Organizing Committee

Pam Asquith, PhD, is a Researcher and the CTSA Lead for ICTR Mentorship Initiatives. In this role, she oversees ICTR mentorship education activities and evaluation and leads cross-CTSA mentorship initiatives. She also collaborates with Faculty Development Directors and the Office of Faculty Affairs and Development in the School of Medicine and Public Health to support their efforts to promote and implement mentorship education for faculty. Dr. Asquith served as a Master Facilitator for the National Research Mentoring Network and is a Principal Facilitator with the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research. Dr. Asquith has been active in research mentoring initiatives at UW-Madison since 2008 and is co-author of Mentor Training for Clinical and Translational Researchers, Mentoring Up for Postdoc Trainees and several other adaptations. She is co-author on several manuscripts reporting on the merits of formal mentor training and trained facilitators. Prior roles at ICTR and in the School of Medicine and Public Health include Administrative Director of the Research Education and Career Development Core, Administrator of the Health Disparities Research Scholars Postdoctoral Training Program and Associate Director of Faculty Mentoring Programs in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. She returned to ICTR in her current role in August of 2020. She holds degrees from the University of Rochester (Ph.D., M.S.) and the University of Buffalo (B.A. and B.S.).

Christine Pfund, Ph.D. is a senior scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW). Dr. Pfund earned her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology, followed by post-doctoral research in Plant Pathology, both at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Pfund’s work focuses on developing, implementing, documenting, and studying interventions to optimize research mentoring relationships across science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). Dr. Pfund co-authored the original Entering Mentoring curriculum and co-authored many papers documenting the effectiveness of this approach. Dr. Pfund is the principal investigator of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) Coordination Center, Director of ICTR’s Mentorship Initiatives and director of the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experience in Research at UW-Madison (CIMER). She is a member of the National Academies committee that recently published the consensus report and online guide, The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM. 

Adriana Báez is a professor at the Pharmacology Department and the Head and Neck Surgery Section of the Surgery Department at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. (Biochemistry/Molecular Biology of Cancer) from the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid, Spain. During 1987-1989 she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France. Her research interests are in the molecular basis of the development and progression of head and neck cancer, HPV and cancer, cancer health disparities, and research mentor training. She collaborates with the Associate Dean of Biomedical Sciences in the UPR School of Medicine to promote and implement mentorship education for faculty and graduate students. As a member of the Educational and Career Development Committee of the Association of Clinical and Translational Research (ACTS), she worked toward promoting research education and methods for enhancing training and advancement in translational research careers. She serves as NRMN Master Facilitator and is co-author of the Mentoring Up for Early Career Investigators curriculum. She is co-investigator in the NRMN-SETH (Strategic Empowerment Tailored for Health Equity Investigators) study that evaluates mechanisms to provide evidence-based mentorship and developmental network coaching intervention for early-stage investigators. 

Roger B. Fillingim, PhD is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Pain Research & Intervention Center of Excellence at the University of Florida (UF). His research investigates biopsychosocial contributions to individual differences in pain, including the influences of sex/gender, race/ethnicity and aging on the experience of pain. Dr. Fillingim’s research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1994, including a current MERIT award from the National Institute on Aging. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and has delivered plenary and keynote addresses at numerous international conferences. Regarding mentoring efforts, in 2013 Dr. Fillingim established the University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Mentor Academy, which provides training for UF faculty in best mentoring practices.  Dr. Fillingim has a longstanding commitment to mentoring and has successfully mentored numerous postdoctoral fellows, and early-stage faculty members.  He also directs an institutional training grant that supports postdoctoral training in pain and aging research and leads the UF Center for Advancing Minority Pain and Aging Science, which supports career development for early career investigators from underrepresented backgrounds conducting pain and aging research. In 2016, he was recognized for his mentoring contributions when he received the UF Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, Postdoc Mentoring Award. He currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer of the International Mentoring Association.

Dr. Russell is a board-certified academic pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC). He also serves as the research director for the Division of Hospital Medicine at CHLA. Dr. Russell completed his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Biology at Harvard University, his medical degree at Harvard Medical School, his pediatric residency at the University of California, San Francisco campus and his Master of Science at USC. His clinical responsibilities include attending on the pediatric inpatient service at CHLA, caring for children hospitalized for a variety of illnesses. His research focuses on developing evidence-based care for hospitalized children with medical complexity, including acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia and bacterial tracheitis, in children with medical complexity. His research efforts have been recognized through receipt of the USC Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award (2014-16), the Academic Pediatric Association’s Young Investigator Award (2015-16), the NIH Loan Repayment Program (2017-2021) and a large grant from the Gerber Foundation (2020-2022). In August 2021, he received a five-year R01 award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study bacterial respiratory infections in children with tracheostomy. Outside of his clinical and research responsibilities, Dr. Russell focuses on research mentorship of medical students, pediatric residents, and pediatric hospital medicine fellows as well as improving representation of underrepresented minorities in medicine throughout the continuum of physician training. Outside of CHLA, Dr. Russell is the chair of the Academic Pediatric Association’s Membership, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee and is on the Executive Committee for the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings research network. Dr. Russell currently serves as an Assistant Editor for the journal, Hospital Pediatrics.