The speakers are listed alphabetically by last name.

 

Dr. Timothy Akers | AVP, Research Innovation & Advocacy, Morgan State & PI, National Quantum Literacy Network

Featured in Part 2: Panel B - QIS Faculty Development

• Click here to read Dr. Akers' biography
• Dr. Timothy A. Akers, M.S., Ph.D. is the Assistant Vice President for Research Innovation and Advocacy in the Division of Research and Economic Development, and Professor of Public Health, at Morgan State University (MSU), one of the nation’s oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Baltimore, Maryland.
  
  Prior to MSU, Dr. Akers was also a Senior Research Administrator at a major university in Georgia where he worked with faculty in conceptualizing and developing projects and writing proposals. Dr. Akers was also the Senior Behavioral Scientist and Program Officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he managed CDC’s largest academic cooperative agreement to the eight leading minority health professional schools. Dr. Akers has also held the position as Senior Research Scientist for the College of Human Medicine’s David Walker Research Institute at Michigan State University. Dr. Akers has personally received and/or mentored faculty in obtaining MSU grants, contracts, interagency and/or cooperative agreements from NSF, NIH, CDC, DHS, DoD, NASA, NSA, SAMHSA, and many other sponsors.
  
  Currently, Dr. Akers also serves as the Chairman of the Board to the Intercultural Center for Health, Research, and Wellness and on the National Advisory Board to Dia de la Mujer Latina, both nonprofit 501c3 organizations, located in Houston, Texas. Both nonprofits are missioned to reduce health disparities by providing education and training to Community Health Workers throughout the U.S. and Latin America (www.interculturalhrw.org/ and www.diadelamujerlatina.org/).
  
  In 2020, Dr. Akers was appointed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy to serve as a founding member to the nation’s first National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQIAC) for the U.S. In the same year, Dr. Akers’ latest NSF grant was to create and establish the National Quantum Literacy Network (NQLN), a consortium of HBCUs, minority business enterprises, and national laboratories to work together to address the hyper-disparities in quantum literacy through the creation of new and innovative research pedagogy for teaching and learning quantum literacy education.
  
  In 2021, Dr. Akers formally established the National Quantum Literacy Network, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion for historically underrepresented groups. (www.quantumliteracy.com and www.quantumliteracy.org). He is currently working with the QED-C (Quantum Economic Development Consortium) as co-chair to the QED-C Subcommittee on Foundations for the Workforce Development TAC (Technical Advisory Committee). Currently, Dr. Akers and his team are planning the first National Quantum Literacy Week for the U.S, scheduled for October 2022, in Washington, DC.
  
  Nationally, Dr. Akers is working with businesses interested in quantum literacy and quantum application technologies for workforce development training. Dr. Akers and his team have been providing input and advise to agencies in DOD, national health research, and commerce. Dr. Akers has been developing micro-credential certification modules in quantum literacy to expedite the learning process for workforce development.
  
  Dr. Akers is a former U.S. Air Force Security Police, where he specialized in counter-terrorism for nuclear weapons and ICBM missile security. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the U.S. Air Force’s prestigious Meritorious Achievement Medal for Research, Visionaries Innovation Award from the U.S. Department of Treasury, the National Minority Research Mentorship award, and Vision Awards from Morgan State University, including an award in mathematics for his mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students in interdisciplinary innovation.

 

Dr. Andrew Arrasmith | Sr. Application Engineer, Rigetti Computing

Featured in Part 2: Discussion with Early Career Professionals

• Click here to read Dr. Arrasmith's biography.
• My research area is quantum algorithms, focusing on near term applications of quantum computers. My research includes quantum machine learning, quantum error mitigation, and optimization for variational quantum algorithms.

 

Dr. Abraham Asfaw | Technical Program Manager, Google Quantum AI Education

Featured in Part 2: Panel A - QIS Pedagogy

• Click here to read Dr. Asfaw's biography
• I am a quantum computing experimentalist and educator. I completed my Ph.D. at Princeton University in the Department of Electrical Engineering, where I was advised by Prof. Stephen Lyon. My research interests are primarily in quantum computation, quantum optics, and condensed matter physics. My graduate work focused on tracking and stabilizing magnetic fields at the parts-per-billion level for quantum computers based on electron spin qubits, and using the kinetic inductance of disordered superconductors to make novel devices for pulsed electron spin resonance experiments. I have also worked on transport measurements of electrons floating on superfluid helium.

 

Dr. Alán Aspuru-Guzik | The Matter Lab, University of Toronto, Co-Founder, Zapata Computing

Featured in Part 2: Plenary - Keynote

• Click here to read Dr. Aspuru-Guzik's biography

• Alán Aspuru-Guzik is a professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto and is also the Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical Chemistry and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. He is a CIFAR Lebovic Fellow in the Biologically Inspired Solar Energy program. Alán also holds a Google Industrial Research Chair in Quantum Computing. Alán is the director of the Acceleration Consortium, a University of Toronto-based strategic initiative that aims to gather researchers from industry, government and academia around pre-competitive research topics related to the lab of the future.
  
  Alán began his independent career at Harvard University in 2006 and was a Full Professor at Harvard University from 2013-2018. He received his B.Sc. from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1999 and obtained a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow from 2005-2006.
  
