Workshops & Panels

As a theoretical astrophysicist, Alejandro studies signatures of Einstein's theory of general relativity and some of its extensions on astrophysical phenomena. His work is devoted to extracting fundamental physics properties from the photon rings of black holes and investigating specific aspects of turbulent dynamics within Einstein's field equations. He was born in Bogotá (Colombia), where he earned a B.Sc. in Mathematics at Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz and a B.Sc. in Physics at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he also acquired an M.Sc in Astronomy. Then, he moved to the US, earned an M.Sc in Physics at Montana State University, and completed his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She successfully guided the TEAM-UP project through the completion of its research phase, which culminated in the TEAM-UP Report, and continues to oversee the project through its implementation phase by engaging and galvanizing the larger STEM community to implement the report’s recommendations for systemic change. For over three decades, Ms. Knowles developed, managed, and led diversity, equity, and Inclusion programs at the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and in partnership with several other physical science societies. Throughout her long career, she has been a staunch leader, champion and advocate for the inclusion and success of people traditionally marginalized in the physical sciences. Ms. Knowles is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development (pre-med track) from Cornell University.

He grew up in Colombia until graduating from high school, and then pursued studies at Northern Virginia Community College (AS), Virginia Tech (BS in Biochemistry and Environmental Science), and UMCP (PhD in Biological Sciences). Since graduating in 2014, Dr. Serrano has been coordinator or director of 6 research programs at UMCP, covering topics from Mathematics of Quantum Science to Nanotechnology. These include a Physics research experience for undergraduates in nonlinear dynamics, and an Astronomy undergraduate summer research experience. Through these, he has provided mentorship, teaching, and professional development support to undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers.

Her degrees are: B.S. in Physics from Lincoln University (PA); M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania; and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Penn State University.  As an NRC Post-doctoral Fellow at NIST, she first began synchrotron X-ray and neutron characterization.  She has mentored students in both graduate and undergraduate research projects and engages in broadening the participation of students in synchrotron x-ray and neutron studies at national research laboratories.  Her research programs are aimed at attracting top students to the sciences using societally relevant energy-related and biomedical-related topics.  She continues to do cutting edge research in applying synchrotron x-ray and neutron analysis to modern engineering problems in carbon nanotubes, gold nanoparticles, the hydrogen fuel economy, and polymer self-assembly.  Also, she has worked diligently to engage high school students in science through her NSF funded programs.  She currently serves on the executive steering committees for the African Light Source Foundation and the LAAAMP project.  She was also a member of the Institute of Physics – Task Force for Underrepresentation of African Americans in Physics.

His research interests span the areas of Optics and Experimental Laser Spectroscopy of condensed phase systems and nanomaterials. The research has led to the publication of five well-known books, including: Ultraviolet Spectroscopy & UV Lasers (Marcel Dekker, 2002), Applied Spectroscopy and the Science of Nanomaterials (Springer, 2015), and Spectroscopy and Characterization of Nanomaterials and Novel Materials. Experiments, Modeling, Simulations and Applications, Wiley-VCH GmbH, 2022, as well as more than 230 research presentations, conference abstracts & proceedings and refereed journal publications. He has supervised and directly mentored more than 60 undergraduate students, 13 Ph.D. graduate students and 6 postdoctoral fellows and research scholars, who have been part of his research group. He is a Visiting Scientist in the Planetary Environments Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Misra has been a Fulbright Scholar (2004-05) and a recipient of NASA Faculty Fellowship awards (1999-2001; 2009-11). He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2015.

Dr. Rockward has a unique combination of leadership from academic, professional, and community experiences. Prior to his transition to Morgan State, he served 7 years as the Chair of the Department of Physics & Dual Degree Engineering Program (Physics & DDEP) and 20 years as the Research Director of the Materials and Optics Research & Engineering (MORE) Laboratory at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia.  Among his professional leadership experiences, he is the immediate Past President of both the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and the Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Honor Society (SPS).  Also, he has served a combination of 29 years as Pastor of the Divine Unity Missionary Baptist Church, East Point, Georgia; Associate Minister of Antioch Baptist Church North, Atlanta, Georgia; and Associate Minister of New Shiloh Baptist Church, Baltimore, Maryland.

As Chair of Physics & DDEP at Morehouse College, his vision and leadership resulted in the department being the US #1 producer for underrepresented minorities with Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics according to the American Institute of Physics in conjunction to boasting the Nation’s most productive Dual Degree Engineering Program. He is a strong proponent of STEM mentorship using methodologies of faculty-to-student, peer-to-peer, professional shadowing, life-skills coaching, and research apprenticeship. His current research interests include micro/nano optics lithography, extreme ultraviolet interferometry, metamaterials, terahertz imaging, nanostructure characterization, and crossed phase optics.

Brian works on the detection and study of (ultra-) high energy neutrinos with the Askaryan Radio Array, IceCube, and Radio Neutrino Observatory-Greenland experiments. Prior to joining the faculty at UMD, Brian was an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University.

Brian completed his PhD in Physics under the direction of Prof. Amy Connolly at The Ohio State University in 2019 with the support of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. His thesis focused on a search for a diffuse flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos with ARA. Prior to arriving at OSU, he earned his undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis, where he graduated with honors in 2014, majoring in physics, and minoring in math and economics. At WUSTL, Brian worked with Prof. Henric Krawczynski’s group on the hard x-ray polarimeter X-Calibur.

