts philosophy and creative writing into his academic lessons.

For Kohno, martial arts are a way of life. They inform his teaching and philosophy.

“Some people think that martial arts are about fighting,” Kohno said. “To me, martial arts is a philosophy and an approach to interacting in the world. …Martial arts, as I train them, begin by observing and understanding our environment and the people around us. In martial arts, the ultimate goal is to never have to fight at all in the first place.”

Creative writing and science fiction also shape Kohno’s approach to academia. 

In his former Seattle office, Kohno hung a vintage poster of Yoda from Star Wars with various famous quotes from the films that he plans to bring to DC. He believes that fiction can help people think more deeply about the relationships between society and technology and has incorporated creative writing into his courses as a method of active learning. 

Outside of work, Kohno enjoys open water swimming, biking and running, and has already registered to run the Marine Corps Marathon in DC this October. 

Asked about his proudest achievements, Kohno points to his students. 

“There are research projects I’ve done, but my absolute greatest accomplishments are the lives that I have impacted and the careers that I’ve helped enable,” he said.

(Photos by Lisa Helfert for Georgetown University)

Established by the ������̳ Academic Council in honor of Chester Gillis, the dean of the ������̳ from 2008 to 2017, the annual award recognizes and celebrates up to two students who embody the values of a liberal arts education rooted in the Jesuit tradition.

“Our students are extraordinary, and this award is an opportunity to highlight two who exemplify the values at the heart of a Georgetown education,” said advising dean . “Their service and commitment to the community here on campus is a jumping off point for the change they will go on to make in the wider world, as people for others.”

This summer, Shah moved to Hawaii to begin his training as a teacher with Teach for America, and Sun is conducting research in the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health.

Naveen Shah (C’25)

A week after Shah graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in government and computer science in May, he hopped on a one-way flight to O’ahu, Hawaii. Once he arrived, he spent several weeks training to be a middle school math and science teacher with Teach for America and has been using his free time to explore O’ahu before the school year begins.

When Shah thinks of teaching, he recalls his favorite Georgetown motto: cura personalis, or care of the whole person. 

“There is a great deal of research on the importance of social-emotional learning, or a more holistic approach to instruction which aims to strengthen students’ capabilities to manage their own emotions, relationships and develop confidence in their own decision-making abilities,” Shah said. “My goal is to grow students in this dimension while maintaining rigor with academics, in the spirit of cura personalis.”

At Georgetown, Shah was involved in several extracurricular activities. He started working with the nonprofit Hatch Tutors the fall of his first year and is still contributing to the tutoring organization. Shah is currently re-designing the backend software that helps match students with tutors. 

Shah also joined the ������̳ Academic Council, which he served for four years, and as a first-year student. 

During the spring semester of his first year, he traveled with the team to the national championships at the United States Tennis Association National Campus in Orlando, Florida. There, he met two representatives from ACEing Autism, a nonprofit organization providing sports related intervention for children with autism. It inspired Shah to start an ACEing Autism program .

As a junior, Shah spent five months as a teaching assistant for the data structures course in the Department of Computer Science.

“I appreciate the Chester Gillis Award as a recognition of the impact work I have done during my time at Georgetown,” Shah said.  

Harry Sun (C’26)

This summer, Sun, a biology major and philosophy minor, is researching immune cell interactions and their implications on tumor immunity at the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health.

The research is extremely personal for Sun. He recently lost his mother to cancer.

“I am still emotionally processing everything, along with my siblings and relatives overseas,” he said.

Sun takes pride in the breadth and depth of his research and hopes to carry it forward for others. He said that receiving the Chester Gillis Award has allowed him time to reflect on the Jesuit values that encourage intellectual curiosity, justice and a commitment to others.

“The Jesuit values of cura personalis and has taken me to diverse realms as a lab researcher and nursing home volunteer, the latter of which I’ve spent summer weekends teaching word games and playing piano for residents,” Sun said. “Cura personalis has also informed my role as a caregiver for my recently passed mom, teaching me to reconcile moments at the hospital with her with emotional conversations at home.”

