Scientista Symposium Speaker Bios
INDUSTRY TRACK PANEL
Robin Berzin MD is a functional medicine physician and the founder of Parsley Health, the first modern and affordable holistic medical center. Her mission is to help people prevent disease and heal sustainably. Robin co-founded the physician communication app Cureatr, is a medical advisor to Yahoo! Health, and a digital health advisor to the Institute for Functional Medicine and numerous startups. A Columbia and Mount Sinai Hospital trained MD, Robin was named one of the Top 100 Women in Wellness in 2015. She is also a certified yoga instructor and a meditation teacher. Robinwrites for numerous leading wellness sites, and speaks regularly for organizations including the Clinton Foundation, Health 2.0, Summit, and Vice Media on how we can reinvent health care.
|
Linda Cureton is the CEO of Muse Technologies, Incorporated, and former CIO of NASA. Muse Technologies is a Woman-Owned, Minority-Owned Small Business, and in the SBA 8(a) program. She has over thirty-four years of public service. Her IT management experience includes, Associate CIO at the Department of Energy and Deputy CIO at Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Linda has a BS in Mathematics from Howard University, a Master of Science degree, and Post-Masters Advanced Certificate in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. She created the NASA CIO blog, has numerous publications, articles, and awards.
|
Miki Hayano graduated this Spring from a PhD program at Columbia. Her research focused on a novel cell death process involved in neurodegeneration and in oncology. Though she enjoyed learning about new research and cutting-edge technologies, but she realized she did not want to make a career out of bench-work. Since graduating, she has been working at Navigant, a life sciences consulting firm, applying some knowledge she acquired in grad school while acquiring new skills.
|
Tessandra Sage is a recent graduate of Kent State University with a B.S. in Physics and Computer Science. Graduating Summa Cum Laude and a member of various organizations, Northrop Grumman was an ideal fit as a Software Engineer in the Professional Development program. Coming from a small town in Northeast Ohio, she is excited to live in The Charm City and explore her new opportunities, which include part time grad school, softball, running, and traveling. As a previous member and President of the KSU Chapter of Scientista, she is driven to continually be successful and help women excel and pursue STEM careers.
|
Jane Demianenko is an experienced, certified Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management implementation consultant. Her role is to help customers develop their business through improving the way they manage and execute their project work accomplishing this through mentoring, training, workshops, project support, processes, and implementations. She specializes in designing standardized planning and scheduling procedures, P6 configuration, P6 integration, developing reports and, tracking mechanisms.
|
Marissa Fayer is a global consultant working with small to mid-size Life Science companies to help them reduce costs and increase profits. Fayer Consulting specializes in manufacturing relocation's, project management, high-performing team development, and optimization of companies operations. Marissa has spent the last 15 years growing medical device manufacturing companies into world-class organizations and has been able to do that because of her distinct blend of Engineering, Operations, Quality, Product Development, and Strategic skills. In addition, she has lived throughout the US, Costa Rica, Canada, and the Caribbean. Marissa has previously worked at Hologic, AccuMed, and Atrium Medical, amongst a few others. Marissa is a graduate of Boston University’s College of Engineering and obtained her MBA at the University of Connecticut. Fayer Consulting was founded in 2015 and is growing strong.
|
SEXISM IN STEM TALK
Dr. Mercy Davidson is a Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia University Medical Center. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from India. She relocated to the US in 1981 to continue her thesis work on the ”Biochemistry of Neuromuscular Diseases” at CUMC where she has devoted her entire career on the study of genetics and biology of Mitochondrial Diseases. Using in vitro disease models of the heart and the blood brain barrier generated in her laboratory, Dr. Davidson’s group has been investigating the pathogenic mechanism and therapy of mitochondrial diseases. She has published over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters. She has served on the Commission for the Status of Women, and as University Senator. She mentors young scientistas at different levels, from junior high to graduate school.
|
HEALTHCARE INNOVATIONS PANEL
Shiri Azenkot is an Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. She is broadly interested in human-computer interaction and accessibility. Professor Azenkot’s research focuses on enabling people with disabilities to have equal access to information via mobile and wearable devices. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2014, where she was awarded the Graduate School Medal, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and an AT&T Labs Graduate Fellowship. She also holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Pomona College. |
Lauren Foundos, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FORTË since March 2015. Before launching her own company, FORTË, she spent four years working as an Institutional Government Bond Broker at Whitaker Securities where she dramatically increased their US Treasury Short Coupon and Bill desk revenues. Prior to that she worked at Deutsche Bank in Synthetic Equities and Cloudview Capital Management, a global-macro hedge fund, on their trading desk. Lauren graduated from the University of Maryland in 2006, with a BA in communications and minor in business. She is a two-time all-American field hockey player and went on to play Division I at the University of Maryland where her team appeared in the final four in 2004 and won national titles in 2005 & 2006.
