Spring 2017 HRA Members Meeting (Manhattan Beach)

Monika Dunbar

Director, Nonprofits and Foundations | ÜberResearch and Digital Science

Monika Dunbar joined the ÜberResearch team in the beginning of 2017 as the Director, Nonprofits and Foundations, North America. The new position at ÜberResearch is an extension of her more than 15 years of experience serving research funders and grantmakers. She spent the first half of her career working as a grant manager for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and later the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. Monika spent the second half of her career serving as the head of Altum’s proposalCENTRAL product where she worked with over 100 non-profits and foundations assisting with their grants management operations using proposalCENTRAL. With her new role at ÜberResearch she continues supporting the missions of research funders. Monika lives in northern VA with her husband and new baby daughter. Before the arrival of her daughter, Monika spent her free time working out, cooking, reading, movies, etc. Now, she enjoys working to get a few smiles and giggles.

Sara Rouhi

Director, North America | Altmetric

Sara Rouhi manages business development for Altmetric’s non-academic business in the US and Canada. Sara launched Altmetric’s institutional presence in 2014 signing its first academic customer, the University of Cambridge in the UK, and is currently responsible for expanding Altmetric’s product and services offerings into the corporate, government agency, and funder spaces bringing on such organizations as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Academies of Science, the World Bank, and many others. In addition to her business development role, she has expanded Altmetric’s institutional offerings to include bespoke consultancy, data, and analytics services. She’s also developed a suite of training and support offerings to ensure these new markets have robust support as they explore how these new metrics can support their organizations. In her infinite free time, Sara travels globally speaking on scholarly communications, metrics, and open access. She is an active member of the Society of Scholarly Publishing’s Education Committee, a recipient of the Society’s 2015 Emerging Leader award, and a published author of peer reviewed research on metrics. She also performs stand up and improvisational comedy in the DC area. Follow her on twitter @RouhiRoo

Shannon Gallagher-Colombo, PhD

Assistant Director | AACR Foundation

Shannon Gallagher-Colombo received her PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from Thomas Jefferson University in 2009, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was involved in basic, preclinical, and clinical research investigating the use of photodynamic therapy as a treatment option for solid malignancies. Her postdoctoral work specifically focused on determining the influence of cell signaling on photodynamic therapy efficacy, and the use of molecular targeting agents in combination with photodynamic therapy to improve therapeutic outcomes. In her current role as a senior program administrator at the AACR, Gallagher-Colombo applies her scientific background to grants administration. She provides scientific support to the AACR’s non-SU2C grants portfolio, including scientific review of grantee progress, interacting with grantees and funders to address areas of need, and providing additional scientific expertise as needed. She is serves as a member of the Program Committee.

Robert L. Grossman, PhD

Chief Research Informatics Officer | Biological Sciences Division | University of Chicago

Robert L. Grossman has been a leader in the field data science, open data and data sharing for over 25 years. He is the principal investigator for the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons (GDC), a five-petabyte data sharing platform containing detailed genomic and associated clinical data on the tumors of over 14,000 patients. He has also developed data commons and data sharing platforms for several other research communities, including the general science community (Open Science Data Cloud), environmental science (OCC-NOAA Environmental Data Commons and NASA’s Project Matsu), and liquid biopsies (BloodPAC Data Commons). He is the Frederick H. Rawson Professor at the University of Chicago and Co-Chief of the Section of Computational Biomedicine and Biomedical Data Science in the Department of Medicine. He is also the Director of the Center for Data Intensive Science and the Chief Research Informatics Officer (CRIO) of the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

