New Voices in Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Cycle

Cohort 4 (2026-2028)
Cohort 3 (2024-2026)
Cohort 2 (2021-2023)
Cohort 1 (2018-2020)

Primary Sector

Academia
Government
Industry
Non-Profit

Primary Discipline

Agriculture and natural resources
Data and statistics
Education
Engineering
Environment and biology
Health and medicine
Information technology
Legislation and policy

Emily Pentzer

Professor; Senior Associate Dean for Research, Texas A&M University
College Station, TX

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas: Polymers and Soft Matter for Carbon Capture; Thermal Energy Management; Electrochemical Energy Storage

Emily Pentzer is a Professor in Chemistry at Texas A&M University where she holds courtesy appointment in Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical Engineering. She received a BS from Butler University (Chemistry, 2005) and PhD from Northwestern University (Chemistry, 2010). She then completed postdoctoral work in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before starting her independent career at Case Western Reserve University in 2013 and moving to Texas A&M in 2019. The Pentzer Lab's research centers on developing new polymeric materials and assemblies to understand structure-property-application relationships and access functions not possible with current state-of-the-art systems. Her group works on the encapsulation of "active" liquids and gases, designing and synthesizing new polymer chemistries, and developing feedstocks for additive manufacturing to produce multifunctional materials. Dr. Pentzer regularly participates in events aimed at the professional development of students and post-docs and facilitating their transition to vibrant STEM careers. She has received the NSF CAREER award (2016), PMSE Young Investigator Award (2017), CWRU Faculty Diversity Excellence Award (2019), ACS WCC Rising Star Award (2021), Journal of Polymer Science Innovation Award (2023); she was named a Texas A&M Presidential Impact Fellow (2021) and finalist for the Blavatnik Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering (2022). She serves as Editor-in-Chief of RSC Applied Polymers and was named a Vanguard Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham (UK, 2024). Emily is from Bedford, Indiana and currently lives in College Station, Texas with her husband, Dean Ilijasic, and dog Mika.

Enrico Castillo

Medical Director for Clinical Innovations and Strategy, San Francisco Department of Public Health
Los Angeles, CA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Health and Medicine
Focus Areas: Health equity, health services, and policy research, social medicine, community-government-academic partnerships, curriculum development, graduate medical education, structural competency, physician advocacy, homelessness and housing policy, incarceration, serious mental illness

Enrico Castillo is a community psychiatrist, health services researcher, and medical educator. He is the Medical Director for Clinical Innovations and Strategy in the San Francisco County Department of Public Health Behavioral Health Services. In this role he creates and implements new clinical programs, advises health system leaders, collaborates with frontline providers to improve existing services, and enhances data systems to support evaluation and continuous quality improvement. His leadership, research, and teaching centers on public service, community-government-academic partnerships, and improving the systems and programs that serve individuals with serious mental illness, especially in the areas of homelessness and incarceration. He serves in several national and state leadership roles in research and medical education, including the Mental Health Advisory Board of the Association of American Medical College, multiple roles within the American Psychiatric Association, Career Development Institute for Psychiatry, National Alliance to End Homelessness, and?the California State Council on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health. Dr. Castillo was previously an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at UCLA and is the co-editor of the forthcoming book, "Homelessness: A Clinical Guide for Providing Mental Health Care for People Experiencing Homelessness," by American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Dr. Castillo is a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholar (2025-2028).
Connect: LinkedIn

Eri Saikawa

Professor and Winship Distinguished Research Professor, Emory University
Atlanta, GA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Environment and Biology
Focus/Research Areas: Air Pollution; Soil Contamination; Climate Change; Environmental Policy

Eri Saikawa is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, jointly appointed in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health at Emory University. She serves as the Director of Emory Climate Hub. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry and Biotechnology Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, a Master's Degree in Environmental Policy and Natural Resource Management from Indiana University Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy from Princeton University. Her research interests are focused on quantifying the sources and the magnitude of various emissions linked to air pollution and climate change, soil contamination, and the impacts of these issues on humans and society.