  Alán conducts research in the interfaces of quantum information, chemistry, machine learning and chemistry. He was a pioneer in the development of algorithms and experimental implementations of quantum computers and quantum simulators dedicated to chemical systems. He has studied the role of quantum coherence in the transfer of excitonic energy in photosynthetic complexes and has accelerated the discovery by calculating organic semiconductors, organic photovoltaic energy, organic batteries and organic light-emitting diodes. He has worked on molecular representations and generative models for the automatic learning of molecular properties. Currently, Alán is interested in automation and "autonomous" chemical laboratories for accelerating scientific discovery.
  
  Among other recognitions, he received the Google Focused Award for Quantum Computing, the Sloan Research Fellowship, The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, and was selected as one of the best innovators under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology Review. He is a member of the American Physical Society and an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and received the Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.
  
  Alán is editor-in-chief of the journal Digital Discovery as well as co-founder of Zapata Computing and Kebotix.

 

Dr. Sergio Boixo | Chief Scientist - Quantum Computer Theory, Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab

Featured in Part 2: Panel D - Building the QIS Workforce

• Click here to read Dr. Boixo's biography.
• I apply methods from computation, information, and pure mathematics to problems of machine learning, physics and chemical physics. In the other direction, I am working on the use of quantum computation to address difficult computational problems. I am also interested in Energy.

 

Dr. Sarita E. Brown | Co-founder and President, Excelencia in Education

Featured in Part 1: Opening Remarks - A Call to Action

• Click here to read Dr. Brown's biography
• Sarita E. Brown is Co-founder & President of Excelencia in Education, a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to accelerating Latino success in higher education by linking research, policy, and practice to serve Latino students.
  
  For over three decades she has served in leadership positions at prominent educational institutions and at the highest levels of government, working to implement effective strategies to raise academic achievement and opportunities for low-income and students of color. She currently plays a major role expanding Presidents for Latino Student Success, Excelencia’s national network of college and university leaders who commit to making their institutions learning environments where Latino students thrive.
  
  Dr. Brown is recognized as a tireless advocate for educational equity. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Center for First-generation Student Success and the Committee on Addressing Women of Color in Tech for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

 

Dr. Erika Tatiana Camacho | Program Director, National Science Foundation

Featured in Part 1: Welcome and Meeting Overview (both parts), Closing Remarks (both parts)

• Click here to read Dr. Camacho's biography
• Dr. Camacho is currently Program Director at NSF,serving as co-lead for the Hispanic-Serving Institutions program and a Program Director for the ADVANCE Program and the Racial Equity in STEM Program Description. At Arizona State University, her home institution,she is a Professor in Applied Mathematics in the School of Mathematical & Natural Sciences. She has led multiple NSF and NSA projects supporting students' research, faculty development, institutional change, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in STEM as principal and co-principal investigator.
  
  Dr. Camacho is recognized as an expert in mathematical models of photo receptor degeneration. Her work provided the first mechanistic models in this area and the first mathematical framework to guide experimental work in retina degeneration and blindness. Her research is at the interface of mathematics and physiology and involves analytical techniques, in silico experiments, computational work, and collaborations with experimentalists; she has numerous publications in high-impact journals.
  
  Dr. Camacho’s passion for and prolific work in DEI and broadening participation in STEM has led to a multitude of efforts resulting in diversification of STEM research and education spaces. She is a renowned leader in diversity and mentoring of STEM students and faculty.
  
  Her leadership, scholarship, and mentoring have won her numerous national recognitions including the 2020 SACNAS Presidential Services Award, the 2019 AAAS Mentor Award, the 2014Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) award from the White House, the 2020 Association for Women in Mathematics( AWM) Louise Hay Award for Mathematics Education, the 2018American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education( AAHHE) Outstanding Latino/a Faculty in Higher Education Research/Teaching (Research Institutions) Award, the 2017 Great Minds in STEM Education Award, the Honorary Dean of the 2018 Youth Development Master’s Institute(previous awardees include Sandra Day O’Connor),the 2012 SACNAS Distinguished Mentoring Award,and the 2011 Hispanic Women’s Corporation National Latina Leadership Award among many other national awards and honors. She was a 2013-2014 MLK Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
  
  She grew up in East Los Angeles and was taught by Jaime Escalante at Garfield High School.She received her B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Wellesley College and earned her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. Dr. Camacho spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She then held a tenure-track faculty position at Loyola Marymount University before joining the faculty at ASU in 2007. She co-directed multiple summer programs dedicated to the recruitment of undergraduate women, underrepresented minorities, and those that might not otherwise have the opportunity.Dr. Camacho’s passion is to continue the work and legacy of her mentors: to create opportunities for those individuals from marginalized communities and make education and advancement attainable to them.

 

Dr. Russell Ceballos | Quantum Education Program Administrator, The Chicago Quantum Exchange

Featured in Part 2: Panel C - Establishing QIS Programs

• Click here to read Dr. Ceballos's biography.
• Russell R. Ceballos, Ph.D., is a Latino quantum information theorist from the South/East-Side of Chicago. Dr. Ceballos has a background in the theory of open quantum systems and is currently the Quantum Education Program Administrator at the Chicago Quantum Exchange. He has a profound interest in the mathematical and philosophical foundations of quantum theory, as well as has a deep passion for understanding how to best teach the fundamental principles of quantum information science through the development of quantum games for pedagogy.
  
