Erin Becker
Associate Director
Dr. Erin Becker is the Associate Director for Data Carpentry, where she leads the organization’s communications and community engagement activities. She received a Ph.D. in computational genomics from UC Davis and completed postdoctoral research at the university’s Center for Educational Effectiveness. Dr. Becker has experience developing and implementing practice-based instructional training programs as well as building community for supporting instructional innovation.
Rinze Benedictus
Staff Advisor
Rinze Benedictus is a staff advisor at the University Medical Center Utrecht and a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Benedictus was trained a biologist and, after working as a science journalist, is now active in science policy and management. He is involved in the Science in Transition initiative and UMC Utrecht’s efforts to develop and implement new incentives for researchers. His Ph.D. research focuses on the formative effects of these new incentive and reward structures.
Bill Brucker
M.D./Ph.D. candidate, Alpert Medical School
Bill Brucker is in the clinical years of the M.D./Ph.D. program at Brown University. He completed his undergraduate education at Brown as well, playing football and graduating with honors in Chemistry in 2004. Brucker is the Founder & Executive Director of the Providence Alliance of Clinical Educators, a nonprofit organization that produces innovative lessons to help engage students in basic science learning. He has taught students of many levels over the years, including as an Adjunct Professor of Biology at Rhode Island College.
Shani Carter
Professor, Management and Marketing
Special Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs for Outcomes Assessment, Academic Affairs
Dr. Carter is a Professor of Management and has been at Rhode Island College since the fall 2001. Dr. Carter teaches Human Resources, Compensation, Labor Relations, Foundations of Management, Organizational Theory, and Business, Government, and Society.
Michael Christman
President and CEO
Michael Christman, Ph.D., is president and chief executive officer of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research. In 2007, Dr. Christman initiated the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC), a research study evaluating the utility of using the knowledge of genetics in medicine. Under Dr. Christmans leadership, Coriell has also established a federally-funded Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell lab. This remarkable technology allows a skin or blood cell to be coaxed into becoming nearly any cell type in the body, opening new avenues for research, drug discovery, and eventually therapy.
Timothy Erick
Ph.D. Candidate, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry
Timothy Erick is a Ph.D. candidate in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University. He is currently performing thesis research on the development and function of the natural killer cell populations of the murine salivary gland and lacrimal gland.
Sarah Fankhauser
Ph.D. Candidate in Microbiology and Immunobiology, Harvard Medical School
Sarah received her B.S. in Biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007. That same year she started graduate school at Harvard Medical School, where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in immunology and conducting research on the immune response to intracellular bacterial pathogens.
Anne Fausto-Sterling
Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emerita of Biology & Gender Studies, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology & Biochemistry
Dr. Fausto-Sterling is currently focused on applying dynamic systems theory to the study of gender differentiation in early childhood. Her ambition is to restructure dichotomous conversations — inside the academy, in public discourse, and ultimately in the framing of social policy — in order to enable an understanding of the inseparability of “nature” and “nurture”.
Michael Littman
Professor, Computer Science
Michael L. Littmans research in machine learning examines algorithms for decision-making under uncertainty. He has earned multiple awards for teaching, and his research on meta-learning for computer crossword-solving, complexity analysis of planning under uncertainty, and algorithms for efficient reinforcement learning has been recognized with three best-paper awards. Littman has served on the editorial boards for the Journal of Machine Learning Research and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. In 2013, he was general chair of the International Conference on Machine Learning and program chair of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference.
Frank Miedema
Professor, Immunology
Vice-Chairman, Board of the University Medical Center Utrecht
Frank Miedema, Ph.D., is Professor of Immunology and Dean and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the University Medical Center Utrecht. He is one of the founders of Science in Transition, an effort to reform the scientific system to focus on creating value for society. Dr. Miedema studied biochemistry at the University of Groningen, specializing in immunology. He has published hundreds of articles in medical journals, including Nature, Science, and Lancet, and is a member of various national and international scientific organizations and advisory committees.
