Fall 2020 webinar series

Omar Alberto Quintero-Carmona's picture

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Mi nombre es Omar-Alberto Quintero Carmona, soy profesor de Biología en la Universidad de Richmond en Virginia.  Nací en San Juan, pero a los dos años mis padres nos mudaron a los EEUU.  He pasado muchos veranos en Carolina, Rio Piedras, y Vega Alta visitando con mis abuelas y mi familia.

Mi carrera científica comenzó con Mariano Garcia-Blanco, quien me aseguró que la Universidad de Duke en Carolina del Norte sería un buen lugar para completar mi PhD (y lo fue).  Fue allí donde conocí a Daniel Colón Ramos, y pude ver que tenía oportunidad de compartir mi amor por las ciencias con el pueblo.  He ayudado con los programas de YaleCiencia, pero hasta hace poco tuve dificultad para encontrar la mejor manera de poner mi granito de arena.

Tomó este año de desechos para ver una oportunidad.  Continuare en inglés para estar seguro de presentar de manera clara la información que quiero comunicar.

My Department has a standing seminar series that is part of a course for our majors.  Since we have to bring in outside speakers but cannot host guests on campus, the series is going to be broadcast via webinar.  During #ShutDownSTEM and #StrikefoBlackLives, I decided that there were opportunities to support Black and Latino scientists that my colleagues and I could make happen right away.  We decided to invite as many Black scientists and other scientists of color to participate in our seminar series as possible.  Recognizing that webinar broadcast gave us some new opportunities, we are wondering if your institutions would be interested in having students participate in our seminar series.  I know how much representation mattered to me as I progressed in my scientific career.

The seminars are every Monday at noon Eastern and geared towards an undergraduate audience.  Since we’re anticipating that there might be more interest than our Zoom license can handle, we’re finalizing a partnership with the Allen Institute for Cell Science (https://www.allencell.org/) to be able to support a webinar with increased capacity.  In order to plan this, it would be good to have a sense of how many participants might be reasonable to expect. 

Here is the current speaker list:

Gerald Downes, uses zebrafish to study genes and gene networks in neural development:  https://www.downeslab.org/

Nathan A. Smith, studies interactions between neurons and glial cells:  https://thesmithlaboratory.org/

Marc Edwards, uses Dictyostelium to study cell motility:  https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/mcedwards

Chantell Evans,  HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow, studies mitochondrial function in neurons in Erika Holzbaur’s lab:  https://www.med.upenn.edu/physiol/article_awards_evans.html

Jaye Gardiner, studies cell signaling in cancer microenvironments and also heavily involved in science communication:  https://www.jayegardiner.com/about.html

Flora Rutaganira, HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow, studies kinase function in choanoflagellates, https://kinglab.berkeley.edu/research/

Sabrice Guerrier, uses Tetrahymena as a model system to study membrane and lipid trafficking (no website currently besides LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrice-guerrier-87755043/

Samantha Lewis, studies mitochondrial DNA inheritance, https://www.thelewislab.org/

Berlin Londono is from Colombia, studies innate and adaptive immunity in humans response to arthropod saliva (mosquito bites), https://www.vectorbioksu.com/

Antonio Baines, studies pancreatic cancer and potential targets for therapeutics, https://legacy.nccu.edu/bbri/pancreatic.cfm

Crystal Rogers, studies genetic and environmental mechanisms affecting vertebrate development, https://www.crystalrogersphd.com/

Kizzmekia Corbett, working at NIH to develop a coronavirus vaccine (https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article243758962.html)

Steve Ramirez is a neuroscientist studying memory storage and retrieval (http://theramirezgroup.org/team/steve-ramirez)

I will also be giving a seminar.

We have decided to name it “In Honor of George M. Langford’s continued contributions to integrative & inclusive science, the UR Department of Biology presents the 2020 scientists of color speaker series”  George Langford will be giving a Keynote, which will probably be an evening event.  https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/george-langford

Could you check at your institution to get a sense of whether there is interest, and in the next few days let me know how many participants might realistically attend the seminars?  This number will influence which Zoom webinar license we need to buy so that we can share these talks as broadly as possible.  Additionally, if you can think of other programs that might be interested that I should contact, please let me know.

Thanks for taking the time to consider it,

Omar A. Quintero, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Biology
University of Richmond
 
oquinter@richmond.edu
 
 

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