Presentation

Salvatore La Rosa, PhD

VP Research and Development | Children’s Tumor Foundation

Salvatore La Rosa, PhD, is Vice President of Research and Development at the Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF) and he is responsible for the implementation of the Foundation’s business strategy into research projects. He manages the foundation’s research activities, providing scientific and knowledgeable review of discovery, preclinical and early development programs in the field of Neurofibromatosis (NF). Dr. La Rosa is responsible for the development and management of novel partnerships and initiatives with academic research groups and biotech/pharma companies which could address unmet needs in the field. Besides the activities of compound scouting and grants management, he is involved in ad-hoc collaborative research programs, CRO selection and management, as well as preclinical testing consortia. Dr. La Rosa’s team acts as project manager for the Synodos program, totaling $9M in three years investment, totaling 5 highly integrated projects, more than 30 Principal Investigators and 20 different institutions. He has co-authored more than 20 peer-review research articles and served as Group Leader and Project Leader for Siena Biotech (Italy), Nikem Research (Italy) and Evotec (UK). He holds a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (Scotland, UK) and MSc in Organic Chemistry from the University of Messina (Italy).

Justin Guinney, PhD

Director, Computational Oncology | Sage Bionetworks

Dr. Guinney is the Director of Computational Oncology at Sage Bionetworks. His research is focused on the development of integrative modeling approaches in cancer using large-scale biomedical and high-throughput genomic data. Aligned with Sage’s mission of promoting open science and data sharing, Dr. Guinney has been a part of several large data sharing initiatives in cancer, including the Colorectal Cancer Molecular Subtyping Consortium, AACR Project GENIE, and the Neo-epitope Prediction Consortium. Dr. Guinney is co-director of the DREAM Challenges, and has led several challenges related to cancer prognosis, combination therapy, and image analysis.

Anita Pepper, PhD

VP of Development | Wistar Institute

Anita Pepper, Ph.D., is Vice President of Institutional Advancement at The Wistar Institute, a role she has held since 2015. Dr. Pepper develops and implements strategic fundraising opportunities to strengthen and cultivate individual and philanthropic support and creates new, complementary relationships with individual, corporate and nonprofit partners. Since joining Wistar, Dr. Pepper has overseen a variety of new programs and fundraising platforms, including the Wistar Science Discovery Fund, which connects philanthropists with scientists in order to solve the issues that are most important to them in a more direct and personal way, and the Women and Science Program, an initiative that highlights the fundamental role that basic and and clinical research plays in addressing the scientific challenges related to women’s health. Prior to joining Wistar, Dr. Pepper was the Director of the Pew Biomedical Programs at The Pew Charitable Trusts. For eight years, she oversaw all aspects of Pew’s biomedical research programs including, the Pew Scholars Program, the Pew-Stewart Scholars for Cancer Research Program and the Pew Latin American Fellows Program. In this role, Dr. Pepper contributed scientific expertise to guide the existing programs’ policies related to external advisory committees, program participants and networks. She worked with clients and philanthropic partners to support, design, implement and administer programs, and she helped to raise 10.7M to support biomedical research through the Pew programs. Dr. Pepper graduated with a B.S. in Plant Sciences from Cornell University. She holds an M.S. in Molecular Systematics from New York University and the New York Botanical Garden, and a Ph.D. in Developmental Genetics from New York University. Upon graduation, Dr. Pepper became a postdoctoral research fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center and investigated gene expression. She later joined the Department of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral fellow and conducted research on fragile X syndrome.

Sally O’Neil

Director, Industrial Contract Office | Stanford University

Sally O’Neil is Director of the Industrial Contracts Office (ICO) at Stanford University. ICO negotiates a variety of research agreements with companies, including sponsored research and other related agreements, working with our parent Office of Technology Licensing. Sally also coordinates agreements with intellectual property terms for other university research agreements. A member of the California Bar and the ABA, Sally is active in AUTM and several university and industry intellectual property and research groups. Her webpage: https://sites.stanford.edu/ico/sally-oneil