Faisal Hossain

Endowed Professor, University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus Areas: Civil and Environmental Engineering; Filmmaking and Communication of Science; Improving Water, Food and Energy Security; The Intersection of STEM Education with the Arts; Sustainable Applications of Earth Science

Faisal Hossain enjoys interacting with students at all levels and disciplines as part of his day job as a faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. His night job where he devotes an equal amount of energy is about filmmaking and communication of science. He uses these to build bridges between communities and solve pressing problems for society. His research group at University of Washington focuses on improving livelihoods in challenging environments through sustainable application of earth science, remote sensing and advanced information technology to improve security for water, energy and food at local and regional scales. His capacity building and education initiatives involving satellite remote sensing has resulted in several independently owned satellite management system for Governments of several Asian nations for improved water, food and energy security. Currently, he serves as Editor for Journal of Hydrometeorology and Applications lead for Science Team of Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Satellite Mission that is scheduled for launch in 2021. He initiated the Engineering Student Film Contest at University of Washington in 2017 that is now planned as the nation's first and bi-annual student film festival for STEM majors as a way to explore the arts.

Connect: LinkedIn

Frances A. Colón

Senior Director, Center for American Progress
Washington, D.C.

Primary Sector: Non-Profit
Primary Discipline: Environment and Biology
Focus Areas: Climate Change, Science Diplomacy/International Cooperation, STEM, Gender Underrepresented Minorities

Frances Colón is a senior fellow on the international climate policy team at Center for American Progress, where she leads a program to drive international ambition and action to meet global climate mitigation goals. Dr. Colón was a member of President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2021-2024) where she contributed to recommendations on accelerating effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, advancing nutrition research, and public engagement with the sciences. She was the former deputy science and technology adviser to the Secretary of State (2012-2017) where she promoted integration of science and technology into foreign policy dialogues, and global advancement of women in science. Colón earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2004 from Brandeis University and her B.S. in biology in 1997 from the University of Puerto Rico. Colón is a governing board member of the International Science Council and was a 2019 Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government fellow, a city of Miami Climate Resilience Committee member, and a 2020 Yale-OpEd Project Public Voices on the Climate Crisis.

Connect: LinkedIn

Grace O'Connell

Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas: Data and statistics; Engineering; Health and Medicine; Research and standards

Grace O'Connell is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Director of the Berkeley Biomechanics Laboratory, and her research interests are in soft tissue mechanobiology and tissue engineering. O'Connell received her PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, where her research focused on intervertebral disc biomechanics with age, degeneration, and injury. O'Connell's research group employs computational modeling and experimental approaches to study the effect of aging, disease, and surgical intervention on joint function. She has received many awards including the YC Fung Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, and the ASME Grood Award for Team Science. O'Connell was inducted into the AIMBE College of Fellows in 2021 and ASME Fellows in 2023. In 2025, she was recognized for her work in engineering through the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Holly Mayton

Science, Technology, & Policy Partnerships Lead
Philadelphia, PA

Primary Sector: Industry
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas: Digital and Precision Agriculture; Sustainability; Food Systems; Science Policy; Science Diplomacy; Carbon Accounting; Data Science

Dr. Holly Mayton works to advance sustainability through digital and precision agriculture as a member of John Deere's Sustainability Solutions team, where she integrates data analytics and scientific expertise with agriculture and climate policy. Holly is also a founding Co-Director and Senior Advisor of the National Science Policy Network (NSPN), a nonprofit coalition uniting thousands of early-career scientists and engineers committed to shaping equitable policy outcomes and championing the crucial role of science in society. Holly previously served as the Managing Director of the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag) research center at the University of Pennsylvania and as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the U.S. Department of State's Office of Agriculture Policy, sponsored by the American Institute of Physics. Her science policy interest also extends to the state level where she has co-developed the Commonwealth of Virginia Engineering and Science (COVES) Policy Fellowship and, more recently, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Science and Technology Policy (COPA-STEP) Fellowship. Holly earned her Ph.D. in Chemical and Environmental Engineering with a Designated Emphasis in Public Policy from the University of California, Riverside, in 2018. Her graduate research focused on the fate of waterborne pathogens in agricultural environments, stimulating her interest in addressing critical, interdisciplinary challenges in the field. Originally from Virginia Beach, Holly holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia. She is currently based in Philadelphia where she enjoys seeking out new flavors of water ice and rooting on the Sixers and UVA basketball.

