Panel Speakers 

Moderator: Lisa Wolf-Wendel, PhD is a Professor of Higher Education and Coordinator of the Higher Education Master’s Degree Program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas.  Dr. Wolf-Wendel joined the faculty of the University of Kansas (KU) in 1995.  She serves as President-Elect of the Faculty Senate at KU and recently served as the Interim Associate Dean of the School of Education.

Dr. Wolf-Wendel earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Communications from Stanford University in 1987.  She earned her doctorate in Higher Education from The Claremont Graduate University in 1995. 

 

Dr. Wolf-Wendel is the author of 6 books and numerous refereed journal articles on topics related to equity issues in higher education.  Her research focuses on faculty issues including studies of the academic labor market, the needs of international faculty and faculty from historically underrepresented groups, and several recent research projects pertaining to the policy response of academic institutions in the wake of demands for dual career couple accommodations and work/family balance. She is an editor of the ASHE Higher Education Monograph Series, she serves on the Editorial Board of many publications in higher education including Research in Higher Education, The Journal of College Student Development, and the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. 

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Lisa R. Abston, PhD is Director of Prehealth Professions Programs at Chicago State University. She advises students in their quest to many of the health profession careers including, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, podiatry, veterinary medicine, optometry, public health, and chiropractic medicine. She’s been appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology.

Dr. Abston received her baccalaureate degree from Chicago State University in 1996. She earned a doctoral degree in biological sciences from Northwestern University in 2004. While at Northwestern University, Dr. Abston received the NIH Cellular and Molecular Basis of Disease Training Grant and the Graduate School’s University Fellowship award. Upon completion of her Ph.D., Dr. Abston received a post-doctoral fellowship in the Respiratory Biology Training Program at The University of Chicago. While there she received the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award F32 Individual Fellowship. Dr. Abston is a member of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions and the National Association of Medical Minority Educators. Dr. Abston lives in Homewood, IL with her son Octavius.

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Anita Blanchard, MD is an Associate Professor of Obstetric and Gynecology at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and has served as the Residency Program Director for the department since 2004. She attended the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed her residency training at the University of Chicago. Dr Blanchard’s commitment to resident education has been unwavering, and she has earned awards from both students and administration, such as the Resident Teaching –Golden Apple Award in 2002 the University of Chicago Resident/Fellow Education Award in 2006. Dr Blanchard has been an examiner with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology since 2001. Dr Blanchard’s clinical work focuses predominantly on cervical cancer prevention and vulvar disease. With Illinois Department of Public Health funding, Dr Blanchard has worked on community outreach program to address the need for cervical cancer screening and prevention mechanisms.

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L. Cate Brinson, PhD is currently the Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Engineering at Northwestern University and Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department with a secondary appointment in the Materials Science and Engineering Department. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1990 from Caltech, Dr. Brinson performed postdoctoral studies in Germany at the DLR and since 1992 she has been on the faculty at Northwestern University. Her primary research focus is on the modeling and characterization of advanced material systems, including polymers, nanocomposites and intelligent materials.  Current research investigations involve characterization of nanoparticle reinforced polymers, the phase transformation response of shape memory alloys, nano and microscale response of bone, and investigation of microstructure effects on properties of microporous materials for bioengineering, where investigations span the range of molecular interactions, micromechanics and macroscale behavior. Dr. Brinson has received a number of awards, including a 2006 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the 2003 ASME Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators, and an NSF CAREER Award; she is a Fellow of the Society of Engineering Science; she held the June and Donald Brewer Junior Chair at Northwestern University from 1992-1994, and served as a member of the Defense Science Study Group (1998-99). She has given over 100 technical lectures on her research, including many keynote talks, organizes symposia at many conferences and has authored one book and 100 refereed journal publications. She is a member of several professional societies and served 5 years on the Society of Engineering Science Board of Directors, including one year as President of the society. She has also been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures and the Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology and is currently serving on the National Materials Advisory Board of the National Academies. Dr. Brinson is also the mother of 4 happy children, an accomplished triathlete, and enjoys house renovation, reading and travel.

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Diana (Dee-Dee) Donnelly-Roberts, PhD is a neuroscientist at Abbott and mother of two daughters, Megan, a graduate of Lawrence University with a BA in History and who just finished student teaching, and Katie, a sophomore at Case Western Reserve University majoring in Anthropology.  Dee-Dee received her BS in Chemistry from West Virginia Wesleyan where she also ran track for four years.  She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Medical College of Virginia/VCU in Richmond with an emphasis on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and Myasthenia Gravis.  She started both her family and post-doctoral career in New Haven with continued research on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor at Yale University and running a few marathons along the way.  Dee-Dee joined the Neuroscience Department at Abbott in 1993 where she has focused on drug discovery in the fields of cognitive disorders and neuropathic pain and has been fortunate to work with different teams to bring forward several clinical candidates. She also has been fortunate to have mentored several undergraduate and masters students through the Abbott internship program.  She received the Volwiler Outstanding Research Team Award in 2006 and Mentor of the Year in 2002.  But she is most proud of the strong, intelligent and passionate women her daughters have become who want to make a difference in the lives of others.

