Congratulations UNT Spring 2025 Grads!

Amaya Green

Biochemistry

By Cassie Kutev

For Amaya Green, science has always been more than formulas or lab reports. It has been a way to explore questions, pursue truth and ultimately make a meaningful impact. A first-generation college student from Fate, Texas, Amaya chose UNT because of its Tier One research opportunities and its reputation for supporting undergraduates in hands-on scientific work.

“When I saw that undergrads could do research here, I was immediately interested,” she explains. That curiosity led her to major in biochemistry, a field that allowed her to combine her love of biology and chemistry in a program that both challenged and inspired her.

As a student in the Honors College, Amaya took every opportunity to grow beyond the classroom. She is vice president of the UNT student chapter of the American Chemical Society and secretary of Hearts for the Homeless, a student organization that provides health screenings and wellness support at local shelters. “That work has kept me grounded,” she says. “It taught me to listen, to connect with people and to understand what it means to serve.”

She also was a researcher in the toxicology lab of Amie Lund, associate professor of biological sciences and director of UNT’s Advanced Environmental Research Institute, where she found a strong sense of community and collaboration. “We’ve built real relationships in that lab,” Amaya says. “We support each other, and that has made all the difference.”

Her passion for reproductive health research comes from personal experience. Amaya spent her first year of college in pain and uncertainty. “There were no answers, and I felt dismissed at the doctor’s office” she says. As a sophomore, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). That experience inspired her goal of entering UTMB’s MD-PhD Combined Degree Program, where she can become both a physician and a researcher. She hopes to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology while contributing to reproductive health research, especially in areas that remain underfunded or misunderstood. “There's not a lot of literature out there about PCOS and things like that, so I think that that has kind of motivated me to maybe hone in on that and maybe do more reproductive research and things like that in the future.”

Outside of academics, Amaya enjoys reading, watching movies (especially solo trips to the theater) and listening to music. She’s currently reading It’s Not Hysteria by Karen Tang, a book that explores reproductive health and the historical mistreatment of women’s medical concerns. Her love for musical theatre and creative expression has provided an important outlet, helping her maintain balance in a demanding academic environment.

One of her most significant challenges was navigating college as a first-generation student. “I didn’t have a clear roadmap,” she says. “But I figured it out, and now I want to help others do the same.”

That motivation led her to mentorship programs like Navigating the Nest, which helps first-year students adjust to life in the Honors College at UNT. “I think finding someone who’s been in your shoes, or even just someone a little older who’s taken the classes you’re about to take, can make all the difference.” 

As she prepares to walk the stage at graduation, Amaya is proud of what she has accomplished and excited for what lies ahead. She defines success as a life that includes meaningful work, joyful moments and time for personal growth. “I want to practice medicine, lead research and teach. But I also want to enjoy the life I build.”

With a strong foundation in science, a commitment to service and a deep belief in the value of education, Amaya is ready to begin her next chapter — and to continue making a difference wherever she goes.

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Brenda Hill

Applied Arts and Sciences

By Allicia Washington-White 

Few will understand how far Brenda Hill has come in her educational journey when she crosses the stage to receive her bachelor’s degree in May. Her path to graduation is a story rooted in perseverance, which spans states, storms and a spirit to succeed in her academic studies. 

“I’ve always been a person of pure determination,” Brenda says.

Before arriving at UNT, she worked as a certified nursing assistant on the critical care step-down unit at East Jefferson Hospital in her hometown of New Orleans. Just two months shy of earning her associate’s degree in health information management from Delgado Community College, her life was forever changed by the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Everything was lost. 

Although she stayed behind under the assumption the storm would blow over, she also ensured the safety of her three boys, aged 17 and under, by sending them to Beaumont, TX, with a relative. She lost contact with them for two days and would not be reunited with them again until nearly one week later.

“It was a tearful moment when they drove away without me,” she says of the day they said goodbye. “It still makes me emotional.”

Katrina forced her to leave their destroyed home. She packed up all she owned, which was seven work uniforms, and traveled to Beaumont to be reunited with her children. Shortly after, Brenda and her children moved from Beaumont to Plano and found temporary housing for evacuees at the Super 8 Hotel.

Brenda anticipated returning to the Crescent City, but realized she needed to start over completely and restabilize herself in Texas.

