Distinguished Alumni and Early Achievers

Adriane Lentz-Smith

Author and Associate Professor of History at Duke University

Adriane Lentz-Smith is an accomplished author and associate professor of history at Duke University. She earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2005. As an author, her interests lie in African American history, twentieth-century United States History, and world history. Her 2009 book, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, looks at the black freedom struggle in the World War I years, focusing on manhood, citizenship, and global encounters. Lentz-Smith’s work has been featured in many academic journals, including in American Quarterly and Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Throughout her career, Lentz-Smith has spoken at various conferences and has appeared on C-Span as an expert on WWI and African-American history. She recently collaborated on two studies entitled Voting Rights in the United States and Challenging the Master Narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. In 2005, Lentz-Smith earned a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of North Carolina. In 2010, she was awarded the Honor Book Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Matt Wisdom

CEO of TurboSquid

Matt Wisdom is CEO of TurboSquid, a company he co-founded in 2000 that allows artists free access to publish and sell digital creations on the internet. TurboSquid is now the world’s leading seller of 3D models used in feature films, computer games, architecture, and defense. Wisdom graduated from Brown University in 1994 with a personal emphasis on software engineering.

He has earned numerous awards and honors, including the Louisiana Governor’s Office “Technology Leader of the Year” and Junior Achievement’s “Business Hall of Fame.” He is also a member of the 2014 Class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute. Wisdom serves as New Orleans Startup Fund Board Chairman, Tricentennial Racial Reconciliation Committee Co-chairman, and RosaMary Foundation Trustee. In 2005, he co-authored legislation for the Digital Interactive Media incentives for the state of Louisiana, widely cited as significantly contributing to the city’s entrepreneurial renaissance. More recently, he co-chaired New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s transition team in 2018.

Sue Yom

Professor of Clinical Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco and Radiation Oncologist

Sue Yom is a Professor of Clinical Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Yom is also a radiation oncologist who specializes in the treatment of head and neck, skin and thoracic cancers. She studied at Rice University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in French, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a Ph.D. in English and a Medical Doctorate.

Dr. Yom is a member of the American Board of Radiology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Journal of Radiation Oncology Editorial Board. She has been honored with numerous awards throughout her career, including Best Doctors in America listings, the Young Investigator Award (presented by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Foundation), and the Brachytherapy Fellowship (presented by the American Brachytherapy Society). At UCSF, Dr. Yom supervises a number of medical studies and clinical trials aimed at finding novel and more effective forms of therapy for cancer patients.

Joni Deutsch

Podcast Manager for WFAE

Joni Deutsch is Podcast Manager for WFAE, an NPR news source in Charlotte, NC. She studied at West Virginia University before earning a Master of Arts in Strategic Communication from American University.

Deutsch began her professional career with WLUR 91.5FM in Lexington, Virginia before transitioning to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she created and hosted two podcasts. In 2015, Deutsch became assistant producer for NPR Music’s program “Mountain Stage.” A year later, she became the program’s host, making her the youngest host of a nationally syndicated public radio program at the age of 24. In 2018, Deutsch launched “She Says,” WFAE’s first investigative podcast about a sexual assault case in Mecklenburg County, which hit the Top 200 on Apple Podcasts and was recognized by the Online Journalism Awards for “Excellence in Audio Digital Storytelling.”

Deutsch’s other awards and honors include West Virginia State Journal’s “40 under 40,” the Online Journalism Association’s “Women’s Leadership Accelerator,” and the Charlotte Agenda’s “30 under 30.”

Morgan Dameron

Award-winning Writer, Director, and Producer

“I wrote down ‘Plan A: make a movie’ and didn’t write a backup plan,” TIPster Morgan Dameron said. “I didn’t give myself a second option.”