  At the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Dr. Ceballos leverages his technical background to 1.) develop quantum curricula and course content, 2.) develop and support quantum-focused programs that foster a culture of inclusivity in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) for students from historically underserved and underrepresented communities by helping construct a supportive network of quantum-focused partnerships with other educational and research institutes in the region (which includes high schools and community colleges) to broaden participation among all demographics and disciplines via outreach events and workshops.
  
  As a 2020 Cohort Member of the NSF's Convergence Accelerator program, he is currently serving as a co-PI and the curriculum development lead for QuSTEAM, which is an NSF-funded quantum education initiative that aims to develop a transformative and convergent undergraduate curriculum to grow a diverse, capable, and effective future quantum workforce.
  
  Dr. Ceballos also works with the Quantum Institute within the NSF Quantum sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering (NSF QuBBE), the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN-CSU program), is an external member of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, and most recently served on the faculty of Chicago State University where he was the founder and director of the Quantum Innovation and Research Center, as well as a visiting faculty fellow at Fermi National Laboratory.

 

Mr. Nery Chapeton-Lamas | Chairperson, Department of Computer Science, MiraCosta College

Featured in Part 1: Panel A - Teaching AI + DS Concepts, Discussion - Next Steps + Reflection

• Click here to read Mr. Chapeton-Lamas's biography

• Nery Chapeton-Lamas is a Full-Time Tenured Faculty in the Department of Computer Science at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California. MiraCosta offers undergraduate degrees (one of 15 of California’s 112 community colleges selected to host a pilot baccalaureate program), university-transfer courses, career- and-technical education, certificate programs, basic-skills education, and lifelong-learning opportunities that strengthen the economic, cultural, social, and educational well-being of the communities it serves. His passion for teaching introductory programming courses (Java, C++) and advanced courses (Mobile Development, Computer Architecture) is the medium through which he applies his greatest passion: providing superior educational opportunities and support for a diverse population of learners. Especially in Computer Science, he is a strong advocate for student success through student equity. In addition to his teaching activities, he is the advisor for the CodeTech Computer Club and an annual workshop presenter forthe Encuentros Leadership Conference and GirlTech Conference and Expo, which encourage Latino boys and middle school girls, respectively, to pursue higher education and STEM careers. His personal interests include embedded systems, computer security, and mobile app development. He spends his breaks working on Raspberry Pi’s, Arduino’s, and reading comic books.

 

Dr. Yosem Companys | President, Techlantis

Featured in Part 1: Panel B - Faculty Development in AI + DS

• Click here to read Dr. Companys's biography
• Yosem Companys has 20 years of experience leading entrepreneurial teams, building high-tech products and ventures, and coaching startup entrepreneurs. He is a pioneer of Lean Startup, human-centered design, and digital viral marketing. He co-founded Augustine Labs and Techlantis, comprising teams of Ph.D. experts from Stanford University, U.S. defense and intelligence, and Corporate America who specialize in artificial intelligence (AI). Previously, he worked at the $176-million AI Fund started by Google Brain co-founder Andrew Ng and backed by Greylock, NEA, Sequoia, and SoftBank. There, he co-founded FourthBrain, which trains Machine Learning engineers. He also led the climate science and AI program at deeplearning.ai, an AI ed-tech company. He advised portfolio companies Factored, which builds world-class data science & AI engineering teams; Landing.ai, which provides enablement tools and transformation programs to move AI projects from proof-of-concept to full-scale production; and Workera, which assesses and develops AI capabilities for enterprises. Yosem holds a Bachelor's degree from Yale, a Master's degree from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.

 

Dr. Leigh Ann DeLyser | Executive Director, CSforAll

Featured in Part 1: Panel A - Teaching AI + DS Concepts, Panel B - Faculty Development in AI + DS

• Click here to read Dr. DeLyser's biography
• Dr. Leigh Ann DeLyser has spent her career building the K-12 computer science (CS) field. As an Executive Director of CSforALL (csforall.org), she oversees programs and strategic planning and supervises research to build support for high quality CS education at all levels. A former high school and university CS educator, Leigh Ann understands challenges faced by teachers, administrators, and students developing their competency in the field and accessing high-quality learning opportunities and resources. Her influential “Running on Empty” report guides policies and research that support high-quality program implementation. Previously, Leigh Ann was Director of Research and Education at CSNYC, which built a foundation for CS in New York City public schools. She received a PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology, with a focus on CS education,from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Dr. Ivan Deutsch | Regents' Professor and Director of the Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico

Featured in Part 2: Panel C - Establishing QIS Programs

• Click here to read Dr. Deutsch's biography.
• Regents' Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico and co-PI of the Center for Quantum Information and Control (CQuIC). Prof. Deutsch founded Southwest Quantum Information and Technology (SQuInT). His research interests include quantum information theory and its application is in quantum optical and AMO system.

 

Dr. Tomasz Durakiewicz | Program Director, National Science Foundation

Featured in Part 2: Panel D - Building the QIS Workforce

• Click here to read Dr. Durakiewicz's biography.
• Tomasz Durakiewicz received his Ph.D. in Poland in 1998 in the area of Experimental Physics for work on surface properties of metals. After spending a year as Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico, Durakiewicz joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2000 as Director's Funded postdoc and converted to staff member in 2003. His main research interests are related to the electronic structure of f-electron materials, mostly actinides, explored by angle-resolved photoemission. In addition, Durakiewicz worked on the electronic structure of topological systems, thermionic emission and work function, and also on applications of stable isotopes. Durakiewicz has coauthored over 170 peer-reviewed publications, over 210 conference abstracts, and 6 patents, and presented over 60 invited talks. Since July 2014 Durakiewicz serves as Program Director for Condensed Matter Physics at the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research, and since February 2019 serves as Staff Associate, Office of the Assistant Director, Directoriate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.  

