2026-27 RESEARCH SCHOLARS (COHORT 6)
Lynden Bond, PhD, MSW
Assistant Professor, College of Social Work
Lynden Bond, PhD, MSW is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky College of Social Work. She is a social work researcher focusing on addressing homelessness and improving access to behavioral health care among people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. Informed through her professional social work practice and advocacy experience, Dr. Bond’s research agenda aims to partner with communities in pursuit of improving housing and behavioral health outcomes. Dr. Bond holds a PhD and MSW from the New York University Silver School of Social Work. Prior to joining the faculty at the College of Social Work, she was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute, where she conducted community-engaged, policy-relevant research on homelessness response systems.
Nicole Davis, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing, Gatton College of Business and Economics
Dr. Nicole Davis is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on critical issues related to racial bias, gender bias, stigma, consumer identity, and branding. Nicole is particularly interested in exploring how representation in marketing appeals and consumer response to these depictions influence both consumer and managerial decisions. She is a strong advocate for effective marketing strategies that can enhance consumer well-being and contribute to a better world.
Delvon T. Mattingly, PhD
Assistant Professor, Behavioral Science, College of Medicine
Dr. Mattingly is an assistant professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Behavioral Science and a primary faculty member of the Center for Health, Engagement, and Transformation. He is also a member of the Markey Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program and Co-Lead of the Career Enhancement Core for the Appalachian Tobacco Regulatory Science Team, a Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (AppalTRUST, TCORS 3.0).
Willie F. McBride III, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, College of Medicine
Dr. McBride is a clinical neuropsychologist within the UK College of Medicine Department of Neurology. He evaluates patients who have neurological and psychiatric disorders. He focuses his clinical, scholarly, and service work on leveraging neuropsychological assessment services and resources within medically underserved communities, particularly older adults within the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. These interests broadly include Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia health literacy, promotion of cognitive healthcare resources and brain health, and community outreach. He earned his PhD in clinical psychology from the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology and completed his doctoral internship at the Vanderbilt/VA Internship Consortium. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health service psychology at the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System and then went on to complete his neuropsychology fellowship at the University of Virginia Health System. Dr. McBride is currently a Geriatric Academic Career Awardee through the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Ketrell L. McWhorter, PhD, MBA, ACE-CPT, ACE-FNS
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, College of Public Health
Dr. Ketrell L. McWhorter is an assistant professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health. She is an early-career epidemiologist whose research focuses on sleep health, tobacco exposure, pain, inflammation, and later-life cardiometabolic outcomes among individuals with pancreatic disease, particularly chronic pancreatitis and recurrent acute pancreatitis. Her work emphasizes health disparities, with a specific focus on populations that are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease, including resource-limited communities.
Mary Mohrin, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Toxicology and Cancer Biology, College of Medicine
Mary Mohrin is an assistant professor of toxicology and cancer biology at the University of Kentucky and a member of the Markey Cancer Center’s Molecular and Cellular Oncology Program, where her lab investigates how aging of the hematopoietic system, driven by stem cell-intrinsic changes, altered immune homeostasis, and environmental stressors such as radon and chronic alcohol use, contributes to systemic degeneration, hematologic malignancies, and tissue-specific pathologies, with a particular focus on the retina. Trained at UCSF and UC Berkeley, she has made foundational contributions to understanding how DNA damage responses, replication stress, and mitochondrial–nucleolar stress pathways govern hematopoietic stem cell maintenance and clonal evolution, with work published in journals including Cell Stem Cell, Nature, Science, Cell Reports, and Aging Cell and shaped by a decade of translational research in biotech at Calico and Genentech. Her independent program, supported by an NIGMS COBRE award, an NCI-supported Markey Cancer Center SUPRA pilot grant, and an NIEHS- supported UK-CARES pilot grant, aims to translate these mechanistic insights into hematopoietic stem cell– and immune-centered therapies that preserve tissue function, protect immune-privileged organs such as the retina, and reduce cancer risk across the lifespan.