Speakers and Panelists

Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics, work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a visiting academic in Oxford and the chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland. She has been president of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female president of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.

She has received many honors, including a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in 2018. The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music, and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme, Dark Matter; Poems of Space.

Dr. Julianne Dalcanton

Dr. Julianne Dalcanton is a broad astrophysicist specializing in the origins and evolution of galaxies and stars, which she studies using a variety of tools and techniques.  She is the Director of the Center for Computational Astrophyiscs at the Flatiron Institute (since 2021), and a Professor of Astronomy and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Washington (since 1998), where she previously served as Chair of Astronomy.  She was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS in Physics) and Princeton University (PhD in Astrophysical Sciences in 1995), and then became a postdoctoral fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.  Over her career, she has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award for beginning faculty, a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Wyckoff Faculty Fellowship through the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, the Mohler Prize from University of Michigan, and the Beatrice Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society.  She has also given the invited Eddington lecture at Cambridge University, the Baird lecture at the Ohio State University, the Spitzer lectures at Princeton, and the Sackler lecture at Leiden University.  As a third generation teacher and a proud graduate of the Pittsburgh Public School District, Dr. Dalcanton is equally committed to education and outreach.  She has taught more than 1500 students, and has been involved in public outreach throughout her career. She has also written articles for popular magazines, and blogged for Discover Magazine.

        Founder/Chief Executive Officer of BeyondDEIBA

Fatima Alleyne, Ph.D., currently serves as the Founder/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BeyondDEIBA. Leveraging her substantial experience in guiding both public and private organizations with their efforts to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in STEM, Dr. Alleyne was inspired to establish this business to support leaders who are truly committed to bringing their businesses,  organizations, and/or educational institutions to the next level and foster environments where all STEM professionals can thrive. In addition to BeyondDEIBA, she conducts research in engineering education with a focus on the examination of methods to increase access and opportunities for communities that have been historically excluded and are currently underrepresented in STEM. Prior to becoming CEO, Dr. Alleyne was the first director of Community Engagement and Inclusive Practices in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley where she led strategic DEI initiatives for the college’s faculty, staff, and 6,800 students by developing an award-winning multi-stakeholder engagement approach that was nationally recognized by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). Additionally, she has worked for the US Department of Agriculture and served as an elected official on the Contra Costa County Board of Education, becoming the 1st African American to serve as President of the Board.
Dr. Alleyne earned her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley and B.A. in Chemistry from City University of New York, Hunter College.

Distinguished Prof. U. Kansas

University Distinguished Professor Alice Bean joined the University of Kansas Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1993 and has had a very productive research program in experimental particle physics for over 3 decades. She obtained her bachelor’s degrees (in physics and computer science) at Univ. of California, Irvine, and her MS and PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, she is a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration and has helped to design, build, and analyze data taken from the detector which resides in the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN lab near Geneva, Switzerland. She is proud to be a co-discoverer of the Higgs Boson. Bean created the Quarked! Adventures in the Subatomic Universe project which promotes science enrichment activities to elementary aged childrenthrough its popular website (quarked.org). She also was a Jefferson Science Fellow where shespent a year as a science advisor for the U.S. Department of State. Here, she created new avenues for impacting policies on climate change. Bean is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society (APS).

Tetana's Biosketch

Tetiana (Nosach) Quignon is a Senior Quantitative User Experience Researcher at Google with a diverse background including data science, experimental physics and art.

As a third generation physicist, Tetiana started her journey in Physics in Ukraine, where she was born and raised. In 2006 she received her Bachelor’s Degree (BS) with honors from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a focus in Optics, Electronics and Engineering. She then moved to the United States and continued her education at The Graduate Center (City University of New York, CUNY) where she received two Masters Degrees (MA and PhM) and in 2014 graduated with a PhD in Physics, specializing in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), working on rechargeable batteries. During her physics career, Tetiana published multiple papers in Optics and NMR (including publications and presentations with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), presented in multiple conferences (ECS Meetings, APS March meetings), worked in research labs and taught Physics courses in Hunter College.
After receiving her PhD, Tetiana decided to join the workforce outside of Academia and worked in different areas. In 2015 she joined Cipherhealth as a Product Manager and Data Scientist, where she was a technical contributor and team leader in full-spectrum data analysis on large healthcare-related data. 

Rachael Alexandroff

Rachael Alexandroff got her PhD from Johns Hopkins in physics and astronomy in 2017 studying actively accreting supermassive black holes—a passion she developed conducting undergraduate research at Princeton University. After a postdoc from 2017-2019 spent jointly at the Dunlap Institute and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto, she decided to take her career in a new direction. She moved to New York City to work for the New York City Council as a data scientist helping Council Members write and pass new legislation based on evidence-based decision making and data analytics. One of her biggest accomplishments was contributing to the City Council’s first ever pay equity report that examined salary disparities across all city agencies and job titles and has led to the introduction of several new pieces of legislation. She is currently the Deputy Director of Data Analytics and Research at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office where she has been employed since 2021. There, she manages an interdisciplinary policy and data team that helps the DA’s Office make evidence-based policy decisions, works in conjunction with partners to conduct criminal justice research, and maintains public-facing data dashboards to promote transparency.