Connect: LinkedIn

Hussam Nabil Mahmoud

Craig E. Philip Endowed Chair of Engineering and Director, Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate, Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas: Sustainable Infrastructure and Communities, Extreme Events and Resilience Healthcare System, Resilience, Climate Change and Mitigations, Risk-informed Decisions

Hussam Mahmoud is the Craig E. Philip Endowed Chair of Engineering and Director, Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate at Vanderbilt University. He obtained his BSc and MSc in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota and his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Mahmoud's research is focused on sustainable and resilient infrastructure and communities with emphasis on developing socio-physical to capture the recovery of systems as influenced by human behavior and socio-economic policies. He has been developing models for risk-informed recovery of infrastructure with focus on hospitals and schools using complex systems analysis. He has authored over 350 publications and has given more than 200 presentations including 150 invited talks at national and international conferences and workshops. He has chaired and served on numerous technical committees, including the ASCE Committees on Fire Protection and on Multi-hazard Mitigation. Dr. Mahmoud is a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and is the recipient of various awards, including the American Institute of Steel Construction early faculty career award, the American Iron and Steel Institute Robert J. Dexter Memorial Lecture award, and the Air Force summer faculty fellowship award. He has recently been selected by The National Academies among the 22 New Voices Cohort from across the U.S. He has been invited to various symposia by the U.S. National Academies, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. His research has received media coverage through citations and interviews in numerous venues, including Nature Climate Change, The U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times, and CNN.

Connect: LinkedIn

Jamaji C. Nwanaji-Enwerem

Presidential Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Health and Medicine
Focus/Research Areas: Advocacy; Aging; Air Pollution; Biomarkers; Built Environment; Chemical Exposure; Community Health & Development; Emergency Medicine; Environmental Health; Epigenetics; Exposome Geriatrics; Global Health; Health Equity; Public Policy; Social Determinants of Health

Jamaji C. Nwanaji-Enwerem, MD, PhD, MPP, is a Presidential Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as the Executive Director of Elnd, a community environmental education/improvement organization. Dr. Nwanaji-Enwerem graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Valedictorian from Morehouse College. He earned his PhD in the Harvard University Biological Sciences in Public Health program, his Master’s in Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard Kennedy School, and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. He completed his residency in emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and served as chief resident. He has served as a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the White House Office of Public Engagement Roundtables on Clinical Innovation and Health Equity, the World Health Organization technical advisory group for the occupational burden of disease estimation, and the International Society of Exposure Science Board of Directors. Dr. Nwanaji-Enwerem is the recipient of numerous honors including being named a 2025 National Medical Association Top Healthcare Professional Under 40, a National Minority Quality Forum 2021 40 Under 40 Leader in Health, a Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum Fellow, a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow, and an Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellow. He has authored several peer-reviewed publications and given many domestic/international lectures on his research, which leverages molecular biomarkers to better understand how environmental exposures impact human aging and health. His work further emphasizes the need for public policy solutions aimed at fostering greater health for all.

Connect: LinkedIn

Jasmine R. Marcelin

Associate Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, NE

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Health/Medicine
Focus/Research Areas: Health and Science Communication; Authentic Community Engagement; Advancing Health Equity; Economy and workforce; Health and Medicine

