Appendix B

Planning Committee Member and Speaker Biographies

WORKSHOP PLANNING COMMITTE

Bonnielin K. Swenor (Chair) is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health, and is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, which aims to shift the paradigm from “living with a disability” to “thriving with a disability.” Motivated by her personal experience with a visual disability, her work takes a data-driven approach to advancing health equity for people with disabilities and promoting disability inclusion in higher education, STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine), public health, and research.

Emily E. Ackerman is a postdoctoral researcher in the Systems Biology department at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Her work uses computational methods to understand p53 signaling dynamics. Her activism centers on the interaction between disability, technology, and education; she has published writings and spoken publicly on her identity as a disabled woman in computational science and the exclusion of disabled voices in STEMM fields. She holds a second HMS appointment as a disability advisor and serves on the Board of Directors of Future of Research, co-leading a project aimed at assessing and improving the labor conditions of academic workers.

David D. Caudel is the associate director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in 2009, Caudel is a neurodivergence advocate, speaking to a variety of organizations, including the United Nations and autism conferences internationally. He received his Ph.D. in physics at Vanderbilt University in 2017. He serves on the advisory committee for the Center for Discovery, Innovation, and Development (CDID) at Children’s Specialized Hospital in New Jersey, the Clinical Advisory Panel on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities for BlueCare Tennessee, the Vanderbilt University Diversity Council, and the All Access Inclusion Network, and is a founding member of the Vanderbilt Autism and Neurodiversity Alliance.

Michele L. Cooke is professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst. She researches fault evolution in the Earth’s crust using numerical models, laboratory experiments, and geophysical data. Cooke’s collaborative research integrates these approaches to illuminate how faults grow, which helps constrain the hazard of damaging earthquakes. She is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and has served in leadership roles in several geoscience organizations as well as co-directing The Mind Hears, a blog by and for Deaf and Hard of Hearing academics. For her advocacy and outreach within the disabled community, she was awarded the UMass Amherst Distinguished Academic Outreach Teaching Award in 2010 and the International Association for Geoscience Diversity Inclusive Geoscience Education and Research Award in 2020.

Logan Gin is the assistant director for STEM Education in the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University, where he works on initiatives related to STEM graduate student and postdoctoral teaching professional development. Prior to arriving at Brown, Gin was a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellow at Arizona State University and served as the program manager for an NSF S-STEM program focused on involving community college transfer students in undergraduate research. He holds a Ph.D. in biology from Arizona State University, where his dissertation work centered on the experiences of STEM students with disabilities in active learning classrooms, online courses, and laboratory and research environments.

Andrew Imparato is a disability rights lawyer and policy professional who has been working inside and outside government to advance policies and

practices to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities for more than 30 years. His perspective is informed by his lived experience with bipolar disorder. He is the executive director of Disability Rights California, a $44 million legal services and policy advocacy organization based in Sacramento with 26 offices across California. Since 2016, he has led the planning for four international summits on disability employment that have attracted participation from more than 40 countries. He has been an advisor on disability inclusion and accessibility to many large employers, including Walmart, Verizon, AT&T, Microsoft, IBM, Walgreens, and SAP.

Mona Minkara is an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering and an affiliate faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University. She heads the COMBINE (Computational Modeling for BioInterface Engineering) Lab. Minkara uses computational methods to study biological interfaces at the atomic and molecular scales. Her current research examines pulmonary surfactant, the complex protein-lipid substance lining the alveoli. As a scientist who is Blind, she is committed to making science more accessible and inclusive through designing new tools for Blind scientists. Minkara received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Florida. Before joining the Northeastern University faculty, she held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Chemical Theory Center with a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Jordan Rodriguez is a civil engineer-in-training at Stantec based out of Phoenix, Arizona. He has 5 years of experience in the design, rehabilitation, and management of water, wastewater, and conveyance infrastructure. His disability experience is shaped by having Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Outside of project work, he promotes accessibility and disability inclusion through co-leading internal document accessibility trainings, sitting on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of the Arizona Water Association and the Arizona Chapter of the American Public Works Association, as well as providing STEM career advice to local Blind and Low-Vision high school students.

