Speakers

Peggy McIntosh- Keynote Speaker
Wellesley College

Peggy McIntosh is Associate Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She is Founder and Co-director of the United States S.E.E.D. Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity). She consults widely in the United States and throughout the world with college and school faculty who are creating more gender-fair and multicultural curricula. McIntosh has taught at the Brearley School, Harvard University, Trinity College (Washington, D.C.), the University of Denver, the University of Durham (England), and Wellesley College. She is co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute and has been consulting editor to "Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women." In addition to having four honorary degrees, she is the recipient of the Klingenstein Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership from Columbia Teachers College.

Websites: National SEED Project, Wellesley Centers for Women

Lydia Villa-Komaroff - Keynote Speaker
Independent Scientist

Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a molecular biologist, an executive, and a diversity advocate. She is a board member and former CEO and CSO of Cytonome/ST, LLC, a company developing and manufacturing purpose-built cell sorters. She currently serves on the boards of ATCC, the Massachusetts Life Science Center (Gubernatorial appointment), and the Keck Graduate Institute. She is a member of the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering and the Advisory Council of the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences. She is a co-founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Dr. Villa-Komaroff held faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Children's Hospital, Boston, and Harvard Medical School. She served as Vice President for Research at Northwestern University in Illinois, Vice President for Research and Chief Operating Officer of the Whitehead Institute, and she served on the boards of Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc, and AAAS, as well as the Advisory Councils for National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, and the Biology Directorate of NSF. She served for 8 years as a member of the National Academies Standing Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine.

Dr. Villa-Komaroff is a fellow of AAAS and AWIS. Her honors include the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement Award from Hispanic Business Magazine, 2008 Hispanic Scientist of the Year (Museum of Science and Industry, Tampa, Florida), 2013 Woman of Distinction (American Association of University Women), and the 2016 Elking Morison prize (MIT Program in Science and Technology). She is one of 11 women scientists profiled on the website of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Her BS is from Goucher College and her Ph.D. is from MIT.

Websites: Lydia's Makers Story

France Córdova - Speakers
National Science Foundation

Among other professional roles, Córdova has served as president of two universities and as NASA chief scientist. Her scientific contributions have been in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multiwavelength research on X-ray and gamma-ray sources, and space-borne instrumentation. She has published more than 150 scientific papers. She helped organize Women in Astronomy I (1992).

Websites: France Córdova

Alicia Aarnio - Panelists
University of Colorado Boulder

Alicia Aarnio, George Ellery Hale Postdoctoral Fellow of Solar and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder Alicia is co-chair of the AAS Working Group on Accessibility and Disability.

Alicia studies the Sun and million-year old solar analogs to understand the evolution of activity on solar-like stars; space weather then and now. Her teaching philosophy and pedagogy focus on inclusive universal design practices in the classroom and in engagement with colleagues and the public. Alicia's goals are to make astronomy accessible for all and to confront and dismantle the stigmas often associated with disability and neuroatypicality.

Summer Ash - Panelists
Columbia University

Summer Ash is the Director of Outreach for the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. She came Columbia in 2008 as a Science Fellow for Frontiers of Science in the Core Curriculum and stayed on in 2011 to coordinate the many outreach efforts of the department. Her doctorate research was on the evolution of radio galaxies and active galactic nuclei (just a fancy phrase for supermassive black holes). She values the power of the scientific method, the history of science and the necessity of skeptical inquiry.

As a self-professed space cadet, Summer grew up dragging friends and family out at all hours of the day or night to look up at the sky. In her previous life she was a rocket scientist, but now enjoys getting paid to spread her love of space with anyone who will listen.

Websites: Summer Ash

Adam Burgasser - Panelists
UC San Diego

Adam Burgasser is a Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, and an observational astrophysicist who studies the lowest-mass stars, brown dwarfs and exoplanets; he also works in the area of physics education research. In addition to his research and teaching activities, Adam is committed to addressing and eliminating inequities in the inclusion, teaching and practice of astronomy and physical science. At UCSD, he is co-director of the UCSD-Morehouse-Spelman Physics Bridge program, a campus Diversity Coordinator, and was a recipient of the UCSD Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action. For the AAS, he has been a member and chair of the Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy and is currently a AAS Councilor and AAS Agent. He has also served on the steering committee for CalBridge and testified before the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology on equity in Astronomy. As part of the organizing committee for the 2015 Inclusive Astronomy Conference, Adam worked specifically on the curation of the Nashville Recommendations.