Dameron didn’t need one, either. She is the awardwinning writer, director, and producer of Different Flowers, a feature film that tells the story of two sisters on a road trip through the Midwest after one of them runs away on her wedding day. Dameron raised the money for the film herself before premiering it to sold-out crowds at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, seeing it open at AMC theatres, and finally selling it to Showtime.

The Kansas City native began dreaming of making films at five years old. She made homemade movies as a child, took art classes at local film organizations, and was eventually awarded a full scholarship to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she graduated summa cum laude. She also experienced TIP in 2006, taking part in a study abroad course called France: Philosophic Quest.

In addition to her success with Different Flowers, Dameron has worked on hit films such as Star Trek into Darkness and Star Wars: The Force Awakens—there’s even a Star Wars character named after her! She also has directed commercials and cooking shows and served as executive assistant to director and producer J. J. Abrams. Dameron also received the Spirit of Kansas City Award from Kansas City Women in Film and Television for her work furthering the filmmaking community.

Derek Wallbank

Team Leader - First Word DC - Bloomberg

Derek Wallbank runs Bloomberg’s First Word breaking news desk in Washington, DC, the top media source for breaking news on everything coming out of the White House, Congress, and the rest of the US federal government. A policy-focused news source in Washington since 2008, Wallbank’s desk regularly moves world markets and currencies with its scoops and breaking news.

“The goal now as always is to examine the inner workings of Washington and lay them out in the open, in plain English, so people know not only what’s happening, but why,” Wallbank said about his work as a journalist.

Wallbank is chairman of the Board of Governors at the National Press Club, the nation’s foremost professional association of journalists. He is also a member of the board of the National Press Club Journalism Institute, the Club’s charitable wing that provides training for journalists and promotes press freedom around the world. Wallbank is a regular commenter on US political news for national and global outlets, and has appeared on MSNBC, NPR, C-SPAN, and Bloomberg TV. His work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, Detroit Free Press, and Chicago Tribune.

Wallbank attended the Duke TIP Summer Studies Program three times—once at Appalachian State and twice at Kansas—before attending Michigan State University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science. He was also named Michigan State’s 2015 Rising Star for its College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

Asked about his proudest moment as a journalist, Wallbank pointed to a northern Minnesota school that was rebuilt after he and other news outlets brought attention to its appalling condition and neglect. “If the life or future of an eight-year-old is better, in any small part, because I did my job, then it’s a good day,” Wallbank said.

Ian Clark

Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Principal Investigator at Jet Propulsion Laboratory

My three summers at TIP were incredibly formative in part because of the opportunities to learn and explore in subjects I was passionate about and the environment that embedded me with kids who were similarly in want of nurture for their intellectual curiosity. I have vivid memories of the campus and classrooms at Davidson, of the trips off campus, and of Meteor Mike assigning us chapters out of A Brief History of Time as homework and teaching us stars and constellations at the Morehead Planetarium (‘Arc to Arcturus and take a hike-a to Spica’). I’ve shared those memories with my family and now my niece and nephew are getting the opportunity to experience that themselves as TIP scholars.

Dr. Ian Clark was recognized for his exceptional leadership in developing new landing technologies for future space exploration.

You can’t explore Mars without landing safely on it first. The methods currently used have been around for over forty years, so NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerators (LDSD) team has been working to develop state-ofthe-art technologies that will be used in future Mars landing missions. Leading this team is principal investigator and TIP alumnus Dr. Ian Clark. Clark is an engineer in the EDL Systems and Advanced Technologies Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a specialist in the area of planetary entry, descent, and landing (EDL). Clark has been working with his team to test supersonic parachute capabilities so that heavier vessels carrying exploration teams and vehicles can land safely on Mars.

Three summers of Clark’s youth were spent at TIP, where he first explored outer space with an astronomy class. He then went on to graduate with honors from Irmo High School in South Carolina. He was the only person in his year to have a perfect SAT score. Georgia Institute of Technology remains his only alma mater, where, in addition to his undergraduate degree, he earned a master of science and PhD in aerospace engineering.

