REGISTER HERE

NOTE: This talk was rescheduled from a previous time of Nov 11th

Prior to joining the Coast Guard, Dr. James served with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) as a Team Leader, he then graduated from USCG Boot Camp class Y-149 in 1996. 

CDR James attended New Mexico State University under the Coast Guard’s College Student Pre-Commissioning Initiative (CSPI) program. While at NMSU, he held Internships at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight

Facility and at the National Science Foundation (NSF), and served as a regional Rape Crisis Advocate for Doña Aña county, NM.

CDR James worked as a Project Engineer at the Command and Control Engineering Center (C2CEN) and from there was selected for the Academy Instructor Masters program. 

Dr. James earned a Master’s of Science Degree from Columbia University, and began teaching at the academy in 2004. Dr. James completed a his Doctorate in Plasma Physics at Columbia’s Plasma Physics Lab through Steven’s Institute of Technology in December 2008. 

Since then he has been the PI of the Coast Guard Academy Plasma Lab (CGAPL), Department Equity Officer, Science Lecture Coordinator, Internship Coordinator, Co-founder/Director for CGA’s Science Partnership for Innovation in Learning (Project SPIL), Genesis & Spectrum Council (CGA’s Black and Gay Student Unions) and the Science Department Diversity & Inclusion Officer.

CDR James is a founding member of the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalist’s Organizing Collective, is the co-founder of the New London Freedom School, is a co-founder and Chair of the American Physics Ssocietiy Division of Plasma Physics’s (APS DPP) Diversity Equity and Inclusion Organizing Collective Committee (DEI-OCC), co founder of the Coast Guard Spectrum Affinity Group founding Science Technology and Mathematics Magnet School Board Member, and Member of the Nuclear Energy Advisory Council for the state of CT (currently on leave of absence). Dr. James is currently attached the Air Force Institute of Technology Visiting Faculty Fellow serving in the lives in New London with his three daughters Isis, Yemaya, Sati, son Olorun. His wife Jessica James is a Graduate Student of Divinity at Andover Newton Seminary.

CDR James’ research focus is primarily in laboratory and space based magnetized plasmas, plasma interactions with electromagnetic radiation (with emphasis on high energy lasers), fusion energy, and plasma water treatment.

REGISTER HERE

Mareena Robinson Snowden, PhD is a senior engineer in the National Security Analysis Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Her current research portfolio includes future nuclear weapon systems, nuclear crisis issues, and new technology for surface warfare. Prior to joining JHU APL, Mareena was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where her research focused on nuclear arms control verification, nonproliferation, and modernization.

In 2017-2018, Robinson Snowden served as a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Graduate Fellow (NGFP) in the Office of Major Modernization Programs. This office is responsible for the modernization of warhead systems and ensuring access to the strategic materials used in the U.S. stockpile. Robinson Snowden was awarded the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship Graduate Fellowship (SSGF) in 2012, a four-year fellowship that supported her graduate work in the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy. As an SSGF fellow, she conducted research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she developed computational models to understand radiation interactions generated inside of an open-source warhead design, and conducted experiments to understand the feasibility of detecting these interactions in reality.

Robinson Snowden became the first black woman to earn a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT in 2017, and holds a BS in physics from Florida A&M University. Her story in STEM has been featured in MARVEL Comics, CNBC, BET and other national television, radio and print media. She is a native of Miami, FL and currently resides in Washington DC with her husband and daughter.

Professor Edward Thomas, Jr. is originally from the island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. After graduating from high school in 1985, he went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the Florida Institute of Technology, a Master’s degree in Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Physics at Auburn University. 

In 2000, Dr. Thomas returned to Auburn University

as a faculty member. He is currently a Professor of Physics and is the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Sciences and Mathematics.

Prof. Thomas' research has become centered in basic plasma physics where his group conducts experimental plasma physics research on dusty (complex) plasmas, magnetized plasmas and plasma diagnostic development – with an emphasis on the particle, wave, and energy transport in low temperature plasmas and laboratory simulations of the near-Earth space environment. Most recently, he has led the development of the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment (MDPX) device, a superconducting, 4-Tesla, multi-configuration, collaborative research platform for studying plasmas in which the electron, ion, and charged microparticle components are dominated by the presence of the magnetic field. 

Prof. Thomas is also active in science policy and outreach through his work with the American Physical Society (APS), National Society of Black Physicists, the University Fusion Association, the International Union of Radio Science, and Quality Education for Minorities (QEM). Prof. Thomas has served on numerous advisory committees for NSF, DOE, National Academies of Sciences, European Space Agency, and several research centers in the US, Europe and India. He also serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Plasma Physics, is an elected member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) – Commission H and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the National Society of Black Physicists. He and his wife Wendy have a son that has just completed his Master’s degree and a daughter that has just begun her graduate studies.