Anita Stone Marshall is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and serves as the executive director of the International Association for Geoscience

Diversity. Her research focuses on improving access for people with disabilities in the geosciences with ongoing projects, including the GeoSPACE Accessible Planetary Geology field course, a Culture Change Project focusing on disabled geoscientists in professional settings, and the ASCEND research coordination network for creating more inclusive cultures in geoscience professional societies. She is actively involved in the diversity, equity, and inclusion community of geosciences, sharing her expertise and personal experience in STEM as a person with disabilities and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Marshall has 17 years of undergraduate teaching experience designing inclusive and accessible courses in community colleges and R1 research institutions in a range of modalities—in-person, hybrid, and online. She received a B.S. in earth science, an M.S. in geology from the University of Arkansas, and a Ph.D. in geology from the University of South Florida.

Rupa Sheth Valdez is an associate professor at the University of Virginia. She merges engineering and social sciences to understand and address questions of health equity across home, community, and clinical spaces and has been supported by numerous federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NSF, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. She recently testified before Congress on the topic of health equity for the disability community and received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for her pioneering work in patient ergonomics. She holds numerous appointments, including as founder and president of the Blue Trunk Foundation, as a board member for the American Association of People with Disabilities, and as a member of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Patient Engagement Advisory Panel and National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Health Equity Working Group.

WORKSHOP SPEAKERS

L. Miché Aaron is an earth and planetary science Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University researching sulfates within Martian craters using remote spectroscopy. She received her B.A. in earth and environmental science from Wesleyan University and M.S. in geographic information systems from Sam Houston State University. She has contributed her efforts to many initiatives, including the Women+ of Color Project, Space Interns, Black in Geoscience, and local astrobiology outreach programs. She also

strives to change the face of STEM by addressing ableism in academia and improving disability representation in underrepresented minority students.

Mariah Lynn Arral is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Her Ph.D. advisor is Dr. Kathryn Whitehead, and her thesis is on mRNA lipid nanoparticle delivery. Before joining Dr. Whitehead’s lab, Arral was one of the first researchers in Dr. Halpern’s lab at the University of New Hampshire. During her undergraduate studies with Dr. Halpern, she developed an interest in studying neurodiversity and mentorship, for which she has two papers. Additionally, she has been invited to give a presentation on the accessibility and inclusion of disabled students. She has received national and international awards for her research and academic work, including the NIH National Research Service Award Fellowship. She is an openly autistic and dyslexic researcher.

Edmund Asiedu is a proud person with disability and a passionate accessibility, disability inclusion, and inclusive mentoring advocate who raises awareness on the needs of persons with disabilities in educational institutions and workplaces. He co-chairs the National Disability Mentoring Coalition and works as the accessibility policy analyst/Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator and serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the New York City Department of Transportation. He has also held positions at Columbia University School of Public Health, National Disability Rights Network, and Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled.

Christopher Atchison is an IPA Program Director in the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM in the Directorate for STEM Education at the U.S. National Science Foundation where he leads the Workplace Equity for Persons with Disabilities in STEM and STEM Education initiative. He is also Professor of Geoscience Education in the School of Education and Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati. Through his teaching and research, Atchison advocates for the intentional development of inclusive communities of learning in classroom, laboratory, and field environments. With the use of universally designed instructional strategies, students with disabilities can remain actively engaged and participate in all STEM disciplines. Atchison earned a Ph.D. in Science Education from The Ohio State University and a master’s degree in Geology from Wright State University.

Erica Avery recently received her doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from the Cellular and Molecular Physiology Program where her thesis research was focused on mitochondrial phospholipid metabolism. She was diagnosed with a chronic illness known as fibromyalgia syndrome in 2012 and recently with long COVID in 2022 and began her disability advocacy journey at Johns Hopkins as co-chair of the Equal Access in Science and Medicine Committee from 2019 to 2023, hosting programming and working with leadership with the goal of improving accessibility, awareness, community, representation, equity, and inclusivity. She received her B.S. from Rowan University with a major in biochemistry and minor in journalism. She has written for publications such as ASBMB Today and Scientific American, and for the American Chemical Society, discussing her disability and health journey.