He is originally from Bridgeton, MO, a small town in North St. Louis county. He attended Pattonville High School (Go Pirates!), and they have written a few kind articles about my AAPF, GRFP, and research in Antarctica.

Sarah also serves as a Core Organizer of the Access Network, co-working with graduate and undergraduate students across the country towards a vision of a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible STEM community.

Originally from Seattle, Sarah received her BS in Physics from the University of Maryland in 2018 where she researched dark matter, working as a lab assistant on the LZ Dark Matter Detector experiment. Passionate about community outreach, Sarah also led the university's Society of Physics Students and American Nuclear Society chapters as President, while working on various other departmental community initiatives, such as physics summer camps, working in the lecture-demo facility, and Physics is Phun. After graduating, Sarah completed an internship with the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology where she researched emerging technologies and how they would impact society, before being hired at the American Physical Society.

Dr. LaNell A. Williams holds a PhD in Physics from Harvard University. Her research focuses on understanding the self assembly of RNA-Viruses in particular the Bacteriophage MS2. She graduated from Wesleyan University with her B.A in Physics., and she went on to receive her M.A. in Physics from Fisk University before coming to Harvard. LaNell has also been heavily involved in programming with the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP). As of January, she serves on the American Physical Society Council of Representatives representing the Forum on Graduate Students & the Forum on Early Careers. She is the founder of the Women+ of Color Project and hopes to encourage more BIWOC to pursue academic careers.

Kelin Kelcourse-Oquendo received her Bachelor’s in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2018, where she participated in Astrophysics research and presented at the North Carolina Astronomer’s Meeting twice. She later earned her Master’s in Applied Physics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte while teaching one of the introductory Physics labs as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2021. She now works as a transformational physicist designing experimental circuits at Northrop Grumman. When she’s not busy pushing on projects and lending a hand to those around her, she spends her time as of late exploring Frontiers of Pandora, raiding in Guild Wars 2, and developing her artistic skills.

Kayla Rodriguez is a first-generation Hispanic-raised woman in physics from Riverside, California. Kayla had a long road getting to her current PhD program. Her path to UMD consisted of going to three different institutions for her Bachelor's and Master's and two gap years. Kayla started her college career at community college at RCC (Riverside City College) in 2014 and transferred to finish her bachelor of Science in physics at UCLA, where she graduated in 2018. In 2018, Kayla took a gap year, where she kept working at UCLA to do research and finished it by doing research as a staff member in her hometown, UCR (University of California, Riverside), while applying and planning for graduate school. At the end of spring 2019, She decided UCR was the best place for her to progress in school. At UCR, Kayla was admitted as a PhD student but ended up getting a masters there instead. While Kayla was at UCR, she won an NSF GRFP fellowship, did well taking a complete set of graduate physics courses, made a website of accessible graduate material which is still being used, and ended up being a co-author on two different papers on the two different projects she worked on there. During Kayla's first and second year, COVID-19 started, and she was experiencing COVID through the worry of her family and community who couldn’t work remotely. She was also from the area, a primarily Hispanic community (almost 50% of so-cal is)–both her family and surrounding community– because she was essentially seeing her community drop like flies. Luckily, she could focus through the end of her courses but started to fall behind on her research and exam studies. With this additional stress on top of her usual test anxiety, she ended up having to drop out of the program.

Kayla left UCR in the fall of 2021; She had been applying for jobs all year and got an offer to work at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She took the offer to start afresh and make more than a graduate student's salary. Kayla moved across the country for NIST, where she had a one-year contract, and from there, Kayla transitioned to the PhD program at UMD. Unfortunately, because Kayla took a job at NIST and left school, she could not retain her fellowship to fund her Ph.D. However, Kayla is currently in her second semester at UMD, and she is very much enjoying building up a new lab to do neutral atom-based quantum information and simulation.

Dr. Keith Hillaire is an enrolled member of the Lummi Tribe of Native Americans, a Coastal Salish Tribe located in the Pacific Northwest also known as the Lhaq’temish, or the People of the Sea. He obtained his Associate in Science from Whatcom Community College, a Bachelor of Science in physics from Washington State University, where he did experimental research developing color-tunable light emitting polymers, and he obtained his Masters of Science in Physics and PhD from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he conducted experimental research in Dr. Karen Daniels Non-linear Physics Lab studying the fluid dynamics of room temperature liquid metals undergoing electrochemical oxidation. After obtaining his PhD, Dr. Hillaire was hired to work for Northrop Grumman as an experimental physicist in the Microelectronics Design and Applications (MDA) business unit where he conducts fundamental physics experiments at temperatures within a few milliKelvin of absolute zero.

Evan Donohue got his bachelor's degree in physics from Rochester Institute of Technology in May 2023, and joined Northrop Grumman the following June. During his time at RIT, Evan worked as a software developer, then found a strong interest in experimental quantum optics and integrated photonics. His is interested in the physics of next-generation technology for computation and communication.

She studies supermassive black holes and the environments around them using computer simulations. In particular, her work focuses on how magnetic fields and plasma close to the black hole interact leading to instabilities that move matter closer to the black hole. She is also interested in how mentoring and similar programs can better support students and improve departmental communities. Megan received her B.S. from Miami University and her Ph.D. from UMD.

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.

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.