2021 Panelist Details
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Opening Remarks and Moderators
Kathryn Boor, Dean and Vice Provost for Graduate Education
Opening Remarks
Kathryn J. Boor is the Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education at Cornell University. Dr. Boor is responsible for oversight of all Cornell University Graduate School administrative offices, serves as the institutional advocate for all graduate students, and oversees all research M.S. and Ph.D. programs across Cornell University as well as program assessment of graduate fields of study. Previously, Dr. Boor served as the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University (July 1, 2010 – September 30, 2020).
Dr. Boor’s research focuses on identifying biological factors that affect transmission of bacteria in food systems, from farm to table. She established the Food Safety Laboratory at Cornell University; her group has published more than 175 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Among other discoveries, her team identified seminal evidence linking bacterial environmental stress response with virulence gene expression in the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. Dr. Boor has served as major advisor for 27 graduate students and as minor advisor for an additional 22. She is a member of the graduate fields of food science and microbiology.
Dr. Boor earned a B.S. in food science from Cornell University, a M.S. in food science from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of California, Davis. She joined the Cornell food science department as assistant professor in 1994, became its first tenured female faculty member in 2000, and led as department chair from 2007-2010. Dr. Boor serves on the Board of Directors for Seneca Foods Corporation, the United States-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development (BARD) Fund, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). She serves on the Science Board for the US Food and Drug Administration and on the New York State Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council, and the New York State Council on Hunger and Food Policy.
Dr. Boor is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the International Academy of Food Science and Technology, the Institute of Food Technologists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Dairy Science Association. She received an honorary doctorate from Harper Adams University in the United Kingdom in 2016 and was named a 2018 Woman of Distinction by the New York State Senate.
Twitter: @CornellGradDean
Sara Xayarath Hernández, Graduate School Associate Dean for Inclusion & Student Engagement
Welcome and Land Acknowledgement, Panel Moderator, Introduction of Keynote Speaker
Sara Xayarath Hernández serves as the Associate Dean for Inclusion & Student Engagement for the Graduate School at Cornell University, where she is part of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education's core leadership team, providing vision and strategic management for Graduate School initiatives and policies related to diversity, inclusion, access, and equity. She also serves as a member of the Cornell University Academic Diversity Council led by the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. Hernández is the PI for an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded grant focused on improving admissions and mentoring practices for graduate students within the Sloan University Centers for Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) and Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership communities. She is a co-PI for the Cornell Sloan UCEM Program, and serves on the Sloan UCEM Community Advisory Committee. Hernández is a co-PI for Cornell’s NSF-funded Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Program, and has served as a Co-PI for NSF-funded LSAMP, PAESMEM, and STEP “Graduate 10K+” awards. Hernández is also the chair of the Diversity and Inclusiveness Advisory Committee for the Council of Graduate Schools and a member of the NSF AGEP Advisory Committee for the Southern Regional Education Board, External Advisory Board for the NSF AGEP Research Universities Alliance, and NSF ADVANCE Advisory Committee for the Social Science Research Council. Hernández is a first-generation college student holding a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology from Ohio Wesleyan University and a Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University. Navigating life in partnership with her husband and keeping up with their young daughter bring her great joy and keep her grounded.
Ms. Xayarath Hernandez's Website
Facebook: http://facebook.com/cornell.oise
Twitter: @CornellOISE
Colleen McLinn, Executive Director for Future Faculty and Academic Careers
Panel Moderator
Colleen McLinn directs Future Faculty and Academic Careers programs, a Cornell University Graduate School initiative involving collaboration with the Center for Teaching Innovation and other units serving graduate students and postdocs. As Executive Director for Future Faculty and Academic Careers programs at Cornell, she prepares graduate students and postdocs for successful academic careers through development of teaching, research mentorship and other key skills. She coordinates Cornell’s participation in the CIRTL CIRTL Network, a group of 40 research universities collaboratively offering workshops and courses on academic career preparation topics and three important themes for higher education: teaching as research, learning communities, and learning through diversity. Colleen’s interests include helping graduate students and postdocs gain experience with strategies for innovative and evidence-based teaching and mentoring, and contributing to projects that diversify the professoriate. She teaches classes and workshops for the CIRTL Network and Cornell University audiences, including ALS 6014: Theater Techniques for Advancing Teaching and Public Speaking. She is also a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate grant project (Award No. 1647094). Until mid-2020, she served on and chaired the CIRTL Cross-Network Operations Group, which is responsible for all Network programming aimed at graduate students and postdocs. Dr. McLinn received a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from University of Minnesota and previously served as an extension associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where she developed online and print curriculum materials and played a leadership role in grant-funded science education efforts.