Sandra Brown, Ph.D., JD

Dr. Sandra Brown advises tech companies and Higher Ed institutions on legal, regulatory, and compliance matters, and guest lectures on entrepreneurship. She previously headed the legal function of a digital therapeutics startup and the U.S. division of an enterprise software/SaaS company. She also previously practiced law at Cooley, Foley & Lardner, and Jones Day law firms, advising clients in software, life sciences, pharma, healthcare, medical devices, and high-tech industries. In her commitment to education and diversity, Dr. Brown served for six years on the Board of Trustees of a K-12 public charter school in a low-income community in Boston, MA, with a mission of preparing each student for college. She has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she performed research in the lab of Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus.

Nishani Jayakody, Ph.D

Nishani Jayakody is a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Nishani started her journey in physics in Sri Lanka where she was raised. In 2015, she received her Bachelor’s degree (BS) with honors from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She moved to the United States to continue her education at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, where she received a master’s degree (MA) and in 2022 graduated with a PhD in physics, specializing in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), working on energy storage materials.. After receiving her PhD, she moved to Virginia with her family for her postdoc, where she is engaged in materials science research. 

Connie Hsueh, Ph.D

Connie Hsueh is an American Institute of Physics & American Association for the Advancement of Science congressional fellow in the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology in Washington, D.C. She works with congressional offices to draft and push legislation, especially as related to research and technology. Prior to her position with congress, she completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University with a focus on nanoelectronics and condensed matter. She also holds a M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge and a B.S. from Caltech. Connie attended CUWiP for the first time in 2013.

Sara Abedi, Ph.D

Sara is an adjunct assistant professor at Farmingdale State College. She received a B.A. in physics from Barnard College. She also holds a M.Sc. and M.Phil. from The City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Her Ph.D. is a joint degree with both institutions.  Her research focused on electron transport properties in topological insulators and semiconductors. Sara attended CUWiP for the first time in 2017. She returned in 2019 and 2020 as a recruiter for physics doctoral program at CUNY Graduate Center. As a first-generation Afghan/Uzbek woman of color, she hopes to inspire future generations of women and underrepresented minorities to pursue physics.

Shana Elbaum-Garfinkle, Ph.D

Shana Elbaum-Garfinkle, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary scientist, working at the interface of biology, physics, and engineering. Elbaum-Garfinkle received her Ph.D. from Yale University in molecular biophysics and biochemistry in 2012 after graduating from Hunter College’s Thomas Hunter Honors Program with a B.A. in physics. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, where she worked with Clifford Brangwynne. She was awarded the prestigious NIH K99/R00 career award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to jumpstart her independent research career.

Lindsay Victoria Goodwin, Ph.D

Lindsay Victoria Goodwin (they/them, she/her) is a queer and disabled physicist, specializing in plasma physics in the geospace environment and coupling from the Sun to the Earth. Lindsay received their BSc in Physics at the University of Calgary (2005), and their MSc (2014) and PhD (2018) in Physics and Engineering Physics at the University of Saskatchewan. Afterwards they went on to fill postdoctoral research positions at Boston University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology before being awarded the Jack Eddy Fellowship in 2020. They are now an Assistant Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In addition to researching and teaching, they serve as a panelist for the National Academies's 2024-2033 Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics). They are also a science steering committee member for the NSF's Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions Program.

Grace Bosse, Ph.D

Grace Bosse is currently a senior lecturer in the Princeton Department of Physics.  She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2015, studying the electronic properties of strongly correlated systems using terahertz spectroscopy.  Previously, she was an Associate Instructor and the lab manager of the Department of Physics at the University of North Florida, the same university from which she earned her BS in physics in 2008.  During her final year in grad school, Grace assisted in teaching in a course that had been recently redesigned to include active learning pedagogy.  This sparked her interest in Physics Education Research and helped her realize her passion for teaching.  She was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from the University of North Florida in 2021.  Her overarching teaching goal is to make physics clear, precise, and welcoming to all students.  

Priscilla Antunez, Ph.D

Assistant Director for Strategic Partnerships, Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Lab

Dr. Priscilla Antunez leads partnerships with businesses, institutions, and agencies, while guiding researchers in the strategic exploration of collaborations and funding opportunities. She also manages strategic communications and scientific employee engagement, retention, and recruitment. In 2019 she detailed for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science to help manage Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) proposals and has continued to work with researchers to help them leverage this and other DOE programs. Previously, Dr. Antunez served as a Business Development Executive at Argonne National Lab (another DOE Lab) helping researchers protect their IP and develop strategies to maximize the impact of their work (with special emphasis on partnerships). Before joining Argonne Lab, Dr. Antunez worked at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, where she published 9 papers, obtained 7 patents, and received Invention Plateau Awards in 2016 and 2017 for her work on solar cell devices. Dr. Antunez received a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Southern California, where she researched materials for solar cells. She also received a BS in chemistry from Cal Poly Pomona and majored in Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at the Universidad de Sonora.