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Aicher, Rebecca
Rebecca Aicher, Ph.D., is a project director at the AAAS Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues (AAAS EPI Center). She most recently worked with the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program to support scientific collaborations and community building in science. Prior to AAAS, she worked on policy-relevant scientific research including topics related to invasive species, restoration of ecosystems, climate change, and water resources at the Northeast Midwest Institute, US Global Change Research Program and EPA, among others.
Aicher was an AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow from 2011 to 2013 with the EPA and worked on understanding the potential impacts of mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
She received her Ph.D. in biology at the University of California Irvine and bachelor’s degree in biology from the George Washington University.
Allen, Ronald
Ronald Allen, J.D., is the John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern University, in Chicago, IL. He did his undergraduate work in mathematics at Marshall University and studied law at the University of Michigan. He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of evidence, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. He has published seven books and over 100 articles in major law reviews. He has been quoted in national news outlets hundreds of times, and appears regularly on national broadcast media on matters ranging from constitutional law to criminal justice. He has worked with various groups in China to help formulate proposals for legal reform, and he was recently retained by the Tanzanian Government to assist in the reform of their evidence law.
Allen began his career at the State University of New York, and has held professorships at the University of Iowa and Duke University prior to coming to Northwestern. He has lectured on his research at universities across the world, among them Columbia University, Cornell University, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Duke University, Oxford University, University of London, Leiden University, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Edinburgh, University of British Columbia, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), Parma University, Turin University, Pavia University, University of Adelaide, Australia, and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and UNAM, Mexico City. In 1991, he was the University Distinguished Visiting Scholar, at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. One of his books has been translated into Chinese by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and he has been invited to China for a series of lectures each year from 2004 to 2010. He was recently appointed the inaugural Fellow of the Procedural Law Research Center of the China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, and Chair of the Board of Advisors of the new Evidence and Forensic Science Institute in Beijing. In April of 2007, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China announced that he had been designated as a Yangtze River Scholar, only the fourth American and first law professor (Chinese or foreign) to be so honored. He has also been invited to lecture by the governments of Mexico, Spain, and Trinidad/Tobago. For the last ten years, his research has focused on the nature of juridical proof.
He is a member of the American Law Institute, has chaired the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and was Vice-chair of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence Committee of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. He has served as a Commissioner of the Illinois Supreme Court, assigned to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. He is presently on the Boards of the Constitutional Rights Foundation-Chicago, and the Yeager Society of Scholars of Marshall University. He has served on various boards and committees of civic and cultural institutions in Chicago, and presently is a member of the Board of the Joffrey Ballet.
Anderson, Marvin
In December 2001, Marvin Lamont Anderson became the ninety-ninth person in the United States to be exonerated due to post-conviction DNA testing.
On July 17, 1982, a young woman was raped by a black man whom she said was a total stranger. After she reported the crime, a police officer singled out Anderson as a suspect because the perpetrator had told the victim that he “had a white girl,” and Anderson was the only black man the officer knew who lived with a white woman. Because Anderson had no criminal record, the officer went to Anderson’s employer and obtained a color employment photo identification card. The victim was shown the color identification card, along with six black-and-white mug shots, and identified Anderson as her assailant. Within an hour of the photo spread, she was asked to identify the man who had attacked her from a lineup. Anderson was the only person in the lineup whose picture was in the original photo array shown to the victim and the victim identified him in the lineup as well. At trial, the victim testified in detail regarding the assault and identified Anderson as the man who attacked her.
An all white jury convicted Anderson on all counts and he was sentenced to two hundred and 10 years in prison.
In 2001, after requests for DNA testing were denied, the Innocence Project, in conjunction with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, finally won access to DNA testing. The results excluded Anderson as the person who committed the crime, and when it was run through Virginia’s convicted offender DNA database, it matched two people who were incarcerated. On August 21, 2002, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner granted Anderson a full pardon.
Following his release, Anderson served as chief of the Hanover, Virginia Fire Department, where he oversaw a team of 30 people. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Innocence Project and has three children—two sons and a daughter.
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Bankston, Adriana
Adriana Bankston, Ph.D., works on building a robust STEM workforce through research, training, policy and advocacy. She has worked to foster the future of U.S. science and technology by supporting the next generation of scientists in their research endeavors through non-profit organizations and scientific societies, including currently as a Senior Fellow in Science Policy at Federation of American Scientists, and previously through the National Postdoctoral Association, American Society for Cell Biology, Future of Research and Society for Neuroscience.
Additionally, Bankston has facilitated substantial engagement for early career scientists in science policy and advocacy through non-profit organizations such as the STEM Advocacy Institute and as a fellow with Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS), as well as many universities including the University of California System and Arizona State University.
Bankston continues to highlight the importance of federally funded research in society and engage early career researchers in science policy through innovative programs and tools with non-profit organizations, including as a Senior Fellow in Civic Science & Public Policy with Sigma Xi and part of the AAAS Section X Steering Group.
She is also Founder and CEO of Bankston Policy Consulting LLC, a consulting firm that works to build a strong STEM workforce through policy change in the science, technology and innovation ecosystem and empower students and early career researchers to impact policy at all levels of government.
Over the years, Bankston has spoken at several national and international conferences and workshops, including at the British Embassy, UNESCO, NASEM and AAAS CASE. She has given a number of oral and written interviews. Her work in the field has appeared in several writing outlets such as Issues in Science & Technology, Inside Higher Ed and the Union of Concerned Scientists Blog.
In recognition of her contributions to workforce development in research, higher education and science policy, Bankston received a number of honors and awards, including the inaugural ARIS Emerging Broader Impacts Leader Award, and Top 20 in 2022 Award For Excellence in Advocacy from The Advocacy Association.
Bankston earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology from Emory University.
Brown, Rebecca
Rebecca Brown is the founder of Maat Strategies, LLC, a political strategy firm. Prior to that, she was employed at the Innocence Project for 18 years, serving most recently as its Director of Policy where she directed its federal and state policy agenda, which seeks to
prevent & reveal wrongful convictions and assure compensation for the wrongfully convicted upon release from prison. In addition to numerous federal laws, the Innocence Project's policy team has successfully lobbied the passage of more than 250 laws at the state-level. Previously, she served as a Policy Analyst for the Mayor's Office in New York City and as a Senior Planner at Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES), where she conducted research, evaluation and planning work around its alternative to incarceration programs.
Brown has presented at judicial conferences, bar associations, and diverse criminal justice & academic conferences, and has been sought out as a subject matter expert by such high- profile media outlets as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, VICE, Slate, BBC, CBS News, NBC News's Meet the Press, Politico, NPR and the American Bar Association Journal. She serves on the Boards of For the People and Roc Nation's United Justice Coalition.