Presentation

William Chambers, PhD

Senior Vice President, Extramural Research | American Cancer Society

William H. [Bill] Chambers, PhD, assumed the role of Senior Vice President, Extramural Research in March, 2014. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the Society’s Extramural Research and Health Professional Training Programs, which encompasses 6 research and training programs across the cancer continuum from research in the most basic areas of cancer, to research on health policy. Each year, the extramural research and training programs carry out peer review of ~1800 applications, and management of approximately 900 grants totaling in excess of $470M. In addition, Dr. Chambers directs the Research and Clinical Research Professor Programs. Dr. Chambers also has oversight of the Council for Extramural Research which defines pay-lines for research funding, and makes final selections of applications which are funded. Dr. Chambers joined the ACS in 2008 as Scientific Program Director for the Clinical Cancer Research and Immunology Program. In that capacity, he managed the development of the Society’s cancer research and training programs in the areas of nutrition and cancer, environmental oncology, clinical cancer research, epidemiology, leukemia, blood cell development and tumor immunology. Dr. Chambers received a PhD in immunology from Auburn University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Vanderbilt University, School of Medicine, and at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, specializing in tumor immunology. He subsequently served on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine and as a Member of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute for more than 20 years. He has been involved in basic research in non-adaptive and adaptive immunity; and in translational research investigating the use of adoptive cellular immunotherapy and of cytokine gene therapy for the treatment of tumors. Dr. Chambers has published widely on these topics. Dr. Chambers has been the recipient of research support from the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the Fogarty International Center, the Health and Human Behavior Network of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a 21st Century Scientist Research Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation for research in immunotherapy of primary brain tumors. In addition to his research and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, he served as the Interim Deputy Director for Basic Research, and as Associate Director for Basic Research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, which is an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.

Presentation

Louise Perkins, PhD

Chief Science Officer | Melanoma Research Alliance

Dr. Perkins joined the Melanoma Research Alliance as Chief Science Officer in 2013 where she is responsible for the development and implementation of the MRA’s scientific strategy including its research award program and annual Scientific Retreat. Her interests center on translational research including genomics, drug discovery and advancement of novel therapeutic approaches. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research and of the Health Research Alliance. Prior to joining the MRA, she was Chief Scientific Officer at the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) for five years, following a 16-year research career at two major pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Perkins led the expansion of MMRF venture philanthropy activities including its Biotech Investment Award program and development of the scientific direction of its CoMMpass longitudinal study. At Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Perkins was Director of Cancer Research where she contributed to advancing novel targeted therapies toward clinical study including Nexavar and other innovative signal transduction inhibitors. Before joining Bayer, she led a cancer research group at the Schering-Plough Research Institute participating in early-stage programs, including novel target-finding using human genomics data. Dr. Perkins graduated from the University of Michigan with a PhD and MS in Biological Chemistry and conducted postdoctoral studies at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology. She earned her BS in Zoology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Presentation

Chris Percopo, MA

Director of Grants Management | Helmsley Charitable Foundation

Christopher Percopo serves as the Director of Grants Management and Special Program Operations at the Helmsley Charitable Trust. As one of Helmsley’s first staff members, he has served in a variety of capacities in collaboration with staff, external consultants, and the trustees, and has seen the organization grow from a staff of three to the philanthropic organization it is today. As Director of Grants Management, Chris oversees the entire lifecycle of Helmsley’s grantmaking, and his team provides technical assistance to internal and external audiences, ensuring that all grants remain compliant and are monitored. This includes managing the online grant process, overseeing the grants database, creating and maintaining policies and procedures, and developing training materials. His department’s central role in Helmsley’s grantmaking means he plays an active role in reporting within the organization and beyond. The grants management team also plays a key role in the grant testing portion of the annual audit, tracking grant-related budgets, and predicting cash needs for the organization. In his role overseeing Special Program Operations, Chris works across programs and is involved in launching new strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Helmsley, Chris primarily worked as a fundraiser for various nonprofits. In addition to fundraising, he supported other critical endeavors, such as developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for social service programs, developing and executing strategic plans, facilitating a merger to eliminate duplicative administrative functions for organizations with similar missions, and assisting with the drafting of bylaws and governance for board development. Chris graduated from the George Washington University with a B.A. in Human Services (Nonprofit Management) and has a Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College. His passion for public service has led him to present and train on a number of topics, ranging from process development to nontraditional grantmaking, change management, and building efficient practices. He serves on nonprofit boards, including the Grants Managers Network. Outside of work, Chris enjoys skiing, traveling, cooking, and is a licensed marriage officiant in New York.

