April 22, 2025
Daniel Sullivan, PhD
Dr. Daniel Sullivan is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Arizona and the Director of the Cultural-Existential Psychology Lab. The lab pursues questions centered on how a wide variety of cultural factors - such as social class, religion, and everyday patterns of activity - influence a equally wide variety of negative experiences - such as unpleasant emotions, illness, and natural disasters. He has contributed to over 100 scholarly publications in psychology, philosophy, sociology, environmental science, and film and literary studies. His collaborative research with graduate students has been funded by NSF and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. He is particularly interested in suffering, anxiety, guilt, cultural differences, religion and terror management.
May 5, 2025
Steven Heine, PhD
Dr. Steven J. Heine is Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. After receiving his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1996, he had visiting positions at Kyoto University and Tokyo University, and was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to British Columbia. He has authored the best-selling textbook in its field, entitled “Cultural Psychology,” and has written two trade book called “Start Making Sense” (2025) and “DNA is not Destiny” (2017). Dr. Heine has received numerous international awards and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Heine’s research focuses on a few topics that converge on how people come to understand themselves and their worlds. In particular, he is most known for his work in cultural psychology where he has explored the key role that culture plays in shaping people’s psychological worlds, including how they sleep. He has also conducted much research exploring how people make meaning in the face of meaninglessness, and what predicts a more meaningful life.
May 20, 2025
Danny Marrero, PhD, J
Danny Marrero is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Director of the Philosophy Pre-law Concentration at this institution. His academic and professional trajectory has been inspired by the fascinating issues that arise at the intersection between Law and Philosophy. This led him to earn a BA degree in Philosophy, a JD, an LLM and an MA and a PhD in Philosophy. His topics of interest revolve around Philosophy of Law, Epistemology, Feminist Philosophy and Earth Jurisprudence. He has been the beneficiary of important awards and recognitions such as the Fulbright Scholarship (2009), the North Star Collective Faculty Fellowship by the New England Board of Higher Education (2022), the Diversity and Inclusiveness Grant (2023-2024) by the American Philosophical Association, The UTRGV Excellence Teaching Award in Community Engagement (2025) and the Mellon Foundation-Puentes Scholarship (2025-2026).
June 4, 2025
Ayodola Anise, MHS
Ayodola Anise is the senior director of operations at Milken Institute Health, supporting FasterCures, Public Health, Future of Aging, and Feeding Change. With over 20 years of experience, she specializes in strategy, operations, staff development, and advancing equity and efficiency. Her expertise includes community engagement, health equity, patient-centered CER, and health payments. She previously served as deputy director at the National Academy of Medicine Leadership Consortium, focusing on health equity, evidence generation, digital health, and payment systems. As a senior program officer at PCORI, she managed a $78M portfolio to improve healthcare and equity. Her earlier roles include managing healthcare quality projects at Brookings, a senior associate at Lewin Group, and a project coordinator at Georgetown University. Anise holds a B.A. in English with minors in chemistry and biology from the University of Pittsburgh and a MHS from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
June 17, 2025
TC Chakraborty, PhD
Tirthankar “TC” Chakraborty is an Earth Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with expertise in atmosphere-biosphere interactions. During his PhD, he developed a surface-energy budget perspective on aerosol-climate interactions. He has also worked extensively on impacts of urbanization on weather and climate by leveraging satellite measurements, crowdsourced weather station data, and modeling frameworks. TC is passionate about big data, machine learning, and urban informatics to understand the complexities of cities. His developed the most comprehensive global urban heat island dataset, conducted pioneering studies on urban heat disparities and humidity feedback, and isolated urban warming signals at multiple scales. Currently, he is improving urban representation in land models and examining extreme events over coastal cities. In addition to being a Google Earth Engine Developer Expert, his work has appeared in high impact scientific publications and media outlets, including Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, New York Times, and the Washington Post. He received the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career grant in 2023 to improve urban representation in Earth system models through planetary-scale data-model integration. He has also been funded by NASA and DOE to work on urban heat hazard disparities and climate resilience.
August 13, 2024
Candace A. Robledo, PhD, MPH
Dr. Robledo is a Scholar Alumni of the Rio Grande Valley Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (RGV AD-RCMAR) and the South Texas Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). She is an epidemiologist with collaborative research and consultation experience in reproductive and perinatal epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, and health disparities research. Her primary research interests have focused on assessing the impact that environmental chemicals (i.e. bisphenol-A, phthalates, persistent organic pollutants and air pollution) have on maternal and child health. She is the principal investigator of the UTRGV Maternal Health Research Center, a center focused on building capacity to conduct research to address health disparities in maternal health outcomes and help design and inform community-based solutions to address these disparities.
November 3, 2020
Bruce V. Lewenstein, Ph.D.
Dr. Bruce V. Lewenstein is a Professor of Science Communication and Chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. He was trained as a historian of science and is a widely known authority on public communication of science and technology, including informal science education, citizen science, and communication training for scientists. He has edited and co-edited special journal sections on citizen science and on feminist approaches to science communication and has been an active evaluator of informal science education programs, especially in citizen science. He also served on the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine committee that produced Learning through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design (2019). Dr. Lewenstein earned his Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from University of Chicago and his master’s degree and PhD in History and Sociology of Science from University of Pennsylvania.
September 22, 2020
Robert Espinoza, M.P.A.
Mr. Robert Espinoza is currently the Vice President of Policy of PHI, a non-profit that works to improve the quality of the job done by direct-care workers who provide services to the elderly and individuals with disabilities whether in people's homes or in nursing homes and other institutional facilities. He is responsible for leading PHI’s national strategies for advocacy, research, policy analysis, and public education, working at the intersection of workforce development, eldercare, and disability services. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Journalism and his Bachelor of Arts in English both from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received his Master of Public Administration from New York University.
June 16, 2020
Silvia H. Barcellos, Ph.D.
Dr. Silvia Barcelllos is an Assistant Professor of Economics of the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in Economics at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Later, she also earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton University. Her research interests include span labor economics, development, economics, and health economics.
June 9, 2020
Neela K. Patel, M.D.
Dr. Neela Patel is an Associate Professor and Chief of the Division of Geriatrics & Palliative Care in the Dept. of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. Dr. Patel earned her medical degree from the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences and her residency at St. John's National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore, India. Later, she completed a residency and fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. Dr. Patel developed a model of integrated care for older adults across all clinical settings called the CARINO Approach that is linked to community resources. She has served communities in South Texas, as she helped develop and implement closely integrated, seamless care patterns across clinicians, ranging from screening in primary care offices, personalized preventive advice, diagnosis, and development of integrated care plans. In collaboration with Biggs Institute, she supports community care providers and family caregivers, as behavioral, medical, and neurological issues arise, to manage and severe dementia.