“I wanted to go back home to New Orleans, but I had lost everything, and Texas became our new home,” she says. 

The transition was difficult as her children enrolled in new schools and she had a limited support system, but Brenda was finally able to return to work in the medical field. During her first year of employment at Children’s Medical Center Dallas, she met and fell in love with her now husband, Byron.

She and Byron settled with their newly blended family in Carrollton in March 2007. With a little more support in her personal life, Brenda shifted her focus back to her education. She sought to complete her associate's degree at Dallas College Mountain View Campus, but her specific medical billing and coding program was discontinued only months later.

Rather than give up, she deferred her academic goals, continuing to work to save for her education and taking time off from school to attend her children’s extracurricular activities and focus on life in her new state. “The people, the schools and the [Plano] community showed up for us when my children were little,” Brenda says.  

Years passed and the children grew. 

Now an empty nester, Brenda decided it was time to finish her associate’s degree. She found herself at Collin College in the health community program, eager to start the Fall of 2018 semester.

Despite the turmoil of taking classes at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she finally did it. Brenda completed her associate of applied sciences in health information management and a Level 1 billing and coding certificate in 2020. “There was nothing stopping me now; I wanted to keep going,” Brenda says. 

While thinking of her next steps, she attended two UNT commencement ceremonies for her best friend and a friend’s daughter and said to herself, “This is where I’m going to get my bachelor’s degree.”

Brenda landed at UNT at Frisco and found her place in the applied arts and sciences program, perfect for students with substantive work experience. To help finance her education, she took time off between semesters and took fewer classes per semester while working full-time.

Still, she was determined.

At times, she faced imposter syndrome and feelings of uncertainty. “I wasn’t always confident, especially being older than most of my classmates. But I embraced them, and they embraced me.” Brenda credits Katie Hermes, student services coordinator at the Center for Belonging and Engagement and the First-Generation Success Center as someone who made graduating feel possible. 

Her path has never been linear, but she never lost sight of her goals. “I did not think I was going to be able to do it,” she says. “After losing everything, I still found love and reached the finish line!”

Excited to take off a year after graduation to bask in her accomplishment, Brenda plans to return to UNT for a master’s degree. Though unsure of what she will study, Brenda says she’ll continue to live by her mantra: “Aim high and reach beyond the stars!”

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Dheeraj Marthand Machiraju

Data Science

By Lisa Sciortino

Not only is Dheeraj Marthand Machiraju the first in his family to attend college, he’s also the first among them to travel halfway around the world and study abroad.

It was his “hunger for more,” he says, that prompted him in 2023 to leave his hometown of Hyderabad, in Southern India, and attend UNT, where he graduates this spring with a master’s in data science after maintaining a 4.0 GPA over the past four semesters.

Along the way, he also helped UNT’s Division of Student Affairs collect, organize and validate data and run advanced statistical analyses to uncover insights designed to help its team strategize for future programming.

“I’m a very intellectually curious person. I’m curious about a lot of things — how they work, why they work,” says Dheeraj, who earned a bachelor’s in computer science and was working as a software engineer in India when he decided to further his education.

He was impressed with all that UNT’s data science program had to offer — especially in the field of natural language processing, a type of artificial intelligence in which machine learning enables computers to comprehend and communicate with human language. 

“You can literally ask a machine something in plain old language and it understands as if there’s a human present,” he explains. “It’s just this mystery that fascinates me. It’s honestly like a sci-fi movie coming to life.”

When he arrived at UNT, Dheeraj needed a campus job to support himself. In India, he’d had a “side hustle” working as an instructor teaching CrossFit-style classes. Passionate about fitness, he was hired as an instructor and weight room supervisor at the Pohl Recreation Center.

Dheeraj introduced a new class called Functional Flow — a ground-based workout that sees participants stretch, crawl and otherwise move to improve mobility, coordination and strength. It quickly became a popular addition to the rec center’s class schedule.

“Nobody had ever done it before, and they loved it,” says Dheeraj, who taught Functional Flow for a semester and was named the center’s Best Group Fitness Instructor in Spring 2024.

He noticed the rec center collected a considerable amount of data about those using the space through membership applications and card swipes. Dheeraj thought the information could be helpful to staff in scheduling classes, programs and events.