 

Dr. Sophia Economou | Professor, Virginia Tech

Featured in Part 2: Panel B - QIS Faculty Development

• Click here to read Dr. Economou's biography.
• Sophia Economou is a professor of physics at Virginia Tech. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of California, San Diego, where she worked on theoretical aspects of optically controlled spin qubits. After that, she spent several years at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., first as an NRC postdoc and later as a staff researcher. Her current research interests include quantum computing with various types of qubits, including spin-based, superconducting, and photons. She is also interested in photonic entanglement in quantum networks as well as quantum simulation algorithms for solving many-body problems on quantum devices.

 

Dr. Diana Elder | Division Director, National Science Foundation

Featured in Part 2: Closing Remarks

• Click here to read Dr. Elder's biography
• Dr. Diana Elder began her academic career at Northern Arizona University (NAU), where she earned a B.S. in Geology, a B.S. in Physical Sciences, and an M.S. in Quaternary Studies. While completing her graduate studies, Dr. Elder worked for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Branches of Astrogeology and Western Regional Geology, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Desert Research Institute. Dr. Elder earned her Ph.D. in Geological Sciences at the University of California – Riverside. After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Elder returned to Northern Arizona University, where she holds the rank of Associate Professor of Geomorphology. Dr. Elder’s most recent appointment is as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for NAU’s College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences. Dr. Elder served as a Program Director for the Directorate for Biological Sciences in the Division of Biological Infrastructure from 2010-2012, and became Division Director for EHR’s Division of Human Resource Development in January 2020.

 

Dr. Eden Figueroa | Associate Professor, Stony Brook University

Featured in Pt. 2: Panel C - Establishing QIS Programs

• Click here to read Dr. Figueroa's biography.
• Coming soon.

 

Dr. Omar U. Florez | NLP Researcher, Twitter Cortex

Featured in Part 1: Plenary - Keynote

• Click here to read Dr. Florez's biography
• Doing state-of-the-art research on enabling natural conversations between humans and devices. Implementing meta-learning and memory augmented recurrent neural networks to learn with small data, as we humans do, and to deal with catastrophic forgetting.
  
  Formerly, I was a Senior Research Manager at Capital One and Machine Learning Research Scientist at Intel Labs. Focused on teaching computers to understand user context in images (visual questioning answering), audio (prediction of acoustic events),and text (image captioning, dialog systems). I use Deep Learning for accurate predictions and Bayesian models for discovering interpretable hypotheses.
  
  IBM Research granted me the Innovation Award on Scalable Data Analytics in 2010, which funded my PhD thesis "Real-time learning of rules and prediction of dangerous scenes on traffic surveillance videos". On the news: http://goo.gl/9ptn4U.
  
  I contributed to the Yahoo's Pig Latin open source project to include meta data (aspect oriented features like privacy, reliability, and time)into the FILTER, JOIN, GROUP, and UNION transformations of the execution engine. Pig Latin is a cloud computing language for massive data analysis based on Hadoop.

 

Dr. Ann Gates | Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, University of Texas at El Paso

Featured in Parts 1 and 2: Welcome and Meeting Overview (both parts), Panel A - Teaching AI + DS Concepts (Pt. 1), Panel C - Overcoming Administrative Barriers (Pt. 2)

• Click here to read Dr. Gates's biography
• Dr. Ann Quiroz Gates holds the AT&T Distinguished Professorship and is the Vice Provost at the University of Texas at El Paso. Gates is the past Chair of the Computer Science Department (2005-2008 and 2012-2020) and Associate VP of Research and Sponsored Projects (2008-2012). She is the Executive Director of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), one of NSF’s eight National INCLUDES Alliances that promote the importance of inclusion and equity in advancing innovation and discovery. Gates directs the NSF-funded CyberShARE Center of Excellence that advances interdisciplinary education and research.She was a founding member of the NSF Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure and served on the Board of Governors of IEEE-Computer Society 2004-2009. Gates was a member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee (2016-2018), AAAS Board appointed Committee on Opportunities in Science (2014-2017), and past member of the Computer Science Accreditation Board (2011-2013). Gates received the 2015 Great Minds in STEM's Education award,the CRA’s 2015 A. Nico Habermann Award, the 2010 Anita Borg Institute Social Impact Award, and the 2009 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing. She was named to Hispanic Business magazine’s 100 Influential Hispanics in 2006 for her work on the Affinity Research Group model.

 

Dr. Christopher Gutiérrez | Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

Featured in Part 2: QIS Faculty Development

• Click here to read Dr. Gutiérrez's biography.
• Christopher Gutiérrez is an experimental condensed-matter physicist and assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University, New York, before moving to postdoctoral positions at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Maryland, and the University of British Columbia Quantum Matter Institute, Canada, where he was a Prize Fellow. His research interests are broadly in designing and imaging novel quantum states of matter in low-dimensional materials.