Cathie Axe is the executive director of Johns Hopkins’ Student Disability Services. With more than 30 years of higher education experience, and 27 of those years managing disability services at a variety of institutions, she has had the opportunity to actively engage in the evolution of services as well as perspectives around disability. She received her master’s in education with a focus on counseling and development at George Mason University, where she also got her start in disability services. She earned her bachelor’s in economics at Brown University, where she served as associate dean and director of student and employee accessibility services, providing accommodations and inclusive services for both employees and students.

Amy Bower is a tenured senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. She studies physical oceanography, specifically the pathways of deep ocean currents in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans from the tracks of acoustically tracked drifting buoys released far below the sea surface. Over the course of her career, she has experienced decreasing vision due to degenerative retinal disease. Assistive techniques such as video magnifiers, computer software that magnifies and reads computer screen content aloud, and access assistants provided by her employer have allowed her to thrive in a STEM career.

Susanne M. Bruyère is professor of disability studies and academic director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, New York. Bruyère serves as institute administrative/strategic

lead, and as the principal investigator/co-principal investigator of research, dissemination, and technical assistance efforts focused on employment disability policy and effective disability workplace practices. She is the principal investigator/project director of the National Policy, Research, and Technical Assistance Center on Employment of People with Disabilities funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Disability Employment Policy. She is the author/co-author of five books and more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on workplace disability inclusion.

Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global subject-matter expert in the fields of disability and accessibility. She is best known for launching digital accessibility programs at McDonald’s, Albertsons, and VMware. With degrees in computer science, law, and business combined with identifying as a disabled person, she has a complete 360-degree view of all the issues affecting disability inclusion and accessibility. Byrne-Haber was named a 2022 LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact. Her award-winning blog, which has reached more than 300,000 readers, summarizes legal cases and issues facing people implementing accessibility programs. She is a frequent panelist and speaker at accessibility; user interface/user experience, or UI/UX; and human resources conferences and is an active member of several accessibility committees and nonprofits, helping drive and communicate the evolution of accessibility standards. Her book, entitled Giving a Damn about Accessibility, is available for free.

Ana Caicedo grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, fascinated by the topics of evolution and genetics. She came to the United States for graduate school, obtaining her Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, and after a postdoctoral experience at North Carolina State University, she joined the Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as faculty. Caicedo’s research focuses on the genetic basis of plant adaptation, with a particular interest in the processes of domestication and weedy plant evolution. In 2018, with Dr. Michele Cooke, she co-founded The Mind Hears, a blog by and for Deaf and Hard of Hearing academics.

Alison Cernich is the deputy director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and works to support the institute’s mission to lead research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. Prior

to this position, she was the director of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at NICHD, deputy director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and multiple roles at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). She is a board-certified neuropsychologist and is the lead or contributing author on multiple peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations, with an emphasis on disability and pregnancy, traumatic brain injury, and computerized neuropsychological assessment.

Vivian Cheung is an RNA biologist and child neurologist. She is the Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on gene regulation and neurogenetic disorders. Her work has shown the import of RNA sequence and structure in the regulation of cell function. Cheung is a recipient of the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and she served as the president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2016. She is one of the founders of the Physician-Scientist Support Foundation, and a determined advocate for a diverse biomedical workforce.

Jacquelyn Chini is an associate professor in physics at the University of Central Florida. She completed her B.A. in physics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and her Ph.D. at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Chini’s research, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and an Innovation Fund grant from the American Physical Society (APS), explores how practices and attitudes in the physics community work to broaden or narrow participation. She is chair-elect of the APS Topical Group on Physics Education Research and an editorial board member for Physical Review Physics Education Research.

Rory Cooper is the founder, director, and CEO of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories, a joint venture of the University of Pittsburgh, the VA, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He also serves as assistant vice chancellor for research for STEM and health sciences collaboration and FISA/PVA Distinguished Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also professor in the Bioengineering, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Orthopaedic Surgery Departments at the University of Pittsburgh, and holds adjunct professorships at the Robotics Institute of

Carnegie Mellon University and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Cooper was awarded an honorary professorship at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an honorary doctorate at Xi’an Jiatong University in Xi’an, China. He has dedicated his career to improving mobility, function, and quality of life for people with disabilities through advanced engineering in clinical research and medical rehabilitation.

