Speakers

Dr. Lisa M. Jones is the Chancellor’s Associate Endowed Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California San Diego. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Georgia State University. She received postdoctoral training in structural virology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and in MS-based protein footprinting at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is focused on extending the protein footprinting method fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP) coupled with mass spectrometry into complex model systems. Her lab has extended the method for in-cell analysis to provide structural information across the proteome. She has further developed the method for in vivo analysis in C. elegans, an animal model for human disease. Her lab aims to understand the biological causes of health disparities in cancer and other diseases. She also has a passion for increasing diversity in STEM and participates in several outreach initiatives to achieve this.

Adjeoda is a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Insitute of Technology in the Agapie Group. He completed a B.A. in Chemistry and Mathematics at Amherst College in 2022. His research background is in the inorganic synthesis of discrete organometallic complexes, with applications as catalysts for the synthesis of degradable polymers. His research interests lie broadly in catalysis, from the perspective of chemical synthesis for tuning catalytic systems.

Dr. Charles D. Norton is the Deputy Chief Technologist at NASA JPL/Caltech responsible for JPL’s technology strategic planning, research, and infusion into flight missions. He has led and performed research spanning high-performance computing, advanced information systems technology, and small satellite science and technology mission development. 

Dr. Norton has expertise in electrical engineering and computational science, having developed and managed multiple SmallSat flight projects for NASA. He has co-authored numerous National Academies reports on remote sensing with small satellites and is a recipient of numerous awards for new technology and innovation, including the JPL Lew Allen Award, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the NASA Outstanding Public Leadership Medal. He is also an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.

Dr. Stacey Finley is holder of the Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professorship at the University of Southern California. She is Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Quantitative & Computational Biology. Dr. Finley received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida A&M University and obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. She completed postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Finley joined the faculty at USC in 2013, and she leads the Computational Systems Biology Laboratory. Dr. Finley has a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and she is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Finley is also a standing member of the MABS Study Section at NIH. Her research has been supported by grants from the NSF, NIH, and American Cancer Society.

Kwabena Boahen is a Professor of Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering, and by courtesy Computer Science at Stanford University; an investigator in Stanford’s Bio-X Institute, System X Alliance, and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute; and the founding director of Stanford’s Brains in Silicon Lab. His group models the nervous system computationally to elucidate principles of neural design at the cellular, circuit, and systems levels; and synthesizes neuromorphic electronic systems that scale energy-use with size as efficiently as the brain does. His interest in neural networks developed soon after he left his native Ghana to pursue undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1985. He went on to earn a doctorate in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology in 1997. From 1997 to 2005 he was on the faculty of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, where he was the inaugural holder of the Skirkanich Term Junior Chair. 

Dr. Tracy Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree from UCSD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley.  She was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Dr. Johnson began her first faculty position at UCSD in and moved to UCLA to join the faculty in 2013. In 2020, Dr. Johnson was appointed Dean of Life Sciences at UCLA. Her research lab laboratory focuses on understanding mechanisms of gene regulation, particularly RNA splicing, chromatin modification and the intersection between these reactions.

In addition to her activities at UCLA, Dr. Johnson plays a leadership role in a number of professional societies. She is the current President of the Genetics Society of America. She has served on the RNA Society Board of Directors, the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Advisors, and as the chair of the Molecular Genetics NIH study section. She is currently on the Executive Board for the Society of HHMI Professors and recently served as its chair. Dr. Johnson is a trustee of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Dr. Johnson is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and in 2013 was named of the Top 20 Women Professors in California. In 2022 she received the Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

To this end, Dr. Johnson has been actively involved in a number of education initiatives to support the development of students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, including the HHMI Pathways to Success program, which fosters academic success for students, in part by early exposure to research. In 2017, Dr. Johnson received the 2017 Academic Senate Award for Career Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and in 2018 she received the Life Sciences Award for Excellence in Promoting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.

Alyssa Donawa is a Ph.D. student in the Network Reconnaissance (NetRecon) lab at the University of Southern California. Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, she received her B.S. in Computer Science from San Diego State University and her M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky. Alyssa’s research interest is driven by her desire to use technology to help address health disparities in underserved communities. Her research centers around the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), user interface (UI)/user experience (UX) design, and gamification strategies for attracting and retaining users in medical applications. Alyssa builds mobile applications for medically underserved demographics who may live in sparse and intermittently connected communities and might not reap the same benefits from remote patient technology as their well-connected counterparts. For example, rural versus urban communities. 