|
Camilla Hermann is the founder and Executive Director of Odisi, a not-for-profit tech startup that developed a platform for last mile data collection. The first application of this platform is the Assisted Contact Tracing (ACT) system. ACT was built to deliver better, faster medical care during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The system automates contact follow up and builds location based maps of transmission networks, thereby providing a resource efficient and highly scalable foundation for further data analysis.Prior to Odisi, Hermann co-founded GroundUp Global, an organization that provides capacity building and resources to local leaders. She worked with the Liberian refugee population on the Buduburam camp in Ghana between 2010 - 2014, where she partnered directly with the Liberian Embassy in Ghana to raise funds and support citizen empowerment initiative within Buduburam. Through GroundUp, Hermann documented demographic data for 3500 unregistered Liberian refugees with a team of 10 for the purposes of repatriation by the UN, Ghana Refugee Board, and International Organization of Migration. Her work has been featured at the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference, the United Nations NGO Conference, and was selected as a semi-finalist for the Ashoka Changemaker Challenge.
|
Dr. Carrie Mantha is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and data scientist. She is currently the president of Aporia, a strategic growth partner to top life science companies, and the founder of Indira Inc., a retail technology personalization company. A surgeon by training, Carrie began leading efforts to modernize medicine through technology as the youngest ever member of the Board of Governors of Florida’s state medical association. She later joined one of New York’s largest hedge funds, directing investments into cutting-edge biotechnology companies and helping to bring life-saving new therapies to patients. Carrie’s strategic vision and expertise in drug, device, and technology development lead her to become a sought-after advisor to life science companies and investors. She advises and invests in start-ups across the technology spectrum.
|
Zoe Barry
Recently named to Inc. Magazine's 30 under 30, Zoë began her career originating and executing high-return strategic investments at a hedge fund in New York. In 2011 Zoë joined AthenaHealth (ATHN) as her foray into the industry, but quickly realized the inefficiencies in ePrescribing. She left ATHN to launch ZappRx in 2012. A graduate of Columbia University, she currently mentors budding entrepreneurs in the Columbia College Women in Business Society. |
Big Data Panel
Deborah Berebichez is a physicist, TV host and STEM advocate. She completed a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University and two postdoctoral fellowships at Columbia University's Applied Math and Physics Department and at NYU's Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences where she carried out research in the area of waves. As a co-host of Discovery Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science TV show she uses her physics background to explain the science behind extraordinary engineering feats. She has also appeared as an expert on National Geographic, the Travel Chanel, NOVA, CNN and numerous international media outlets. Dr. Berebichez’ work in science education and outreach has been recognized by Oprah, WSJ, TED, Forbes and WIRED. She is currently a Principal Data Scientist at Thoughtworks in NY.
|
Jennifer Lopez is the Commercial Innovation Technology Development Lead for the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory at CASIS – Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. As the Founding Member of NASA’s Datanaut Corps in the Technology and Open Innovation Division of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), she is shaping the direction of the program inspiring future engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to learn more about data science via NASA’s Data Portal and ultimately collaborate with NASA. Ms. Lopez serves on the Advisory Council for the Physics and Astronomy Department at Johns Hopkins University, she is an Innovation Fellow of the Disruptive Foundation, Tribeca Film Disruptive Innovation Awards and a Key Influencer for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tomorrow Lab - Advancing Science for the Benefit of Humankind.
|
Maria Naggaga is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft focusing on Microsoft Open Source development and Data Science. This year Maria has spoken at both OSCON and DOTNET FRINGE on ASP.NET 5 and using the new OSS .NET story to engage students and other emerging devs. She spends her spare time volunteering with Black Girls Code, Code Liberation, and Young Game Makers
Maria’s passion is in finding interesting ways on how we can use software and hardware to change perception, tell stories, and break stereotypes. |
Jennifer Shin is the Founder of 8 Path Solutions LLC, a data science, analytics and technology company. She is also a management consultant at Fortune 100 companies, a data science writer for IBM Big Data & Analytics Hub, and a technology expert on eHow.com. Ms. Shin is a recognized thought leader, including being named a Big Data and Analytics Hero by IBM in 2015. Her expertise has been sought out by numerous publications, conferences and organizations, including USA Today, VentureBeat, IEEE, ACM, Cornell University, IBM, Monster, SBA, SCORE, Hiscox, and ICERM. Ms. Shin received her undergraduate degree in Economics, Mathematics & Creative Writing and her graduate degree in Statistics both from Columbia University.