Meenakshi Das is a software engineer at Microsoft working on building accessible front-end experiences. She is the founder of the Working with Disabilities support group for working professionals with disabilities, which has more than 4,000 members. For her tech inclusion work, she was inducted into the Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame, named a DO-IT Trailblazer by the University of Washington for changing the way the world views people with disabilities, and she was recently awarded Disability: IN NextGen Leader of the Year. She serves on the Board of Directors of Teach Access, an organization addressing the digital accessibility skills gap among students.

Ernest (Ernie) Dianastasis is the founder and CEO of The Precisionists, Inc., a global administrative services and information technology company focused on employing 10,000 neurodiverse professionals over the next several years. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the company, which is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, but is national in its focus. Creating meaningful careers for people with disabilities while delivering world-class service to customers is a passion for him.

Wanda Díaz-Merced is an astronomer and the leading proponent of “sonification,” a way to turn huge datasets into audible sound. She realized that she could use her ears to detect patterns in stellar radio data and could uncover connections obscured by graphs and visual representation. Díaz-Merced has held positions at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the South African Astronomical Observatory. She also co-chaired the 2019 conference Astronomy for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. She was awarded the first Google scholarship for people with disabilities and is an honorary ambassador of Soka University in Japan. Díaz-Merced is an important voice and leader in increasing equality of access to astronomy and STEM.

Rasheera Dopson is a public speaker, podcaster, author, and qualitative researcher at the National Center of Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine. Her intersectional research approach has supported systems, organizations, and teams to advance equity and mitigate health disparities in multiply marginalized communities through community engagement, policy development, education, and advocacy. She is the founder of the Dopson Foundation, whose organizational aim is the advancement of professional, health, and social equity for women and girls with disabilities.

Bradley Duerstock is associate professor of engineering practice and the principal investigator of the Institute for Accessible Science Lab at Purdue University. His research focuses on overcoming functional impairments and health challenges faced by those with disabilities. Duerstock is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pathfinder Award to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the STEM workforce. He has participated in several committees and projects related to accessible biomedical laboratory spaces and is an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering fellow.

Stephanie Feola is a graduating doctoral student at the University of South Florida and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. They are a discipline-based education researcher in chemistry and biochemistry. Their research interests are centered on understanding and supporting institutional change initiatives focused on integrating asset and evidence-based teaching practices in STEMM higher education.

Anjali Forber-Pratt is a disability activist, a two-time Paralympian, fellow of the American Psychological Association, and the director of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) in the Administration for Community Living. Forber-Pratt serves as the chair of the Interagency Committee on Disability Research, which exists to promote coordination and collaboration among federal departments and agencies conducting disability, independent living, and rehabilitation research programs. As a researcher, her primary area of work relates to disability identity development. As a wheelchair user for more than 35 years, Forber-Pratt is nationally and internationally recognized as a disability leader and mentor. She was a White House Champion of Change in 2013, and the American Psychological Association awarded her the 2020 Citizen Psychologist Award for Advancing Disability as a Human Rights and Social Justice Issue Award.

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese is the chief of staff for the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). She collaborates closely with ODEP’s assistant secretary and other DOL leaders to identify and implement strategies for increasing the number and quality of employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Geevarghese draws on years of legal experience in both the public and the nonprofit sectors. She came to DOL from the DOD, where she served as a subject-matter expert and senior disability policy advisor for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives. Prior to that, she worked for 7 years at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Office of Federal Operations, where she was instrumental in implementing updates strengthening Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Emily Harris is the executive director of the Disability and Philanthropy Forum. Prior to this, she was the founding executive director of Disability Lead, the nation’s first disability civic leadership program, and a senior director at the Chicago Community Trust. In previous positions she focused on regional economic growth, open space conservation, early childhood education policy, nonprofit strategy, and urban planning. Harris earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. She is president of Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation and serves on Forest Preserves of Cook County Conservation and Policy Council, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago Advisory Board.

Jasmine Harris is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School with a secondary appointment at the Penn Graduate School of Education. She is a leading law and inequality scholar with expertise in disability law, antidiscrimination law, and evidence. She writes frequently about disability law for popular audiences with bylines and commentary in such publications and media outlets as The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, Bloomberg, and National Public Radio. Harris graduated with honors from Dartmouth College and received her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Andrew Houtenville identifies with his deeply rooted personal and family connection to disability. He experiences depression, anxiety, and learning disabilities, mitigated with medication and ongoing therapy, and as a child, he was placed in remedial education due to untreated learning disabilities. Houtenville is an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire,

focusing on applied microeconomics, and is the principal investigator of the Rehabilitation Research Center on Disability Statistics and Demographics, funded by the NIDILRR.