Brandon Bozek - Workshop Leader
University of Texas, Austin

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Texas, Austin

Websites: Brandon Bozek

Caitlin Casey - Panelists
University of Texas, Austin

Caitlin Casey is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she specializes in dust-obscured starburst galaxies in the early Universe.

Websites: Caitlin Casey

Kim Coble - Panelists
San Francisco State University

Kim Coble is an associate professor of physics at San Francisco State University, recently ranked the most diverse large university in the US. She serves on the AAS Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy and the Astronomy Education Board, and was one of the organizers of Inclusive Astronomy 2015. Her current research interests include student understanding of cosmology, use of authentic data and telescopes in general education courses, identifying the strengths and resources of diverse physics learners, and using the results from this research to build effective, interactive curricula. She was formerly an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellow and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Kelle Cruz - Workshop Leader
CUNY Hunter College

Kelle Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the City University of New York, Hunter College, and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. She was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow, a Spitzer Fellow, and has been awarded grants from her University, NASA, NSF, and the Sloan Foundation. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the AstroBetter blog and wiki. She also recently started ScienceBetter Consulting, a small business dedicated to the scientific community.

Websites: Brown Dwarfs in New York City (BDNYC)

Natalie Gosnell - Speakers
Colorado College

Dr. Natalie Gosnell graduated from Colorado College in 2008 with a degree in Physics. She received her M.S. in Astronomy in 2010 and her Ph.D. in Astronomy (with a Physics minor) in 2014 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to returning to CC, Dr. Gosnell was the W. J. McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on observations of binary stars that challenge our ideas of stellar evolution.

Websites: Natalie Gosnell

Sethanne Howard - Panelists
US Naval Observatory (retired)

Dr. Sethanne Howard, who knew Dr. Rubin well, has agreed to present an overview of the latter's scientific contributions, including personal recollections. A presentation of slides, including a selection from the archives of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dr. Rubin’s former employer, will also be made.

Dr. Howard is a retired scientist from the US Naval Observatory (USNO), the author of a book on women astronomers through history, a AAS Shapley Lecturer, and Secretary of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy. She has studied large-scale computer simulations of interacting galaxies and developed the now-accepted explanation of the appearance of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. Before her tenure at USNO, she held managerial positions with NASA and the NSF. She was Chief of USNO’s Astronomical Almanac Office, which produced the book that is an international standard for the astronomical community.

Madeline Hsu - Panelists
University of Texas at Austin

Madeline Hsu is a professor of history at UT Austin, and former director of the Center for Asian American Studies. She was born in Columbia, Missouri but grew up in Taiwan and Hong Kong between visits with her grandparents at their store in Altheimer, Arkansas. She received her undergraduate degrees in History from Pomona College and PhD from Yale University.

Two recent projects explore how immigration controls, which closely align with limits on the full rights and protections afforced by citizenship, have historically discriminated on the basis of race and nationality, gender, socioeconomic standing, and employment. The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton 2015) explores how changing priorities in immigration restriction—from race and national origins to economic pragmatism and recruitment of skilled workers—remade the image and demographics of Chinese immigrants. The anthology project, “A Nation of Immigrants Explained: Immigration Policy, American Society, and the World, 1924-1965, ” which is co-edited with Maria Cristina Garcia and Maddalena Marinari, explores these transitions comparatively and reveals the growing intersections between US immigration policy, employer interests, US foreign policy objectives, and the remaking of US immigrant populations associated with the 1965 Immigration Act.

Katie Jameson - Panelists
Australian National University

Katie Jameson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian National University where she focuses on understanding the neutral atomic gas, the transition to molecular gas, and the connection to star formation at low metallicity in the Magellanic Clouds. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland where she also started the graduate-student led initiative connecting the astronomy and physics departments with mid-Atlantic minority-serving institutions called Graduate Resources for Advancing Diversity with Maryland Astronomy and Physics (GRAD-MAP). In 2015, Katie won the university-wide Graduate Student Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to the astronomy department, including the creation of GRAD-MAP.