Bunch, Kristine
Kristine Bunch languished behind bars for more than 17 years after she was arrested and charged with setting a fire that claimed the life of her three-year-old son, Anthony, on June 30, 1995. On March 21, 2012, the court reversed the conviction based on evolving and more reliable fire science and because undisclosed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) evidence contradicted trial testimony which argued that Bunch had started the fire.
Bunch, who had earned undergraduate degrees in English and anthropology from Ball State University in prison, was freed 17 years, after her wrongful arrest. She walked out of the Decatur County Jail, where she had been sent to await retrial, and into the arms of her family, who had steadfastly supported her throughout her ordeal.
Today, Bunch is an advocate for people exonerated of wrongful conviction. She co-founded and co-runs a non-profit organization called Justice4JustUs, which connects exonerated individuals to social and medical services to help them rebuild their lives.
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Carlson, Scott
Scott Carlson’s, J.D., legal career spans over 30 years and includes over 20 years in the international development and rule of law fields. He began his work in rule of law in the early 1990s, as a pro bono Rule of Law Liaison for the American Bar Association (ABA). In the years since, he has worked in both field-based and headquarters settings.
Currently, he is Associate Executive Director of the ABA's Center of Global Programs, previously the Senior Director for Programs and Strategic Initiatives at ABA ROLI. In this capacity, he oversees the design, management, and evaluation of ABA ROLI’s complex international legal assistance programs. He brings experience working with a variety of donors and international organizations, including USAID, UN, European Union, ILAC, African Union, U.S. Department of State, The Hague Institute for Global Justice, and International IDEA.
Over the course of his career, Carlson has worked on both the donor and implementer sides of international development. On the donor side, he has served as Senior Rule of Law Advisor for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) and Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the Rule of Law Center for Innovation at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). As an implementer, he has worked with various companies and organizations, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), New-Rule LLC, ABA, and Chemonics International.
When not doing international development, Carlson practiced as a lawyer in the public and private sectors. In the public sector, he worked with the IRS Office of Chief Counsel in the Honors Program, drafting regulations and rulings, as well as litigation at Tax Court. He also served in the Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP); he was a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow; and he worked as an Assistant General Counsel for the United States Sentencing Commission. In the private sector, he worked for a large international law firm in their European offices. Each of these engagements in the practice of law shaped and informed his understanding of rule of law.
Before recently rejoining ABA, Carlson served in ABA’s Washington Offices, as the Director for Central and Eastern Europe and Judicial Reform from 1999-2003. He designed and managed multiple international legal reform programs and supervised over 80 employees in offices across Eastern Europe. He also led the implementation of ABA ROLI’s first assessment tool, the Judicial Reform Index. He has published regularly on rule of law, human rights, anti-corruption, and other legal fields.
Carlson holds a B.A. degree in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a J.D. from the University of Georgia, and a Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University. He speaks Albanian and French.
Cecil, Joseph
Joseph Cecil, J.D., Ph.D., joined the Civil Justice Research Initiative after retiring from the Division of Research at the Federal Judicial Center. While at the Center he examined access to civil justice in federal district courts as a as a result of the changing role of motions to dismiss and summary judgment. His research in this area has been commissioned and relied upon by the advisory committees on federal rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Cecil he also directed the Center’s Program on Scientific and Technical Evidence, which focused on the evolving role of scientific evidence in federal courts. He conducted empirical research projects on admissibility of scientific evidence in civil and criminal litigation and the role of court-appointed experts. He also served as principal editor of the first two editions of the Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, and collaborated on the development of the third edition, published jointly by the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies.
Cecil has been a member of the National Academies’ Committee on Science, Technology & Law since it began in 1998. He has been appointed as a member of a number of panels of the National Academy of Sciences, including recent service on panels issuing reports on eyewitness identification (Identifying the Culprit, 2014) and forensic science (Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States, 2009).
Other areas of research interest include federal civil and appellate procedure, jury competence in complex civil litigation, and development of large civil justice databases. Cecil received his J.D. and Ph.D. in psychology from Northwestern University.
Chu, Sarah
Sarah Chu, Ph.D., is the Director of Policy and Reform at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law. As the director of policy and reform, Sarah leads the Perlmutter Center's forensic science policy initiatives. She served on the Scientific Inquiry and Research Subcommittee of the National Commission on Forensic Science and was the 2021 recipient of the Legal Aid Society’s Magnus Mukoro Award for Integrity in Forensic Science. Prior to joining the Perlmutter Center, Sarah led the Innocence Project's policy portfolio on forensic science, forensic medicine, and police investigative technologies for 15 years. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Sarah holds bachelor degrees in Biochemistry/Cell Biology, Communication, and a Masters in Biology. She also holds a Masters in Epidemiology from Stanford University and completed her doctorate in Criminal Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center. Sarah is a member of the 2023-2024 class of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics Fellowship Program.
Cuellar, Maria
Maria Cuellar, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Criminology and the Department of Statistics and Data Science. Her training is primarily in statistics and data science, and my work is driven by interdisciplinary projects in public policy, public health, and forensic science.
Cuellar is interested in the intersection of statistics and the law, particularly how and whether we can (and should!) answer legal questions by using statistics. She has written about nonparametric estimation in causal inference, as it relates to the legal question of whether one can attribute an outcome (e.g. cancer) to an exposure (e.g. exposure to a harmful chemical).
She has also written about the statistical foundations of forensic science. She has studied the proper way to state a conclusion in pattern-matching disciplines (e.g. fingerprints, hair microscopy, toolmarks identification) and what information a forensic examiner should not have access to when analyzing evidence. Cuellar is currently working on an algorithm for toolmark identification.
She often serves as an expert witness and consultant in trials, and has discussed the statistical foundations of forensic science (in cases regarding hair microscopy and toolmarks) and the basis for statistical arguments in child abuse (shaken baby syndrome). Cuellar enjoys explaining complex statistical or machine learning ideas to a lay audience, especially in high-stakes situations, such as the law or public health.
Cuellar currently serving as the Chair of the American Statistical Association’s Advisory Committee on Forensic Science. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at UPenn, a member of the CCEB Center for Causal Inference, and an affiliate of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.
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Doermann, David
David Doermann, Ph.D., M.S., is a Professor of Empire Innovation at the University at Buffalo (UB) and the Director of the University at Buffalo Artificial Intelligence Institute. Prior to coming to UB he was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he developed, selected and oversaw approximately $150 million in research and transition funding in the areas of computer vision, human language technologies and voice analytics. He coordinated performers on all of the projects, orchestrating consensus, evaluating cross team management and overseeing fluid program objectives.
