Speakers

Irene Hulede

Education Director, American Society for Microbiology

Irene Hulede serves as ASM’s Education Director, a senior staff member for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).  In this capacity, Hulede oversees the development and implementation of trainee and faculty programs and services in the microbiological and biological sciences and leads educational activities, various external grants and cooperative agreements in this role. Irene Hulede joined ASM’s Education Department in 1994. She is responsible for the delivery of signature ASM programs, including ABRCMS, ASM’s conference in support of multidisciplinary science and workforce development, ASM MOSAIC Program, ASM Conference for Undergraduate Educators (ASMCUE), career and workforce development programs, including online learning and ASM fellowship programs for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scientists.

Currently, Hulede is the project director and co-principal investigator for ABRCMS and principal investigator for ASM MOSAIC Program and ASMCUE. In her work, she adheres to best management practices to leverage ASM’s resources and maximize investments. She is responsible for developing strategic goals to advance education and professional and career development in the microbial sciences; executing policies and practices to achieve program goals; overseeing the development and implementation of ASM education initiatives and meetings; and leading ASM efforts that promote a culture of inclusion to achieve diversity in science; and providing smooth and efficient services that meet the expectations of members, target audiences, partners, volunteers, and consultants. Her position plays a leading role in recruiting and developing volunteers, staff, and subject-matter experts and forming and sustaining partnerships and collaborations with various disciplinary societies, organizations, and educational institutions.

Throughout Hulede’s 30-year plus tenure at ASM, she has mentored trainees at different levels of their career trajectory and worked closely with faculty to facilitate a mentoring program to ensure the success of the future generation of scientists. She is responsible for over $25M of external funding, including partnerships with the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In the past, she managed the ASM Fellowship Fund, an endowment fund that supports undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellowship and a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more than 20 years.

Under her leadership, the ASM education program has been recognized with several honors, including the Presidential Award for Mentoring Underrepresented Minorities in Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology and the 2019 AIMBE Excellence in STEM Education Award, awarded for contributing to the advancement of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; diversifying the biomedical sciences and biomedical engineering workforce; and providing students from groups underrepresented in science with early exposure to the profession. She serves on national advisory committees of several organizations, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program, National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP), Understanding Inventions, the Leadership Alliance IPERT program, and ACCESS+ STEM program.

Professor Robert Mokaya

Provost & Deputy-Vice-Chancellor, University of Sheffield

Professor Robert Mokaya OBE FRS is Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield. Robert obtained a B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the University of Nairobi after which he spent a year working for Unilever in Kenya. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1992. In 1992 he was elected to a Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge and in 1996 was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship. He was appointed to a lectureship in Materials Chemistry at the University of Nottingham in 2000, was promoted to Reader in Materials Chemistry in 2005, and to Professor of Materials Chemistry in 2008. From 2016 to 2018 he was Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham and then the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Global Engagement from 2019 to 2024. He is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder (2017-2022). He was appointed OBE in 2022 for services to the Chemical Sciences and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2023. He is President-Elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2024 – 2026) and will be President for the period 2026 to 2028.

Dr Deborah Husbands

Chartered Psychologist and Associate Professor, University of Westminster

Dr Deborah Husbands is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Professor in Race and Sociocultural Psychology at the University of Westminster. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is Co-Chair of the EDI Committee, founder and Co-Chair of the BME Colleague Network, and founder and Lead for the Black History Year programme, which features a Vitae award-winning Researchers Network, all at the University of Westminster. She also chairs the British Psychological Society's Editorial and Advisory Committee for its flagship magazine, The Psychologist, and sits on the BPS Research Board. Deborah employs qualitative research methods and critical race theories to investigate constructions of identity in higher education and society, with a keen focus on the effect of the impostor phenomenon on sense of belonging. She has a keen interest in addressing retention, progression and awarding for marginalised students. Her latest research examines the effect of the impostor phenomenon on academic performance, academic satisfaction and sense of belonging in underrepresented student groups. She collaborates with several universities on diverse projects to advance equity in higher education.

Professor Devi Sridhar

Professor & Chair, University of Edinburgh

Devi Sridhar is a writer, broadcaster and world-leading expert in public health and wellbeing. She is Professor and Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and has advised the WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and the Scottish, UK and German governments. Devi appears regularly on ITV and Channel 4 News, has a weekly column in the Guardian, tweets to over 300,000 followers, and recently became a certified Level 3 Personal Trainer. Her first book, Preventable, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Sunday Times bestseller.

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