Twitter: @CUFutureFaculty
Panel 1: Exploring Your Institutional Fit
Moderator: Dr. Colleen McLinn, Graduate School Executive Director of Future Faculty and Academic Careers, Cornell University
Panelists:
Dr. David Cortez (Cornell PhD, Government), Assistant Professor of Political Science, Notre Dame University
David Cortez is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latinx Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His research centers on ethnic and racial identity with particular focus on intersectional and situational identity salience. His current book project explores the emergence of a disproportionately-Latinx immigration law enforcement workforce as a metaphor for the minority experience in the United States. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, including interviews with and observations of more than one-hundred Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across Texas, Arizona, and California, his research engages questions of belonging, obligation, and liminality to reveal the careful negotiation of cross-cutting social group memberships of Latinx immigration agents caught between two worlds: the police and the policed. Prof. Cortez is an alumnus of the American Political Science Association Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Political Science Association Minority Fellowship Program, and published in the Annual Review of Sociology and Political Research Quarterly.
Twitter: @_fronteras_
Dr. Jakina Debnam Guzman (Cornell PhD, Applied Economics), Assistant Professor of Economics, Amherst College
Jakina Debnam Guzman is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Debnam Guzman is a behavioral economist working to understand the impact of economic policies and events on human thriving, where human thriving is broadly defined. Prior to joining Amherst College in 2018, Debnam Guzman earned her Ph.D. in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, and her A.B. in Applied Mathematics at Brown University.
Dr. Maria Mercedes Franco (Cornell PhD, Applied Mathematics), Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Queensborough Community College – The City University of New York
Dr. Maria Mercedes Franco is Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Queensborough Community College –The City University of New York. She has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. She also holds a M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University and a B.S. in Mathematics from Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia). Dr. Franco is a very committed educator, who for nearly 30 years has taught college and high school students at institutions in Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the United States. From giving lectures to organizing workshops to collaborating in undergraduate research programs, Dr. Franco is actively involved in activities that seek to increase the number of women and minorities in STEM disciplines, increase public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics & STEM, and address issues relevant to social justice. She is the author of a forthcoming book chapter entitled “Examining Human Rights through the Lens of Statistics”, to appear in Mathematics for Social Justice: Perspectives and Resources for the College Classroom – Vol II: Focusing on Quantitative Reasoning and Statistics (Mathematics Association of America Press).
At Queensborough, Dr. Franco has worked on a wide range of initiatives. From 2006 to 2009, she was co-PI and Associate Project Director for a grant-funded initiative that led to the establishment and institutionalization of Service-Learning as a high impact practice at the college. From Spring 2014 to Summer 2016, Dr. Franco served as the college’s Coordinator for Undergraduate Research and in that capacity she co-led institutional efforts that established undergraduate research as a high-impact practice and launched the research-in-the-classroom modality on campus. At the department level, Dr. Franco led efforts to establish two research courses in mathematics and helped establish the OUR SUN Award for students engaged in undergraduate research.
Outside of her institution, Dr. Franco holds several leadership and advisory roles in national programs. She is co-PI and co-Director of MSRI-UP, the NSF-REU program hosted at the internationally renowned Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California. And she is co-PI and co-Director of the NSF-funded Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM). Although these programs differ in nature and structure, both fund undergraduate research opportunities for students from all types of institutions and both address issues of underrepresentation in the mathematical sciences. Additional efforts to address issues of underrepresentation are channeled by Dr. Franco through participation in activities linked to the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans (SACNAS). In addition, Dr. Franco is a member of the Mathematics Advisory Group for Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics (TPSE Math). Sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and National Science Foundation (NSF), TPSE Math seeks to advance mathematics education reform efforts across the nation and across institutions (from 2-year colleges to research universities).
Dr. Hannah Ryan (Cornell PhD, History of Art), Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, St. Olaf College
Hannah Ryan, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Art History at St. Olaf College, where she teaches modern and contemporary art history. Her research interests lie at the intersection of feminism, decoloniality, consumption, and labor. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from Cornell University where she researched human milk in transatlantic visual culture. She is currently working on her first book, “Liquid Gold: Lactation as Labor and Milk as Commodity in Transatlantic Visual Culture,” which has been supported by many grants and fellowships including an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship. Ryan’s research has appeared in Frontiers: The Journal of Women’s Studies, and several edited volumes including the forthcoming Designing Motherhood, published by MIT Press.