Prior to his work at NASA, Clark served as a visiting assistant professor at Georgia Tech, where he advised and managed the EDL research group. He was recently recognized by President Obama with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Clark is also a recipient of the JPL Lew Allen Award, the JPL Explorer Award, and NASA’s Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal.

Kiran Musunuru

Associate Professor of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Kiran Musunuru was recognized for his outstanding achievements in genetic research.

Growing up in Florida as the son of a renowned cardiologist, Kiran Musunuru decided to follow in his dad’s footsteps and become a heart doctor. The twist? He decided he didn’t want to just treat cardiovascular disease: he wanted to figure out how to prevent heart attacks in the first place. This drive has led him to win multiple awards and grants supporting his innovative pursuit to research the link between genetics and the world’s leading killer: heart disease. For this, he is being honored as one of our distinguished alumni.

Before graduating from Harvard College with a degree in biochemical sciences, Musunuru took part in three TIP courses, one of which was chemistry. He then went on to collect his PhD in biomedical sciences from The Rockefeller University, an MD from Weill Cornell Medical College, and his MPH in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also completed postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In addition, he has contributed to numerous medical textbooks and publications, and has won multiple awards for his research, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Today you can find Musunuru teaching as an associate professor of cardiovascular medicine and genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alison Stuebe

Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

My four summers on East Campus were oases on my path through high school. In the classroom, I fell in love with writing, history, and political science. After class, I debated the meaning of life and formed lasting friendships. Without TIP, I can't imagine who I would be today.

Dr. Alison Stuebe was recognized for her significant contributions to the field of maternal-fetal medicine.

As a well-known scholar, teacher, mentor, and clinician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stuebe has received a number of professional awards, including a recent grant worth over two million dollars from the National Institutes of Health, awarded to study how changes in maternal and infant hormones form a connection between postpartum depression and breastfeeding. She was also named a Distinguished Scholar of Infant and Young Child Feeding at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Stuebe has perfected the blending of arts and sciences: her ability to translate and communicate her scientific findings to the broader public through tweeting, blogging, and media appearances has had a significant impact on public health programming and policy.

After graduating from Duke University with a BS in biology, Stuebe went on to earn her MD at Washington

University School of Medicine and completed her residency and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In between practicing medicine and penning dozens of peer-reviewed articles, Stuebe also earned an MSc in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Though she didn’t know it at the time, Stuebe met her husband during one of her four TIP programs between 1986 and 1989. She reconnected with TIP alumnus Geoff Green later on at Duke, and they were eventually married by Gerald Wilson, one of their TIP instructors.

David Shaywitz

Chief Medical Officer, DNAnexus

“My experiences at TIP were transformative, and absolutely pivotal in my life—and not so much because of what I learned academically, which, while important, was in many ways besides the point. Rather, TIP was the first time I felt immersed in a social environment where intellectual curiosity was a given part of the fabric; where it was ok to be smart; and where it was exhilarating to appreciate the incredible diversity of really talented people. My most cherished associations relate to the many activities we did outside the classroom, from Frisbee and soccer to movies and late night pizza. It was at TIP that I first began to develop a real sense of confidence that the world could be a welcoming place—a great place—for someone like me.”

David Shaywitz was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus for his pioneering work in the medical industry.

David Shaywitz attended Harvard University where he majored in biochemistry, wrote for The Crimson,
and graduated summa cum laude. He received his MD from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program and his PhD in biology from MIT, and went on to the Massachusetts General Hospital for his training in internal medicine and endocrinology, and conducted his post-doctoral research at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Passionate about translating science into clinical application, he transitioned to industry, working for the next ten years at Merck Research Labs, Boston Consulting Group, and Theravance Biopharma. In 2014, he became the Chief Medical Officer of DNAnexus, a Silicon Valley-based health data management company where he works to deliver collaborative, genome-enabled medicine.

