• Student and Community Speakers
• Reception and Student Postering Session
• Organization Networking

SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE:
Representative Carol Ammons
Beverley Baker
Marty Burke
Anita Chan
Mukund Chorghade
Andrea S. Fanta
Caitlin Fredericks
Aashini Lakshmi
Aarush Lakshmi
Claudia Lutz
Will Patterson
Aarush and Aashini Sanapala
Karen Simms
Te’Shyah Spinks
Saif Williams
And Nobel Prize-Winning Laureate Richard J. Roberts

HOSTS: Ruby Mendenhall and Beverley Baker

SPEAKER BIOS:

Carol Ammons is a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives who has represented the 103rd district since January 2015. She is also the bicameral chair of the Illinois Black Caucus; the chair of the Small Business, Tech Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Committee; and a senior member, Higher Education and Higher Education Appropriations committees.

Beverley Baker is the chief impact officer and director for Community Impact at United Way of Champaign County.

Martin D. Burke, M.D., is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also a professor of Chemistry; a department affiliate with Biochemistry; and holds professorships at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.

Anita Say Chan, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Information Sciences and the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she holds the Fiddler Innovation Faculty Fellowship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. She is also a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (I-CHASS), the Illinois Informatics Institute, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP).

Mukund Chorghade, Ph.D., is the founder, president, and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at THINQ Pharma / MVRC Research and Ayurvidya Healthcare Innovations in Natich, MA. He is the CSO at Chicago Discovery Solutions and APINOVO and also an adjunct research professor at Northeastern University and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Chorghade also holds appointments at Harvard University and MIT.

Andrea S. Fanta is an integrated health disparities mental health specialist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Caitlin Fredericks is an integrated health disparities mental health specialist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Claudia Lutz, Ph.D., is an outreach manager at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Ruby Mendenhall is the Kathryn Lee Baynes Dallenbach Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Associate Dean for the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also a professor of Sociology, African American Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, and Social Work and a faculty affiliate with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, Cancer Center at Illinois, the Siebel Center for Design, the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA), the Faculty Entrepreneurial Leadership Program (Gies College of Business and Discovery Partners Institute), the Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (ARCHES), and the Geospatial Software Institute Conceptualization Project. Mendenhall is also 2024 Urbana Poet Laureate.

William Patterson, Ph.D., is a clinical professor in the Department of Music, an adjunct professor in the Department of African American Studies, and a fellow of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Nobel Prize-Winning Laureate Sir Richard J. Roberts, Ph.D., is the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Phillip Allen Sharp, for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. He is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at New England Biolabs (NEB), a member of the Advisory Board of Patient Innovation, chairman of The Laureate Science Alliance, and a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) inductee.

Te’Shyah Spinks is a junior at Rantoul Township High School. She is on the Eaglettes dance team and has been dancing for about 14 years. She started with her mom at church and now dances with the Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church praise dance team.

Karen Simms, Ph.D., is the founding executive director of the Trauma & Resilience Initiative, Inc. and a trainer, speaker, consultant, and coach for Meridian K Consulting & Coaching Services.


PRESENTED BY the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Campus-Community Compact to Accelerate Social Justice, STEM Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Family Resiliency Center (College of ACES, U of I), the Center for Social & Behavioral Science (U of I), and the Champaign Park District.





Richard J. Roberts
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1993