Sam Catherine Johnston is the chief postsecondary and workforce development officer at CAST. In this role, she collaborates with a talented team to increase access to middle- and high-income careers for populations underrepresented in the workforce. She focuses on design-based research, translating universally designed tools and strategies developed through co-design with stakeholders into practical applications in the field to improve education, training, and workplace practices. She is the principal investigator for two NSF grants: one to co-design a multigenerational STEM makerspace in affordable housing, and the other to design a dual enrollment pathway to careers in biomanufacturing, an emerging area within advanced manufacturing. Johnston is also a parent to three spirited children, including her 9-year-old daughter who has Down syndrome.

Jae Kennedy is a professor of community and behavioral health in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University in Spokane, Washington. He received a Ph.D. in health services and policy analysis from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, in 1996 and has been teaching and advising graduate students in public health and health administration for the past 25 years. He is a Switzer distinguished research fellow and recent recipient of the Allen Meyers Award for Research, Teaching and Advocacy. He has written more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and has been the principal investigator on more than $3 million extramurally funded grants projects on disability and health policy. He currently directs an NIDILRR-funded postdoctoral training program on disability and health policy, which actively recruits and supports research scholars with disabilities.

Aaron Konopasky is a senior attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the EEOC headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he assists the commission in interpreting and applying the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other federal employment discrimination statutes. Konopasky has participated in the development of regulations under the ADA of 1990, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as well as numerous policy documents and other EEOC publications. Prior to joining the EEOC, Konopasky earned his J.D. at Stanford Law School, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University.

Raja S. Kushalnagar is a professor and director of the Information Technology undergraduate program and Accessible Human-Centered Computing graduate program at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science and LL.M in intellectual property and information law from the University of Houston in 2010 and J.D. from Texas Southern University in 2008. As a Deaf professor, he brings consumers, industry, and policymakers together on accessibility issues with a focus on a Deaf/Hard of Hearing perspective and evidence-based research. He has mentored more than 130 undergraduates, including more than 80 who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Kushalnagar focuses on increasing the numbers of people with disabilities in the computing pipeline through community involvement.

Angela Lean has more than 20 years of experience working for financial services and technology brands. Her functional expertise spans marketing sales readiness to program management. In her current role as the senior business program lead for accessible employee experience at Microsoft, she manages cross-functional teams dedicated to building an accessible and disability-inclusive workplace environment where employees with disabilities can succeed and thrive. She is also the benefits policy lead for the leadership board of Microsoft’s Employee Resources Group dedicated to families and is a member of Yale University’s Disability Alumni Group. She was recognized by Women’s Wear Daily in March 2023 as one of the top 25 most inspirational women leaders of 2023. Lean graduated from Yale in 1993 with a degree in history and earned an M.B.A. from the Stern School of Business at New York University in 1999.

Mark H. Leddy is a program director in the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, in the Directorate for STEM Education, at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Leddy works with the new Workplace Equity for Persons with Disabilities in STEM and STEM Education activity, and on the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program. Before joining NSF in 2006, Leddy worked at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Alaska–Fairbanks, and the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an M.S. from Columbia University.

Megan Lynch is a nontraditional disabled student who earned a B.A. in art from UCLA and a California teacher’s certification to teach social

studies at the secondary level. On behalf of UC Access Now, she wrote the Demandifesto, a document that has since influenced other disabled people’s movements in higher education. She also created and ran the presentation/panel/workshop “Beyond Law – Providing Accessibility and Inclusion Just Because” for the American Society of Plant Biologists’ Plant Biology 2021.

Cassandra McCall is a visually impaired assistant professor in the Engineering Education Department at Utah State University (USU). In her work, McCall leverages emergent qualitative approaches and Universal Design for Research practices in exploring the intersections of disability, identity formation, and cultural implications within engineering and academia. At USU, she is the co-director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Transition Services. Her work with civil engineering students with disabilities and positionality practices have won best paper awards both nationally and internationally. She is an advocate for the increased participation of people with disabilities in the engineering fields and is a founding member of the Equity, Culture, and Social Justice in Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education.