From 1993 to 2018, Doermann was a member of the research faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. In his role in the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, he served as Director of the Laboratory for Language and Media Processing, and as an adjunct member of the graduate faculty for the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He and his group of researchers focused on many innovative topics related to analysis and processing of document images and video including triage, visual indexing and retrieval, enhancement and recognition of both textual and structural components of visual media. He has over 250 publications in conferences and journals, is a fellow of the IEEE and IAPR, has numerous awards including an honorary doctorate from the University of Oulu, Finland and is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition.
Doermann also successfully co-founded and managed Applied Media Analysis, Inc, building a team of 12 research and developers from 2001-2014. He recognized the need for a cross platform implementation of computer vision algorithms on mobile devices and developed the architecture to port basic image processing and document analysis capabilities to various devices from a wide range of manufacturers. The work, which was supported by Small Business Innovative Research grants, government contracts, Nokia and Ricoh, resulted in the ability to implement an early version of both barcode readers (1D and 2D) and optical character recognition technologies on many devices.
Doermann is a leading researcher and innovative thinker in the areas of document image analysis and recognition. He is interested in applying his skills in leadership, mentoring and transition of research to help change the way we perceive and comprehend visual information. The impacts and scale of his interests are global because documents range from containers for textual and visual info-graphics to dynamic powerful resources that have the ability to seamlessly drive business processes in today’s evolving digital environment.
Dundes Renteln, Alison
Alison Dundes Renteln, J.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at the University of Southern California where she teaches Law and Public Policy with an emphasis on international law and human rights. A graduate of Harvard (History and Literature), she has a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from Berkeley Law, and a J.D. from the USC Gould School of Law. Renteln served as Director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics and Vice-Chair of Political Science.
In 2005 she received the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2022 the Dornsife Raubenheimer Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and SErvice.. Her publications include several books. The Cultural Defense received the 2006 USC Phi Kappa Phi Award for Creativity in Research. Professor Renteln worked with the United Nations on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The American Bar Association sent her to teach comparative legal ethics in Bangkok and Manila. She has taught seminars on the rights of ethnic minorities for judges, lawyers, court interpreters, and police officers. She also served on several California civil rights commissions, and is currently a member of the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She is a member of the American Society of International Law, the International Law Association (American Branch) and on its Board of Directors, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the the Law and Society Association.
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Garza, Cynthia
Cynthia R. Garza is the Special Fields Bureau Chief of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s and Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU). Garza graduated magna cum laude with a double undergraduate degree in Sociology and Psychology, with distinction, from Southern Methodist University in 2001. She received her law degree in 2004 from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.
Garza established her own law firm after graduation and later joined a criminal defense firm where she honed her skills in appellate and post-conviction criminal defense. She joined the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s Appellate Division in 2008 and joined the Conviction Integrity Unit in January 2010. Garza was named the Chief of the CIU in July 2017. She has been involved in a significant percentage of the Unit’s exonerations.
She is the longest tenured prosecutor in any Conviction Integrity Unit in the nation and is frequently contacted by other jurisdictions for advice on establishing a CIU or best practices in running their CIU. She trains prosecutors in Dallas County, as well as travels around the state and country training criminal justice stakeholders and speaking about actual innocence and wrongful convictions. Garza also participates in legislative efforts to improve the criminal justice system in Texas, and is consulted by jurisdictions for input on criminal justice reform efforts around the nation.
Garza has been recognized by Texas Super Lawyers Magazine and was awarded a Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023, as well as a La Cima Latina Government Leader Award by the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for her work in the CIU. She was also named District Attorney Employee of the Month by Dallas County in February 2019 and received a Profiles in Leadership award from Southern Methodist University’s Women’s Symposium in March 2020. Garza has served on the Board of Directors for various bar associations, including the Dallas Hispanic Bar Association (DHBA) and Dallas Association of Young Lawyers (DAYL). She is currently on the Emerging Leaders Board for Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and a co-chair of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys’ Conviction Integrity Advisory Committee.
Gertner, Nancy
Judge Nancy Gertner, J.D., was a United States District Court Judge in the District of Massachusetts for seventeen years. She was appointed to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton, leaving in 2011 to be a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School.. Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School where she was an editor on The Yale Law Journal. She received her M.A. in Political Science at Yale University. She has been an instructor at both Harvard and Yale Law Schools, teaching sentencing and comparative sentencing institutions, since 1998. Prior to 1998 she taught evidence, including issues in expert evidence, at Harvard and Boston University. She has written (judicial opinions and scholarly articles) and spoken widely on various legal issues including forensic science. She served as a Senior Advisor to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2016) and a member of the McArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. She is presently a member of the Massachusetts Forensic Science Oversight Board and a managing director of the MGH Center for Law Brain and Behavior.
In 2008 she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, only the second woman to receive it (Justice Ginsburg was the first). In 2010 she received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award. In 2011 she received the Massachusetts Bar Association's Hennessey award for judicial excellence, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University. In 2012 she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts. She was selected to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession in August 2014. She has been profiled on a number of occasions in the Boston Globe, the ABA Journal, Boston Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was released on April 26, 2011. Her book, The Law of Juries, co-authored with attorney Judith Mizner, was published in 1997 and is continuously updated. Her two volume book, Opinions of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was published in 2022. She is presently working on a judicial memoir (focused on sentencing) entitled Incomplete Sentences: Judging, Guidelines, and Gangs (Beacon Press, forthcoming).
Glynn, Claire
Claire L. Glynn, Ph.D., is Professor of Forensic Science, in the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, at the University of New Haven, Connecticut. Claire is also the Assistant Director of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. Claire previously was employed as a Forensic Biologist at LGC Forensics (now called Eurofins) in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine, Claire joined the faculty at the University of New Haven in 2014, where she teaches courses and conducts extensive research focused on forensic biology, forensic DNA analysis, and Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG). Claire is the Founding Director of the online Graduate Certificate in Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy at the University of New Haven, which is the first program of its kind in the world. Claire actively consults and provides subject matter expertise on FIGG to law enforcement agencies in the United States and internationally
Grimm, Paul
Paul W. Grimm, J.D., is the David F. Levi Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. From 2012 until his retirement in 2022, he served as a district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. From 1997 to 2012, he was a magistrate judge in the same court, serving as chief magistrate judge from 2006 to 2012. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has written extensively and taught courses for lawyers and judges in the U.S. and abroad. Judge Grimm served on the Advisory Committee for the FRCP from 2009 to 2015 and chaired its discovery subcommittee. He graduated with an A.B. (with highest honors) from UC-Davis in 1973; received his J.D., magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, from the University of New Mexico in 1976; and a Master of Judicial Studies from Duke University in 2016. He served both on active duty and in the Army Reserve as a Judge Advocate General’s Corps
officer.