Sun’s academic program in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences has largely framed the research he does. His biology major has informed his love for immunology and his philosophy minor challenges him to take other perspectives, predict counterarguments and consider the underlying ethics of future therapies, he said.

At Georgetown, Sun volunteers as a first responder with . He has also held leadership roles in , working as the head of purchasing and connecting with distributors and local minority-owned businesses to expand campus offerings.

The summer after Sun’s first year, he began working in a lab at UConn Health, and that fall, he joined the lab of , a professor of oncology and pharmacology at Georgetown’s School of Medicine and a member of the . Sun currently studies cancer immunology at Wellstein’s lab and neuroimmunology at the Jin Lab in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health. 

Sun’s goal is to ultimately build novel treatments for cancer patients like his mom, he said.

After graduating from Georgetown, Sun plans to enroll in an MD/Ph.D.program. He is also interested in exploring research opportunities abroad to further his understanding of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy.

“To me, the Jesuit tradition is like a veil through which the world unravels, shedding light on the goals I feel inspired towards and how I can best pursue them,” Sun said.

(Top photo of Harry Sun by Tiffany Pham)

He ran. He biked. He swam. He did bodyweight workouts. 

The exercise helped Edelstein, who became the on July 1, think about where he wanted to take his career. At that time, Edelstein was finishing his second book, working toward a promotion to full professor and had taken on new administrative responsibilities at Georgetown. 

He leaned into endurance sports as an outlet, competing in marathons and triathlons. He later finished two full Ironman competitions, each consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. Nowadays, Edelstein enjoys running, biking and strength training at the gym.

By fitting workouts and training sessions into his busy schedule — often early in the morning before dawn — Edelstein said he has become a more well-rounded person. It has given him something to focus on besides his work schedule. In short, he’s applied the values of cura personalis, or care of the whole person, to his life.

“It is important to have something other than your work,” Edelstein said. “You don’t have to be a triathlete, and you certainly don’t have to be an Ironman triathlete or a marathon runner. It can be going for a half hour walk every day. It can be painting. Whatever it is, I think having something that gives you a distraction from other things that you’re doing and makes you a more well-rounded person just makes you a healthier person.”

Going the Distance

Edelstein’s interest in sports started early.

Growing up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia, he became a fan of all professional Philadelphia sports teams, with a particular love for the Philadelphia 76ers and Olympic sports. But Edelstein’s fandom didn’t translate to participation in sports.

Beyond playing recreational soccer or basketball, he did not join any sports teams in school. Edelstein was more interested in his schoolwork and learning about politics, history and economics.

He certainly never thought he would become a competitive triathlete as an adult.

“Fifteen-year-old me would be shocked by what 50-year-old me was doing,” he said.

But when Edelstein turned 40 years old with two young sons, he realized he was not as healthy as he wanted to be. 

So, he started doing resistance and bodyweight workouts in his basement at 4:30 in the morning. After six months of only that, Edelstein got bored. He needed a new goal.

“I said, all right, well, I’ll run a marathon, right? That’s a good goal to have,” he said.

Edelstein had run occasional 5Ks for fun but never raced longer distances. He asked his sister-in-law, a marathon runner, for a training plan, and soon, pre-dawn basement workouts became runs on the Capital Crescent Trail.

“There’s always been something about workouts first thing in the morning, where no matter how the rest of my day goes, I feel I have accomplished something,” Edelstein said. 

In 2014, he ran the and finished the race in 3 hours, 26 minutes and 10 seconds — a pace of 7:52 per mile.

The day after the marathon, Edelstein got out of bed with pain in his knees, and his wife, in a moment Edelstein jokes that she likely regrets, encouraged him to try triathlons, which includes running, swimming and biking. Even though he had never swum competitively, he signed up for triathlons and quickly discovered his new passion. 

“I was never bored with it, because I was always doing some other different type of workout,” Edelstein said. 

Edelstein completed his first triathlon in the summer of 2014 in Culpepper, Virginia. It was a sprint triathlon, which consists of a 750-meter swim, a 14.3-mile bike ride and a 5K run. He finished in the middle of his age group. For about a decade after that, Edelstein worked with a local triathlon coach, David Henkel, and went on to complete around 20 triathlons.

