Speakers and Poster Presenters

Dr. Angela Amedee received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from LSU School of Medicine - New Orleans, in 1992. Following postdoctoral training at Tulane National Primate Research Center, Dr. Amedee joined the LSUHSC School of Medicine faculty in 2001. She was promoted to Professor in 2016, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies in 2017, and Interim Dean in 2021. Dr. Amedee teaches virology to medical health professionals at LSUHSC New Orleans and mentors students in the PhD and MD/PhD programs. Her laboratory investigates the pathogenesis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), with a focus on the viral and host factors responsible for transmission. Through collaborations with other scientists, her studies investigate the mechanisms involved in mother-to-infant transmission of HIV and the establishment and maintenance of HIV reservoirs. Another main focus of the laboratory seeks to identify how alcohol consumption and drug abuse affect the transmission of HIV and modulate disease progression.

Dr. Christopher Baglow serves as the Director of the Science & Religion Initiative at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, creating programs, courses, talks and publications that bring the Catholic faith and modern science into dialogue. His work is the culmination of 18 years of faith and science scholarship and educational program creation, as well as a lengthy career in Catholic theological education spanning high-school, undergraduate, graduate and seminary teaching. In his five years as Director, SRI has seen major growth, reaching over 2700 Catholic leaders and educators from diocesan offices and parishes, but above all science and religion teachers from Catholic high schools, supported by three successive grants from the John Templeton Foundation. For this work, he was co-recipient of an Expanded Reason Award in Teaching from the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid) and the Vatican Joseph Ratzinger Foundation (Rome).

Dr. Stephen M. Barr is President of the Society of Catholic Scientists and Professor Emeritus of theoretical particle physics at the University of Delaware. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. His research has centered mainly on “grand unified theories” and the cosmology of the early universe. In 2011, he was elected to be a Fellow of the American Physical Society “for his original contributions to grand unification, CP violation, and baryogenesis”. He writes and lectures extensively on the relation of science and religion. He is the author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and The Believing Scientist: essays on science and religion (Eerdmans, 2016). He was elected in 2010 to the Academy of Catholic Theology and was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr. Kate Bulinski is an Associate Professor of Geosciences in the Department of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University. She received her B.S. in Geoscience from The Pennsylvania State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Bulinski’s current research efforts are focused on exploring the paleoecological relationships of Paleozoic coral ecosystems at the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana. Dr. Bulinski also has an interest in exploring the intersectionality of faith and science, especially within the Catholic tradition, which she explores in her teaching, research and educational outreach. Kate is the 2017 recipient of the Excellence in Science Education and Outreach from the Kentucky Academy of Science, the 2017 recipient of the William T. Miles Memorial Award for Community Service and received the Doris A. Tegart Teaching Excellence Award in 2023. Aside from her teaching, research, and service endeavors, Kate also enjoys gardening, beekeeping, and spending time with her husband and four children.

Heather Foucault-Camm, PGCE, M.Sc., M.A., is Project Director at the McGrath Institute for Church LIfe at the University of Notre Dame. She received an M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from University of Ottawa in Canada and a PSGC in Science Education from University of Leeds in the UK, has completed the program for the National Certificate in Health Care Ethics from the NCBC, and is working towards an M.A. in Theology at the University of Notre Dame. A veteran science teacher and curriculum expert, she has created and implemented a high school course with a two-part focus on the Church’s historic relationship with science and bioethics.

Dr. Sofia Carozza is a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School. She completed her doctorate in neuroscience in Summer 2023 as a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Through her research on child brain development, she explores the causes and mechanisms of resilience after childhood trauma. Sofia is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she studied neuroscience and theology as a Hesburgh-Yusko Scholar and was the valedictorian of the class of 2019.

Dr. Maureen Condic is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on the role of stem cells in development and regeneration, and has been recognized by both the Basil O'Connor and the McKnight awards. She is currently a member of Pontifical Academy for Life, and in 2018, was appointed by the President of the United States to the National Science Board. Dr. Condic is the co-author of Human Embryos, Human Beings (winner of the 2020 international Expanded Reason Award), that explores the nature of the human embryo from scientific and philosophical perspectives. Her second book, Untangling Twinning (2020), considers the ethical and biologic issues raised by human monozygotic twinning. Dr. Condic has taught Human Embryology in the University of Utah Medical School for 20 years. She has a strong commitment to public education, and has presented over 250 seminars and interviews, both nationally and internationally, on science policy, bioethics and her own research.

