UC Irvine professors Nadia Chernyak and Mirian Martinez-Aranda have been named 2025 recipients of the School of Social Sciences Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Research. Funded by the Dean's Leadership Society - a network of supporters and friends committed to the school’s success - each honor carries a $5,000 prize. Read more about their work below, and congratulations!

Nadia Chernyak, Cognitive Sciences
Social Sciences Associate Professor Research Award Recipient

Nadia Chernyak, cognitive sciences, is this year’s recipient of the Social Sciences Associate Professor Research Award. The award was established in 2012 to recognize research excellence and project proposals by newly tenured faculty in social sciences.

Chernyak studies how children learn about their social world, and how the information they gain translates into behaviors toward others. She particularly looks at how early experiences contribute to our understanding of choice, and our morals and generosity toward others.

With funding from the research award, she's working with graduate student Isabel Herrera Guevara and undergrad Lana Abad to investigate preferred types of leadership systems and how individual, developmental, and cultural differences influence those preferences.

Other work has been funded by the John Templeton Foundation, National Academy of Education, National Science Foundation, and American Psychological Association, among others.

Her findings – which have been popular in news media – have been published in academic journals including Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Cognitive Development, the Journal of Cognition and Development, Psychological Science, Behavioral and Brain Science, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and others.

Chernyak received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology at Cornell University where she also earned her B.A. in English and psychology. She spent time in postdoctoral researcher positions at Boston College, Boston University, Brown University and the Harvard Graduate School of Education before joining the UCI Department of Cognitive Sciences in 2018.

Mirian Martinez-Aranda, Sociology
Social Sciences Assistant Professor Research Award Recipient

Mirian Martinez-Aranda, sociology, is the Social Sciences Assistant Professor Research Award recipient. Established in 2005, the honor recognizes research excellence accompanied by a strong project proposal from a junior faculty member in social sciences. Her work examines the social, material, and health consequences of immigration detention and surveillance on immigrants, families, and communities. Using qualitative methods, she looks at how immigration status is used by the state to stratify, surveil, and exclude immigrants, their families, and their communities. Her current research focuses on how surveillance technologies such as GPS monitoring and facial recognition apps are employed by immigration enforcement to impact immigrants and their families’ well-being. She also studies how immigration detention is detrimental to family cohesion.

The goal of her newly funded project is to qualitatively examine how immigrants facing deportation navigate the U.S. immigration court system without legal representation, and how communities respond to systemic barriers to justice. “Specifically, I will investigate how children of immigrants, and immigrants themselves, develop and provide legal advocacy for those facing deportation without legal representation,” she says. She’s also currently working on a book project, which traces the experiences of immigrants during and after detention. The work highlights how immigration enforcement policies shape their journeys through family reunification, community incorporation, life under ICE surveillance, and navigating the immigration court system.

Previous findings, funded by the National Science Foundation and several institutional fellowships, have been published in Law & Society Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Social Problems, Immigration Detention and Social Harm, Routledge Edited Collection and in the American Behavioral Scientist journal.

Martinez-Aranda earned her bachelor’s in Latin American studies and film studies at UC Berkeley, and her master’s and Ph.D. in sociology at UCLA. She was a visiting scholar in the Global Migration Center and a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, both at UC Davis, before joining the UCI Department of Sociology in fall 2023.