Websites: Grad-Map, Katie Jameson

Pat Knezek - Workshop Leader
AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy

Dr. Patricia (Pat) Knezek chairs the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy. Pat has been active in issues of diversity and inclusion for her entire career. She previously served on Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy from 2002 to 2008 (and as chair from 2003 to 2007). She led the development of “Equity Now! The Pasadena Recommendations for Gender Equality in Astronomy,” launched (with Rachel Ivie of the American Institute of Physics) the ad hoc group that developed the Longitudinal Study of Astronomy Graduate Students, and developed the Anti-Harassment Policy for AAS. Her scientific interests include stellar populations, galaxy formation and evolution, and star formation in dwarf and low-surface-brightness galaxies.

Websites: AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy

Raquel Martinez - Workshop Leader
University of Texas, Austin

Graduate Student at University of Texas, Austin

Casey Miller - Panelists
Rochester Institute of Technology

Casey W. Miller is an Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he is Director of the Materials Science and Engineering program. He is an experimental physicist focusing on nanoscale magnetic materials and related devices. He graduated summa cum laude from Wittenberg University in 1999 with University and Physics Departmental Honors, where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003 for work combining Magnetic Resonance Imaging with Scanning Probe Microscopy.

Websites: Casey Miller

Jessica Mink - Panelists
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Jessica Mink is a positional astronomer and software developer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. She has SB and SM degrees from MIT in comparative planetology, co-discovered the rings of Uranus while working at Cornell, moved back to MIT, where she worked on occultation predictions which led to the discovery of Neptune's rings and detection of the extent of Pluto's atmosphere. After moving up the Charles River to the Center for Astrophysics, she worked on the Space Shuttle Spacelab 2 Infrared Telescope, developing some key workstation and mapping software, and moving into the Telescope Data Center, where she has developed pipelines for ground-based spectrographs. Along the way, she wrote the widely used software packages WCSTools and RVSAO, became a bicycle activist, and changed gender.

Jackie Monkiewicz - Panelists
Arizona State University

Jackie Monkiewicz is an astrophysics PhD candidate at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration. (SESE). Her research uses radio continuum observations and visual emission-line imaging of nearby dwarf galaxies to study the detailed physics of star formation in low-metallicity environments. She is a coordinating committee member of the AAS Working Group for Accessibility and Disability (WGAD).

Websites: links

Nancy Morrison - Speakers
University of Toledo (retired)

Nancy Morrison received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii in 1975 and then held a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. From 1978 until her retirement in 2010, she held a faculty position at The University of Toledo. There, she served as Director of Ritter Observatory (from 1996), Director of Ritter Planetarium and Brooks Observatory (from 2006), and Graduate Committee Chair (from 2001). She has served on the Board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, on the AAS Committee on the Status of Women, on the AAS Council, and, since 2014, as AAS Treasurer. She is a Fellow of the AAAS. After her retirement, she moved to the Boston area in order to be with her parents in their final years.

Websites: Nancy Morrison

Rachael Neal - Workshop Leader
St. Edwards University

Rachael Neal is an Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Edward’s University, specializing in how identities such as race and social class impact people’s life experiences. Her current research documents the experiences of people who identify both as White and anti-racist. Past research has analyzed the academic experiences of students in marginalized groups on college campuses. Dr. Neal is a winner of the St. Edward’s Hughes Teaching Excellence Award in the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and typically teaches courses such as Self and Society, Childhood and Inequality, and Race, Class, and Gender. In her work off-campus, Dr. Neal is an active member of ATX-EJ, an organization working on local environmental justice initiatives.

Websites: Rachael Neal

Dara Norman - Panelists
NOAO

Dr. Dara Norman is the Deputy Associate Director of the Community Science and Data Center at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, AZ. Her research interests include the study of AGN and their influence on galaxy evolution. Dr. Norman is also the AURA Diversity Advocate at NOAO. Duties of this position include creating and advancing opportunities at NOAO/AURA to bring more under-represented minorities and women into the “astronomy enterprise”, which includes research science, engineering, data science and instrument building. She recently served on the governing board of the American Astronomical Society where she chaired the task force that revised the society’s Ethics Code. She has been an active member of the AAS’s CSMA; chair of the astronomy and astrophysics section of the National Society of Black Physicists; and co-organizer of the Inclusive Astronomy Conference. Dr. Norman holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Astronomy from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science from the Mass. Inst. of Technology.