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Hans, Valerie
Valerie P. Hans, Ph.D., Charles F. Rechlin Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, conducts empirical studies of law and the courts, and is one of the nation's leading authorities on the jury system. Her law school course on Social Science and the Law explores how lawyers have deployed scientific evidence in litigation.
Trained as a social scientist, she has carried out extensive research on juries and jury reforms as well as the uses of social science in law. She is the author or editor of 10 books and over 150 research articles. Her research includes work on how jurors understand scientific evidence, the impact of trial reforms to increase juror comprehension, and what courts can do to promote fair jury trials. Her books on the US jury system include: American Juries: The Verdict (2007); The Jury System: Contemporary Scholarship (2006); Business on Trial: The Civil Jury and Corporate Responsibility (2000); and Judging the Jury (1986).
Professor Hans is coeditor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, past president of the Law and Society Association, and a member of the American Law Institute.
Harris, Theresa
Theresa Harris, J.D., is the Program Director of the AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program. She manages the Program’s projects on science and human rights, including On-call Scientists, a volunteer referral service that provides technical support for human rights organizations, activities that promote greater understanding of the human right to science, and a new project on artificial intelligence and human rights. She also serves as coordinator of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition, a network of scientific, engineering, and health associations that recognize the role of science and technology in human rights.
Prior to joining AAAS, Harris represented survivors of human rights violations before United States courts, the Inter-American human rights system, and United Nations human rights mechanisms. She has served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and is a member of the governing body of the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT). Harris holds degrees in anthropology, land use planning, and law and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Henderson, Howard
Howard Henderson, Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the Center for Justice Research and professor of Justice Administration in the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. Henderson serves as an advisory board member of the Vera Institute’s Rural Jail Research Policy Network, a member of the National Scientific Advisory Committee at the Institute of Justice Research and Development at Florida State University, and a member of the National Science Foundation's STEM Opportunities in Prison Settings workgroup.
Henderson is an expert on culturally responsive criminal justice research, program evaluation and predictive bias. An equity-focused criminologist, His research takes a systems-based approach to understanding policy and program effects. Utilizing a translational research model, Henderson's research has demonstrated the inability of current policy and programming to remain race-neutral, in effect, negatively impacting historically disenfranchised communities. His research has provided approaches to reducing disparities in the criminal justice system and within its risk assessment instruments.
Recently, Henderson served as the chair of the data subcommittee for Houston’s Racial/Ethnic Disparities Committee Data Workgroup supported by the MacArthur Foundation. He was also critical to the National Science Foundation-funded project with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Initiative on Neuroscience and Law that designed an iPAD assessment application that determined decision-making characteristics of the criminal justice involved through a range of cognitive traits. Henderson has also developed a multi-university research collaborative that provides mentoring opportunities for minority graduate students and junior university-level faculty. He previously served as the graduate program director in the School of Public Affairs and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Criminal Justice and Law Review.
His research on predictive bias and program evaluation has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Justice, and most recently the collaborative efforts of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the Charles Koch Foundation. Henderson serves as an advisor to local, state and federal legislators and a host of criminal justice agencies along with reform-oriented organizations.
Henderson’s most recent research has appeared in Race & Justice, Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, and the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics. His public scholarship has been published in the Huffington Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Texas Tribune. Awarded the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Minority Mentor of the Year in 2019, Henderson has appeared on CNN, FOX, NBC, CNBC, ABC, Black News Channel, and the Laura Coates Show. His research has been cited by Politico, Vice, Aljazeera, Yahoo News, and The Crime Report.
Henderson received his B.S. in criminal justice administration from Middle Tennessee State University, masters of criminal justice from Tennessee State University, and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in 2006.
Hervey, Barbara
Barbara Parker Hervey, J.D., was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000 after working in the Appellate Section of the Bexar County District Attorney’s office for 16 years. She earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her Juris Doctor from St. Mary’s University School of Law.
Judge Hervey is an author and frequent speaker. She is a co-chair of the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health, is a member of the Senior Advisory Board for the Center for Statistics and Applications of Forensic Evidence (CSAFE), and is member of the Training Advisory Board for the Texas Police Chief’s Association. A member of the State Bar of Texas, the Texas Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the American Academy of Forensic Science, Judge Hervey also served as a Commissioner on the National Commission for Forensic Science and was an Advisor to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s project, “Forensic Science Assessments: A Quality and Gap Analysis.”
Judge Hervey founded the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit and has been the Chair of the Court’s Grant Committee for 20 years. She also taught Texas Criminal Procedure for 10 years.
Hughes Hallett, Deborah
Deborah Hughes Hallett is Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. She graduated from Cambridge University in England and has taught at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey and at the University of Brunei Darussalam. Her work is on strategies to improve the teaching of mathematics, and she is interested in promoting international cooperation between mathematicians. With Andrew Gleason at Harvard, she organized the Calculus Consortium for Higher Education and started a foundation to promote innovative curriculum and pedagogy. She has served on committees for the National Academy of Sciences and organized three international conferences on the teaching of mathematics. She has been elected a fellow of the American Advancement of Science and is the author or coauthor of seven books, which have been translated into several languages. Her work has been recognized by prizes from Harvard, the Association for Women in Mathematics, the Mathematical Association of America, and in 2022 won the American Mathematical Society’s Award for Impact on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics.
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Isaacs, Max
Max Isaacs, J.D., is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Policing Project. His work focuses on emerging policing technologies and their implications for civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice.
Prior to joining the Policing Project, Max clerked for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Lorna G. Schofield of the Southern District of New York. He also served as a civil rights fellow at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Max graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law where he was a member of the Law Review.
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Jurs, Andrew
Andrew W. Jurs, J.D., is the Richard M. and Anita Calkins Distinguished Professor of Law at Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa. He teaches Expert Evidence, Evidence, Criminal Procedure – Investigation, Criminal Procedure – Adjudication, and Criminal Law. In 2020, he received the Stevens Faculty Scholar of the Year award at Drake, and has twice been named the Forrest Outstanding Professor of the Year by the graduating class, in 2018 and 2014. Prior to entering academia, he was an Assistant Attorney General at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and a Deputy District Attorney in the Denver area.