Dr. Aaron Thomas, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Director of Indigenous Research and STEM Education (IRSE), University of Montana
Dr. Thomas works closely with Native K-12, undergraduate and graduate students while establishing relationships with the tribal colleges and reservation communities in Montana in working towards improving Native STEM education and STEM research collaborations. He has established a number of activities that involve Native American students from the reservations in Montana while also providing workshops for faculty from the tribal colleges. He currently chairs the President’s Native American Advisory Council and started the Montana American Indians in Math and Science program. In addition, his other research involves the study of gas separations on the macroscale and biological separations (DNA) on the microscale for lab-on-a-chip work. Before transferring to the University of Montana in January 2013, Dr. Thomas was an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Idaho for 11 years. He also was the director of the Idaho Space Grant Consortium and NASA EPSCoR during his time there.
Panel 2: Faculty and Leadership Pathways at Minority-Serving Institutions
Moderator: Sara Xayarath Hernández (Cornell MRP, City and Regional Planning), Graduate School Associate Dean for Inclusion & Student Engagement, Cornell University
Panelists:
Dr. Jessica Black, Director, Center for Indigenous Health, Culture & Environment, and Chair, Department of Natural Science, Heritage University
Jessica L. Black is the Director of the Center for Indigenous Health, Culture & the Environment (CIHCE), a Professor of Environmental Science and Studies, and the Chair of the Science Department at Heritage University. Jessica earned a B.A. in Geology from Wellesley College, a B.S. in Geography from the University of St Andrews, a M.S. in Quaternary Studies from the University of Maine, and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado. In her professional career, Jessica has focused her efforts towards the overall goal of supporting diverse undergraduate students in STEM to completion of their degrees so they can transition to graduate programs and the STEM workforce, ultimately diversifying the professoriate and strengthening rural and tribal communities with skilled indigenous candidates. Jessica continues to work with her colleagues at Heritage University to infuse the B.S. Environmental Science and B.A. Environmental Studies degree programs with culturally responsive curricula, respectfully intertwining Traditional Ecological Knowledge, intergenerational learning, and experiential learning methodologies. In her international programs, Jessica works to promote sustainable, culturally vibrant communities, building global partnerships to empower indigenous peoples. She is currently working with the Ngäbe Bugle of Panama, the All Nations LSAMP CRIRE program, and Engineers Without Borders to provide opportunities for global indigenous exchange between STEM students and indigenous communities in Panama and Costa Rica.
Dr. Cristóbal Rodriguez, Associate Dean of Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
“We have a great responsibility to connect the dots from our work in leadership and policy through research, teaching, and service, in order to improve opportunity and equity for all.” -Cristóbal Rodríguez
Dr. Cristóbal Rodríguez is the Associate Dean of Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. Being born and raised in the Texas Borderlands of El Paso under hard-working immigrant parents from Mexico, and studying in Germany as a U.S. Congress-German Bundestag scholar has shaped the world views and research of Dr. Rodríguez, along with his Ph.D. studies in Education Policy and Planning with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. As such Dr. Rodríguez' works and collaborations are published in the Journal of Latinos and Education, Harvard Journal of African American Policy, Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, Equity & Excellence in Education, Association of Mexican American Educators Journal and the International Journal for Qualitative Studies in Education, and has a forthcoming special issue collaboration as guest editors in Educational Studies focused on coalition and solidarity building in policy advocacy for equity for all. In 2018 with co-editors Melissa A. Martinez and Fernando Valle, they published a first on: Latino Educational Leadership: Serving Latino Communities and Preparing Latinx Leaders Across the P-20 Pipeline. More importantly, Dr. Rodríguez provided an expert report/testimony on equity and achievement in the educational opportunity case Martinez v. New Mexico, conjoined with Yazzie v. NM., and recently contracted on to another finance case on Bilingual Education in Tennessee.
In 2016 Dr. Rodríguez was recognized with the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Faculty Honors and was most recently honored as the 2019 José A. Cárdenas School Finance Fellow with the Intercultural Development Research Association to collaborate on school finance, equity, and college readiness for Black and Latina/o/x students. He serves as the Chair of the Charles H. Thompson Lecture-Colloquium Committee in the School of Education at Howard University, which annually highlights nationally recognized scholars in the education of Black students in coordination with the Journal of Negro Education. Dr. Rodríguez is always happy to serve, as he serves and leads on multiple national education committees, boards and organizations in advocating for educational equity for all students. Prior to his newly appointed role, Dr. Rodríguez spent 5 years as an Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic Serving Institution and his undergraduate and master’s degree alma mater; with an additional 7 blessed years thereafter at Howard University in Washington, DC, a top Historically Black College/University, as an Associate Professor and as the Director of Graduate Studies of the School of Education.