Dr. Jasmine R. Marcelin is a nationally and internationally recognized physician leader and educator transforming healthcare and academic medicine. A Caribbean native born on the island of Dominica, Dr. Marcelin earned her medical degree from American University of Antigua College of Medicine and completed Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases training at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN before joining the Division of Infectious Diseases at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in 2017. Dr. Marcelin is an Associate Professor of Medicine/Infectious Diseases at UNMC and serves as Vice Chair of Belonging and Community Engagement in the Department of Internal Medicine, Associate Medical Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship, and Co-Director of Digital Innovation & Social Media Strategy in the Division of Infectious Diseases. A TEDx speaker and prolific scholar, Dr. Marcelin has authored over 150 publications and been featured in 200+ media outlets. Authored book chapters include the chapter "Communicating about Infectious Diseases to the Public" in Mandell, Douglas and Bennett's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, 10th Edition, the premier Infectious Diseases teaching textbook used globally. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Foundation and holds leadership positions in several local and regional organizations. Dr. Marcelin has been recognized with numerous institutional and national awards, and her work focuses on reducing health disparities in infectious diseases and antimicrobial stewardship, building and supporting a diverse healthcare workforce, developing effective communication skills in healthcare professionals, and authentic community engagement.

Jeffrey Marlow

Assistant Professor, Boston University
Cambridge, MA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Natural Sciences
Focus/Research Areas: Deep Sea ecosystems, Geobiology, Astrobiology; Environment and biology

Jeffrey Marlow is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston University, where his lab studies the links between microbes and their surroundings in a range of environments from the deep sea to hypersaline lakes. Jeff completed his undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis, a master's degree at Imperial College London, and a PhD at Caltech, before working as a postdoc at Harvard University. Much of his focus has been on measuring metabolic activity of complex microbial communities within methane seep carbonate rocks, which has revealed new habitats capable of sustaining very high rates of methane oxidation. As the co-chair of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative's Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction working group, Jeff has served as a science advisor at the United Nations' negotiations for the High Seas Treaty. In his work as a science writer, Jeff has written for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times, and is the author of the forthcoming book, The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea.

Jessica Menold

Associate Professor of Engineering, Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas:Engineering design; Design Decision Making; Manufacturing; Immersive Technologies

Dr. Jessica Menold is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. She is the Director of Digital Twin Hub and the Center for Immersive Experiences at the Institute for Computational Data Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research explores fundamental issues related to engineering design and advanced technologies, including human-AI teaming, Digital Twins, and trustworthy AI for cyberphysical systems. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the RK Mellon Foundation, and Industry Partners.

Jesús Alvelo Maurosa

Chief Science and Sustainability Officer, Zion Capital Investment
Washington, D.C.

Primary Sector: Industry
Primary Discipline: Natural Sciences
Focus/Research Areas: Sustainability, Epidemiology, Environmental Microbiology, Climate Change, Natural Disasters

Jesús Alvelo Maurosa is the Chief Science and Sustainability Officer for Zion Capital Investment, a private equity firm focused on the aerospace industry. Formerly, Dr. Alvelo Maurosa worked at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate of Engineering for 5 years working as an Engineer/Science Analyst for the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation where he provided data and scientific analysis to senior leadership across the division and the directorate. He also worked in multiple research solicitations such as the Disaster Resilience Research Grants, an initiative with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Navigating the New Artic, an NSF 10 Big Idea Initiative. In 2016 he was a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering researching how viruses and bacteria spread through sneezes and cough. In 2016, Jesus obtained his Ph.D. in microbiology from University of Massachusetts Amherst, he received his B.S. from Universidad de Puerto Rico del Recinto de Río Piedras in 2008. During the National Academies New Voices Cohort 2021-2023 Dr. Alvelo Maurosa contributed in developing a survey to measure the impact of National Academies New Voices program on the cohort on their first year, attended a G7 Research Summit One Health in Canada, deposed at a Board on Higher Education and Workforce panel regarding the statues of Federal STEM workforce and reviewed proposals of 2023 US NAM Catalyst Award Competition and the National Academies Scientists and Engineers in Exile or Displaced (SEED) program for displaced Ukrainian scientists.

Jim Yoon

Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA

Primary Sector: Government
Primary Discipline: Environment and Biology
Focus/Research Areas: Coupled Human-Natural Systems; Agent-Based Modeling; Water Security; Multi-Sector Dynamics.