His research agenda investigates the management and evaluation of expert evidence in the judicial system using an empirical approach. His most recent publication is a textbook on use of expert witnesses in court, Expert Evidence, published in 2019 by Carolina Academic Press. Notable articles include A Tale of Two Dauberts: Discriminatory Effects of Scientific Reliability Screening, 79 Ohio State Law Journal 1107 (2018) (coauthored); Expert Prevalence, Persuasion and Price: What Trial Participants Really Think About Experts, 91 Indiana Law Journal 353 (2016); An Overreaction to a Nonexistent Problem: Empirical Analysis of Tort Reform from the 1980s to 2000s, 3 Stanford Journal of Complex Litigation 62 (2015) (coauthored); Gatekeeper with a Gavel: A Survey on Judicial Management of Challenges to Expert Reliability and Their Relationship to Summary Judgment, 83 Mississippi Law Journal 325 (2014); Et Tu, Plaintiffs? An Empirical Analysis of Daubert’s Effect on Plaintiffs, and Why Gatekeeping Standards Matter (a Lot), 66 Arkansas Law Review 975 (2013) (coauthored); The Stricter Standard: An Empirical Assessment of Daubert’s Effect on Civil Defendants, 62 Catholic University Law Review 675 (2013) (coauthored); Questions from the Bench and Independent Experts: A Study of the Practices of State Court Judges, 74 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 47 (2012); and Balancing Legal Process with Scientific Expertise: A Comparative Assessment of Expert Witness Methodology in Five Nations, and Suggestions for Reform of Post-Daubert U.S. Reliability Determinations, 95 Marquette Law Review 1329 (2012).
Professor Jurs was recently appointed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Organization of Scientific Area Committees’ Legal Task Group, and previously served as a member of the executive committee of the AALS Section on Evidence with a term as chair in 2017-2018.
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Lund, Steven
Steven Lund, Ph.D., majored in physics and mathematics at St. Olaf College and earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University. He joined NIST's Statistical Engineering Division as a mathematical statistician in 2012. While at NIST, he has given several workshops on statistics in forensic science for lawyers, judges, and practitioners. He is the leader of the Evidential Statistics Focus Area for the Special Programs Office at NIST and also leads the NIST Footwear Impression Research Group. He has served on the Footwear and Tire Tracks OSAC Subcommittee as well as the US Delegation for ISO Technical Committee 272 on forensic sciences.
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May, Willie
Willie E. May, Ph.D., is President-Elect of AAAS. May earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park. His numerous honors include American Chemical Society Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Analytical Chemistry Award; Department of Commerce Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal Awards; Arthur Flemming Award for Outstanding Federal Service; National Bureau of Standards (NBS) Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Award; and the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) Percy Julian, and Henry Hill Awards for outstanding contributions in Chemistry.
On May 9, 2018, Dr. Willie E. May took over the leadership of D-RED as our new Vice President for Research and Economic Development. He previously served as Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology, a position created in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. As NIST Director, Dr. May provided high-level oversight and direction for NIST, the agency that promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology. Dr. May led NIST's research and measurement service programs in chemistry-related areas for more than 20 years. His personal research activities were focused in the areas of trace organic analytical chemistry and physico-chemical properties of organic compounds, where his work is described in more than 90 peer-reviewed technical publications.
In his new position at MSU, Dr. May will seek to continue to enhance Morgan's research vitality, develop new relationships and expand existing partnerships with government agencies, corporations and research foundations on major research initiatives. He will also work with the deans and department chairs to develop and support institutional and cross-disciplinary research initiatives, promote excellence in research activities and scholarship, and research administration, as well as strengthen the management and commercialization of innovations resulting from faculty research endeavors.
Mazza, Anne-Marie
Anne-Marie Mazza, Ph.D., is senior director of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law (CSTL) at the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. As founding director of CSTL, she has led numerous influential studies.
Mazza was the US Academies staff lead on the 2015, 2018, and 2023 International Summits on Human Genome Editing and currently serves as the study director for the joint NAS-Federal Judicial Center Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which is provided to all federal judges. From 2021-2022, she was detailed to the White House as Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisors of Science and Technology (PCAST) where she established several initiatives on semiconductors, public health, extreme weather, and the bioeconomy.
She is a fellow of the AAAS. Mazza received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., from the George Washington University.
Merner, L. Delta
Delta Merner, Ph.D., is the lead scientist for the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, she provides timely, scientific evidence to support legal cases that hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate-related damages. She reviews legal communications for scientific accuracy, connects legal teams with technical experts, and leads trainings for scientists working at the intersection of climate science and law. Prior to joining UCS, she was a senior scientist at the American Institute of Physics, where she most recently conducted a global survey measuring the gender gap in science.
Merner earned a Ph.D. in geography and environmental systems from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She also holds bachelor of science degrees in geography and environmental science and policy from Clark University. Merner has been quoted in ABC News, the Financial Times, the Lancet, NPR, and has written for The Hill and Scientific American.
Mnookin, Jennifer
Jennifer L. Mnookin, J.D., Ph.D., is the 30th leader of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Prior to joining UW–Madison as chancellor, Mnookin served for seven years as dean of the UCLA School of Law and as Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Professor of Law. As dean, she broke fundraising records, built the first new degree program in a generation, and created new institutes in areas ranging from immigration law to technology, law, and policy. She also helped to enhance the school’s overall ranking and both the academic quality and the diversity of the student body, and for five years chaired UCLA’s Council of Professional School Deans.
Mnookin is one of the most cited scholars in the nation in the area of evidence law. She has written on topics ranging from photographic and filmic evidence, to forensic pattern evidence (e.g., fingerprint identification, document examination, DNA evidence), to more theoretical work on how we use scientific information within the legal system.
In 2020, Mnookin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She previously served on the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine (NASEM) Committee on Science, Technology and Law, and currently co-chairs a NASEM committee examining Facial Recognition Technology. She has worked on several national reports on forensic science, including co-chairing a group of senior advisors to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report on the use of forensic science in criminal courts.
Prior to joining UCLA Law in 2005, Chancellor Mnookin was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School.
She received her A.B. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology from M.I.T. Mnookin and her husband, political scientist Joshua Foa Dienstag, have two children, 20 and 23. In December 2020, Mnookin donated her kidney to her father and is a strong proponent of living kidney donation.
Montojo, Caroline
Caroline Montojo, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization in New York City dedicated to advancing neuroscience and society by supporting cross-disciplinary intersections such as neuroscience and ethics, law, and social sciences. Montojo leads the Foundation’s new mission to advance neuroscience that benefits society and reflects the aspirations of all people.
Montojo serves on the Advisory Board of the Science Philanthropy Alliance and is a member of the U.S. National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics Working Group. She was previously the Director of Life Sciences and the Director of Brain Initiatives at The Kavli Foundation. Montojo has been deeply involved in catalytic efforts to advance neuroscience, including the U.S. Brain Initiative and the International Brain Initiative (IBI).
Montojo completed postdoctoral research in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for which she was awarded the Arnold Scheibel Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience Award and the Stephen R. Mallory Schizophrenia Research Award. Montojo received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University.
