Organizers

Her work is largely driven by her commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. In addition to her work with the Climate Committee, she is a member of the University Senate EDI Committee and she is the Department lead and co-founder of the UMD-NIST Conference for Underrepresented Undergraduate Minorities in Physics (CU2MiP) previously held in 2016, 2017, and 2021. She also co-organized the UMD Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) in 2014 and 2020.

While in the Department of Physics, Josiland has worked with the Women in Physics student group and advised the Graduate Student Committee. In 2018, she was awarded the Outstanding Coordinator of Graduate Studies from the UMD Graduate School. This award recognizes exceptional contributions made to the graduate student experience. She enjoys working with students and assisting them as they progress through the graduate program.

She leads a team of researchers focused on building novel optical spectroscopies and advancing their applicability to characterize quantum materials. These novel measurement capabilities probe the underlying photophysics of low-dimensional materials, including quasiparticles phonons, magnons, and excitons, and their interactions.

An issue of great importance to Dr. Hight Walker is encouraging the young and under-resourced to participate in science. Through demonstrations and lectures, she actively engages in promoting the excitement of science. Recruiting, supporting, and mentoring students and postdoctoral researchers is a passion. Over 50 students and young professionals have been trained in the Hight Walker lab, with many of those from minoritized groups.

Dr. Hight Walker is active within the American Physics Society (APS), where she is a Fellow and immediate Past Chair of the APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP). She has co-organized two Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWIP) and has been a speaker at countless others. She also served within the chair line of the Topical Group of Instruments and Measurement Science (GIMS) from 2015-2017.

Amber received her B.S. in physics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, then completed her Ph.D. in physics at The Pennsylvania State University in 2017. While at Penn State, she studied a wide variety of properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials and had guest researcher positions at both the Army Research Laboratory (Adelphi, MD) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, MD). After her Ph.D., Amber was awarded the National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship to study magnetism in 2D materials at NIST with her postdoc advisor Dr. Angela Hight Walker. In January of 2021, Amber joined Northrop Grumman’s Microelectronics Design & Applications business Unit as a Senior Principal Physicist, where she is an experimental tester studying superconducting qubits at milli-Kelvin temperatures. Throughout her career, Amber has been passionate about inspiring future scientists and increasing diversity in physics. She’s participated in a wide variety of outreach and volunteering activities, and has been on the organizing committees of two CUWiPs and CU2MiPs. When she isn’t in the lab or doing outreach, she enjoys gardening, hiking, attempting to cook, visiting all the Smithsonian museums, and playing with her pet chinchilla.

She is a theoretical physicist who studies black holes. Delilah is interested in leveraging features of the spacetime geometry and the radiation sourced near black holes to determine the properties of black holes we can detect. She has focused on characterizing universal observational signatures of black holes using analytic tools such as the analysis of critical null geodesics, and the emergent conformal symmetry of the near horizon region of rapidly rotating black holes.

As a former UMD Physics student, Angel found his passion for making physics entertaining and accessible through volunteering for Physics is Phun. Since graduating, he developed Toolkit for Success with Donna Hammer and started hosting programs instead of volunteering. This year, Angel was nominated for both the University's Terrapin Innovation Award and the MVP Impact Award.

He has been a major player in the implementation of CU2MiP (2016, 2017, 2021) and CUWiP (2014, 2020). He is excited to be part of the team again for the 2024 CU2MiP! Eliot has a true passion for the physics community. His work includes activities in all areas of physics administration and department outreach.

Brad received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland – College Park and a B.S. in physics with a minor in history from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Prior to NIST, Brad served as the Director of two membership societies for the American Institute of Physics: the Society of Physics Students and Sigma Pi Sigma, the Physics and Astronomy Honor Society. There he supported a network of over 800 undergraduate physics and astronomy student groups at two-year/four-year institutions and +80,000 lifetime members. Earlier he was a tenured Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Appalachian State University, where his research focused on nanoelectronics, acoustics, and microscopy. Before becoming a professor, he was a National Research Council (NRC) Fellow at NIST in the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory where he studied the electrical properties of organic single crystals.

Motivated to address the underrepresentation she observed in her physics courses, Jaid has dedicated herself to encouraging diversity within the field. She works across the physics and astronomy departments to support women and individuals of color within STEM spaces. As a current P3 fellow, Jaid does quantum device research at the Laboratory for Physical Science at UMD.

As an undergrad at Skidmore College, he served on the board of Pass the Mic, a social justice collective on campus that aimed to amplify the experiences of marginalized students through recorded interviews. Since then, he has been looking for ways to bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion particularly within STEM.

When not doing science, Jonathan is perusing art at museums, listening to or writing music, or curling up with a good book.

His commitment to academic excellence is reflected in his memberships with the College Success Scholars, Chesapeake Scholars, and the UMD Honors Program. As an undergraduate, Diego has embraced the challenges and opportunities that the University of Maryland offers. Beyond academic pursuits, his aspirations extend to creating or joining a peer mentoring system aimed at supporting minority students with limited resources, guiding them to excel in their chosen majors. His journey is driven by a dedication to inclusivity, mentorship, and the belief that every student, regardless of background, deserves a chance to reach their full potential.