Favour Nerrise (she/her) is a third-year Electrical Engineering Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. Her doctoral research is supported by the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, EDGE Fellowship, NeuroTech Training Program Fellowship, Human-Centered AI (HAI) Fellowship, and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Fellowship. She holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science and minors in Arabic and Global Engineering Leadership from the

University of Maryland, College Park (Go Terps!). At Stanford University, she serves as President of the Graduate Students in Electrical Engineering committee, as a committee member of the Electrical Engineering Culture, Equity, and Inclusion committee, and as a committee member of the School of Engineering’s Engineering Students for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She is also a Peer Academic Coach for the Center of Teaching & Learning, and an officer in the Black Graduate Students Association and the Black Engineering Graduate Students Association.

Her current research focus is in using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques like geometric deep learning and computer vision to identify data-driven digital biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders associated with aging and movement. 

Favour is dedicated to building communities, teaching, and leadership engineering. She has been a member and leader of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) for 14+ years, and her efforts have been featured in the CNBC “Ready, Set, Grow” campaign, Atlanta Black Star magazine, NASDAQ x Spiffy Spotlight, Stanford Libraries, Diversity in STEAM magazine, and the Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine. She is currently concluding her term as the National Chairperson Emeritus for NSBE, having previously served as National Chairperson and various other leadership roles. Favour has traveled to 24+ countries and speaks 5 languages. In her spare time, Favour loves going to Stanford athletics home games, Bay area sports games, speed reading science fiction and fantasy books, cooking varied cuisines, trying new outdoor sports, and listening to Dutch hip hop. Favour can be reached at fnerrise@stanford.edu or be connected with on LinkedIn.

Obumneme Godson Osele (he/him) is a 3rd year Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at Stanford University. His research interests include developing cost-efficient robots exploiting under-actuated, reconfigurable, and soft robotic designs outfitted with innovative sensors to aid human-robot collaboration. Additional research interests include translating cost-efficient robots into low-resource settings as well as expanding the accessibility of robotics technology and curricula. He is a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, EDGE Fellow, GEM Associate Fellow, SystemX Robotics DEI Fellow and a Stanford RAISE Fellow. He also holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University. 

Ronald A. Lopez is an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Immediately following high school, Ronald attended Los Angeles Pierce College, a local community college, where he received an A.A. in STEM in 2013. That same year, he transferred to UCLA, where he received a B.S. in Astrophysics in 2015. For the next two years, he took time off from school to conduct research in exoplanets and astronomical instrumentation. It was during this time that he realized his love for building instruments aimed at the search for exoplanets. In 2017, he applied to graduate school and was once again admitted to UCLA, where he received the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship. During this period, he dedicated much of his time to outreach, diversity, equity, and inclusion as a planetarium coordinator and graduate student representative to the faculty. His graduate research focused on the study of directly-imaged debris disks and near-infrared instrumentation, and in 2023, he graduated with his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Today, Ronald is a postdoc at UCSB working on the development of an MKID high-resolution multi-object spectrograph testbed. For this project, he uses the energy-resolving properties of superconducting detectors to simplify the design of typical high-resolution spectrographs. In doing so, a future MKID HRMOS instrument will be able to take high-resolution spectra of many objects at once without the need for the commonly used, large, and expensive detector arrays.

Jordan’s research broadly studies facets of the Earth system such as clouds and ocean currents. He works on representing mixed-phase clouds (clouds that contain both liquid and ice) in climate models by constructing simple parameterizations of cloud processes and calibrating them with observational data. Accurately representing these clouds is essential for assessing climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, He uses ocean current observations to search for observational evidence of sub-mesoscale (very small scale) energy transfer that shapes heat and nutrient movement in the surface ocean.  Jordan was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and is now a 5th year graduate student working with Professor Tapio Schneider in Environmental Science and Engineering.­

John Dabiri is the Centennial Chair Professor at Caltech, with appointments in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT) and Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on unsteady fluid mechanics and flow physics, with particular emphasis on topics relevant to biology, energy, and the environment. Current interests include biological fluid dynamics in the ocean, next-generation wind energy, and development of new experimental methods. Dabiri is a MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the American Physical Society as well as the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Other honors include the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation, the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award for Aquatic Sciences, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, and being named one of MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35" as well as one of Popular Science's "Brilliant 10."

Dabiri serves on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the Energy Secretary's Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), the Board of Directors of NVIDIA Corporation, and the Board of Trustees of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. He previously served as Chair of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics, as well as a member of the National Academies' Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; the editorial boards of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Journal of the Royal Society Interface; the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNCTAM); the Defense Science Study Group; and as an Advisor to X at Alphabet (formerly GoogleX).

Dabiri received his B.S.E. summa cum laude in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University (2001); his M.S. in Aeronautics from Caltech (2003); and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering with a minor in Aeronautics from Caltech (2005). He was a Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering at Caltech from 2005 to 2015, during which time he also served as Director of the Center for Bioinspired Wind Energy, Chair of the Faculty, and Dean of Students. From 2015 to 2019 he served as a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, where he was recognized with the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching. (Source: https://dabirilab.com)