Sindy Escobar Alvarez, PhD

Sindy N. Escobar Alvarez is the Senior Program Officer for Medical Research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). DDCF is a private foundation with the mission to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being. At DDCF, she oversees the peer-reviewed selection and post-award monitoring of grants for two programs: The Clinical Scientist Development Award for early-career physician scientists and a grant portfolio supporting innovations in sickle cell disease research. She is also co-chair of the Early Career Scientist and Open Science Working groups of the Health Research Alliance, a coalition of non-governmental funders of health research. She is a doctoral graduate of the Pharmacology Department of Cornell University Weill Graduate School and post-graduate alumnus of Sloan-Kettering Institute.

Stephen Joel Coons, PhD

Stephen Joel Coons is Executive Director of the Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) Consortium at Critical Path Institute (C-Path). C-Path, an independent, non-profit organization established the PRO Consortium in cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry for the purpose of developing, evaluating, and qualifying PRO measures for the assessment of clinical trial endpoints. Stephen earned BS (University of Connecticut), MS, MEd, and PhD (University of Arizona) degrees and his post-doctoral training was completed at the University of California, San Diego. Stephen joined C-Path after a 23-year academic career. He is a fellow in the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona.

Presentation

Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA

Julie Fleshman serves as the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s President and CEO. In 1999, Julie lost her father to pancreatic cancer and is committed to changing the course of this deadly disease. She became the organization’s first full-time staff person and Executive Director in 2000. In 2004, the Board of Directors appointed Julie as President and CEO. The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network has grown to a staff of over 140 with offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The organization funds cutting-edge research and provides innovative services to people affected by pancreatic cancer.

Presentation

Mary DeRome

Mary DeRome joined MMRF as Translational Research Manager in February 2014. In this role she was responsible for managing the MMRF research grant programs and helped manage the MMRF CoMMpass trial, an 8 year study of 1000 Multiple Myeloma patients, as well as a number of other MMRF precision medicine initiatives. Mary was recently promoted to Director of Medical Communications and Education, where she oversees all MMRF patient and professional education initiatives and is responsible for scientific content on the MMRF website, press releases, and social media channels. Prior to her current position, Mary spent twelve years as a Senior Investigator in oncology drug discovery at Bayer HealthCare in West Haven CT and seven years as Senior Scientist in nanotechnology vaccine development at Artificial Cell Technologies in New Haven CT. Mary received her BS in chemistry, did graduate work in Pharmacology, and received her MS in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Connecticut, Storrs CT/University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington CT.

Chris Martin, PhD

Chris Martin’s interests span the continuum from physics to public policy. Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Martin was a professor of physics and astronomy at Oberlin College (2004-2013) where he studied the Milky Way Galaxy using the Herschel Space Observatory, long duration balloon missions, and telescopes around the world. During his tenure at Oberlin, he spent a year as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Fellow with the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and was involved in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, space policy, nanotechnology, and the federal funding of science research. Dr. Martin completed his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of California Santa Barbara in 1999, and then became the Station Science Leader at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and spent two years wintering over at the bottom of the Earth during his postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since joining The Kavli Foundation in 2012, Dr. Martin has played a key role in the development of the U.S. BRAIN Initiative, the National Microbiome Initiative, Neurodata Without Borders, and the International Brain Initiative, as well as a wide range of programs bridging the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience, and theoretical physics. Prior to joining FFB, Dr. Laster was a faculty member of the Department of Biology at Stevenson University. Dr. Laster completed a Postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Solomon Synder Department of Neuroscience. Her area of research focus was the study of neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Laster holds a B.S. Natural Science from Spelman College and a Ph.D. Biological Sciences from Purdue University.