In addition, Shaywitz co-founded the Harvard PASTEUR program for translational research and the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH) and was a founding advisor of Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit medical research initiative for open science. He has also written about complex issues in medicine for leading publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, and writes regularly about entrepreneurial innovation in medicine for Forbes. He is currently a Visiting Scientist (adjunct) in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

He is co-author, with Lisa Suennen, of Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare With Technology (Hyperink Press, 2013), and co-hosts, with Lisa, the twice-monthly podcast “Tech Tonics,” focused on “the people and passion at the intersection of technology and health.” He lives in the Bay Area with his wife (also a physician-scientist), three daughters, and a clumber spaniel.

Andrew Samwick

Professor of Economics, Director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, Dartmouth College

Andrew Samwick was recognized as a Distinguished Alum for his leading research on economic policy, his commitment to education, and his public service. After taking five math and science courses at TIP between 1982 and 1984, Andrew Samwick graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in economics. He then went on to receive his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in public economics and finance.

Since 1994, Samwick has been a faculty member at Dartmouth College, where he is now the Sandra L. and Arthur L. Irving ‘72a, P’10 Professor of Economics and the Director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In the field of economics, Samwick is most widely known for his research on the economics of retirement. He is the co-author of a set of reform proposals that restore solvency to the Social Security system through the addition of investment-based, personal retirement accounts. He has testified multiple times before Congressional committees on his research. Over the past two decades, he has also made scholarly contributions on saving, taxation, portfolio choice, education, and executive compensation. In 2009, Samwick was selected as the New Hampshire Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, recognizing his work to educate, train, and inspire the next generation of public policy leaders.

In 2003, Andrew served for a year as the chief economist on the staff of the President’s
Council of Economic Advisers. He currently serves as a member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee.

Diane Tang

Google Fellow, Google

“I’m honored to be selected as a TIP Distinguished Alumna—TIP was an extremely memorable experience growing up and something that I fondly remember and cherish. It’s an experience that I definitely think shaped me.”

Diane Tang is being recognized as a Distinguished Alumna for her innovative work leading the search ads quality team of Alphabet—Google’s parent company.

Tang received her bachelor’s degree in computer science at Harvard University and a PhD in the same subject from Stanford University. She began at Google in 2003, spending her first ten+ years with the company focused on increasing the quality and profitability of Google’s search ads, which provide the majority of the company’s revenues. She helped build the team from a dozen members to over four hundred, as well as the infrastructure and tools for A/B testing. Tang has also published a number of research papers for Google.

Today, Tang is a fellow in Google Research, working on both health projects as well as measurement
and A/B testing across Google.

Alice Chen-Plotkin

Neuroscientist and Neurologist, University of Pennsylvania

I cannot even begin to describe what a tremendous impact TIP had on me. Growing up as a math-loving girl in Mississippi, it was incredible to be in a place where everyone was interested in learning. For many kids, and especially girls (who might be particularly susceptible to social pressures in those early teen years), having a place where it’s okay, and even cool, to be smart might be nothing short of a revelation–that’s certainly how it was for me. Plus I am now extremely good at doing the Time Warp.

Alice Chen-Plotkin is a neuroscientist and neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate and English literature major at Harvard University, Alice began her scientific training as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. She subsequently returned to Harvard for medical school and neurology training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Since 2010, Alice has been an assistant professor of neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

A physician-scientist, Alice runs a research group studying neurodegeneration and sees patients with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease. Her laboratory specializes in using unbiased approaches permitted by modern technology to generate leads in the investigation of neurodegenerative disorders, then follows these leads downstream in mechanistic cell and molecular biological experiments. She has been the recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists, a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinician Scientist Development Award, and the American Academy of Neurology Jon Stolk Award in Movement Disorders.

Alice lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, biologist Joshua Plotkin, and their son and daughter. Alice is hoping that the Marine Lab will still be around when her kids are old enough to attend.