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Leslie Kay, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and the Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology. She is also a member of the graduate committees on Neurobiology and Computational Neuroscience. Leslie received her BA in Liberal Arts from St. Johns College in Santa Fe, NM. When she graduated from college she worked at Los Alamos Laboratories for the GenBank project at its beginning. She received her PhD in Biophysics from UC Berkeley where she studied olfactory physiology and dynamical systems. She was then a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech for 5 years in Biology and Computational Neuroscience. She joined the faculty at The University of Chicago in 2000, and her laboratory focuses on olfactory system neurophysiology, psychophysics and oscillatory processes. Her two daughters were born just before and just as she started her position at the University. She found early on from battling breast cancer and raising two babies with an extremely supportive spouse that many things she thought were important turned out not to be. She has been fortunate to have excellent students and juggles her attention between them and her family with occasional success.

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Emily Monosson, PhD consults, writes, and teaches about the environmental and human health impacts of emerging contaminants, nanomaterials and plastics. She is editor and contributor to the recently published Motherhood the Elephant in the Laboratory: women scientists speak out, is on the Stewardship Committee of the Environmental Information Coalition developing guidelines and policies for the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), and maintains her own blog, www.theneighborhoodtoxicologist.blogspot.com. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and two children. Dr. Monosson received her B.S. in biology from Union College, and M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemical toxicology from Cornell University.

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Amanda Petford-Long, PhD is a Senior Scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Lab and also a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University.

 Dr Petford-Long gained her undergraduate degree in Physics from University College, London in 1981. She gained her D.Phil in Materials Science from the University of Oxford in 1985. Subsequent to this she carried out a postdoc at Arizona State University, followed by personal research Fellowships at the Department of Materials in Oxford. She joined the faculty of the Department of Materials in Oxford in 1999, and was made a Full Professor there in 2002, before leaving to join Argonne in 2005.

Dr Petford-Long’s heads the Interfacial Materials Group which has extensive research programs on ferroelectric, ferromagnetic and multiferroic oxide heterostructures. Her own areas of research include the correlation of magnetic, transport and optical properties of layered ferroic thin films with microstructure, magnetic domain structure and composition profile. She uses a range of high-resolution electron-microscopy and position-sensitive atom probe techniques, including Lorentz microscopy for imaging magnetic domains. She is also involvedin the development of in-situ TEM techniques for the investigation of magnetization reversal and transport behavior.

Dr Petford-Long is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is active as a reviewer for physics and materials science journals and is involved in outreach activities, in particular for young females with interests in science and has presented papers on gender equity in materials science. She is also involved in conference organization. Dr Petford-Long lives in Naperville with her teenaged daughter. She also has a son who is in his first year of a Materials Science undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford.

Bethanee Schlosser, M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Director of the Women’s Skin Health Initiative in the Department of Dermatology of Northwestern University.  She also serves as the Associate Program Director of the Dermatology residency program.

 

Dr. Schlosser earned her undergraduate degree from Bucknell University in 1996.  She earned her medical degree, as well as her doctorate in Cell and Molecular Biology, from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in 2003.  Dr. Schlosser completed an internship at Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, FL) in 2004.  She subsequently received her training in Dermatology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, where she also served as Chief Resident. She was awarded the Women’s Dermatologic Society Academic Research Grant in 2006 and the Women’s Dermatologic Society Mentorship Award in 2007.  Dr. Schlosser joined the faculty of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2007.

 

Dr. Schlosser’s areas of interest include acne, rosacea, polycystic ovary syndrome, excess hair disorders in women, skin disorders in pregnancy, mucosal disorders and adolescent dermatology.  As the Director of the Women’s Skin Health Initiative, Dr. Schlosser leads a team of expert physicians in providing outstanding and comprehensive care in medical, surgical and cosmetic dermatology to women of all ages and stages of life.  She currently sees patients at the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation outpatient dermatology clinic and performs inpatient consultations at Prentice Women’s Hospital.

 

Dr. Schlosser is an active member of the American Academy of Dermatology, Association of Professors of Dermatology, Medical Dermatology Society and Women’s Dermatologic Society.  She currently serves on the Young Physicians Committee of the American Academy of Dermatology, the Mentorship Committee of the Women’s Dermatologic Society, and the Membership Committee of the Association of Professors of Dermatology.  Dr. Schlosser is board-certified by the American Board of Dermatology.

 

Dr. Schlosser, her husband Dr. Steven Deliduka, and their two children live in Wilmette.

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Gina Wesley-Hunt, PhD graduated from Northwestern University in 1995.  Dr. Teresa Horton was her Honors Thesis Advisor and introduced her to the excitement of research. The opportunities that emerged as a result of her thesis experience resulted in two very fun years of biology field jobs around the country. It was during this time that she decided to pursue a career in Paleontology and chose the University of Chicago for her graduate work. Gina earned her PhD from the Committee on Evolutionary Biology in 2003.  Her first Postdoctoral position was at the Natural History Museum of Stockholm, Sweden, and a she held a second  at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C. Gina is currently an Assistant Professor at Montgomery College in Rockville Maryland, and a mother.