“I knew he had a lot of potential physically,” Henkel said. “Combine that with his mental aptitude and excitement for the sport, and it was clear he was going to be special.”

Racing Against Yourself

Edelstein has found that exercise and training benefit his work life. It allows him to better focus, he said, and his job at Georgetown and race preparation both require strategy.

“There’s a lot of strategizing in the triathlon,” Edelstein said. “You’re racing against other people, but, in many ways, you’re racing against yourself, and thinking about how to make your way through the three different disciplines.”

Prior to his role as dean of the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences, Edelstein served as the vice provost for education, vice dean for faculty affairs in the ������̳ and a professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has written two books that examine military intervention and great power politics.

“The common thread among these different interests is strategy,” Edelstein said. “Whether it’s in sports or politics, how you achieve your goals, in some sense, has always been fascinating to me.”

He said the chance to lead and guide the ������̳ as its dean excites him. His priorities include building the ������̳’s identity and developing its global presence. He feels a sense of pride in what the ������̳ does, both at Georgetown and beyond. 

“I’ve been at Georgetown for a long time now and worked in the ������̳ dean’s office for several years, and I have such admiration and affection for the institution,” Edelstein said. “Its smart, dedicated and caring people — faculty, staff and students — are its special sauce.”

Reaching the Top

After completing several half Ironman triathlons, Edelstein set his sights on his next goal: a full Ironman. 

In 2021, he signed up for his first full Ironman in Lake Placid and finished in just under . Half way through the eight-hour drive home the following day, Edelstein stopped to get lunch and stretch his legs. When he opened his email inbox, an unexpected message popped up inviting him to register for another Ironman.

Edelstein had qualified for the , an iconic and scenic race through lava fields and along the coastline.

“My head exploded,” he said. “I was immediately texting everybody I know in the triathlon world.”

In the race, which took place in October of 2022, Edelstein moved up in the rankings in each of the three legs of the race and finished in the middle of his age group. He had competed in the world championships in just his second full Ironman.

“I’ve been to the top of the triathlon mountain,” Edelstein said. “I wasn’t the fastest to get there, but it was an amazing experience.”

These days, Edelstein isn’t competing in triathlons. Instead, he goes to his local F45 Training gym at 5:30 a.m. six days a week, incorporating both cardio and strength training. On the weekends, he usually goes for a long run or bike ride.

To Edelstein, few things are better than an early morning run.

“I’ve always said that I do my best thinking when I’m walking or running or moving in some way,” he said.

(Top photo taken at the 2021 Ironman Lake Placid by The IRONMAN Group/Finisherpix.com)

The comes after years of advocacy from students, faculty, staff and community members, and Georgetown will be one of the few top-ranked universities in the country to offer an undergraduate major program dedicated to disability studies. 

Having a disability studies major – on top of the existing minor and programs – fits into Georgetown’s mission and the Jesuit concept of cura personalis, says , the director of the Disability Studies Program and an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy. 

“It fits into our commitment to understand what it means to be human along the many dimensions of life that present themselves,” Reynolds says. “Disability will always be a central feature of human life, and its study is something that benefits everyone.”

Inherently Interdisciplinary

Most people will experience disability at some point in their lives, says , a teaching professor in the Department of English and the founding director of the Disability Studies Program. 

Disabled people are the largest minority group in the United States, and according to the , more than 1 in 4 adults in the country have some type of disability. Nearly 14% of degree-seeking undergraduate Georgetown students identified as someone with a disability (mental, physical or other) in the university’s first in 2020. 

Disability studies is an inherently broad and interdisciplinary field.

“It’s extraordinarily relevant for students entering into a range of professions,” Rifkin says.

The Disability Studies Program at Georgetown is designed to be flexible and fit with students who are doing another major. It allows students to choose their own path, Reynolds says. The program currently has core and affiliate faculty members and courses in a wide variety of departments, including biology, psychology, philosophy, music, theology, anthropology, medicine, sociology and English. 