Melissa McDaniels is the associate executive director and associate scientist at the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a co-investigator and community advancement manager for the NIH-supported National Research Mentoring Network. In her prior role as a member of the Michigan State University (MSU) Graduate School leadership team, McDaniels worked to support graduate students and postdocs as they developed their capacities as postsecondary instructors and mentors. Previously, she served as director of their NSF ADVANCE Grant where she spearheaded efforts to diversify their STEM faculty. In this role, she was responsible for the development and implementation of MSU’s new faculty mentoring policy. McDaniels has more than 20 years of experience in graduate student and faculty development, undergraduate and graduate teaching, and learning and organizational change.

Marcia McNutt is a geophysicist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. She previously served as editor-in-chief of the Science journals, and the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, where she was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal. McNutt also served as pres-

ident and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and as the president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). She holds membership in numerous professional organizations, in addition to being the recipient of several honorary doctoral degrees. She is a fellow of AGU, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy.

Edward Ombati Manyibe is the capacity-building director and research associate professor at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Research and Capacity Building for Minority Entities at Langston University (LU-RRTC). He has served as co-principal investigator on several NIDILRR-sponsored projects at the RRTC, focused on both enhancing minority-serving institution research capacity and improving disability and rehabilitation services for multiply marginalized people with disabilities. He has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed research publications, monographs, and policy briefs on topics such as mentorship and research-capacity building. He is the recipient of the National Association of Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns Bobbie Atkins Research Award.

Karen Marrongelle is the chief operating officer of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), where she oversees operations of the $10 billion federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering. Previously, she served as assistant director of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Education and Human Resources. Prior to joining NSF, Marrongelle was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University and professor of mathematics and statistics, where she oversaw 24 departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Marrongelle has a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of New Hampshire and a master’s degree in mathematics from Lehigh University.

Lisa Meeks is an associate professor of learning health sciences and family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. She is also the executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative, co-creator of their social media campaign, and co-host of their podcast. She is widely considered the leading expert on disability inclusion in health professions education and is the editor of two ground-breaking books on the topic of disability inclusion in health sciences. Her work has been published in

leading medical journals and has also been featured in several media outlets. Meeks also regularly collaborates with health professions associations and is the lead author of the Association of American Medical Colleges special report Accessibility, Inclusion, and Action in Medical Education: Lived Experiences of Learners and Physicians with Disabilities.

Kate Mittendorf is an interdisciplinary translational genomic scientist focused on translational genomics and digital health interventions, with particular focus on ensuring that precision medical and digital health approaches close, rather than widen, existing health gaps for medically marginalized populations. They has been a key contributor to a number of large genetics consortia and associated clinical trials, including the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)–funded Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research and ClinGen consortiums as well as the NHGRI-funded eMERGE Network. They have a passion for improving scientific communication with accessible visual aids and associated image description alt-text; their illustrations have appeared on journal covers, in textbooks, in biotechnology curricula, and on scientific knowledge resource websites. They have also designed and developed resources for improving access for disabled scientists and research participants, which are made freely available on their website.

Michelle Olson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human-centered computing from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in May 2023, and is presently enrolled in the Human-Computer Interaction master’s program at RIT. She works in the Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research (CAIR) Lab as a research assistant with Dr. Kristen Shinohara and Ms. Loam Shin on a project that explores various methods for guaranteeing accessibility to users and designers who are Hard of Hearing or Deaf using the think-aloud protocol approach. Prior to her position as a research assistant, Olson served as an American Sign Language consultant for the RIT Department of Access Services.

Kimberly J. Osmani is a senior extension associate with Cornell University’s Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability. In her position, Osmani is the project director for the Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth, or CAPE-Youth. She is also part of a team leading an initiative with the Oregon Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, Inclusive Career Advancement Program, helping people with disabilities access post-

secondary education within community colleges working through career pathways. Osmani has extensive experience in working with youth with disabilities—first as a special education teacher, then as an associate state director of special education services at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and finally, as the statewide transition coordinator for the Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services.

