Robert M. Sellers (he/him) is the James S. Jackson Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan. A native of Cincinnati, he received his undergraduate degree at Howard University and Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, both in Psychology. He started his academic career as an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Virginia in 1990. He returned to the University of Michigan as a faculty member in 1997 where he has been a faculty member ever since. Dr. Sellers has had a productive and successful academic career as a scholar studying the role of race in the psychological lives of African Americans. He and his students have proposed influential conceptual frameworks for understanding African American racial identity and racial socialization processes. In addition, Dr. Sellers has served in various academic leadership positions at the University of Michigan for more than 15 years including the Chair of the Department of Psychology and the Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer (VPEI-CDO) at the University of Michigan. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, he has received numerous national and international honors, career awards, and recognition for his scholarship, mentoring, and service to the field.
Dr. Payne-Sturges is Professor of Environmental Health Sciences with the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is currently conducting research applying systems modeling to better understand the links between structural racism, cumulative environmental exposures and health outcomes among children and migrant farmworkers. She values transdisciplinary collaborations to generate the informational bases for establishing environmental policies that are truly protective of public health.
I am a cell biologist who studies the tissue morphodynamics that occur in healthy tissues and when normal epithelial architecture is broken down as cancer cells become invasive and metastatic. I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto where I studied fundamental questions related to how signals at sites of epithelial cell-cell adhesion promote tissue morphogenesis during embryonic growth. I then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to investigate how aggressive cancer cells undergo morphodynamic processes to become metastatic. I started my own lab here at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2024, where my research group continues to explore how epithelial cells remodel during both normal physiological processes and cancer invasion and metastasis.
Kiana "KC" Cook is a multidisciplinary artist, movement catalyst, and cultural producer rooted in Black American performance traditions. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Dance and is a GSI at the University of Michigan. For the past twenty years, KC has studied street and social dance cultures including Breaking, Krump, Hip Hop, Footwork, and House. Her practice weaves together curating, emceeing, battling, performance, and international exchanges, with experiences in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Jamaica, Austria, and Brazil. Her choreographic work and academic research have been featured at the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference, Columbia College Chicago, Critiquing Power in the Arts Conference, the Hip Hop Studies Conference, the American College Dance Festival, and Performance Studies International. Her chosen home is Chicago where she produced Krump events for five years. KC is part of the Kautionz Krump Fam and the street dance company, BraveSoul Movement.
Bonje Obua got their bachelor's in Spanish and Biology from Colby College in 2020. They then spent two years as a research assistant at the Belfer Center of Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. Bonje is currently a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Dr. Junior West. Their project seeks to understand the molecular drivers of the claudin-low breast cancer signature.
Chloe is a first-gen college student from Cleveland with research values in interdisciplinary collaboration, community-centered science, and collecting evidence for actionable interventions. Her primary research interest is how social structures shape the inequitable distribution of hazardous exposures from built environments. She will be graduating this spring with her Master of Public Health degree in Environmental Health Sciences, with a concentration in environmental health promotion and policy and a graduate certificate in social epidemiology. She began working with Dr. Payne-Sturges on the RESPIRAR project in September 2025, and will return this fall to begin her studies in the EHS PhD program!
Camille is a master's student in Health Behavior & Health Equity at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health (Class of 2027). Camille earned her B.S. in Agricultural Business Management from North Carolina State University in 2024 with minors in both Agroecology (Sustainable Food Systems) and Economics. Currently, she is working to blend her public health training and agricultural background as a Graduate Research Assistant for the RESPIRAR project (focused on improving H-2A farmworker living conditions in MD), as a Student Manager for the U-M Campus Farm, and a Dow Sustainability Fellow. She has a passion for creating agricultural communications that help both growers and consumers better understand our current food system, and wants to help shape a more equitable food system in Michigan and beyond!
Payton Harvey is a Master of Public Health student in Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and founder and CEO of EmpowHer Group LLC, a Detroit-based youth empowerment organization. Her work focuses on advancing health equity by creating community-based programs that build leadership, self-efficacy, and socioemotional well-being among adolescent girls through athletics and mentorship. Her project, EmpowHER in Action: Addressing the Socioemotional Needs of Adolescent Girls in Highland Park, MI, led by herself and her mentor, Dr. Asari Offiong, centers on developing culturally responsive programming informed by community voice and lived experience. Payton is passionate about translating public health training into sustainable, community-driven interventions that expand opportunity and improve long-term health outcomes.