Geoff Davis

Data Scientist, Google [x]

Geoff Davis is a data scientist at Google [x] where he works on the Baseline Study, a collaboration between Google, Duke University, and Stanford University to detect the onset of chronic diseases early enough to enable their prevention.

Geoff earned a PhD in applied mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University and a BS in mathematics and physics from Duke University. His academic work focused on algorithms for the efficient representation, storage, and transmission of digital information. He pursued his research interests as an assistant professor in the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth College and as the Texas Instruments Visiting Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Rice University. In 1998 Geoff left academia for Microsoft Research where he worked on methods for better audio compression. He holds two patents and is the recipient of an IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award and the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award.

Geoff has had a longstanding interest in improving the training of young scientists. While a postdoctoral student he created one of the most popular online career resources for early career scientists. He later led a large-scale study of factors that affect the outcome of postdoctoral training with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and a Wertheim Fellowship at Harvard Law School. He has served on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Science and Engineering Workforce Project and on the National Research Council’s Committee on Developing Science, Technology, and Innovation Indicators for the Future.

Richard Hatchett

Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority

Richard J. Hatchett, MD, is Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), where he oversees programs to develop and procure medical countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, pandemic influenza, and emerging infectious diseases. Over the last year, he has helped lead BARDA’s efforts to develop and test vaccines and therapeutics against Ebola.

Richard serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization on a variety of topics related to biodefense and emergency medical preparedness, is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness, and is chair of an External Advisory Committee on infectious disease modeling for the National Institute of General Medical Science.

Richard served as Director for Medical Preparedness Policy on the White House National Security Staff under President Obama, Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush, and Associate Director for Radiation Medical Countermeasures and Emergency Preparedness at the National Institutes of Health. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital–Weill Cornell Medical College and a fellowship in medical oncology at Duke University Medical Center after receiving his BA summa cum laude in English Literature and MD from Vanderbilt University.

Anne Harkavy

Deputy General Counsel, Litigation and Enforcement, U.S. Department of Energy

Anne Harkavy is the deputy general counsel for litigation and enforcement for the U.S. Department of Energy. In that role, she oversees all litigation involving the Department, as well as the Department’s energy efficiency standards enforcement program. Prior to joining the Department of Energy in 2013, she was a partner at the law firm of WilmerHale LLP, where she was vice chair of the firm’s government and regulatory litigation group and represented clients in congressional investigations and in trial and appellate litigation with public policy dimensions.

Anne served as deputy national counsel in 2004 for John Kerry’s presidential campaign and as a senior legal advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

Anne began her legal career as a clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She received her JD cum laude from Harvard Law School and her AB magna cum laude in Government from Harvard University. Anne is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina and attended TIP all four summers.

Rachel Newcomb

Professor of Anthropology, Rollins College

“TIP made such a profound impression on me—it was one of the best times of my life.”

Dr. Rachel Newcomb is an associate professor of Anthropology and Diane and Michael Maher Professor of Distinguished Teaching at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Rachel specializes in cultural anthropology with a focus on gender, globalization, Islam, and identity in the Middle East and North Africa.

Rachel has published extensively on cultural anthropology, having written multiple scholarly articles on issues ranging from marriage and reproductive rights to the role of non-governmental organizations in the advancement of women’s rights in North Africa. She has also written op-eds and book reviews for publications including The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, USA Today, and The Christian Science Monitor. Dr. Newcomb has produced two books, her first, Women of Fes: Ambiguities of Life in Urban Morocco was authored in 2009; and her second, Encountering Morocco: Fieldwork and Cultural Understanding, was co-edited with Dr. David Crawford of Fairfield University in 2013.

In addition to her academic work, Rachel has served as a consultant on projects related to the presentation of Middle Eastern cultures, having worked with a variety of clients, including Disney World and Universal Studios. She has also trained future business leaders in issues related to cultural awareness and workplace diversity.