Elizabeth Nolan
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
Liz Nolan was raised in Niskayuna, New York and graduated magna cum laude from Smith College in 2000 with highest honors in chemistry and a minor in music. Liz conducted her graduate studies in inorganic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she joined the laboratory of Professor Stephen J. Lippard. Her doctoral work focused on the synthesis, characterization, and application of small-molecule fluorescent sensors for detecting zinc in biological samples and mercury in aqueous solution. Liz pursued post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School where she investigated the biosynthetic assembly of microcin E492m, an antibiotic “Trojan horse” peptide that targets Gram-negative bacteria expressing siderophore uptake pumps. Liz joined the Department of Chemistry at MIT as an assistant professor in 2009. Her current research interests include synergies between metal ion homeostasis and immunity, and the roles of host-defense peptides and metalloproteins in various biological phenomena. Liz received a 2010 NIH New Innovator Award, and she was named a Searle Scholar in 2011 and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in 2013.
James Piette
VP of Analytics
Deepti Pradhan
Senior Research Analyst, Office of Development
Deepti Pradhan is a Senior Research Analyst in the Yale Office of Development, and a 2015 Public Voices Fellow at The Op-Ed Project. After spending the better part of her career immersed in chemistry, biochemistry, and cell biology, including 13 years on the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Pradhan changed direction and moved to the Yale Office of Development in 2008, where she uses her skills in data analysis to enhance donor support for the university. She sustains her passion for science through Tilde Café, an independent not-for-profit science café she founded in 2008.
Erin Riggs
Genetic Counselor, Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute
Erin Rooney Riggs, MS, CGC is a certified genetic counselor at Geisinger Health Systems Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute and the co-coordinator of the International Collaboration for Clinical Genomics (ICCG). Previously, she served as a clinical genetic counselor at Emory University School of Medicine, focusing on general pediatrics and lysosomal storage disorders. Her research interests include the identification and characterization of the genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disorders, the effects of gene dosage, and the clinical utility of genomic testing.
Christopher Tan
Senior Genetic Counselor, Department of Human Genetics
Chris graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2007 with a Master of Science in Human Genetics and was certified by the American Board of Genetic Counseling in 2009. He joined the University of Chicago as a Genetic Counselor in 2007, where his responsibilities covered general pediatrics, prenatal, newborn screening, and laboratory counseling. Over the years, he has also been involved in a variety of specialty clinics, including ophthalmology and neurogenetics. He is currently the Senior Genetic Counselor for the University of Chicago Genetic Services, an academic DNA diagnostic laboratory that tests rare orphan genetic diseases.
Karen Wain
Certified Genetic Counselor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Karen received a degree in biology from Luther College (Decorah, IA) in 2000 and a Master of Science degree in Human Genetics, Genetic Counseling from the University of Michigan in 2007. She is a genetic counselor in the Mayo Clinic Cytogenetics Laboratory. In addition, she is a member of the Education, Engagement, and Ethics Workgroup and the Structural Variation Workgroup for the International Collaboration for Clinical Genomics (ICCG). She also provides genetic counseling services for patients with Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT) and chromosome anomalies. Her research interests include psychosocial issues in genetic counseling, adult and pediatric clinical genetics, HHT, and cytogenetics.
Sarah Weil
After a plant-centric introduction to biology, Sarah Weil became interested in molecular and cellular biology and earned a PhD from Columbia Universitys Biological Sciences Program. She now works as a medical writer.
Emily Weiss
Dow Chemical Company Research Professor, Department of Chemistry
Dr. Emily Weiss is the Dow Chemical Company Professor in Northwestern University’s Department of Chemistry. She earned her A.B. from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern in 2005. Dr. Weisss research group studies the behavior of nanoscale particles and molecules when they absorb light energy, and aims to discover ways they can convert light energy to electricity and fuel. She is a Public Voices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project.
Bill Wuest
Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator and Associate Professor, Chemistry
In July of 2011, Bill began his career as an Assistant Professor at Temple University and in 2016 was named the Daniel Swern Early Career Professor of Chemistry. In 2017, he then moved to Emory University where he is currently a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator and Associate Professor of Chemistry. His research focuses on the modification of natural products through total synthesis in an effort to develop innovative, pathogen-specific therapeutics.