Alyssa Paparella is a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Baylor College of Medicine and a 2023 HHMI Gilliam Fellow. She is a passionate disability advocate. In 2020, Paparella created the DisabledInSTEM platform, where she sparks conversations regarding disability inclusion and access within STEM. Additionally, she founded a DisabledInSTEM Mentorship Program, which is currently in its third year, as she believes mentorship is vital to success within STEM. Through her platform, Paparella has had an effect at multiple institutions, conferences, and national organizations to raise awareness of disabled scientists.

Yvette E. Pearson is vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Society for Engineering Education. Pearson is recognized globally for more than 25 years in higher education, particularly for her work to advance sustainability, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Her efforts have led to changes in policies and practices of universities and global engineering organizations, including, but not limited to, increased equity and inclusion for individuals with disabilities. Among Pearson’s awards and honors are ABET’s Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity and Inclusion and ASCE’s President’s Medal. Her podcast, Engineering Change, has audiences in more than 80 countries. Her book Making a Difference: How Being Your Best Self Can Influence, Inspire, and Impel Change was released in February 2023.

Luis Pérez is the disability and digital inclusion lead for CAST, and his work is embedded with the Postsecondary and Workforce Development group. In this role, he promotes the creation, delivery, and use of high-quality accessible educational materials and technologies to support equitable learning opportunities for all students. He works to increase access to middle- and high-income careers for populations underrepresented in the workforce, including people with disabilities. His perspective is informed by his own lived experience as a person with a disability and multilingual learner. Pérez

has published three books on accessibility, mobile learning, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL): Mobile Learning for All, Dive into UDL, and Learning on the Go. He currently serves as a transition and workplace accessibility strand advisor for the Assistive Technology Industry Association.

Joey Ramp-Adams is the founder and CEO of Empower Ability Consulting Inc., a firm that advocates for people with disabilities in STEM, focusing on service dog handler access to equal opportunities in science. With a background in biocognitive neuroscience and as a neuroscience research affiliate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Ramp-Adams saw a gap in disability access to science education and career opportunities. She is also the co-founder and vice president of the International Alliance for Ability in Science. This nonprofit organization provides resources, financial aid, and scholarships for student scientists with disabilities.

Matthew Seita is a recent doctoral graduate from the computing and information sciences Ph.D. program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is an accessibility and human–computer interaction researcher, and while earning his Ph.D., he conducted research at the CAIR Lab at RIT, advised by Dr. Matt Huenerfauth. His work was generously supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and the RIT AWARE-AI NRT Fellowship. Currently, Seita works for Dr. Raja Kushalnagar as a research assistant at Gallaudet University and continues to work on research involving improving accessible technologies for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Seita is profoundly Deaf and fluent in English and American Sign Language.

Loam Shin is a fourth-year undergraduate human-centered computing major at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She works as a research assistant in RIT’s CAIR Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Kristen Shinohara. Along with her colleague, Michelle Olson, they are conducting a project to investigate different ways to make the think-aloud protocol accessible to Deaf/Hard of Hearing designers and users.

Kristen Shinohara is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the Rochester Institute of Technology where she co-directs the CAIR Lab. Her research is at the intersection of human–computer interaction, accessibility, and design, with a focus on accessible design, research, and

computing education. Her NSF-funded research projects focus on how to empower disabled graduate students and designers, and on how to improve accessibility practice in the tech industry and in computing education. She is a recipient of a 2022 Google Scholar Award to improve the think-aloud design method for Deaf and Hard of Hearing users and designers.

Barbara R. Snyder is president of the Association of American Universities. Prior to that, she served as president of Case Western Reserve University from 2007 to 2020. She was a faculty member at the Ohio State University (OSU) from 1988 to 2007, and she served as executive vice president and provost from 2003 to 2007 and held the Joanne W. Murphy/Classes of 1965 and 1973 Professorship at OSU’s Moritz College of Law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Humanities Alliance and was previously the chair of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education and the Business-Higher Education Forum and vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Internet2.

Caroline Solomon is a marine ecologist who focuses on nutrient cycling and phytoplankton physiology. She is heavily involved in research that looks at water quality issues in local waters, such as the Anacostia River that flows through Washington, D.C. Solomon’s work also includes mentoring Deaf and Hard of Hearing students in the classroom, through providing internship opportunities, advising students as they navigate graduate school, and she is one of the organizers of the 2023 Global Year of STEM Sign Language Lexicons looking at the ethical and linguistic underpinnings, effectiveness for K–12 education, and their sustainability for future generations.

