Six UNM faculty promoted to distinguished professors
July 21, 2026
Each year, The University of New Mexico selects a handful of professors to be honored with the highest faculty title the University bestows — distinguished professor.
Announced jointly by the UNM Office of Academic Affairs in collaboration with the Health Sciences Center Office of Faculty Academic Affairs, the title of distinguished professor is reserved for academics who “have demonstrated outstanding achievements and are nationally and internationally renowned as scholars,” according to the UNM Faculty Handbook.
This year, six academics from across disciplines — ranging from DNA repair to economics — have been chosen for this honor.
The 2026 distinguished professors are Robert Berrens, Melanie Moses, Michelle Ozbun, Tassy Parker, Alan Tomkinson and Mark Unruh.
Information about each honoree’s scholarship and accomplishments is listed below:
Melanie Moses, a professor in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Engineering, established an internationally recognized, interdisciplinary program that has pioneered research in biologically inspired computation, swarm robotics, computational immunology and trustworthy AI. This research has advanced understanding of how decentralized systems in computation and biology adapt to the environment and scale to large sizes. Moses’s research has shaped both theoretical foundations and practical applications of distributed computational and biological systems. As principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on over $20 million in research funding from National Science Foundation, NASA, DARPA, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, and industry partners, she has built sustained research capacity for UNM and the state of New Mexico. In addition, Moses has been a leader in the development of inclusive education programs, including NASA Swarmathon, which has engaged more than 1,500 students from minority-serving institutions in a national robotics competition; and New Mexico CS for All, which has trained dozens of teachers who have taught thousands of high school students, most from underrepresented groups, through a dual-credit computer science course that was the first computer science course to count toward New Mexico’s natural science course requirement.