“Having knowledge about disability immediately puts you in a better position than the person next to you who doesn’t have that knowledge,” Reynolds says. “This is one of those sorts of fields of study where it gives you an immediate edge.”

All of the students will complete either a theoretical or practical senior capstone project, says , a professor in the Department of Philosophy who served as director of the Disability Studies Program from 2022 to 2024. The former will be a traditional, standard thesis that involves a research project, and the latter is a community based learning project, like an internship. 

“That gives people a ton of flexibility as to what they do with that final project, and it can also – depending on what their career plans are – be a really good stepping stone,” Kukla says.

And while there are no formalized tracks within the major, there are informal pathways, including for students interested in law and policy, pre-medicine and arts and humanities. 

“Students who major in this come out with such a deep appreciation of the complexity of embodiment and of social and political norms and practices,” Reynolds says. “That is very useful to be a human, to live a life out into the world and hopefully, in the end, try and make the world a better place.”

‘Students Were Hungry for This’

Starting in 2017, Georgetown students have been able to , but students have expressed interest in studying the field long before that.

“I started teaching courses in disability studies as freshman writing seminars, probably as far back as 2008 and really got the sense that Georgetown students were hungry for this,” Rifkin says.

Rifkin, who served as the program director from 2017 until 2020, began to find other faculty members who wanted to teach courses in disability studies, pulling together colleagues in theater and performance studies, anthropology and health sciences. In 2014, they assembled a cluster of classes tied together by a series of events and speakers. 

“We started to develop an audience and community for this work,” Rifkin says. 

That led to finding other faculty members who were interested in or already teaching disability material in their courses, and from there, a cohort formed that worked on launching a disability studies minor. The proposal for that went through in April of 2017 and the minor program started in the fall of that year, according to Rifkin. The M.A./Ph.D. certificate was approved in 2020.

Dominic DeRamo (C’23) graduated from Georgetown in 2023 with a double major in government and philosophy and a minor in disability studies. For the past year, he has been working as a development associate at Disability Rights Fund (DRF). The organization provides funding, peer and collective learning and advocacy support to organizations of persons with disabilities in the Global South. 

“I am constantly applying lessons from my disability studies minor,” DeRamo says. “My minor helps me contextualize DRF’s efforts in global disability movements and apply critical frameworks, especially as they relate to intersectionality.”

DeRamo says he would have “absolutely” declared a major in disability studies if it were offered while he was a student. 

“The Disability Studies Program was so important to understanding my own disability identity,” he says. 

Making It a Major

Georgetown students have been a driving force in making the new major a reality. As soon as there was a minor, there was talk about starting a major. 

“The students really initiated that conversation,” says , a professor of English and core faculty in disability studies. “They were so excited by the work they were doing in the minor and saw direct connections to their career paths.” 

Fink also served as the director of the program after Rifkin. When she was director during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fink and other faculty members started thinking about what a disability studies major at Georgetown would look like. 

A formal proposal was drafted under the guidance of Kukla. The final version of the proposal was revised and submitted by Reynolds in 2024 after they became director, and it was approved in early 2025. 

Having a major program allows students to engage more deeply with disability studies than with a minor. It will also help with research possibilities.

“It allows for both more depth and breadth,” Fink says. “You can take more diverse classes, just because they’re more of them, and then research a specific area more deeply.”

Lauren Santoro (C’26) did not know that Georgetown had a Disability Studies Program until she took the Disability, Culture, and the Question of Care First-Year Seminar with Rifkin. But once she did, Santoro knew that she would declare disability studies as a minor as soon as she could, adding it to her other minor in English and major in psychology.

Now, Santoro plans to convert her disability studies minor to a double major with psychology. Santoro says that learning about disabilities in an academic setting has helped her take pride in her identity as a disabled person.

“Going through high school and having chronic illness and disability was really difficult,” Santoro says. “So going into a class where it was kind of like, hey, being disabled isn’t a bad thing … it just felt like I found more of a purpose, and that suddenly my experiences weren’t this tragic story.”