|
Delivering Better Health Care With Big Data Talk
Sherry Gao grew up in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama and graduated from MIT in 2011 with a degree in mathematics. She is currently a software developer at athenahealth working on the Clinicals product after spending some time on the Collector product. She has been at athena for over 4 years now and her past projects have included work on anesthesia billing and ensuring that her clients were prepared for the recent government mandated transition from the ICD-9 diagnosis code set to ICD-10 which affected every medical professional in the country.
|
Alternative Careers Panel
Lauren Celano is the Co-founder and CEO of Propel Careers, a life science search and career development firm focused on connecting talented individuals with entrepreneurial innovative life sciences companies. Lauren is very passionate about working with individuals with strong scientific backgrounds to find exciting growth opportunities in the life sciences industry. Before Propel, she spent about 10 years in the life sciences industry working with companies to advance drug molecules through SNBL USA, Aptuit, Quintiles, and Absorption Systems. She has a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Gettysburg College and an MBA with a focus in the health sector and entrepreneurship from Boston University. Lauren is on the Board of MassBioEd, the Advisory Board of the Boston University School of Public Health Pharmaceuticals Program, and the Advisory board for Endicott College Boston. She also serves on the Gettysburg College Entrepreneurial Fellowship Advisory Council and the programming committee of the Capital Network.
|
Liza Daly is the CTO at Safari, an O'Reilly Media company. During her tenure at Safari she has overseen the creation of an internal engineering, IT, and data science capability, bringing all technology activities in-house. Her current focus is on expanding the best of healthy engineering culture to the whole organization. Previously she founded a digital publishing startup that was eventually acquired by Safari, and has held a variety of management and engineering roles in digital publishing and web development.
|
Marissa Fayer is a global consultant working with small to mid-size Life Science companies to help them reduce costs and increase profits. Fayer Consulting specializes in manufacturing relocation's, project management, high-performing team development, and optimization of companies operations.
Marissa has spent the last 15 years growing medical device manufacturing companies into world-class organizations and has been able to do that because of her distinct blend of Engineering, Operations, Quality, Product Development, and Strategic skills. In addition, she has lived throughout the US, Costa Rica, Canada, and the Caribbean. Marissa has previously worked at Hologic, AccuMed, and Atrium Medical, amongst a few others. Marissa is a graduate of Boston University’s College of Engineering and obtained her MBA at the University of Connecticut. Fayer Consulting was founded in 2015 and is growing strong. |
Rebecca Searles is a science journalist and product manager at a media tech startup called Sonr. Formerly she was the Editorial Director for a science research crowdfunding site called Experiment. Before that, she was a Science Editor and Social Media & Community Editor at The Huffington Post. She writes about science, technology and culture, but spends most of her time thinking about new technologies for storytelling. Recently, she launched a digital mentorship platform for women in science called Nettie.
|
Neha Uppal is the Clinical Engineer at Neumitra, a company dedicated to quantifying stress to help people live healthier, less stressed lives. Neha's interest in understanding the science behind mental illness began in high school while volunteering at a school for children with mental and physical handicaps in Dehradun, India. Her graduate work centered on identifying neuropathology in brain regions known to be affected in autism. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York in 2013, and continued on to do her postdoctoral work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her postdoctoral work expanded from basic science into a more clinical realm, using electroencephalography to identify sensory processing deficits in children with low- and high-functioning autism. She has continued her work in understanding and alleviating mental health illnesses through her work at Neumitra.
|
Nasa Panel - Innovations in Space
Christina Ciardullo holds the current Ann Kalla Professorship in Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. Ciardullo has a background in astronomy and philosophy and has held research positions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture’s Space Architecture Lab and the Habitability Design Center at NASA Johnson Space Center. Her practice focuses on an interdisciplinary research approach, long term thinking, and the incorporation of fundamental physics in design. She recently was awarded the winning design for a new planetarium in Shanghai with Ennead Architects, for which she a continuing grant from the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society integrating architecture and astronomy. In her work off the planet, she is a founding member of SEArch, a consortium of architects designing for habitats for life in other atmospheres. Most recently she participated in teams that won both first and second place in NASA's Centennial Challenge to 3D Print a Mars Habitat. Christina also designed the logo for the Scientista Foundation!