 

Dr. Rosalyn Hobson Hargraves | Division Director, National Science Foundation

Featured in Part 2: Welcome and Meeting Overview

• Click here to read Dr. Hargraves's biography.
• Dr. Rosalyn (Roz) Hobson Hargraves is Division Director for the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE). The Division of Undergraduate Education, in the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources, strengthens STEM education at two- and four-year colleges and universities. Dr. Hargraves is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University and previously served as an Intermittent Expert for NSF's Directorate for Education and Human Resources. She began her term as NSF division director for DUE on August 1, 2021.
  
  In addition to STEM education, Dr. Hargraves’ research interests also include diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, machine learning, biomedical signal and image processing, and the role of science and technology in international development. Dr. Hargraves received her Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia. During her 25 years at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Dr. Hargraves co-founded the VCU College of Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering, and has served in numerous leadership roles, including Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence, the Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University - University of KwaZulu Natal International Partnership, Associate Dean in the College of Engineering, and Interim Co-chair in the School of Education Department of Teaching and Learning.  
  
  Dr. Hargraves has published over sixty peer reviewed conference and journal publications, been awarded two patents, given over 60 lectures/seminars domestically and internationally and served on expert panels across the United States. She has consulted with private industry in the area of machine learning and co-founded a start-up, SPT (Signal Processing Technologies), based upon her research in biomedical image processing.  She has been awarded sponsored research grants as PI, co-PI, or senior personnel totaling over $25 M from federal, state, foundation, and industrial sources primarily in the area of STEM education and training. Throughout her career she has served on over 80 review committees, conference organizing committees, professional, university, school and department committees. Her professional service has included membership on two National Academies Committees, and she currently is elected to serve on the American Council on Education Council of Fellows board, the Bon Secours Richmond Health System Board, and as a Richmond Memorial Health Foundation Trustee.
  
  Dr. Hargraves has been recognized nationally for her mentoring, teaching, leadership, and diversity initiatives. From 2019-2020 she was one of 38 academic leaders selected for the nationally renowned American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship, the premier comprehensive leadership development program in American higher education. In 2003-2004 she served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Diplomacy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development (2003-2004).  Among her numerous awards, she received the 2018 National Association for Ethnic Studies Robert L. Perry Mentoring Award and 2006 Dr. Hargraves was named Engineer of the Year by the Richmond Joint Engineers Council.

 

Dr. Isaac Kim | Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: Panel D - Building the QIS Workforce

• Click here to read Dr. Kim's biography.
• Isaac Kim is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. As a member of It from Qubit, he was a postdoc at Stanford University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include developing a general theory of quantum error correction and fault-tolerant logical gates to study holographic duality.

 

Dr. Greg Kuperberg | Professor, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: QIS Faculty Development

• Click here to read Dr. Kuperberg's biography.
• Dr. Kuperberg is interested in finding new quantum algorithms or complexity barriers for candidate problems for quantum and classical algorithms, as well as geometric properties of quantum error correcting codes and quantum entanglement problems. My work has had applications to post-quantum cryptography, which is the effort to find and designate new standards of public key encryption that are resistant to quantum attacks.

 

Dr. Karen Jo Matsler | Assistant Professor of Practice, University of Texas at Arlington

Featured in Part 2: Panel A - QIS Pedagogy

• Click here to read Dr. Matsler's biography.
• Karen Jo Matsler is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Arlington and currently supervises the UTeach STEM Clinical Teachers. She has been in education for over 35 years, mostly as a high school physics teacher, but has also taught middle school science and served as a K-12 science coordinator. Matsler is the founder of STEM Experts and currently Principal Investigator for the NSF funded project, Quantum for All https://quantumforall.org/. She has received numerous awards for her service and educational expertise in STEM curriculum development, program evaluation, and K-12 professional development/certification.

 

Dr. Lina Mendez | Director of HSI Initiatives, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: Welcome and Meeting Overview

• Click here to read Dr. Mendez's biography

• Lina Mendez is a first-generation Latina who is passionate about mentoring the next generation of rising scholars.  She has worked at UC Davis since 2003 and is currently the inaugural Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) initiatives director.  She received her master’s degree from Harvard University and later attended UC Davis for her Ph.D. Throughout her educational career, she has always tried to open doors for the next generation of students who could become the professionals their communities desperately need. Because of her lived experiences, she sees all of her work through a social justice and equity framework, which allows her to build rapport and trust.

 

Dr. Naomi Nickerson | VP of Quantum Architecture, PsiQuantum

Featured in Part 2: Panel D - Building the Quantum Workforce

• Click here to read Dr. Nickerson's biography.
• Quantum computing researcher focused on how to make quantum error correction work in real devices.

 

Ms. Victoria Norman | Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: Discussion with Early Career Professionals

• Click here to read Ms. Norman's biography
• Victoria Norman is a 5th year graduate student in the Physics and Astronomy Department working with Marina Radulaski on solid state photonic quantum information.
  
  Her undergraduate research at the University of Chicago was in David Schuster's group on fabricating Josephson junction qubits. She currently helps run the UC Davis Quantum Journal Club, an interdisciplinary club that fosters education and collaboration in QIST.