Dr. James P. Donahue is a synthetic inorganic chemist at Tulane University, where he is a professor of chemistry. His lab focuses on hydrogen catalysis using metal sulfide clusters and on development of molecular system that can host weakly-coupled electron spins for quantum memory/computing applications.

Dr. Cory Hayes is the Dean of Discipline and teaches Humanities and Theology at John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette, LA. He holds a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. His research and teaching interests include: Byzantine and Eastern Christian theology, Philosophy of Nature, and the relation between Catholic theology, philosophy, and empirical science. He and his wife Jennifer reside in Lafayette, LA and they have 8 children.

Dr. Dan Kuebler is a Professor of Biology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where he teaches courses on evolution, cell physiology, and science and faith. He is the project co-lead for the Purposeful Universe, a Templeton funded grant that focuses on examining the order and purpose inherent in the world around us. which includes the Purposeful Lab podcast that he co-hosts with Catherine Hadro. Dan is the co-author of The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories (Baker Academic, 2007) and another forthcoming book on Evolution and Catholicism (Word on Fire Press) and he has written both academic and popular articles on issues related to science, religion and ethics. He is Vice-President of the Society of Catholic Scientists. He has been married to his wife Nellie for 26 years and has six kids and resides in Steubenville Ohio.

Dr. Heather Machado was born and raised in Metairie, Louisiana, attended Mount Carmel Academy, and graduated from the University of New Orleans. She earned her PhD at Tulane School of Medicine in 2005, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine in Mammary Gland and Breast Cancer Biology in 2013. She opened her research lab at Tulane School of Medicine in 2013, where she has maintained a rigorous research program in breast cancer biology. Since joining the faculty of Tulane, she has been actively engaged in teaching medical and graduate students, and is a member of the Catholic Society of Scientists. She is currently an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a member of the Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium, and the Assistant Dean for the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program.

Dr. Kieran McNulty is a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Fellowship 2008, named Scholar of the College in 2017, and has received multiple teaching awards. His principal interests are in the evolution of apes and humans, pursued through paleontological fieldwork in eastern Africa. Kieran conceived of and directs the NSF-funded REACHE project, a collaborative network that coordinates field research at all of the Early Miocene fossil ape sites in eastern Africa, working in close association with the National Museum of Kenya and Uganda National Museum. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Leakey Foundation. He is a member of the Society of Catholic Scientists and was received the Leading with Faith award from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Dr. Maria Elena Monzani is a dark matter data wrangler. Her research field is Astroparticle physics, which focuses on topics at the intersection between particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology, using the tools of data-intensive science. She received a dual Ph.D. from the University of Milano and the University of Paris 7, performing research with the Borexino experiment that measured neutrinos produced by the Sun. She then held a postdoctoral position at Columbia University before joining SLAC in 2007 to work on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Today, Monzani is a lead scientist at SLAC and a senior Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology member at Stanford. She leads the software computing effort for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment and the science operations team for the Fermi satellite. She is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory and enjoys discussing the shared philosophical foundations of scientific and religious endeavors.

Dr. Robert Rohli is a Professor in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences at LSU College of the Coast & Environment. His research interests include coastal weather and climate, atmospheric circulation variability, natural hazards and risks, tropical cyclone dynamics, surface-atmosphere interactions, synoptic meteorology and climatology, geoscience education, and the history of science. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.

Dr. Michael W. Totaro, O.P. is a Perpetually Professed Dominican Tertiary (Lay Dominican), and is an associate professor with the School of Computing and Informatics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His research interests are in intelligent systems, modeling, and simulation. Dr. Totaro teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in computing and informatics, and supervises graduate students' master's theses and doctoral dissertations. Dr. Totaro has a B.S. degree in computer science (1982), an MBA (1988), an M.S. degree in telecommunications, and a Ph.D. in computer science (2007).