Dr. Abel Valenzuela Jr., Professor of Chicano & Central American Studies, Labor Studies, and Urban Planning, and Director of UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA
Abel Valenzuela Jr. is Professor of Chicano and Central American Studies, Urban Planning, and Labor Studies. He is also Director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. In 2017, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Immigration Policy. Professor Valenzuela is one of the leading national experts on day labor (itinerant workers) and has published numerous articles and technical reports on the subject. His research interests include precarious labor markets, worker centers, immigrant workers, and Los Angeles. His academic base is urban sociology, planning, and labor studies. In addition to the topic of day labor, he has published numerous articles on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality, including co-editing (with Lawrence Bobo, Melvin Oliver, and Jim Johnson) Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2000, and Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence (with Ramiro Martinez Jr.). He has also published in American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Annual Review of Sociology, New England Journal of Public Policy, Working USA: a Journal of Labor and Society, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, and Regional Studies. Dr. Valenzuela earned his A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.C.P. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Venice with his wife and three sons.
Twitter: @AValenzuelaJr
Dr. Dana Williams, Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of African American Literature, Howard University
Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. Prior to being appointed Dean in 2021, she served as Chair of English at Howard University for nine years. In recent years, she has served as chair of the Executive Committee of the African American Forum of the Modern Languages Association, president of the College Language Association (the oldest and largest professional organization in the US for faculty of color who teach languages and literature), and president of the Association of Departments of English. She currently serves as president of the Toni Morrison Society and as a member of the Executive Council of the MLA. In 2016, she was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as a member of the National Humanities Council. In addition to her work at Howard, she has held faculty positions at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL as a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow; and Duke University, as a faculty fellow of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Concurrent Panels: Establishing Your Scholarship and Research Agenda as a New Faculty Member
3a: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Disciplines
Moderator: Dr. Colleen McLinn, Graduate School Executive Director of Future Faculty and Academic Careers, Cornell University
Panelists:
Dr. Anthony Burrow, Associate Professor of Human Development and Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Cornell University
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development, and director of the Purpose and Identity Processes Laboratory. I also serve as a Provost's Fellow for Public Engagement. I received my B.A. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and my Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from Florida International University. I received my postdoctoral training within the Multicultural Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame. I am also director of PRYDE (the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement). The aim of PRYDE is to link science and service in innovative ways by involving 4-H communities in basic and applied research to promote positive youth development.
My research follows two paths. The first investigates why having a sense of self-direction – or purpose in life – serves as a psychological resource for those who cultivate it. Specifically, I conduct studies testing the extent to which purpose (a) contributes to positive adjustment and (b) serves as a source of protection in the face of stress and challenge. A second path examines how notions of race are incorporated into one’s sense of self (i.e., racial identification) and potentially shape perceptions of everyday encounters. My work in this area has focused on the psychological adjustment of ethnic minorities and examines (a) how race-related experiences are related to adjustment and (b) whether racial identity might either amplify or lessen the impact of these experiences. I believe the importance of this work lies in the potential to identify sources of resilience capable of improving the well-being of vulnerable and often marginalized populations.
Dr. Honey Crawford (Cornell PhD, Performing and Media Studies), Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Chicago
Honey Crawford is a scholar/practitioner of theatre and performance studies. Her research interests include global feminisms, public spectacle, and protest. She specializes in Black diasporic performance, exploring intersections between ritual and self-making through a repertoire that includes carnival, media activism, radical theatre, and the performance of everyday life. She earned her MFA in creative writing at California Institute of the Arts and her PhD in theatre studies from Cornell University where she was also a New York Public Humanities Fellow. Honey is presently a Harper-Schmidt Collegiate Fellow with the Society of Fellows in Liberal Arts, and a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Ozias Moore (Cornell PhD, Human Resource Studies), Assistant Professor of Management, Lehigh University
Ozias A. Moore, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business at Lehigh University. He recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the Management Department for the 2019-2020 academic year. He received his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Human Resource Studies from Cornell University.
Dr. Moore’s’ research spans areas in organizational behavior and human resource management. His major research interests focus on team and multi-team effectiveness. He is particularly interested in the multi-level effects of multiple team membership on team processes, emergent states, and team outcomes. His secondary area of research, which shifts from the team to individual processes and outcomes, focuses on the effects of individual differences that affect perceptions, judgments, and performance. He has published his work in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Small Group Research and the Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology.