Morgan, John
John Morgan, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work in forensics, body armor, special operations technology, and predictive policing. He directs and develops forensic science research, training, and quality assurance programs, including the National Institute of Justice Forensic Technology Center of Excellence and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Laboratory Certification Program. Currently, he is responsible for management, business development, and strategic planning to maintain and grow our programs in forensic science and related areas of education, policing, homeland security, defense, and international capacity building. Previously, Morgan was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates and Congressional Science Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served in the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Defense as a senior executive managing programs that encompass scientific research, public safety, military technology, special operations, information systems, and standards. He received the 2007 Service to America Medal for his work to improve the nation’s capacity to conduct DNA analysis.
Murphy, Emily
Emily Murphy’s, J.D., Ph.D., research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, behavioral science, and law. She writes about the use of neuroscience as evidence and how neuroscience and behavioral science shape public policy and legal systems. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Stanford Law Review, The Journal of Law & the Biosciences, Connecticut Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, Law & Psychology Review, Psychology Public Policy & Law, and Science.
Murphy earned her A.B. magna cum laude in Psychology from Harvard University, her Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychopharmacology from University of Cambridge, Trinity College, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and her J.D. from Stanford Law School. Prior to law school she was a postdoc with the Program in Neuroethics at the Stanford Center for Biomecial Ethics, Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences as well as the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Richard A. Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to joining UC Law SF, Murphy spent a year as a fellow in the Program in Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence at UCLA Law School. Before that, she practiced law at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, handling all aspects of complex commercial litigation, with an emphasis on professional liability and internal investigations. Her pro bono practice focused on housing issues and civil rights work addressing homelessness and incarcerated persons with disabilities.
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Neal, Tess
Tess M.S. Neal, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology and serves as a Dean’s Professor at Iowa State University. Before moving to Iowa in Fall 2023, she was tenured at Arizona State University, where she was the founding director of the Future of Forensic Science Initiative. She is a scientist; a licensed clinical psychologist trained to assess, diagnose, and treat mental and behavioral disorders; and a forensic psychologist trained to bring psychology into legal contexts. Neal studies the nature and limits of expertise. Her basic work focuses on understanding and improving human judgment processes – especially among trained experts, and her more applied work focuses on improving forensic and legal experts’ judgments in particular. Neal's work has been funded by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, and she has published more than four dozen scientific papers. She is the incoming Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law and is a fellow of both the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association. She recently completed a Fulbright Scholarship in Australia.
Nichols Thiam, Sandra
Sandra Nichols Thiam, J.D., is an attorney specialized in developing and implementing effective legal and policy approaches to solve sustainable development challenges. She conducts innovative research in these fields and is a skilled project manager with practical field experience. She has 16 years experience in strategic program development, promoting rule of law and good governance in natural resources sectors, advocating for communities, advising governments on comparative best practices, and designing and implementing training programs for a broad spectrum of stakeholders including high-level government officials. She has worked across the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and internationally on a broad range of topics including resource rights, forest legality and enforcement, biodiversity protection, climate mitigation and adaption, and on the nexus between natural resource management and peacebuilding. In addition to serving as the Vice President for Research & Policy, she is also ELI's Director of Judicial Education.
Norman, Alain
Alain Norman, J.D., heads the Science and the Law initiative of the Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program at AAAS.
At AAAS he works to advance the scientific enterprise by enhancing the judiciary’s understanding of scientific and technological issues, by managing projects and developing innovative project proposals, researching issues at the nexus of emerging technology and law, and building relations between the science and legal communities, notably as the AAAS’ liaison to the American Bar Association (ABA).
Prior to joining AAAS, he served for 22 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State – during which time he, inter alia, spearheaded rule-of-law and environmental security projects, in addition to providing analyses of political issues abroad. Prior to working as a diplomat, Alain established and ran the liaison office of the ABA’s Coalition for International Justice program in The Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), thereby advancing the development of international humanitarian law. Alain speaks French and Spanish.
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Ottaviano, Deanne
Deanne M. Ottaviano, JD, general counsel for APA, has extensive experience as both general counsel and outside counsel for dozens of nonprofit, professional and trade association clients, primarily in the automotive, retail and health care fields. She has represented clients in a variety of contexts, including general commercial matters, insurance recovery and risk management techniques, anti-trust claims and securement of governance rights. At APA, Ottaviano leads the Office of General Counsel comprised of four lawyers and a paralegal, which has responsibility for legal issues faced by the Association with respect to its internal operations and its policymaking activities. She also runs the association’s well-respected amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) program which provides the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal and state appellate courts with the unique scientific perspective of psychological professionals on matters of importance to key legal decisions.
Prior to joining APA in June 2016, Ottaviano spent 24 years at Arent Fox LLP, where she had been a partner, and also was chair of the firm’s Pro Bono Publico Committee. Before joining Arent Fox in 1992, Ottaviano clerked for two years with Arnold & Porter LLP. From 1986-90, she was legislative assistant to then-Rep. Dan Glickman, D-Kan.
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Parikh, Sudip
Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., became the 19th Chief Executive Officer of AAAS and Executive Publisher of the Science family of journals in January 2020. Parikh has spent two decades at the nexus of science, policy, and business.
Immediately prior to joining AAAS, Parikh was senior vice president and managing director at DIA Global, a neutral, multidisciplinary organization for healthcare product development. At DIA, Parikh led strategy in the Americas and oversaw DIA programs that catalyzed progress globally toward novel regulatory frameworks for advanced therapies.
Prior to DIA, Parikh was a vice president at Battelle, a multibillion-dollar research and development organization, where he led two business units with over 500 scientific, technical, and computing experts performing basic and applied research, developing medicines and healthcare devices, developing agricultural products, and creating advanced analytics and artificial intelligence applications to improve human health.
From 2001 to 2009, Parikh served as science advisor to the Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, where he was responsible for negotiating budgets for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and other scientific and health agencies. As a key legislative liaison to the research and development ecosystem, Parikh was on the frontlines of many science policy issues debated during that time, including embryonic stem cell research, cloning, disease surveillance, bioterrorism, cyber security, and doubling the NIH budget.
An active member of the scientific advocacy community, Parikh serves as a board member and officer for several impactful organizations, including Research!America (which he has chaired since 2023), Friends of Cancer Research, and ACT for NIH. He also serves as co-chair of the Science and Technology Action Committee, Science CEO Group, and the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science. He is also a member of the Board of Life Sciences of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Parikh is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also received multiple public service awards, including recognition from the Society for Women’s Health Research, the American Association of Immunologists, the National AIDS Alliance, the Coalition for Health Services Research, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Early in his career, Parikh was a Presidential Management Intern at the NIH. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship while earning his Ph.D. in macromolecular structure and chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. There, he used structural biology and biochemistry techniques to probe the mechanisms of DNA repair enzymes. The son of Indian immigrants who worked in the textile and furniture manufacturing plants of North Carolina, Parikh completed undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, first as a journalism major before switching into materials science. As a parent of three energetic children, he prioritizes volunteering as a mentor for their Science Olympiad teams.