|
Jennifer Lopez is the Commercial Innovation Technology Development Lead for the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory at CASIS – Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. As the Founding Member of NASA’s Datanaut Corps in the Technology and Open Innovation Division of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), she is shaping the direction of the program inspiring future engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to learn more about data science via NASA’s Data Portal and ultimately collaborate with NASA. Ms. Lopez serves on the Advisory Council for the Physics and Astronomy Department at Johns Hopkins University, she is an Innovation Fellow of the Disruptive Foundation, Tribeca Film Disruptive Innovation Awards and a Key Influencer for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tomorrow Lab - Advancing Science for the Benefit of Humankind.
|
Matthew Pearce is currently employed by the NASA Goddard Office of Education at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies on the campus of Columbia University as an Education Program Specialist. Pearce worked for NASA for 10 years as a prestigious NASA-NEAT educator, where he provided services as an educational consultant to schools and media organizations. He has over 22 years of diverse leadership, administrative and science teaching experience at all levels of academia, with extensive curriculum development and leadership experience in online instruction, medical, life and the physical sciences. Pearce is also a published author in genetics, neuroscience, anatomy and physiology and health science, and has received awards for excellence in science teaching from the National Science Foundation, NASA and Nobel Laureate, Dr. Francis Crick.
|
Deanne Bell is an engineer, television host, and the founder of FutureEngineers.org, a platform that hosts national invention challenges for students. Deanne is currently a co-host for CNBC’s ‘Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and her previous hosting credits include PBS, ESPN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and DIY Network. In 2014, Deanne founded Future Engineers, which hosts a multi-year space challenge series in partnership with NASA and the ASME Foundation. The inaugural challenge asked students to create a space tool to be 3D printed aboard the International Space Station.
|
Entrepreneurship Panel
Sara Chipps is a JavaScript developer based in NYC. She has been working on Software and the Open Source Community since 2001. She’s been obsessed with hardware and part of http://Nodebots.com since 2012. She is the CEO of http://Jewelbots.com, a company dedicated towards drastically changing the number of girls entering STEM fields using hardware. She was formerly the CTO of http://FlatironSchool.com, a school dedicated to teaching people of all ages how to build software and launch careers as software developers.
|
Elizabeth Entin is the Founder/CEO of Runway Passport, a marketplace where users can shop and discover emerging fashion forward designers by city from around the world. Liz fell in love with the world of fashion while growing up in New York. She began her career by interning first in fashion PR then moving to the magazine world - first at Harper’s Bazaar in New York and then Vogue in London. From there she grew to assist fashion stylists on a variety of shoots ranging from Vogue (UK and Italian), Glamour, Marie Claire, and many commercials. She also began styling on her own for smaller and more creative magazines such as Zink and Oyster. Runway Passport just launched out of it’s private beta and is signing on new designers daily from new cities around the world.
|
Tiffany Pham is the Founder & CEO of MOGUL, an award-winning worldwide platform connecting women to trending content, including articles, videos, questions, photos, products, and courses that are personalized to their interests. MOGUL is visited by millions of women from over 196 countries and territories and 20,651 cities worldwide. Mogul was named one of the "Top Sites for Marketing Your Company Online" by Forbes in 2015. Tiffany was named one of Forbes 2014 "30 Under 30" in Media, Business Insider 2014 "30 Most Important Women Under 30" in Technology, ELLE Magazine 2015 "30 Women Under 30 Who Are Changing the World," and also the Recipient of the 2014 Cadillac "IVY Innovator" Award. She is a frequent speaker at Harvard Business School, Wharton, Bloomberg, Northeastern, Columbia, and events from Beijing and Dubai. Tiffany is also the co-author of the book From Business Strategy to Information Technology Roadmap: A Practical Guide for Executives and Board Members (published by CRC Press). She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School.
|
Shioulin Sam is a Managing Director at Golden Seeds, an early stage investment firm focusing on women leaders. Prior to that, she was the Director of Research at ClearStream Investments, where she designed systematic trading strategies for equities and futures contracts. Shioulin also worked at Moody’s Investors Service, where she focused on research for models used in analyzing collateral debt obligations, catastrophe bonds and other structured finance products. Shioulin Sam is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science while a National Science Foundation Fellow. She also holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, from University of Maryland, College Park.