Chavella Pittman - Workshop Leader
Dominican University

Dr. Chavella T. Pittman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Dominican University.​ Her research interests and expertise include higher education, interpersonal interactions & marginalized statuses. Her teaching publications include "Race and Gender Oppression in the Classroom: The Experiences of Women Faculty of Color with White Male Students” (Teaching Sociology 2010) and "Exploring How African American Faculty Cope with Classroom Racial Stressors” (The Journal of Negro Education 2010).

Dr. Pittman is also the owner of Effective & Efficient Faculty, a faculty development company that works extensively with faculty and campuses across the country to help them develop strategies for inclusive college classrooms, efficient teaching, and documenting teaching effectiveness for tenure & promotion reviews.

Websites: Effective Faculty

Phillip Reed - Panelists
Kutztown University

Phill Reed earned his Ph.D. in 2008 from Lehigh University, and he is currently an associate professor of astronomy & physics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as the director of the on-campus observatory and planetarium. Reed leads an active observational astronomy program with undergraduate students, recently participating in several new transiting exoplanet discoveries and winning support from the National Science Foundation. Reed's primary research interest is the study of interacting binary stars, and in particular, creating new Doppler tomograms of bright, active Algols in a collaboration he joined with Mercedes Richards. Richards was a revered mentor to Reed before her passing in 2016, and Reed plans to continue this work, to the best of his ability, in honor of Richards's legacy.

Websites: Phillip Reed

Lauren Ross - Workshop Leader
Glenrose Engineering

Dr. Lauren Ross is an environmental engineer, a writer, community organizer and trainer. She is a founder and organizer with Undoing Racism Austin and Undoing White Supremacy Austin. She teaches community classes in facilitation, consensus, community and culture building, and anti-racist analysis through the lens of whiteness. When not at her desk, you are likely to find her scouting the Lake Austin shore for ripe wild cherries or pecans.

Websites: Undoing Racism Austin

Sharron Rush - Panelists
Knowbility

Sharron Rush is the award winning co-founder and Executive Director of Knowbility, a nonprofit advocacy, consulting, and training company based in Austin Texas. Since 1998, Sharron has been a leader in raising awareness and skills around the issue of access to technology for people with disabilities. Her work at Knowbility includes policy review, performance analysis, technical consultation, and training development for private and public companies, government agencies, and schools. Her technical expertise, understanding of the barriers faced by people with disabilities, and strong communication and training skills have contributed to her leadership position in the field.

Websites: Knowbility

Fran Sepler - Workshop Leader
Sepler & Associates

Fran Sepler, President of Sepler & Associates since 1991, is best known for her pioneering work in harassment prevention and workplace investigations. She has developed techniques and protocols used by organizations throughout the United States to investigate complaints of workplace misconduct and is the author of Finding the Facts: What Every Workplace Investigator Needs to Know, published in 2008. She has also conducted extensive research on the impact of employer response to employee complaints and interpersonal and institutional barriers to reporting of protected-class harassment. Fran has conducted over 1000 workplace investigations, served as an expert witness regarding employer response to employee complaints, and provided anti-harassment, anti-bullying and implicit-bias training for hundreds of organization. She has also conducted workplace climate assessments for workplaces of all sizes. She is working on developing world-class standards for organizations to develop their “fairness quotients.” Fran recently taught a semester-long master’s-level class at the University of Minnesota on Workplace Fairness.

Websites: Sepler & Associates

Alysha Shugart - Panelists
AURA - Gemini Observatory

Born in Washington D.C., Alysha Shugart spent the majority of her life in Austin, Texas, where she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with Bachelor's of Science degrees in Physics, Astronomy, and Pure Mathematics. During her undergraduate studies, she participated in a 6-month internship for the Health Service Executive in Dublin, Ireland, as well as an REU at SETI Institute. Here she assisted with the SETIStars funding program and with the technical shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array. When she served as an observer at McDonald Observatory for the graduate students and faculty in UT's astronomy department, she discovered a passion for telescope observation in leu of computational astronomy. She worked her way through other observatories in the U.S., including Lick and Apache Point, where the SDSS is conducted, until she landed the job at Gemini South.