Marcia McNutt, PhD

Marcia McNutt (B.A. in physics, Colorado College; Ph.D. in earth sciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography) is a geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she was editor-in-chief of Science journals. McNutt was director of the U.S. Geological Survey from 2009 to 2013, during which time USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For her work to help contain that spill, McNutt was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Geological Society of America, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy. Her honors include membership in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1998, McNutt was awarded the AGU’s Macelwane Medal for research accomplishments by a young scientist, and she received the Maurice Ewing Medal in 2007 for her contributions to deep-sea exploration.

Presentation

Maria Pellegrini, PhD

Dr. Maria Pellegrini is the Executive Director for Programs at the W.M. Keck Foundation in Los Angeles. She is the former Vice President for Research at Brandeis University and prior to that was the Program Director for Science and Engineering and the Liberal Arts at the Keck Foundation. Before joining the Keck Foundation Dr. Pellegrini spent 20 years on the faculty of the University of Southern California as Professor of Biology. During that time, she served as department chair for five years, and as Dean of Research in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Her research interests were in the field of protein synthesis. She was a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher Scholar Award. Dr. Pellegrini received her BA in Chemistry from Connecticut College, and her PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech. Dr. Pellegrini currently serves on the Boards of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, the USC-Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and is a trustee of Connecticut College.

Presentation

Jennifer Hall, PhD

Dr. Jennifer Hall graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1995 with a Ph.D. in physiology, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford and Harvard Schools of Medicine. She now serves as the Chief of The Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine for the American Heart Association. Dr. Hall is the immediate past Chair of the Functional Genomics and Translational Biology Council of the American Heart Association. She recently served on other National and International Committees including the National Heart Lung and Blood Parent Committee, the AHA Steering Committee, the DNA Framingham Committee, and the Genome Canada Review Board (past Chair for Cardiovascular group). Dr. Hall was an associate editor of JACC from 2009-2016 and was the founding editor in chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Translational Research.

Presentation

Chris Martin, PhD

see above

Kevin Lee, PhD

Dr. Lee is Senior Scientific and Programmatic Advisor to the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research. In that role he assists in guiding and coordinating the Foundation’s scientific mission to extend the healthy, productive years of life through research on the biological mechanisms of aging. He also serves as Executive Director of the Lawrence Ellison Foundation (formerly the Ellison Medical Foundation), a philanthropic organization supporting biomedical research on the fundamental mechanisms of aging, age-related diseases, and neuroscience. The Foundation was established by Lawrence Ellison, the Executive Chairman and founding CEO of Oracle Corporation. Dr Lee is Senior Advisor for Medical Research for the JPB Foundation, and Chief Scientific Officer for the Grace Science Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to understanding and developing treatments for NGLY1 deficiency and other related genetic conditions. Dr. Lee is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His career spans over 25 years of research experience in molecular genetics and neurobiology in biotechnology, academic research and not-for-profit settings. He served previously as Deputy Executive Director of the Ellison Medical Foundation from 2007-2012. Prior to joining the Ellison Medical Foundation, Dr. Lee was Executive Vice President-Research of Sentigen Biosciences. He was responsible for the start-up and development of this New York City-based biotechnology company leading to its acquisition by Invitrogen Corporation in 2006. He has served as a member of the Scientific Review Board for the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative in New York. Dr. Lee’s scientific research career employed genetic approaches to learn how neurons in the brain are “wired up” during development to make functional circuits that relay sensory information and control behavior. He worked with Dr. Thomas Jessell in the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, where he studied the specification, axonal projection, and functional connectivity of nerve cells in the spinal cord. He is the recipient of biotechnology patents and is the author of numerous research publications.