Rachel received a BA in History from Davidson College, an MA in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University. A former Fulbright scholar, she has been a member of the faculty at Rollins College since 2004. She is a native of Rock Hill, South Carolina and attended TIP for three summers.

Alex Rampell

Founder & CEO, TrialPay; Investor

“My four years at TIP represent some of my best experiences, and I am incredibly grateful and lucky to have participated in the program. In an era before Wikipedia, TIP opened up ‘higher education’ to me on topics (philosophy, economics, etc.) that young teenagers just weren’t expected (or at my school, allowed!) to learn, and just as importantly showed that ‘learning’ and ‘having fun’ were not mutually exclusive. At TIP, the cool kids were the smart kids, and the smart kids were the cool kids. My interest in economics and business was shaped and enhanced at TIP, I made some amazing, brilliant friends, and after each summer couldn’t wait for the next one. And I developed a lifelong love of ultimate frisbee, but alas great skill in that game still escapes me, and is the one thing TIP can’t teach you!”

Alex Rampell is the CEO and co-founder of TrialPay, a leading transactional advertising and payments company serving digital goods and e-commerce clients such as Facebook, Zynga, and Gap, with 100 employees and over $250M in cumulative revenue. Previously, Alex co-founded FraudEliminator, the first consumer anti-phishing company which merged into SiteAdvisor and was acquired by McAfee for $75M in 2006. He is a frequent writer on e-commerce and advertising topics for TechCrunch, and coined the term “O2O” to refer to the growing category of online-to-offline
commerce companies like Uber and Groupon. Alex is an active angel adviser and investor, having advised or invested in Pinterest, Zong, Wooga, Hunch, Truaxis, OrderAhead, Twice, and CardSpring. He has served on the board of friend.ly, which was acquired by Facebook and Backstage Technologies, which was acquired by RealNetworks. Alex currently serves on the board of CashStar, a leading electronic gift card company, and as advisor to Ron Conway’s SV Angel fund.

Alex attended Harvard University where he graduated cum laude with a BA in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. While at Harvard, Alex served as a teaching fellow in Computer Science and played on the Squash team. He attended TIP all four summers taking classes in Philosophy, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Psychology.

Kimberly Garbett

International Programs Manager, Partnership for Peace Consortium, George C. Marshall Center

“TIP planted seeds for a lifetime love of learning.....and I’ve found that a continued thirst for knowledge, combined with confidence, a sense of self-reliance, and generous helpings of hard work are key ingredients to achieving your goals, desires, and dreams. The TIP experience opened a new world of possibilities for me as a youth and helped set the stage and laid some of the foundational groundwork for my future.”

Major Kimberly Garbett is an international programs manager at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.
In her current position, Kim works with the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes (PfPC), an alliance of defense academies and security organizations from the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) region. Kim’s work facilitates strategic dialogue among international, security-focused organizations and working groups – including Emerging Security Challenges, Security Sector Reform, and Advance Distributed Learning, all dedicated to strengthening defense education and research through cooperation.

Kim has served at several U.S. Air Force bases, supporting Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Education and Training Command. She has worked with the White House Press Corps, CNN, FOX, Discovery Channel, and The Learning Channel as well as other international media outlets highlighting women in combat, humanitarian operations, and civil-military cooperation among others.

As assistant professor at Oregon State University, she taught public speaking, leadership, aviation history, and national security. While there, she led the unit’s community service organization to the #1 national ranking two years in a row.

Kim served with U.S. embassies in Paris, Ankara, Vienna, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. In Central America, she worked with organizations conducting counter-narcotic operations, humanitarian relief, and disaster relief missions. In 2006, she spoke about her work at the US Air Force Academy “Heroes of Humanitarian Operations” forum.

In Afghanistan, she supported combat operations as team leader for an information operations fusion cell along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, also conducting numerous humanitarian missions for Afghan women and children. For her work, she earned the Bronze Star, the fifth-highest combat medal.