Elissa Steglich - Panelists
University of Texas School of Law

Elissa Steglich is Clinical Professor at the Immigration Clinic of the University of Texas School of Law. In her 16 years advocating for immigrant rights, she has provided direct representation to asylum seekers, immigrant children, and immigrant victims of violence and human trafficking. In addition, Professor Steglich has trained to pro bono attorneys, state court judges and state agencies on legal protections available to immigrants. She previously served as Legal Services Director at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, New Jersey and as Managing Attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center. She currently serves as President of the Board of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. Her publications include Disparate Outcomes: The Quest for Uniform Treatment of Immigrant Children, with Randi Mandelbaum, Family Court Review (50 Fam. Ct. Rev. 606, 2012). She regularly appears in the media to discuss immigration issues. She received her JD with honors from the University of Texas School of Law.

Professionals of STScI - Workshop Leader
Space Telescope Science Institute

This workshop is facilitated by a variety of STEM professionals listed below who work across all divisions of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Our skills are as diverse as our backgrounds. A few examples of the areas in which we work are science instrument calibration, operations and engineering, middle and senior management, human resources, astronomical research, education, and public outreach.

• Alessandra Aloisi
• Francesca Boffi
• Keira Brooks
• Sheryl Bruff
• Brigette Hesman
• Samantha Hoffmann
• Jessica Kenney
• Lauretta Nagel
• Cristina Oliveira
• Allyssa Riley

Sarah Tuttle - Workshop Leader
University of Washington

Sarah Tuttle is primarily an instrumental astrophysicist who dabbles in observations of nearby galaxies. Her work is focused on novel approaches to observing faint and diffuse matter, as well as techniques supporting integral field spectroscopy. Her past work involved using UV spectroscopy to try and detect the intergalactic medium. She was also the instrument scientist for VIRUS – a massively replicated spectrograph currently coming online at McDonald Observatory to detect dark energy at intermediate redshifts. Professor Tuttle’s current interests include novel materials for astronomical gratings and filters, as well as approaches to bring polarimetry (and spectropolarimetry) to small telescopes.

Websites: Sarah Tuttle

Aparna Venkatesan - Workshop Leader
University of San Francisco

Aparna Venkatesan is a cosmologist working on a number of research topics including studies of the first stars and quasars in the universe, cosmological reionization, the physical conditions in early-universe galaxies, cosmological element synthesis, and the cosmic microwave background.

She is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of San Francisco.

Venkatesan currently serves on a number of local and national committees to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields and astronomy, including the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy, and the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy.

Websites: Aparna Venkatesan

Sherry Yennello - Workshop Leader
Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M

Dr. Sherry Yennello is Regents Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M, which serves as the core of Texas A&M's nuclear science program and as a major technical and educational resource for Texas and the nation. Her research on the nuclear equation-of-state impacts such fundamental questions as, "What is the origin of the elements?" and "How are neutron-rich and heavy nuclei synthesized in the core of a star during stellar evolution?" In addition, her pioneering example as an instructor, research scientist, administrator, and mentor to faculty and students -- particularly women and minorities -- is equally respected at Texas A&M and in national and international professional circles. She is an APS-trained professional skills workshop leader for students and early career scientists.

Websites: Negotiation Skills Seminar

Judith Allton - Panelists
NASA/Johnson Space Center

Judy has been involved in the Genesis Solar Wind Sample Return mission beginning with design and construction of the ultra-clean facility in which the Genesis solar collector payload was cleaned and assembled. She was present in Utah when the space capsule re-entered and crashed in 2004. Judy was part of the team that recovered the solar collectors from the desert floor. She is now curator of the solar wind collectors at Johnson Space Center, where samples are cleaned and shipped to scientists world-wide. From analyzing these solar wind samples, scientists are discovering a few surprises about our solar system’s early history. The Genesis science mission is a success!

Prior to becoming part of the Genesis team, Judy opened and described Apollo lunar soil cores for the Astromaterials Curation team. She served as Archivist for Curatorial Practices, accumulating stories of Apollo lunar exploration and sample collecting. Early in her career she worked as an environmental chemist, marine scientist and college chemistry instructor. Although she has a Master’s Degree in geochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin, she entered college as an art major.

She enjoys telling stories of space exploration and scientific discovery.