Valerie Conn

Valerie Conn is the vice president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. She brings 25 years of experience working with philanthropists, foundations, and corporations to fund science, medicine, engineering, and education initiatives. Her work for the Alliance concentrates on building the community of funders for basic science by advising individuals and foundation on how to strategically support basic science as a significant portion of their philanthropic portfolio. During her decade at the University of Chicago, Valerie led teams in the Physical Sciences Division, as well as university strategic initiatives, including mapping and implementing the strategy for partnership development, resource development, and marketing for the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Computation Institute. Prior to joining the Alliance, Valerie was the Vice President of Strategy for the B612 Foundation. Valerie began her career at the Illinois Institute of Technology, after which she led a campaign for medical research at Children’s Memorial Medical Research Center in Chicago.

Kristen Mueller, PhD

Scientific Program Director | Melanoma Research Alliance

Kristen Mueller, PhD, is the Scientific Program Director of the Melanoma Research Alliance. Prior to joining the Melanoma Research Alliance, Kristen was a Senior Editor at the journal Science. At Science, her primary responsibilities included orchestrating the peer review process for manuscripts covering subjects such as cancer immunology and immunotherapy, infectious disease and vaccines and also attracting the best research in these fields to Science. Kristen joined the Melanoma Research Alliance in 2017 with more than 15 years of experience in biomedical research and scientific publishing. She currently manages MRA’s research awards, including the solicitation, peer review, and oversight of approximately $8 to $10 million per year in funded programs. She is also responsible for coordinating MRA’s Annual Scientific Retreat. Kristen received her B.A. in biology from Carleton College and earned her Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Minnesota, where she studied the molecular regulation of T cell activation and adhesion – two processes critical for T cell responses to infection and for killing tumors. She continued to study similar processes in T cells as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH. While at NIH, she also served as a member of the Fellows Committee (FELCOM), an advocacy group for NIH postdocs, and co-chaired the Career Development Subcommittee of FELCOM.

Anna Kaatz, PhD

Director of Computations Sciences | UW-Madison Center for Women's Health Research

Dr. Anna Kaatz is the Director of Computational Sciences at the UW-Madison Center for Women’s Health Research. As a data scientist at the nexus of research on scientific workforce diversity and stereotype-based bias, Dr. Kaatz is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel tools and technologies to study and address reasons for female and racial/ethnic minority scientists’ underrepresentation in science and medical research careers. Broadly, current projects involve development of curriculum to help women and minority scientists advance to leadership; development of data- and text-mining algorithms to test for race and gender bias in NIH’s peer review process; and development of interventions, including role-playing video games, to reduce race and gender bias in medical schools, universities, national labs, industry, and high school settings.

Shirley Malcom, PhD

Director of Education and Human Advancement | AAAS

Shirley Malcom is head of Education and Human Resources at AAAS. In this position she works to improve the quality and increase access to education and careers in STEM. Dr. Malcom is a trustee of Caltech, a regent of Morgan State University and a former member of the National Science Board, the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation. She served on President Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. Malcom, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, received her PhD in ecology from Penn State, masters from UCLA and bachelor’s from the University of Washington, both in zoology. Malcom chaired the NAS Committee on Barriers and Opportunities to 2-Year and 4-Year STEM Degree Completion. She serves on the boards of the Heinz Endowments, Public Agenda, the National Math-Science Initiative and Digital Promise. In 2003, she received the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the highest award given by the Academy.

Sindy Escboar Alvarez, PhD

Senior Program Officer for Medical Research | Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Sindy N. Escobar Alvarez is the Senior Program Officer for Medical Research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She manages the peer-review and evaluation of grants for early-career physician scientists and for research advancing knowledge and treatments for sickle cell disease. Sindy also supports planning, strategy, and grant policy development and implementation for awards to advance biomedical research innovation and to develop clinical research careers. Sindy is a graduate of the Pharmacology Department of Cornell University Weill Graduate School and Sloan-Kettering Institute.