I am an experienced physicist, educator, policy maker, writer, and advocate. I am a proponent of higher education reform, specifically eliminating gender, racial, disability, and LGBT bias, discrimination, and harassment. I am an adjunct physics teaching professor, with a focus on integrating art, student-driven inquiry, and service learning into the undergraduate physics curriculum.
I am a former American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Office at the U.S. Agency for International Development. I served at the U.S. Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C. My primary responsibilities included maintenance of the LGBTI focal point system, supporting LGBTI focal points in USAID’s missions throughout the world, supporting LGBTI working groups in the provision of LGBTI documents and LGBTI strategies for embedding LGBTI considerations internally, coordinating the White House report on USAID supported LGBTI activities, and participation in the inter-agency committee on hate crimes.
I earned my B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Following graduate school, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Stanford Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), within the Department of Radiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. My work in CISNET focused on a Monte Carlo simulation model to estimate the relative impact of lowered mammographic tumor detectability versus faster tumor volume doubling time on the reduced performance of screening mammography in younger women. I also participated in a CISNET analysis that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force relied upon in developing the new mammography screening guidelines in 2009. I worked as a project lead in the Center for Health Policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine where I helped to develop population-based microsimulation models of adult obesity in India and child welfare in the United States. Following my own research vision, I adapted microsimulation modeling, as used in health policy, to study human rights policy questions. In particular, I assessed the impact of prevention and intervention efforts to combat sex trafficking out of Eastern Europe to help build better knowledge-based policies.