Dr. Moore teaches courses in Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Work Groups and Teams to upper-level undergraduate students. He was a recent recipient of the 2018 Lehigh University College of Business Teaching Excellence Award and named among the Poets & Quants’ 2018 Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors. In 2016, he was awarded the Cornell University Provost Fellowship and the Lee Hakel Scholarship by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. More recently, in 2018 his research was funded by a grant from the U.S. Air Force. He is an active member of and regularly presents at the Academy of Management (Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Divisions), Society for Industrial and Organizational, and the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research. He is also on the editorial review board of the Journal of Management Studies. Prior to his years in academia, Dr. Moore’s work experience was inclusive of key management and executive-level positions at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, IBM Corporation, American Express, and Pfizer, Inc. He is also a PMI (Project Management Institute) certified PMP® (Project Management Professional).
Dr. Nancy Quintanilla (Cornell PhD, English), Assistant Professor, Cal Poly Pomona
Nancy Quintanilla is an Assistant Professor of English and Modern Languages at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She received her PhD in English from Cornell University where she specialized in U.S. Latino/a Literature with an interdisciplinary focus on diaspora, gender, and Central American studies. She is originally from Los Angeles, CA and has a BA from the University of California, Irvine in English and Global Cultures.
Nancy has published book reviews and peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano/a Studies, and Label Me Latina/o. At Cal Pomona, she teaches ethnic literature courses ranging from Intro to Multicultural Literature in the U.S. to Hemispheric American Literature, and is very active with Latino/a/x student services.
3b: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Disciplines
Moderator: Sara Xayarath Hernández (Cornell MRP, City and Regional Planning), Graduate School Associate Dean for Inclusion & Student Engagement, Cornell University
Panelists:
Dr. Cédric Feschotte, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University
Cédric Feschotte, Ph.D. is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University. His laboratory studies the evolution and biological impact of mobile genetic elements and endogenous viruses in a wide range of eukaryotes, including humans. Dr. Feschotte obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toulouse, France in 1996 and completed his doctoral studies in 2001 for the University of Paris, working on mosquito transposable elements with Prof. Claude Mouchès. From 2000 to 2004, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Susan Wessler at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA where he investigated the origin and amplification mechanism of plant transposons. He launched his independent laboratory in 2004 as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. He then joined the University of Utah School of Medicine in 2012 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Genetics, where he was promoted to Professor in 2016. In 2017, Dr. Feschotte relocated his laboratory to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University. He received the Empire Innovation Award from the State of New York in 2017 and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019.
Twitter: @CedricFeschotte
Dr. Emilia Huerta-Sanchez (Cornell PhD, Applied Math), Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University
Emilia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a member of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology (CCMB) at Brown University. She completed her PhD in Applied Mathematics with Rick Durrett and Carlos Bustamante at Cornell University. Her postdoc was at the University of California Berkeley in the Departments of Statistics and Integrative Biology where she worked with Rasmus Nielsen. Before moving to Brown University, she was a faculty member at the University of California Merced.
Dr. Jamol Pender, Assistant Professor, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University
Jamol Pender is an Associate Professor of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2013 where he was advised by Dr. William Massey. He joined Cornell University in 2015, and serves as a Faculty Fellow in the Townhouse Residence Halls. Jamol is a recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, MIF Career Award, and several teaching and advising awards, including the Sonny Yau Award for teaching excellence, James and Marsha McCormick Award for advising excellence, and the Zellman Warhaft Commitment to Diversity Award. Jamol's research focuses on how to disseminate information to customers in queues and how this information affects the underlying dynamics in these queues. He is very interested in the interplay between stochastic processes, simulation, and non-linear dynamics. Jamol is heavily involved in the Applied Probability Society of INFORMS, where he served as the INFORMS APS 2019 conference co-chair.
Twitter: @jamolpender
Dr. Elizabeth Wayne (Cornell PhD, Biomedical Engineering), Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Elizabeth Wayne is a TED Fellow and Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Wayne received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and Moelis Access Science Scholar. Dr. Wayne continued her education at Cornell University, where her research on the role of immune cells in cancer progression and their potential as drug delivery carriers was supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences in Oncology Network and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2016, Dr. Wayne earned her PhD in biomedical engineering where her work in immune cell-mediated drug delivery resulted in several publications and a technology patent. Afterwards, she completed a National Cancer Institute Cancer Nanotechnology Training Program Postdoctoral Fellow in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Wayne’s current research is at the interface of macrophage biology and biomaterials where her lab develops strategies to enhance therapeutics delivery and diagnostics tools.
Dr. Wayne has developed a public scholar platform to increase knowledge of immunotherapies and to discuss issues related to underrepresented minorities in science. Her work has appeared in TED Talks, PBS New Hour Brief but Spectacular, Aspen Ideas Health, Nature Medicine, Nature Careers, The LA Times, and Bust Magazine.
Twitter: @lizwaynephd