Dr. Jim Yoon is a Senior Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research focuses on the development and application of advanced modeling and simulation techniques to understand, quantify, and evaluate climate and socioeconomic impacts on coupled human-natural systems, identifying solutions that can enhance system resilience, sustainability, and equity under changing and adverse conditions. Dr. Yoon leads several climate adaptation and agent-based modeling research efforts being conducted for the Department of Energy Office of Science Multi-sector Dynamics (MSD) Program and the Department of Defense. He is a member of the MSD Community of practice scientific steering group and chair of the MSD Human Systems Modeling Working Group. Dr. Yoon obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University where he was integrated model lead on the Jordan Water Project, an international interdisciplinary research project focused on the development of a multi-agent hydrologic-economic model for evaluation of water security in Jordan and the Middle East. Prior to his work at Stanford, Dr. Yoon spent several years working as a water resources engineer at MWH Global in Southern California, consulting for municipal clients across the western U.S. He is also co-founder of WellDone International, a non-profit organization working to support clean water and sanitation projects in underserved regions across the developing world. Dr. Yoon holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering with an English Literature minor from the University of California, Los Angeles.

LinkedIn: https://energyenvironment.pnnl.gov/staff/staff_info.asp?staff_num=3295

Joel P Baumgart

Associate Vice Provost, Emory University
Atlanta, GA

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Health and Medicine
Focus Areas: Science Diplomacy, Toxicology, Public Health, STEM Education, Global Health

Dr. Joel P. Baumgart is the Associate Vice Provost at Emory University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Cornell University Weill Medical College. Joel was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania in 2015–16. Before his time abroad, Joel was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow at the National Academy of Engineering and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of the Director at the National Institutes of Health, where his portfolio included the Impact of NIH Research project that communicated the value of NIH research to the public. In addition to his policy experience, Joel was a Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars Institute at Princeton University, a New York Academy of Sciences Education Fellow, an Epilepsy Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, a Visiting Scholar at the Université de Montpellier, a Visiting Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, and a writer at the Core Knowledge Foundation. Joel is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology and was selected to the inaugural class of the New Voices at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He received the Eric W. Lothman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Neuroscience, the Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Sciences & Engineering, and the Alumni Early Achievement Award from the University of Virginia; the Dr. Louis B. Fink Capstone Award from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and the Zora Neale Hurston Thesis Award for the Social Sciences from Columbia University. Dr. Baumgart has recently been awarded the MacVittie Emerging Leader Award from the American Association of University Administrators and was inducted into the Bouchet Society at Cornell University in 2012.

Connect: LinkedIn

John Reich

Scientific Program Director, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR)
Philadelphia, PA

Primary Sector: Non-Profit
Primary Discipline: Agriculture and Natural Resources
Focus/Research Areas: RNA biology; Development; Food and Agriculture Sciences; Urban Food Systems

John Reich joined the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) in February 2016, as a Scientific Program Director. John joined FFAR because he strongly believes that advancements in the food and agriculture sector will be key to maintaining our quality of life and that the right investments at opportune moments will provide us with the necessary tools to overcome future challenges in agriculture. At FFAR, John works on building partnerships between the public and private sectors that target pre-competitive research to advance agriculture science including FFAR's first multi-stakeholder consortium, the Crops of the Future, creating a model for FFAR consortia, and his most recently announced consortium, the Precision Indoor Plants Collaborative. John continuously works on developing partnerships and programs that catalyze new areas of multi-disciplinary, cross-sectorial, and participatory research that build on current investments to benefit the public. Trained as a biomedical scientist, John applies his background in genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry to a broad range of topics that support nutrition security, health, and economic opportunities through scientific advancement.

Connect: LinkedIn

Kaiping Chen

Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Middleton, WI

Primary Sector: Academia
Primary Discipline: Social Sciences
Focus/Research Areas: Science Communication; Computational Social Science; Information technology; Law, society and justice; Legislation and policy; Artificial intelligence; Digital apps and services; Human-computer interaction; Community engagement; Equity and justice; Misinformation; Community resilience and sustainability; Policy analysis

Dr. Kaiping Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with affiliate appointments in the Data Science Institute, the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Wisconsin Energy Institute, and others. She designs systems that foster genuine listening between communities and experts as they address complex issues from climate to AI, drawing on her expertise in public deliberation and computational social science.