Purves, Duncan
Duncan Purves Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy and a UF Research Foundation Professor. He specializes in ethics, especially ethical issues concerning artificial intelligence and the treatment of non-human animals. His past work was on ethical issues related to so-called 'autonomous weapons systems,' weapons which can target enemies without human oversight. He now has an NSF grant to investigate the ethical dimensions of predictive
policing algorithms, which are being used to identify places and people at highest risk of crime. Some of the ethical concerns he is looking at include discriminatory impacts and community distrust. He also has significant work on theoretical issues related to the nature and normative significance of harm.
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Rakoff, Jed
Jed S. Rakoff, J.D., has served since March 1996 as a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York. He frequently sits by designation on the 2nd and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals. His most noteworthy decisions have been in the areas of securities law and criminal law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School and New York University School of Law and teaches at University of California, Berkeley School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law. He has written over 180 published articles, 835 speeches, and 1,800 judicial opinions and has co-authored five books. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author of Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, and Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2021).
Rakoff holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College (1964), an M.Phil. from Oxford University (Balliol, 1966), and a J.D. from Harvard Law School (1969). He clerked for Judge Abraham L. Freedman on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 3d Circuit. From 1973 to 1980, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, the last two years as chief of Business and Securities Fraud Prosecutions. From 1980 to 1995, he was a litigation partner at two large law firms in New York.
Rakoff served on the National Commission on Forensic Science (2013–2017) and as co-chair of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Eyewitness Identification. He served on the New York City Bar Association’s Executive Committee and was chair of the association’s Nomination, Honors, and Criminal Law Committees. He was chair of the 2nd Circuit’s Bankruptcy Committee and of the Southern District of New York’s Grievance Committee and Criminal Justice Advisory Board. He served on Swarthmore College’s Board of Managers, on the Governance Board of the MacArthur Foundation’s Project on Law and Neuroscience, and on the committee on the development of the third edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. He assisted the U.S. government in the training of foreign judges in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia, Dubai, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute. He is a Judicial Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. He is a member of the board of the Touro Synagogue Foundation and of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation. Among many other awards, he received in 2018 the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Award for excellence in federal jurisprudence and in 2021 the American College of Trial Lawyers’ Leon Silverman Award for Distinguished Public Service.
Rakoff is married to Dr. Ann Rakoff, a child development specialist. They have three daughters and two grandsons. Rakoff has officiated at over 75 weddings. He is the author of numerous lyrics and humorous poems, several of which have been published. His and his wife’s hobby is ballroom dancing. In 2014, Rakoff was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
Randell, John
John Randell, Ph.D., has served as the Chief Alliance Officer of the Human Cell Atlas initiative since March 2020. He was previously the John E. Bryson Director of Science, Engineering, and Technology Programs at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he served as the staff director for studies on federal research policy, international scientific partnerships, public trust in science, and the societal adoption of scientific and technological advances. In 2001 he was a visiting assistant professor of microbiology at Kathmandu University Medical School. He co-chairs the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists (NCLS), a joint standing committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Science and Technology Law, and has served on the governing board of the Journal of Science Policy and Governance and the advisory board of the Network of African Science Academies.
Randell received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and microbiology from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in virology from Harvard University. From 2003–2009 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied the initiation and cell-cycle control of eukaryotic DNA replication.
Richardson, Rashida
Rashida Richardson is an Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science at Northeastern University. Rashida is a nationally recognized expert in the civil rights implications of artificial intelligence and technology policy more broadly. Richardson is currently on leave to serve as Senior Counsel, Artificial Intelligence at Mastercard, and she has previously served as an Attorney Advisor to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission and as a Senior Policy Advisor for Data and Democracy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Richardson has worked on a range of civil rights and technology policy issues at the German Marshall Fund, Rutgers Law School, AI Now Institute, the American Civil Liberties Union of New York (NYCLU), and the Center for HIV Law and Policy.
Her work has been featured in the Emmy-Award Winning Documentary, The Social Dilemma, and in major publications like the New York Times, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and NPR (national and local member stations). She received her BA with honors in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
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Saks, Michael
Michael J. Saks, Ph.D., is Regents Professor at the Arizona State University, where he is on the faculties of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, the Department of Psychology, the Law and Behavioral Science Program, and is a fellow in the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation. Previous teaching included a decade teaching appellate judges in the University of Virginia Law School's summer LL.M. program. He earned a Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from the Ohio State University and an M.S.L. from the Yale Law School.
His research and scholarship have been concerned primarily with: the psychology of decision-making in the legal process, the behavior of the litigation system, scientific and other expert evidence in the law, and legal policy related to prevention of medical error. Notable publications include: Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony (five volumes, annual updates) (co-editor/co-author with David Faigman, David Kaye, Joe Sanders, and Edward Cheng); The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law (2016) (co-author with Barbara Spellman); Closing Death’s Door: Legal Innovations to End the Epidemic of Healthcare Harm (2021) (co-author with Stephan Landsman).
Sibal, Prateek
Prateek Sibal is a technology policy researcher working to understand the impact of digital technologies, specially artificial intelligence (AI), on societies from a human rights, openness, inclusive access and multi-stakeholder governance perspective. Sibal works at UNESCO’s Digital Innovation and Transformation section in Paris as a specialist consultant. His work involves providing policy advice to governments and developing programmes for reinforcing human and institutional capacities of policymakers and civil society organisations in developing countries. Sibal was a Charpak Scholar in Economics and Public Policy at Sciences Po, Paris. His thematic interests include the intersection of digital technologies with human rights, media development and access to information. In the past, he has worked with a Member of Parliament in India, the City Government of Vancouver, REN21, Paris and founded a multilingual education start-up. Sibal's writings have been published in natural and social science journals and have appeared on media platforms including The Economic and Political Weekly, The Wire, HuffPost, India Spend, Business Standard, The Quint and Scroll.
Seidman Diamond, Shari
Shari Seidman Diamond, J.D., Ph.D., is the Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law and a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. An attorney and social psychologist, she is one of the foremost empirical researchers on jury process and legal decision-making, including the use of science by the courts. She has authored or co-authored more than a hundred publications in law reviews and behavioral science journals. She is currently completing a book on juries based on a unique field experiment in which cameras recorded real jury deliberations.
Diamond practiced law at Sidley Austin in the areas of Litigation and Intellectual Property. She has also taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, served as editor of the Law & Society Review, and was president of the American Psychology-Law Society. She has lectured widely to scholarly and judicial audiences, and has served as an expert witness in American and Canadian courts on matters concerning juries, trademarks, and deceptive advertising. Her publications on juries and surveys have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court as well as other federal and state courts.