 

Dr. Anne-Marie Nuñez | Professor, The Ohio State University

Featured in Part 1: Panel C - Overcoming Administrative Barriers

• Click here to read Dr. Nuñez's biography
• Anne-Marie Núñez is Professor of Educational Studies in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at The Ohio State University. Before joining Ohio State, Dr. Núñez started her faculty career at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), the second largest HSI on the U.S. mainland, and spent nine years there. Her award-winning scholarship employs sociological approaches to advance equitable postsecondary educational opportunities for historically underserved groups in higher education. Her research has focused on: (1) postsecondary trajectories of Latinx, first-generation, migrant, and English Learner students; (2) institutional diversity in the U.S., including the role of HSIs in promoting college opportunities; and (3) building inclusive and equitable environments in STEM disciplines and HSIs. Her research on HSIs, particularly that on accountability policies in shaping HSIs’ capacities, and the creation of an HSI typology, has informed public policy and legislation. She co-edited Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice, an International Latino Book Award winner that is the first book to focus on HSIs as organizations and their role in the American higher education system. As a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee member, she helped co-author and disseminate a 2019 report on the contributions of Minority-Serving Institutions to the science workforce, entitled Minority Serving Institutions: America's Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce.She currently collaborates with scientists on over $10 million in NSF grants to build equitable environments in computing and geosciences, raise Latinx attainment in STEM fields, and strengthen STEM capacity in HSIs. Among these projects, she works with the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) to explore how CAHSI computing departments support Hispanic and underrepresented students to succeed in computing fields.

 

Dr. Patricia Ordóñez | Professor, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Featured in Part 1: Plenary - Introduction, Panel B - Faculty Development in AI + DS

• Click here to read Dr. Ordóñez's biography
• I am an Associate Professor in the Computer Science faculty at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras and thereby fulfilling two lifelong and one unexpected midlife dreams - living in a Spanish speaking country, having the opportunity to make a greater difference in the world, and becoming a professor. My research interests are in applying machine learning, data mining, and visualization to multivariate time series analysis, specifically to large repositories of clinical data (now know as Biomedical Data Science). There are so many techniques that have been applied to financial and marketing data that can make a significant impact to improve the way medicine is practiced today. Through collaboration among computational scientists, medical professionals, and others, tools can be developed to create clinical decision support systems so that medical providers make better diagnosis and treatment plans by learning from the experience of previous providers who have had similar patients. I founded the Symposium of Health Informatics for Latin America and the Caribbean as a major step in addressing that objective through international collaboration. I am passionate about making quality health and education accessible to all. I am also passionate about diversifying the field of computer science and thereby am active in mentoring and developing mentoring communities at the elementary,middle, and high school level, college and graduate school level, and in creating assistive technologies for programming and communication so that computer science is for all.
  
  I received a PhD from the department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I defended my dissertation on March 29, 2012 and my doctoral degree was conferred on May 18, 2012. I was a non-traditional student, meaning I took a huge leap of faith while experiencing a close to mid-life crisis. Ages ago as an undergraduate, I was scared off by electrical engineering (computer science was just starting then). After years of teaching high school math and Spanish and even more years being a technical trainer, I decided to go back to school full-time to pursue a graduate degree and explore my mind's fullest potential. I applied for the PhD program realizing that without external funding I would not be able to accomplish this task. UMBC took a chance on me and accepted me with full funding in Fall of 2005 even though I did not have a degree in Computer Science. Thank you, CSEE department at UMBC! After two years, I was blessed and pleasantly surprised to win a fellowship from the National Science Foundation while I struggled to keep up with all the twenty somethings in graduate school. Thank you, NSF! It's hard to believe I am now a tenured Associate Professor. But, this road was not traveled alone. I have to give credit to UMBC's PROMISE program and to my family, friends, peers, mentors, and advisors for all the support I received from them. Credit also goes to the CRA-W, the CDC, Google, and the Anita Borg Institute for the wonderful programs they have to keep the underrepresented motivated. Thank you to the National Science Foundation, the CSEE department, the eBiquity laboratory,Verizon, Xerox, and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund for helping to fund my graduate school experience.

 

Mr. Jesse Patton | Research Assistant, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: Discussion with Early Career Professionals

• Click here to read Mr. Patton's biography.
• Coming soon.

 

Dr. Mark Pederson | Professor, University of Texas at El Paso

Featured in Part 2: Plenary - Introduction, Panel C - Establishing QIS Programs: Overcoming Administrative Barriers

• Click here to read Dr. Pederson's biography
• Dr. Pederson is Chair and Professor in the Department of Physics at University of Texas-El Paso. He Joins UTEP from the Department of Energy (DOE), with a research background in chemical physics, condensed-matter physics, and computational physics. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison – where he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumni in the Department of Physics – and bachelors’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Pederson was inspired to enter the field of physics while attending high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Harlan Sandholm, his physics teacher and high school athletic director, reminded him and his classmates of a timeless truth: regardless of the era, out-of-the-box innovations by physicists have always been and will always be needed to mitigate societal problems.
  
  Prior to joining UTEP, Dr. Pederson spent his career performing, managing, and funding research at the interface of physics and chemistry for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the National Science Foundation, and most recently for the DOE. Since the start of his career, Dr. Pederson’s focus has continuously concentrated on next-generation computing paradigms for quantum mechanics. His most recent publication focused on how non-destructive magnetic spectroscopy techniques could be used to understand reaction mechanisms in a molecule that bears a striking similarity to a complex in Mother Nature’s photosystem II (PSII), which uses sunlight to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen for energy.
  