|
Gesche Haas is the founder of Dreamers // Doers, the first online Club House for trailblazing women. The highly curated high-impact community enables women to efficiently and effectively leverage each other as a resource. Gesche coined the term “sharing economy 2.0” which describes the capitalization of human capital vs. fixed assets. She believes women are at the forefront of this movement. Gesche started her career as an investor at a healthcare-focused hedge fund where she spent five years before holding senior roles at multiple venture-backed startups in roles covering strategy, growth, business development, and business operations. Her views on the tech space have been featured on Bloomberg TV, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and many other major media outlets. Gesche is half German, half Chinese-Malaysian and was born in Africa.
|
Research Panel
Sandra Batista completed her AB in computer science at Harvard University with generous support from a full scholarship from the AT&T Engineering Scholarship program. She completed her M.S. and Ph.D. at UCLA in computer science, specializing in complexity theory, with the support of a generous fellowship from the AT&T Labs Fellowship Program. For her post-doctoral work, she studied computational genetics and statistical methods at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University. Her current research focuses on gene expression analysis (both RNA and miRNA) and statistical methods for large scale data.
|
Katerina Mantzavinou is a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program, where her research focuses on designing implantable devices to improve access to intraperitoneal cancer therapy. She is from Greece and came to the US in 2007 to attend Harvard College, where she majored in engineering sciences. Her goal is to be an innovator in cost-effective healthcare. At MIT, she has helped create low-cost medical devices, including prosthetics and surgical tools. She co-teaches a course on prosthetic technologies for the developing world at the MIT D-Lab, and helps drive innovation in affordable medical technologies with MIT Hacking Medicine and MGH CAMTech.
|
Dr. Marian Mellen is a Research Associate at The Rockefeller University in the Molecular Biology lab, where she succesfully has developed her career in the field of neuroscience and epigenetics. A native of the Basque Country in Spain, she completed her PhD in Madrid’s Center for Biological Research. After arriving in the US, she concentrated in the budding field of neuroepigenomics and the problems arisen by the epigenetic modification 5hmC and its intriguing connection to Rett Syndrome. She enjoys traveling the world and making documentaries. She is also actively involved in science policy. She has been chosen one of the ten most influential basque women in 2014 by the leading daily newspaper in the Basque Country. Dr. Mellen lives with her husband and daughter in New York City.
|
Dr. Yaihara Fortis Santiago manages the Science Alliance, the professional development branch of the New York Academy of Sciences. Yaihara develops and implements innovative workshops and courses that provide early career scientists with a range of soft and business skills that will be essential for all careers. Yaihara also works closely with career development offices and student/postdoc organizations to consolidate resources and implement new ideas for professional development programing. Yaihara received her PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and then became a Science and Technology Policy Fellow under the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the National Science Foundation.
|
Brandy Grove is a first year doctoral student from Case Western Reserve University's Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering. She received her bachelors degree in physics from Kent State University, where she founded a chapter of Scientista as a junior. Her research interests include computational studies of nonlinear dynamics and rheology of colloidal systems. In her free time, Brandy teaches dance and fitness classes and hangs out with her cat, Rocket Man.
|
WORKSHOP MODERATORS
Ines Chen, PhD, Chief Editor - Nature, Structural and Molecular Biology
Workshop on Scientific Publishing
Ines was born and bred in Brazil. She obtained my B.Sc. in Biology and Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Sao Paulo, then moved to New York for post-doctoral training, at the Rockefeller University and at the Public Health Research Institute in New York. She joined the editorial team at Nature Structural & Molecular Biology in 2006, and became the chief editor in 2011. Being an editor allows her to indulge her broad interest in science and to be actively engaged with the scientific community. |
Yaihara Fortis-Santiago, PhD, Science Alliance Manager - New York Academy of Sciences
Leadership Workshop Dr. Fortis Santiago manages the Science Alliance, the professional development branch of the New York Academy of Sciences. Yaihara develops and implements innovative workshops and courses that provide early career scientists with a range of soft and business skills that will be essential for all careers. Yaihara also works closely with career development offices and student/postdoc organizations to consolidate resources and implement new ideas for professional development programing. Yaihara received her PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and then became a Science and Technology Policy Fellow under the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the National Science Foundation. |
Mackenzie Lowry, Co-Founder - Oasys, Student Advisor - Harvard University
