Dr. Shachee Doshi is an Emerging Technologies Advisor at USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation, within the Technology Division’s Strategy & Research team. In this role, she supports the development and application of research-based best practices for the appropriate and responsible use of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital identity systems and blockchain in international development programming. She is devoted to working with colleagues in the Agency, interagency, academia, private sector, and nonprofits to inform the strategic and policy direction of frontier technologies in the context of human rights and sociotechnical impact in emerging markets. She completed her bachelor’s in biology and doctoral training in neuroscience, both at the University of Pennsylvania, studying mechanisms underlying injury and disease in the nervous system for her Ph.D.
Dr. Jesse Isaacman-Beck (he/him/his; Perlman School of Medicine PhD. 2015; Neuroscience) is currently a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a Fellow, he is Special Assistant to Dr. Lyric Jorgenson, the Acting Director of Science Policy at the NIH. He has a high level perspective on all of the NIH-wide policy being developed for biomedical and clinical research (Data Sharing, Open Access, Clinical Trials, Human Subjects Protection, Biosafety and Biosecurity, Tech Transfer and more!). He also works on specific projects related to social justice in biomedical research (UNITE Initiative) and the ethical implications of data science in biomedical research (NExTRAC Committee). Prior to this Jesse was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Tom Clandinin at Stanford University and a graduate student with Dr. Michael Granato at UPENN. In his free time, Jesse is a dad to a rambunctious 2 year old, an exercise enthusiast, and a reader.
Dr. Samantha White is currently Chief of the Scientific and Public Engagement Branch in the Office of Neuroscience Communications and Engagement (ONCE), where she helps ONCE efforts to provide a seamless flow of information on NINDS research advances and initiatives to various stakeholders including scientific and academic communities, as well as policy-makers, patients, and the public. Dr. White identifies new opportunities for collaboration and partnership between NINDS and external parties, while nurturing existing alliances to support synergy in neuroscience research, education, and outreach activities. In addition to orchestrating standard operating procedures, tracking, and programmatic content decisions for meetings, workshops, and scientific conferences like the annual BRAIN Initiative Meeting and the Nonprofit Forum, she participates in the development and dissemination of communications and outreach materials surrounding the progress of BRAIN and other NINDS-funded research. In ONCE, Dr. White also oversees science education and outreach programming across the portfolio of NINDS stakeholders, including the creation of content targeting students, parents, and teachers. Dr. White began working at NIH as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow in 2014 after receiving her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.S. in neuroscience and behavioral biology from Emory University. She previously worked as a Science Policy Fellow at Research!America, and she was also the program director for Emerging Leaders in Science and Society, a pilot graduate student development program hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Rista Plate (moderator) is a MindCORE postdoctoral fellow interested in how children navigate their social world and uses experimental approaches to better understand the mechanisms underlying socio-emotional development. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also received her BA from the University of Wisconsin and spent two years at the National Institute of Mental Health upon receiving an Intramural Research Training Award. Her graduate research, which was funded by an NSF graduate research fellowship and Emotion Training Grant, focused on how paying attention to patterns and associations in one’s environments contributes to children’s social and emotional development. Rista uses approaches that draw across and beyond areas of psychology, and designs experiments that use theory and techniques from cognitive science to explore issues related to socio-emotional development. In doing so Rista hopes to gain a better understanding of how children’s learning tools generalize across social and nonsocial situations and whether there are instances in which unique skills are required. She also hopes to investigate mechanisms that might underlie social functioning and potentially serve as targets for intervention.