  During his tenure as a government employee, Dr. Pederson was recognized by the NRL for his outstanding performance for 19 consecutive years, beginning in 1989. In 2004, he received the Sigma Xi Edison Pure Science Award from the NRL, one of the highest accolades in human-centered design and innovation. In 2008, Dr. Pederson started building a ten-year, $30 million program in computational and theoretical chemistry for the DOE. The DOE recognized him for his program-manager-level advice on the Materials Genome Initiative, an interagency program with the NSF and NIST, intended to shorten the time required to transition new materials from discovery to deployment. Dr. Pederson is a member of the American Chemical Society, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has published over 200 papers, including one of the most highly cited papers in physics and chemistry, and co-authored with numerous researchers from nearly 30 different countries. In 2014, Dr. Pederson invented a new form of density-functional theory that he named the "Fermi-Löwdin-Orbital Self-Interaction Correction". This method is now being further developed by a large team of scientists in the United States and Germany, alongside researchers at UTEP, one of the four primary hubs for the project.
  
  Dr. Pederson is the primary author of the Naval Research Laboratory Molecular Orbital Library (NRLMOL), a code that is used to benchmark several versions of the density functional theory for molecules. It is the first computational code capable of calculating infrared and Raman spectra of molecules within density functional theory, and the first code to calculate several types of magnetic responses of molecules to applied magnetic fields. In 2000, NRLMOL was the first library to be re-written in a manner that demonstrated a means for performing automatic load-balanced massive parallelization in the field of electronic structure.
  
  His proudest long-term achievement is his individual grass-roots attention to cultural and gender diversity in science, and in affirming by example that equal access and inclusion leads to excellence. In his new role as Chair of the Physics Department at UTEP, Dr. Pederson is committed to combining his research interests with the strategies he presented during his interview process entitled, "How Physicists can Prepare Students to Create a Sustainable Future". His approach for achieving this includes increasing outreach to national labs and industry, and encouraging how teaching experimental, theoretical, and computational physics can be modified to use day-to-day sustainable approaches for the development of new solutions that better address the needs of our society. Dr. Pederson firmly believes that the multicultural community of El Paso will continue to inspire the region to emerge as the international leader in sustainable and cooperative living.
  
  Dr. Pederson shares that in addition to his scholarly work, one of his personal sustainability ventures while in Washington, D.C., was the early installation of a 5KW solar panel on his home. In addition to research challenges, Dr. Pederson enjoys travel, the outdoors, endurance sports, and adventure. He enjoys running and biking, and has completed four marathons. He has swam across the Chesapeake Bay, camped in the frozen Minnesota Boundary waters in the middle of the winter, and bicycled from Munich to Budapest. A yet unmet goal of his is to walk the Appalachian Trail, and bike from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh, on a converted railroad bike path. Dr. Pederson’s wife, Dr. Yung Min Kim, is the assistant head of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. where their daughter, Annika, is attending her final year of high school. Their son, Erik, is enjoying his studies as a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University where he also plays football.

 

Dr. Enrico Pontelli | Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, New Mexico State University

Featured in Part 1: Panel C - Overcoming Administrative Barriers

• Click here to read Dr. Pontelli's biography
• Dean Pontelli received his Laurea in Computer Science from the University of Udine (Italy), his Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Houston and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from New Mexico State University. He is a Regents Professor of Computer Science and has been serving as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since 2016. He has conducted active research in a variety of areas of Computer Science, including knowledge representation and reasoning, multi-agent systems, assistive technologies, bioinformatics and high performance computing. He is founding director of the interdisciplinary Center of Research Excellence in Design of Intelligent Technologies for Smartgrids (iCREDITS) – funded through a $10M investment from the National Science Foundation. He is the recipient of a NSF CAREER award and he has contributed to over $20M of extramural funding. He has authored over 275 peer-reviewed publications. He is also passionate about the importance of inclusion and diversity in STEM education – he serves as the Southwest lead of the Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI), one of the 5 NSF INCLUDES alliances, focused on the advancement of Hispanics in computing; he is also the founder of the Young Women in Computing initiative.

 

Dr. Marina Radulaski | Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 2: Panel A - QIS Pedagogy

• Click here to read Dr. Radulaski's biography

• Marina Radulaski is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis where she leads the Quantum Nanophotonics Laboratory. Prof. Radulaski is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2021, OneQuantum Leading Female Scientist in 2021 award, and was selected for the Pauli Center for Theoretical Study Visiting Researcher program 2021, the Rising Stars in EECS cohort 2017, and Scientific American’s 30-Under-30 Up and Coming Physicists in 2012. She obtained a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University as a Gabilan Fellow, followed by the position as a Stanford Nano- and Quantum Science and Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow. Her academic training includes two undergraduate degrees, in theoretical physics and computer science, from the University of Belgrade and the Union University in Serbia. Prof. Radulaski has broad international experience in quantum and solid-state physics research performed at UC Davis, Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Oxford University, the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna, Helmholtz Center Berlin, the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Science, and the Institute of Physics Belgrade.  