Bold, Brave, and Assured: Confidence Workshop Mackenzie J. Lowry is a proven changemaker and has been recognized for her leadership by Glamour Magazine, Seventeen Magazine, Coca-Cola, Discover Card, Harvard University, among others. Initially interested in social innovation, she successfully advocated for policy changes at the state, university, and national level. After graduating from Harvard with highest honors in History of Science, she performed venture capital research at Harvard Business School and contributed to a #1 Amazon bestselling book on social entrepreneurship, Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation. An experienced keynote and guest speaker, she has traveled across the country for speaking engagements at places such as the Young Presidents Organization Global Leadership Conference, Cottey College, and Johns Hopkins University. Mackenzie also serves on the advisory board of the Scientista Foundation. |
Perry Moa, Software Development Manager, Northrop Grumman
VIPAR - Augmented Reality, A New Perspective on Data
Perry is an experienced software manager with expertise in UAV radar systems that utilize embedded software. Perry graduated from Syracuse University with a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Human Computer Interaction. He also has an MBA from Loyola University in Maryland. |
Stefanie Grupp-Clasby, Executive Director - The University of Cologne New York
Study Abroad Workshop
Stefanie Grupp-Clasby serves as Director of the University of Cologne North America Office, housed at the German Consulate General and Permanent German Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to New York under the leadership of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Working from the New York office, she manages the programs, development and operations of the University of Cologne in the United States and Canada while working closely with the University’s International Office and Rector’s Office on the institution’s internationalization strategy. |
Thea Zimnicki, Patent Attorney, Ferdinand IP, LLC.
Creating Your Personal Board of Directors Having a strong network of support can be incredibly important at all points during your education and career. Your personal “board of directors” will be mentors, colleagues, and peers who can help you with everything from getting your first job to confronting career challenges and beyond. In this workshop, we’ll discuss when a board is particularly important for women in STEM, who to include on your board, and how to be an effective board member for others. Thea Zimnicki is a registered Patent Attorney at Ferdinand IP. Ms. Zimnicki completed her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University and received her JD from Boston University School of Law. She also holds a B.A. in French from Bard College at Simon’s Rock and an LL.M. in European Law from l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II). Ms. Zimnicki’s patent practice encompasses a wide range of technologies, including electrical, mechanical, medical devices, and telecommunication. She also has considerable expertise in biomechanics and tissue engineering. Ms. Zimnicki is also an avid cyclist and tango dancer. |
Rebecca Garcia, Co-Founder - CoderDojo NYC
Intro to HTML/CSS Workshop Learn how to build a basic website with HTML & CSS. Rebecca Garcia is the Co-founder of CoderDojo NYC, a non-profit teaching youth to code. In 2013 she was awarded as a U.S. White House 'Champion of Change' for Tech Inclusion for her work to bring STEM education to underrepresented groups, especially youth and women. Last year she was listed as one of Glamour Magazine's '35 Women Under 35 Who are Changing the Tech Industry’ and this year as one of AskMen’s ‘Top 99 Outstanding Women’. Currently she is a Developer Evangelist at Squarespace, empowering people to build their ideas on the web. |
Maria Naggaga, Technical Evangelist - Microsoft
Intro to Databases Workshop Maria Naggaga is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft focusing on Microsoft Open Source development and Data Science. This year Maria has spoken at both OSCON and DOTNET FRINGE on ASP.NET 5 and using the new OSS .NET story to engage students and other emerging devs. She spends her spare time volunteering with Black Girls Code, Code Liberation, and Young Game Makers Maria’s passion is in finding interesting ways on how we can use software and hardware to change perception, tell stories, and break stereotypes. |
Collin Krepps, Software Engineer - Northrop Grumman
Software Reverse Engineering: winning at Solitaire Do you enjoy solving puzzles? This tech talk looks behind the scenes of a common Windows application. Together we will explore the internal architecture of Solitaire with the goal of "winning", without all that effort of first putting the cards in the right places. Several reverse engineering tools will be used to modify the program and demonstrate the desired effect. Collin Krepps is a software engineer with Northrop Grumman in Baltimore MD. Since 2004 he has worked on a variety of programs from airborne radar to anthrax detection systems. He currently works in the cyber security business area where he oversees three product development teams. Collin is a senior member of the IEEE and a volunteer leader in the Baltimore section and mid-Atlantic region. |
The Scientista Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved © 2011-2021 | Based in NY | contact@scientistafoundation.org
The Network for Pre-Professional Women in Science and Engineering
The Scientista Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) -- Donate!
The Network for Pre-Professional Women in Science and Engineering
The Scientista Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) -- Donate!