Joan Aron
Senior Research Scientist,Great Lakes Program; General Dynamics Consultant; 2008-10 Executive Branch Fellow at EPA
Joan is expert in building U.S. and international partnerships in global environmental and climate change. She is lead author for an EPA report on Using Ecosystem Function in the Clean Water Act and lead editor for Ecosystem Change, and Public Health: A Global Perspective. She also has experience in efforts to address diversity and inclusion in the STEM workforce, including as an advisor to projects on climate and health in developing countries and to trainers for transforming organizational culture in STEM. In the past, she has served as president of a nonprofit organization, faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Senior Staff Fellow at the National Cancer Institute. She earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in biology/ecology, a masters degree from Johns Hopkins in business/information technology management, a diploma from Cambridge (U.K.) in mathematical statistics, and B.A. from Harvard in applied mathematics.
Keshia Ashe - 2017-19 Executive Branch Fellow, National Science Foundation
Keshia is a biomedical engineer, STEM education advocate and social entrepreneur. She is an avid STEM education advocate and social entrepreneur. She co-founded ManyMentors, a technology-driven nonprofit that uses mentoring as a mechanism to increase the representation of women and people of color in the STEM fields. She provides strategic guidance for STEM outreach and managerial support. As a social entrepreneur, she has co-founded three additional companies in the beauty, biotechnology and sports industries. Keshia received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia, and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University Connecticut. Keshia is a passionate change agent, focused on grassroots efforts to broaden participation in STEM through interconnected frameworks that promote access to information and support networks, as well as impacting policies that enhance opportunities for all young people to benefit from STEM education.
Anne Dare
2016-18 Executive Branch Fellow at U.S. Agency for International Development
Anne’s passion for Middle East water issues began with a visit to the Jordan River Valley in 2008. She was subsequently inspired to pursue graduate studies in the area of wastewater reuse in agriculture with partners in the West Bank, Tunisia, and Qatar. Anne co-founded Purdue University’s Innovation for International Development (I2D) Lab – a center focused on creating scalable and sustainable innovations for the developing world – and supported more than a dozen multi-sector research projects. At Purdue, she also supported numerous other international programs and enjoyed various teaching responsibilities. For the last two years, Anne has supported the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) Program as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. In this role, she works to promote regional cooperation on scientific issues with development relevance. In 2017, she served as Regional Embassy Science Fellow for Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories where she was tasked with defining the barriers to wastewater treatment and reuse of treated wastewater in the West Bank, and providing recommendations for intervention via responsive programming and policy. Anne earned a Ph.D. from Purdue University.
Harsh Desai
Nuclear Scientist and Engineer, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
2013-14 Congressional Science & Engineering Fellow sponsored by the American Nuclear Society
At Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Harsh focuses on developing multi-physics methods for an integrated reactor performance and systems-level analysis simulation. Harsh immigrated to North Carolina from India, where he studied nuclear engineering as an undergraduate and a graduate student at NC State University. His dissertation research assessed the technical viability through proper coolant flow distribution of a PRISM reactor, General Electric’s Generation IV reactor solution to closing the nuclear fuel cycle. Harsh then moved to Wilmington, NC where he completed the Edison Engineering Development Program at General Electric, aimed at developing future leaders in science, energy, and technology. In addition to advocating and promoting STEM education, Harsh’s policy interests revolve around a sustainable energy portfolio through conservation, efficiency, innovation, and a concern for the environment.
Karla Hagan
2015-16 Congressional Science & Engineering Fellow sponsored by the American Physical Society
Karla holds a B.S. in physics from the George Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics from the University of Virginia. Karla's dissertation examined one of the four fundamental forces in nature, the strong force, by measuring the production of excited bound states of charm-anticharm quarks at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory particle accelerator. She has extensive experience in local advocacy and politics in Arlington, Virginia, including co-founding an education nonprofit and serving as campaign manager, chief strategist, and treasurer for multiple political campaigns. She is currently Senior Science and Innovation Policy Advisor at the British Embassy where she advises on science policy, represents the UK in relationships with US government agencies and stakeholders in the mid-Atlantic region, and works to promote bilateral science collaboration in fields such as clean energy, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies.
Allyson Kennedy - 2017-19 Executive Branch Fellow, National Science Foundation
Allyson received her Ph.D. in Integrative Life Sciences from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she specialized in developmental biology. She is also a STEM education advocate and science communicator. After a wide range of teaching experiences in graduate school, she served as a high school science instructor in a rural town in Thailand. While abroad, she fostered her passion to engage with the international community by expanding student access to science education. Upon returning to the States, she used her scientific knowledge and experiences as an educator to impact her local community by volunteering at the Science Museum of Virginia, leading citizen science events, and organizing workshops to encourage young girls to pursue STEM.
Sutyajeet Soneja
2016-18 Executive Branch Fellow at U.S. Agency for International Development
Sutyajeet is a public health scientist with over a decade of experience leading domestic and international initiatives across the fields of engineering, environmental and global health, epidemiology, exposure science, risk assessment, and translating science into policy. As a policy fellow, he was involved in projects tied to the post-Ebola response in West Africa that seek to improve how the US approaches the delivery of foreign public health assistance. In another role concurrent to this fellowship, he served as an advisor to the US Embassy in Rome on policy issues that included climate and health, antimicrobial resistance, and the Global Health Security Agenda. Through his research, he developed an extensive understanding of how various environmental pollutants and climate change impact human health both domestically and abroad, thereby enabling him to develop and implement actions that can mitigate the risk from climate change and protect the health of vulnerable populations. He completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Maryland Institute of Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland, College Park, he examined health risk associations from climate change related extreme weather events to food/waterborne and chronic illnesses.
Mike Specian
2017-18 Executive Branch Fellow at the Department of Energy (DOE)
As a policy fellow at DOE’s Building Technologies Office (BTO), Mke worked on a range of issues including resiliency, sensors & data analytics, and grid-interactive efficient buildings. Prior to joining BTO, Mike worked to improve disaster preparedness in Baltimore City, contributed to the National Climate Assessment, and served as a Mirzayan S&T Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences. Mike earned his Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University with a focus on the large-scale structure of the universe. He has been teacher in numerous capacities for over a decade including as a course designer and teacher for the Center for Talented Youth and as a private instructor in Baltimore City.