Chen is also a civic engagement practitioner who collaborates with governments and community organizations, and industry partners to design participatory processes and digital tools that amplify the voices of diverse communities in the United States and China, including communities of color and rural communities. Her team builds scalable deliberation technologies, from digital crowdsourcing platforms that inform policy guidance with community knowledge to AI-assisted chat tools that help people practice perspective-taking across differences. Her scholarship has appeared in journals across disciplines such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, and Journal of Communication, and has been featured in Science, Nature, and PBS Wisconsin.

Chen received Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, M.P.A. from Columbia
University, and Bachelor of Law from Fudan University. She has received the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Early Career Woman Scholar Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Kaid–Sanders Best Political Communication Article Award from the International Communication Association, and was named one of Wisconsin's Most Influential Asian Leaders.

Kaitlyn Sadtler

Investigator, National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD

Primary Sector: Government
Primary Discipline: Engineering
Focus/Research Areas: Immuno-Engineering

Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler is a scientist and Chief of the Section on Immuno-Engineering at the National Institutes of Health. She began her lab at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Chemical Engineering working on the molecular mechanisms of immune activation in the foreign body response. She completed her Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she showed a role for immune cells in biomaterial-mediated muscle regeneration. Her research has been published in journals such as Science, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Materials, and Science Translational Medicine. She was recognized as a TED Fellow and delivered a TED talk that was listed as one of the top-viewed talks of 2018. Dr. Sadtler was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Science, the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, and the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders. She also received an Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from Johns Hopkins University and an honorary doctorate from her undergraduate university, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. At NIH, Dr. Sadtler has lent her lab's expertise to the fight against COVID-19, leading a study that detected 16.8 million undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections in the US after the first pandemic wave in the US. She continues her work on immune-engineering in the context of traumatic injury focusing on the balance of tolerance and autoimmunity during tissue reconstruction, recently implicating a new immune cell type in self-tolerance after volumetric muscle loss.

Connect: LinkedIn

New Voices members appointed to Workshop Committee for Rethinking Researcher Assessment

Mitul Luhar (Cohort 2024-26), Emily Pentzer (Cohort 2024-26), and Eri Saikawa (Cohort 2024-26) were appointed to serve on the workshop committee for Rethinking Researcher Assessment and Incentives at U.S. Academic Institutions, a joint project between the Strategic Council for Research Excellence and New Voices. The committee will explore new approaches to expand the criteria for which researchers are assessed at U.S. academic institutions beyond traditional outputs such as grants, publications, and citation counts. The workshop will bring together professors, researchers, and administrators to explore effective strategies for implementing these changes at universities across the U.S. New Voices member Mitul Luhar will serve as the co-chair for the committee. Visit the Workshop page.

New Voices members work with Hollywood screenwriters at Science and Entertainment Exchange Retreat

New Voices members Enrico Castillo (Cohort 2021-23) and Kiana Aran (Cohort 2024-26) participated in the 2025 Writers Retreat with the Science and Entertainment Exchange. The Science and Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences, connects the entertainment industry with experts in science, technology, and medicine in order to enhance the portrayal of science and scientists in film, television, and new media, and to make science more accessible and inspiring for all audiences.

New Voices members attend National Academy of Sciences 162nd Annual Meeting

On April 26, 2025, Monica Dus (Cohort 2024-26), Rachel Gallery (Cohort 2024-26), Mitul Luhar (Cohort 2024-26), Melanie Napier (Cohort 2024-26) and Emily Pentzer (Cohort 2024-26) attended the NAS Annual Meeting. The meeting was a gathering of NAS members, with an opening address by President Marcia McNutt and subsequent technical panel discussions. New Voices members met with National Academies leadership and members, and highlighted current and future activities.

Visit the event page.

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