Check back soon for a full list of speakers and bios!
Scientista Symposium Speaker Bios
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Research Panel
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.
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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. |
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The Scientista Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) -- Donate!