At the Pohl Rec Center, he approached Wendy Comfort, associate director of fitness and memberships, and his mentor, Assistant Director of Fitness Alexis McDonald, about using his data science background to analyze the information. His proposal then caught the attention of the Division of Student Affairs, which requested to learn more about it.In Spring 2024, Dheeraj was hired by Sheila Bustillos, director of assessment for Student Affairs, to the Student Affairs Assessment team, which examines various data — such as student retention rates and demographics. As a data scientist, he assists the division in cultivating student development and helps departments plan, collect and measure the outcomes of their programs.

Being hired onto the Assessment team was “a huge turning point in my life,” says Dheeraj, who is looking forward to a career in data science. “I never thought I would even do something close to this. This is something I dreamed of.”

For a recent project, Dheeraj and the team pulled together five years’ of student data to learn whether participation in student organizations, on-campus employment and other similar programs impact alumni’s post-graduation employment status and pay rates.

Another project he worked on incorporated natural language processing to analyze student assessments of a career-readiness class taught in the Ryan College of Business.

“I used the NLP techniques that I was aware of to do some sentiment analysis on the feedback and tell them, 'These aspects of the class are something students very much like and these are aspects students feel could be better,'” Dheeraj explains.

Much of the qualitative research Dheeraj and the Assessment team conduct relies heavily on survey responses. Rather than manually reviewing those responses, with NLP, the process is automated — reducing the time spent on analysis from days to hours.

“That was fascinating because I never even had the idea of using my natural language processing skills for surveys,” he says. “I just wanted to build projects that could help in day-to-day life.”

In his free time, Dheeraj has participated in several “hackathons.” During the intense contests — which typically are sponsored by universities, large companies and other organizations — competing teams have as little as 24 hours work on solutions to a real-world problems, build complex computer programs or solve software issues.

At HackUTD 2024 — one of the nation’s largest hackathons — Dheeraj took home the Outstanding Skilled Individual award. At last fall’s HackUNT 2024, held at Discovery Park, his team won third place in a challenge sponsored by Fidelity Investments, in which they were tasked with developing a retirement budgeting tool for teachers.  

“It was a long night. You cannot afford to sleep,” he says. “We had to take a lot of hard turns. We had to scrap everything and build it again halfway through. It was fun.”

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Qihang Lu

Master’s in Vocal Performance

By Bess Whitby

As a child, Qihang Lu listened to his grandfather play the erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument dating back to the seventh century. Since a love of music runs in his family, it was no surprise that he also decided to pursue a musical career.

“My grandfather is a professor of erhu in China, so I began learning erhu when I was five years old,” he says. “But when I started university, I realized I had vocal talents as well.”

Before coming to the U.S. to study at UNT, Qihang earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Education at Central China Normal University, one of the top three universities of its kind in the country. In addition to his academic studies, he took pedagogy and performance courses while teaching large classes of students. He also opened a music studio for students pursuing their own music degrees.

Despite his achievements, Qihang knew his educational journey wasn’t over: he wanted to pursue a field that would provide him with plenty of job opportunities. He admired the faculty in UNT’s College of Music, so he applied to the vocal performance master’s program — and was accepted.

“The faculty are so nice and helpful, and Denton is a lovely city,” he says.

Once on campus, Qihang quickly got to work. He studied and practiced as much as possible to ensure his academic success. Living and working in a different country was challenging in unexpected ways; everything from making phone calls to using the internet was a new experience. But Qihang kept moving toward his goals.

“It was a big change for me, but I knew I would be okay,” he says.

Qihang received high praise from faculty and his fellow students at his master’s vocal recital. It wasn’t just any performance: it was his first-ever full recital as a singer. Qihang doesn’t describe the experience as happy or sad. It was more of a full-circle moment in his academic journey.

“It really fulfilled and completed my voice study experience,” he says.

Now that he’s conquered his master’s degree in vocal performance, Qihang is a top applicant for doctoral programs in both the U.S. and Canada. He plans to teach vocal performance at the university level.

“It’s interesting to teach undergraduate students because they’re still young and have so many new ideas and goals,” he says.

But as Qihang prepares for his future, he says one moment in his recent past will stay with him. His master’s recital included a few songs that visibly resonated with his audience.

“I used instruments and sang Chinese folk songs, and everyone was very moved,” he says. “It was a very good moment.”