 

Dr. Naoki Saito | Director of TETRAPODS - Institute for Data Science, University of California, Davis

Featured in Part 1: Panel A - Teaching AI + DS Concepts, Panel C - Overcoming Administrative Barriers

• Click here to read Dr. Saito's biography
• Naoki Saito is an applied and computational harmonic analyst who is interested in feature extraction, graph signal processing, Laplacian eigenfunctions, and human and machine perception. He received the B.Eng. and the M.Eng. degrees in mathematical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1982 and 1984, respectively. Then, he received his Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from Yale in 1994 while working at Schlumberger-Doll Research. In 1997, he joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Davis, where he is currently a professor and a director of the UC Davis TETRAPODS Institute of Data Science (UCD4IDS), one of the NSF's Transdisciplinary Research In Principles Of Data Science (TRIPODS) Institutes that bring together the theoretical computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, and statistics communities to develop the theoretical foundations of data science.
  
  Dr. Saito received the Best Paper Awards from SPIE (1994) and JSIAM (2016) as well as the Henri Doll Award from Schlumberger (1997), the ONR Young Investigator Award (2000), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2000).
  
  He is a senior member of IEEE as well as a member of IMS, SIAM, and JSIAM. He also served as Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Imaging Science from 2013 to 2015, and is a member of the editorial board of the three international journals: Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis; Inverse Problems and Imaging; Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision.

 

Dr. Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi | Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine

Featured in Part 2: Panel A - QIS Pedagogy

• Click here to read Dr. Sanchez-Yamagishi's biography.
• Coming soon.

 

Dr. Nayda Santiago | Professor, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Featured in Part 1: Panel A - Teaching AI + DS Concepts

• Click here to read Dr. Santiago's biography
• Nayda G. Santiago is professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus (UPRM) where she teaches the Capstone Course in Computer Engineering. Since 2006 she is member of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI) where she is leading the Southeast Region. In 2014 and 2016 she directed the 1st and 2nd Caribbean Celebration of Women in Computing,respectively and recently the Explore CRC PR conference for increasing participation of women in computing. Dr. Santiago is NCWIT academic alliance member, member of Henaac, former board member and lifetime member of SACNAS, member of the CIAPR, senior member of the IEEE, member of the ACM, and senior member of the Latinas in Computing (LiC) organization.Dr. Santiago has been awarded 2017 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award, 2008 Henaac Educator Award,2008 Distinguished Computer Engineer of the CIAPR, and UPRM Distinguished Alumni award.

 

Dr. Corey Stambaugh | Sr. Policy Advisor for the National Quantum Coordination Office, White House OSTP

Featured in Part 2: Panel D - Building the QIS Workforce

• Click here to read Dr. Stambaugh's biography.
• Corey Stambaugh is the Industrial Liaison for the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is currently on detail from the National Institute of Standards and Technology where he is a staff physicist. He earned a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Florida and has co-authored more than 40 papers on a variety of topics. He is a past recipient of an NSF International Postdoctoral Fellowship, a NIST-NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship, and the NIST Allen V. Astin Measurement Science Award.

 

Dr. Tracy Teal | Program Manager, R Studio

Featured in Part 1: Panel B - Faculty Development in AI + DS

• Click here to read Dr. Teal's biography
• Formerly Executive Director of Dryad, The Carpentries (https://carpentries.org) and co-founder of Data Carpentry (http://www.datacarpentry.org). Manages projects, operations and finances. Leads lesson development and volunteer coordination and is responsible for strategic and business planning.

 

Dr. Damon Tull | Director for Industry Alliances, UC Davis GSM and Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Featured in Parts 1 and 2: Welcome and Meeting Overview (both parts), Closing Remarks (both parts)

• Click here to read Dr. Tull's biography
• Damon Tull is Director for Industry Alliances at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management, and the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Tull researches the capital flows of our national science and engineering and small business ecosystems and works with public and private sector sponsors to address the structural impediments to broader participation in the same.
  
  He is an inventor, high-tech entrepreneur, and former engineering professor with dozens of peer-reviewed publications and technical contributions including 11 domestic and international patents.Tull has also served as consultant to multiple research-oriented government agencies such as DARPA, NRO, and RDECOM. In prior roles, he has served as principal investigator and founder of national industrial postdoctoral programs and oversaw a broad portfolio of federally-funded fellowship and research opportunity programs.

 

Dr. James D. Whitfield | Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College

Featured in Part 2: Panel A - QIS Pedagogy

• Click here to read Dr. Whitfield's biography.
• Coming soon.

 

Ms. Beatriz Yankelevich | Quantum Engineering Intern, Rigetti Computing

Featured in Part 2: Discussion with Early Career Professionals

• Click here to read Ms. Yankelevich's biography
• Beatriz Yankelevich received her degree in Engineering Physics with a concentration in Quantum Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2021, with honors in Engineering Physics and Science, Technology, and Society. Her undergraduate thesis, advised by Professor Hari Manoharan, investigated the refraction of Dirac fermions across molecular graphene junctions constructed with scanning tunneling microscopy. While an undergraduate, she founded the Stanford Program for Inspiring the Next Generation of Women in Physics (SPINWIP), a virtual summer outreach program designed to increase interest in physics among high school girls, geared at underrepresented and first-generation students. Currently, she is working at Rigetti Computing, researching superconducting quantum computing and quantum networking. In the fall, Yankelevich will begin her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researching superconducting quantum computing, advised by Professor William Oliver. Yankelevich is the recipient of the Stanford Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and a MIT Presidential Fellowship.