Hari Srinivasan was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as a toddler. While his spontaneous talking skills are a work in progress, he primarily uses augmentative and alternative communication to communicate. His autism presents numerous other challenges that present significant obstacles to his daily living. Srinivasan graduated from the UC Berkeley, and is a Ph.D. neuroscience student at Vanderbilt University, a PD Soros fellow, a Public Voices fellow, and a Neurodiversity Inspired Science and Engineering fellow at the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt. His non-academic affiliations include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, Disability Rights

Education and Defense Fund, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Autism Society of America, International Society for Autism Research, Brain Foundation, and Duke University’s Analytics Center of Excellence.

Mahadeo Sukhai is the world’s first congenitally blind geneticist. He is vice president of research and international affairs and chief accessibility officer for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, having previously served as a researcher at the University Health Network in Toronto. Sukhai is a leading expert on accessibility of graduate and postdoctoral research training in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and healthcare disciplines. He is the chair of the Employment Technical Committee for Accessibility Standards Canada, as well as the external co-chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Expert Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Systemic Ableism.

Laureen Summers manages the American Association for the Advancement of Science Entry Point! Program, which recruits, screens, and refers undergraduate and graduate students with disabilities for summer internships to partners in industry and university research programs. A woman with cerebral palsy, Summers advocates for students and scientists with disabilities to be included and recognized for their talents and contributions to every STEMM venue. She is fierce about the importance of building relationships as a way of contradicting the assumptions and stereotypes about the potential of people like herself. She published her first chapbook of poetry, Contender of Chaos, in 2020 and is completing a second manuscript, Dancing to the Moon.

Dean J. Tantillo is a professor of chemistry at UC Davis. His research can be broadly described as applied theoretical organic chemistry and spans the disciplines of organic, physical, computational, mechanistic, medicinal, natural product, and organometallic chemistry. He also has a long-standing interest in making chemistry accessible to the Blind and Visually Impaired. Tantillo has won multiple awards for his teaching and mentoring, including UC Davis’ campuswide awards for both undergraduate and graduate teaching (the only faculty member to win both), the Inclusion and Diversity Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and an ADVANCE Scholar Award from UC Davis, which acknowledges “faculty who advance diverse perspectives and gender equity in STEM through their teaching, research and service.”

Holden Thorp is the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Prior to joining Science, he spent 6 years as the provost at Washington University in St. Louis and was the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before that.

John Tschida is the executive director of the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. He has spent more than 20 years using data and research to drive policy change and service development for individuals with disabilities. Tschida, who has lived with a spinal cord injury since 1993, serves on several public and private boards designing policy or governance solutions to further the independence of people with disabilities.

Hoby Wedler has been completely Blind since birth. He is a chemist, an entrepreneur, and a sensory expert, and is driven by his passion for innovative, creative, and insightful thinking. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from UC Davis in 2016. Prior to that, he founded a nonprofit organization to lead annual chemistry camps for Blind and Visually Impaired students throughout North America. In the same year, he began opening doors to the world of wine aromas by developing Tasting in the Dark, a truly blindfolded wine experience, in collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola. He has since expanded the program to a global market in a variety of industries and special projects. Wedler uses his highly trained palate and acute sensory insight of his surroundings in his work as a sensory expert and product development consultant. He now works as a global motivational speaker, scientist, mentor, educator, and entrepreneur. President Barack Obama recognized him by naming him a Champion of Change for enhancing employment and education opportunities for people with disabilities. Wedler believes that everyone should pursue their dreams, challenge themselves, and elevate their happiness as they grow and progress through life and their careers. He is committed to making the world more inclusive and accessible for all.

Taryn M. Williams is the assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy at the U.S. Department of Labor. In this position, she advises the secretary of labor on how the department’s policies and programs affect the employment of people with disabilities and leads the ODEP, which works with employers and all levels of government to promote evidence-based policy that improves employment opportunities and outcomes for people with disabilities. Previously, she was the

managing director for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at American Progress. There, she worked on a variety of issues related to education and workforce policy.