Diamond received the 2010 Harry Kalven, Jr. Award from the Law and Society Association for contributions to research in law and society, and the 1991 American Psychological Association award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. As a member of the ABA’s American Jury Project, she helped draft the Principles for Juries and Jury Trials adopted in 2005. She currently serves on the Seventh Circuit Committee on Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
Stout, Peter
Peter Stout, Ph.D., Houston Forensic Science Center’s (HFSC) CEO and president, initially joined the agency in 2015 as its chief operating officer and vice president. He has more than 20 years of experience in forensic science and forensic toxicology. Prior to joining HFSC, Stout worked as a senior research forensic scientist and director of operations in the Center for Forensic Sciences at RTI International. Stout also has served as president of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists (SOFT).
He is currently the president of the Texas Association of Crime Lab Directors. Stout has a doctorate in toxicology from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Stout also served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps.
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Thomson, Lucy
Lucy Thomson, J.D., CISSP, brings a wealth of law enforcement, IT, litigation, and project management experience and insight to her practice advising government and commercial clients on legal and technology issues related to cybersecurity, global data privacy, compliance and risk management. She helps companies prevent and respond to data breaches, secure critical infrastructure, and devise solutions to address complex problems arising from new technologies.
She gained extensive hands-on experience conducting risk assessments, privacy impact assessments, and developing security plans as a senior engineer at CSC, a global technology company, on two of the government’s largest technology modernization projects: Customs and Border Protection (CBP-ACE) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). While at CSC she was appointed a government Information System Security Officer (ISSO). Previously a career white collar crime prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, Thomson managed and conducted complex litigation in the Criminal and Civil Rights Division. There she prosecuted Medicare and consumer fraud cases and civil rights cases, resulting in landmark decisions.
Active in the American Bar Association (ABA), Thomson is a past chair of the Section of Science & Technology Law, member of the House of Delegates (since 2004) and the Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, and is founder and past co-chair of SciTech’s Privacy, Security, and Emerging Technology Division. She is co-editor of the new ABA book The Internet of Things (IoT): Legal Issues, Policy, and Practical Strategies, editor of the ABA Data Breach and Encryption Handbook, and a contributing author to the ABA Cybersecurity Handbook (2d Ed), Homeland Security and Emergency Management (3d Ed), and America Votes! Challenges to Modern Election Law & Voting Rights (4th Ed forthcoming).
Thomson is the author of publications that focus on security and privacy issues with mobile devices, industrial control systems (ICS), big data/AI, law firm security, cyber insurance, third party risk, bioinformatics and health care IT, homeland security, social engineering fraud, election system vulnerabilities, e-discovery, privacy in bankruptcy sales of personal data, and authentication of digital evidence in court. A frequent speaker on cybersecurity and privacy, Thomson has presented dozens of programs at the RSA security conferences, HIMSS and the ABA.
A Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US), Thomson’s extensive privacy expertise has led to her appointment as Consumer Privacy Ombudsman (CPO) in 27 federal bankruptcy cases. Responsible for evaluating the sale of “assets” consisting of sensitive personal information, she has overseen the disposition of more than 250 million electronic consumer records. Her assessment of the work of the CPO was published in the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) Journal (June 2015). Her further work on privacy risks in bankruptcy cases is featured in the Norton Annual Survey of Bankruptcy Law, 2017 Ed.
Internationally, she has served as a Legal Advisor to the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As a legal advisor to the APEC Data Privacy Pathfinder Project, she focused on implementation of the APEC Privacy Framework through the development of Accountability Agents and Enforcement Authorities in Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Thomson is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). She received a Master’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2001, earned the CISSP and CIPP/US certifications, and holds a J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center
Tractenberg, Rochelle
Rochelle Tractenberg, Ph.D., is a professor in the Departments of Neurology; Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, & Biomathematics; and Rehabilitation Medicine, at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She is a research methodologist and ASA-accredited Professional Statistician with a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences from the University of California, and a Ph.D. in statistics, measurement, and evaluation from the University of Maryland. She is also an internationally recognized expert on ethical statistics and data science practice, having published widely on how to integrate ethical content into
quantitative courses, including two books, Ethical Practice of Statistics and Data Science and Ethical Reasoning for a Data-Centered World, published in 2022. She chaired and co-chaired the past three working groups on revising the ASA Ethical Guidelines, She has had NSF funding to study and promote the integration of ethical reasoning in higher education, to create ethical guidelines for the practice of mathematics, and to support the integration of ethical content into STEM-wide undergraduate math courses. In 2023 she became a member of the Advisory Board on Ethics of the International Statistics Institute and a co-Editor in Chief of Research Integrity and Peer Review
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Wible, Brad
After completing Ph.D. and post-doctoral training and research in cognitive neuroscience, Brad Wible has been honing policy and communication skills, working in science policy at the National Institutes of Health and AAAS, university administration at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and currently as a Senior Editor for policy and education at Science magazine.
Wiggins, Beth
Elizabeth Wiggins, J.D., Ph.D., is Director of Research Division at the Federal Judicial Center )FJC). Prior to joining the FJC, she was Assistant Professor in Department of Psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University. Wiggins earned her Ph.D. in psychology from Johns Hopkins University and her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law.
Wolfe Steadman, Dawnie
Dawnie Wolfe Steadman, Ph.D., is the Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and has been a professor at Iowa State University and Binghamton University, SUNY. Her research interests are in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. She has conducted excavations and skeletal analyses of several historic and prehistoric archaeological sites in Illinois, Iowa, and New York. Dr. Steadman is particularly interested in paleopathology, population genetic modeling of past populations, and the application of forensic anthropology to human rights investigations.
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Yeston, Jake
Jake Yeston, Ph.D., joined the staff at Science in 2004, with responsibilities to edit and coordinate review for original research submissions in chemistry and overlapping segments of biochemistry and applied physics. In his current role as Editor, he oversees research content in the physical sciences. Prior to arriving at Science, Yeston earned an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley in 2001, with a focus at the interface of synthetic organometallic chemistry and spectroscopy. He conducted postdoctoral research in ultrafast spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany on the Humboldt fellowship, and then worked as a National Research Council fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
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Zarwell, Lucas
Lucas Zarwell, M.F.S., is the Director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). He has more than 20 years of experience in the forensic science field. For the last several years, Zarwell has served as the Chief Toxicologist for Washington, D.C.’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Zarwell has engaged in substantial professional activities beyond his position in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Notably, he received certification as a Diplomate of Forensic Toxicology from the American Board of Forensic Toxicologist and continues to act in this position. He is a member of the American Board of Forensic Toxicology and the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and has presented at numerous conferences throughout the United States.