From where does it STEM?

In this episode, Dr. Zack Drum, a postdoc in my lab, and I interviewed Dr. Andre Isaacs.

Andre is originally from Jamaica and moved to the US to attend College of the Holy Cross, where he received his BA in Chemistry. He then went on to pursue his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and his postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at College of the Holy Cross.

We had a great conversation about how representation in your peers and mentors matters in science, being openly queer in these higher education / academic environments, and how we can make science more inclusive.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Roshni Patel & Dr. Rachel Ungar. As graduate students at Stanford University in the Pritchard and Montgomery labs, respectively, they created a genetics & ethics course and published about it! Check it out here:

Increasing equity in science requires better ethics training: A course by trainees, for trainees

In this episode, I interviewed Angela Saini with Dr. Mike Love. Angela is a prominent author interested in bridging science and society. Her works include the fantastic books:

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Sean Decatur, the President of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) with my lab's amazing manager, Sylvie Parkus.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Raven Baxter, otherwise known as Raven the Science Maven. She is a prominent scientist, science communicator, and STEM educator. She is also the President of the The Science Haven.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Per her website:

Dr. Nelson was formerly deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In this role, she was the first African American and first woman of color to lead US science and technology policy.

At OSTP, she spearheaded the development of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, issued guidance to expand tax-payer access to federally-funded research, served as an inaugural member of the Biden Cancer Cabinet, strengthened evidence-based policymaking, and galvanized a multisector strategy to advance equity and excellence in STEM, among other accomplishments. Including her on the global list of "Ten People Who Shaped Science," Nature said of Nelson's OSTP tenure, “this social scientist made strides for equity, integrity and open access.” In 2023, she was named to the inaugural TIME100 list of the most influential people in the field of AI.

In 2024, Nelson was appointed by President Biden to the National Science Board, the body that establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the President. Alondra was also nominated by the White House, and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, to serve on the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.

She also helped lead academic and research strategy at Columbia University, where she was the inaugural Dean of Social Science and professor of sociology and gender studies. Dr. Nelson began her academic career on the faculty of Yale University, and there was recognized with the Poorvu Prize for interdisciplinary teaching excellence.
Dr. Nelson has held visiting professorships and fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the BIOS Centre at the London School of Economics, the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, and the Bavarian American Academy. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
Nelson has contributed to national policy discussions on inequality and on the social implications of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data, and human gene-editing in journals like Science. Her essays, reviews, and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Nature, Foreign Policy, CNN, NPR, BBC Radio, and PBS Newshour, among other venues.
She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Nelson was co-chair of the NAM Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation and served as a member of the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Responsible Computing Research.

She is the recipient of honorary degrees from Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and the City University of New York. Her honors also include the Stanford University Sage-CASBS Award, the MIT Morison Prize, the inaugural TUM Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Social Sciences and Technology, the EPIC Champion of Freedom Award, the Federation of American Scientists Public Service Award, and the Morals & Machines Prize.
Raised in Southern California, Dr. Nelson is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of California at San Diego, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her PhD from New York University in 2003.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, the President Emeritus of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

Per his website:

He has given numerous TED talks and chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. President Obama named him chair of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans in 2012. 

In 1988, he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. The program is recognized as a national model in supporting high-achieving students committed to pursuing graduate and professional degrees and research careers in STEM and advancing underrepresented minorities in these fields.  

In 2022, Dr. Hrabowski was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and he was also named the inaugural Centennial Fellow by the American Council on Education. In addition, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) launched the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program in 2022 with a commitment of $1.5 billion to help build a scientific workforce that more fully reflects our increasingly diverse country.

In April 2023, the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the Public Welfare Medal, the Academy’s most prestigious award, and inducted him as a member of the Academy, for his extraordinary use of science for the public good.

In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report, which ranked UMBC the nation’s #1 “Up and Coming” university for six years (2009-14). For the past nine years (2015-23), U.S. News ranked UMBC in the top ten on a list of the nation’s “most innovative” national universities. U.S. News also consistently ranks UMBC among the nation’s leading institutions for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” TIME magazine named Dr. Hrabowski one of America’s 10 Best College Presidents in 2009, and one of the“100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2012. In 2011, he received both the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence and the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award, recognized by many as the nation’s highest awards among higher education leaders. Also in 2011, he was named one of seven Top American Leaders by The Washington Post and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. In 2012, he received the Heinz Award for his contributions to improving the human condition and was among the inaugural inductees into the U.S. News & World Report STEM Solutions Leadership Hall of Fame. More recently, he received the American Council on Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the University of California, Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Award (2019), the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Medal (2020), and the New American Colleges and Universities Ernest L. Boyer Award (2021).

He serves as a consultant to the NSF, the NIH, the National Academies, and universities and school systems nationally. He has served on many national boards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

He has been elected into the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), the National Academy of Public Administration, and the American Philosophical Society; receiving many awards such as the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education, the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. He also holds honorary degrees from nearly 50  institutions – including Harvard, Princeton, Duke, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown University.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Holden Thorp, the Editor-In-Chief of Science Magazine. Formerly, he was Provost of Washington University in St. Louis and spent three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he was Chancellor, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and a Kenan Professor of Chemistry.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

In this episode, I chatted with Dr. Marcia McNutt. A decorated scientist who was the 15th Director (and 1st woman) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a Professor of Marine Geophysics at Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz, and a Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was also the science adviser to the United States Secretary of the Interior, and the former Editor-In-Chief of Science Magazine. She is currently the 22nd President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).