AUM Faculty & Staff
Directory
Steven Lobello
Professor | College of Sciences
BA, Christian Brothers College, Psychology
MS, Mississippi State University, Clinical Psychology
PhD, University of Southern Mississippi, Counseling Psychology
MSPH, University of Alabama in Birmingham, Epidemiology Education
Bio: Steven LoBello completed his PhD in counseling psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1986. He began his career as a psychologist in clinical practice, specializing in psychological assessment of clinical cases requiring intellectual assessment. He is a licensed psychologist in Alabama. He joined the AUM Psychology faculty in 1989. His initial research program involved statistical issues in I.Q. tests and best practices in teaching test administration and scoring to graduate students.
In 1998, he returned to graduate school at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Attending classes on a part time basis, he earned a master’s degree in epidemiology in 2003. While at UAB, he was fortunate to become affiliated with the Injury Control Research Center as a Senior Scientist, and was principle investigator of a longitudinal study of rehabilitation outcomes. This project was planned and initiated by others many years earlier, and was brought to completion during this grant period. The project was a study of outcomes among individuals with spinal cord, head, and multiple trauma, as well as severe burns. The project was funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Dr. LoBello has an active research lab with graduate students who have a broad range of heath behavior interests. Research topics have included studies of quality of life among people with asthma who use alternative and conventional medicines, influenza vaccination among people with asthma, prevalence of depression among pregnant women, and the relationship of depression to chronic illness. In his research program, Dr. LoBello frequently uses the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data sets. He is a student of using population-based health survey data and epidemiological methods to investigate health behavior research problems.
Ben Okeke
Professor | College of Sciences
Ph.D. (1994): University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
M.S. (1989): University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
B.S. (1985): University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
Professor Okeke is a Distinguished Research Professor of Industrial and Environmental Microbiology in the Department of Biology and Environmental Science. His research interests include: biofuel and co-products, biosensors, bioremediation, enzyme biotechnology, effects of pollutants on microbial communities, indicators of microbiological safety of water and food, and genetic engineering of microbes. He teaches industrial microbiology, environmental microbiology, special topics biotechnology, general microbiology and directed research. Professor Okeke did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Riverside; Gifu University, Japan; and the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Trieste, Italy. Dr. Okeke has 60 research papers in peer reviewed journals, three US patents, two books, numerous conference abstracts and several research grants including a million dollar grant for research on fuel ethanol from biomass. His excellence awards include Alumni Professor, Ida Belle Young Endowed Professorship. He is the founding Director of the Bioprocessing and Biofuel Research Lab (BBRL). Dr. Okeke served as Associate and Assistant Editor for two peer reviewed international journals; the Journal of Environmental Quality and Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology.
Glen Ray
Professor | College of Sciences
B.S., Arkansas State University
M.S., Memphis State University
Ph.D., The University of Memphis
Moses Rivera
Assistant Professor | College of Sciences
Dr. Moses Rivera is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department, College of Sciences.
His research focuses on enhancing the effectiveness of cross-domain teams—especially teams of knowledge-workers—by leveraging the empirical science of industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology.
Dr. Rivera teaches several courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including courses in AUM’s Industrial–Organizational track of the Master of Science in Psychology program. Noteworthy courses include: research methods, statistics, and professional ethics of psychologists.
Ben Rogers
Lab Coordinator | College of Sciences
B.S., Zoology, Auburn University
M.S., Biology, University of Arkansas
Bio: Ben Rogers is a biology lab coordinator for beginning biology labs at AUM. His primary area of interest in biology is birds of prey. He studied the dynamics of a winter bald eagle roost in Arkansas for his master’s degree under the Dr. Douglas James at the University of Arkansas. He is a former zoo keeper, and has also worked for the Peregrine Fund’s aplomado falcon re-introduction project in southeast Texas. Some of his other research work involved Mitchell’s satyr butterfly surveys, salamander body sizes, and sexual dimorphism in red-tailed hawks.
He maintains a strong interest in biology education, along with a fascination for weird insects and fossil hunting.
