FALL & WINTER 2022-2023 WEBINAR SERIES
The NSF HSI STEM Resource Hub fall 2022 and spring 2023 webinar series focuses on celebrating and learning from successful NSF HSI awardees. We host panels of successful PIs on specific topics that will engage our audience and support grant writing efforts for those planning a grant submission. This webinar series focuses on a broad array of topics that promote student success, wellness and diversity and inclusion. Dr. Martha Desmond and Dr. Delia Valles are the hosts for this series. The HSI STEM Hub recommends participation in these webinars to learn from successful awardees, particularly if you are currently writing a proposal or are interested in grant writing.
Dr. Par Mohammadian is a professor of Life Sciences at Los Angeles Mission College. Her
Chris Anderson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological
Esther Isabelle Wilder is a professor of sociology at Lehman College, The City University of New York, and a faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her current research focuses on factors that promote quantitative literacy, trends and patterns in scholarly publishing, the experience of disability, and the roles of race/ethnicity and religion in explaining socioeconomic outcomes. She is the author of Wheeling and Dealing: Living with Spinal Cord Injury and coauthor of Voices from the Heartland: The Needs and Rights of Individuals with Disabilities. Her scholarly work has appeared in more than a dozen journals including Scientometrics, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Milbank Quarterly, Social Science Research, Teaching Sociology, The Gerontologist, The Sociological Quarterly, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), she has been active in a variety of initiatives to promote best practices in STEM education and to improve students’ critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills
I have spent my entire life in northern California, and the people and landscapes of this region have profoundly influenced my academic and professional work. I studied hydrology, geomorphology, and soil science as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley. I got involved in watershed monitoring while working with great colleagues at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, got very interested in stream ecology, and went back to U.C. Berkeley for grad school to pursue a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. My doctoral research described the influence of landslides and debris flows on riparian vegetation, stream food webs, and salmonid habitat in the Klamath Mountains. I am incredibly grateful to work as an educator at Stan State, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, with wonderful students and colleagues.
Studying ecological interactions in the social, political, and economic contexts in which they occur, Dr. Alex Racelis is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and the School for Earth, Environmental and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He joined UTRGV from its legacy institution (UTPA) in January 2013, and before that was a research ecologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. In response to the challenges of balancing agricultural and urban development in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Alex has established a nationally recognized research and student training program at UTRGV in agroecology and the study of urban ecosystems, with the ultimate goals of: (1) using science based approaches to elucidate patterns how landowner decision-making (farmers, homeowners, etc) connect to environmental and social health, (2) and increasing ecological literacy in local area students though transformative education and engaged scholarship. Ultimately, the goal of Alex’s program is to create intellectual capital through training and research and social capital and with community engagement and outreach to facilitate sustainability, equity, and resilience within our communities.
Erik Menke was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and primarily grew up on Colorado’s Western Slope. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Colorado State University in 2000 and then moved west to join UC Irvine’s second incoming class in the new Chemistry and Materials Physics (CHaMP) program. He completed his Ph.D. in 2006 under the direction of Prof. Reg Penner and then moved to UCLA as a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Science and Engineering department at UCLA under the guidance of Prof. Bruce Dunn. He is currently an associate professor of chemistry at the University of California, Merced, having joined the UC Merced faculty in 2008. His primary research interests are understanding aluminum ion behavior in organic solvents, motivated by developing electrolytes for rechargeable aluminum batteries, and developing educational interventions, such as culturally relevant science teaching, that positively impact student self-efficacy and sense of belonging in science courses.
Frank A. Gomez, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of STEM-NET, a multicampus consortium, based at the California State University Office of the Chancellor, where he has led STEM initiatives for the 23-campus CSU system since 2019. He is also Professor of Chemistry at Cal State LA since 1994. He received his B.S. (1986) and Ph.D. (1991) in Chemistry from Cal State LA and UCLA, respectively. From 1991-1994 he was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Dr. Gomez’s research focuses in developing microfluidic point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices, fuel cells, and batteries. He has mentored over 140 students and postdocs, the majority from underrepresented groups, and published over 130 publications in these fields. Since 1994, he has received over $21MM in research funding. As Executive Director of STEM-NET he has been a part of collaborative grants securing over $50MM in funding.
Wei Wu, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Construction Management at Lyles College of Engineering at California State University, Fresno. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Built Environment and Equipment Engineering from Hunan University in China in 2004, Master of Science in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford in the UK in 2005, and Doctor of Philosophy in Design, Construction, and Planning from the University of Florida in 2010. Dr. Wu’s teaching interest includes construction graphics, Design-Build Project Delivery, Building Information Modeling (BIM), advanced planning and pre-construction, and construction management senior capstone. He received 2018 Teaching Excellence Award of the Associated Schools of Construction (Region 7) and the 2019 Provost Award in Innovation of Fresno State. Dr. Wu’s research focuses on BIM, cyberlearning, extended reality (XR), and construction and engineering education. He has published more than 70 articles and conference proceedings in these areas. Dr. Wu’s research has been funded by regional and federal agencies, including National Science Foundation (NSF) grants on active and authentic learning with XR.
Dr. Delia Valles Rosales is the Chair of the Industrial Management and Technology Department at Texas A&M at Kingsville. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Instituto Tecnologico de Durango and her master’s of science and MS and PhD from New Mexico State University all in industrial engineering. Her research uses nature to inspire the development of innovative manufacturing processes, new processes of biomass utilization, and models and algorithms for system optimization in agriculture, education, manufacturing, and service areas. More specifically, Dr. Valles-Rosales has been investigating various biomass resources as fibers to be coupled with polymers for fulfilling the need of new applications. She has been the PI or Co-PI in excess of $5 million in grants from various federal agencies and corporations. Her research has impacted several students with funded projects focused on student recruitment, retention, and curriculum development. She has extensive experience in mentoring students in research projects and capstone courses. She has published more than 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