John Green

Author, young adult fiction; Vlogger

John Green is The New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

In 2007, Green and his brother Hank ceased textual communication and began to talk primarily through videoblogs posted to YouTube. The videos spawned a community of people called “nerdfighters” who fight for intellectualism. Nerdfighters.com (97,165 members) has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world. Although they have long since resumed textual communication, John and Hank continue to upload two videos a week to their YouTube channel, vlogbrothers. Their videos have been viewed more than 300 million times.

Green’s book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a book review journal where he worked as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. Green grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School in Birmingham, Alabama and then Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

David M. Smoot, IV

Chief Executive Officer, Dubai International Capital LLC

“At TIP I was really awed by so many bright, social people with amazing personal drive and capabilities. It was a humbling experience for me and an inspiring time academically and socially. A time to make many friends and study hard. TIP imbued one key life lesson that I never will forget and apply every single day: avoid mental complacency by keeping your learning curve as steep as possible! TIP taught me that whenever I find myself plateauing in my career or otherwise, I need to step outside my comfort zone to seek new challenges.”

David Smoot is chief executive officer at Dubai International Capital LLC (DIC). He is also chairman of the portfolio company Almatis and vice chairman of StandardAero. David serves on the boards of DIC portfolio companies Doncasters, Mauser, Rivoli, and Dubai Aerospace Enterprise. DIC’s portfolio companies are engaged in manufacturing, retail, aircraft maintenance services, and aircraft leasing. On a combined basis, the companies generate over $5 billion of annual revenue and employ over 15,000 people in 25 countries on six continents.

Prior to joining DIC in June 2008, David spent 11 years at Morgan Stanley where he was a managing director and co-founder of Morgan Stanley Private Equity (MSPE), the firm’s third party investment vehicle. He led portfolio investments in retail and aerospace and was responsible for building a team of 35 professionals in New York and London. In this capacity, David served on the boards of McKechnie Aerospace, a leading aerospace components manufacturer, and Tops Markets, a New York-based supermarket chain.

Prior to his role in MSPE, David was managing director, financial sponsors, at Morgan Stanley Investment Banking where he advised clients including Bain Capital, Blackstone, First Reserve and Warburg Pincus on M&A, IPOs, and debt and equity financings.

David is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Duke University and a member of the New York Bar. He will become one of TIP’s first legacy parents this summer, when his son attends Summer Studies at Duke.

Douglas Arner

Professor of Law; Head, Department of Law; University of Hong Kong

“My time at TIP was not only absolutely transformative for me but also among the best times of my life and still among my most vivid memories. The four summers at Duke, the courses I took, the people I met, and the things we did and shared opened vistas which I never knew existed. More than that, when things did not always go according to plan in the years after, the foundations built at TIP always gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams, no matter how impossible they sometimes seemed. This award is thus a true pleasure for me, the more so since my best friend from TIP is also among this year’s awardees—how far we have come since those early days on the Quad.”

Before joining the University of Hong Kong in 2000, Douglas was the Sir John Lubbock Support Fund Fellow at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary, University of London. Prior to his appointment as Head of the Department of Law, he co-founded HKU’s Asian Institute of International Financial Law, of which he was director from 2006-2011. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at the Universities of London, McGill, Melbourne, New South Wales, Singapore, and Zurich, as well as Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.

Douglas’s work focuses on financial law, regulation, and development, with a particular focus on financial crisis prevention and resolution. In this respect, he has worked on financial sector reform projects in over 20 economies in Africa, Asia, and Europe as a consultant with, among others, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, APEC, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Douglas is the author, co-author, or co-editor of 11 books including From Crisis to Crisis: The Global Financial System and Regulatory Failure; Financial Stability, Economic Growth and the Role of Law; and Financial Markets in Hong Kong: Law and Practice and is author or co-author of more than 100 studies, articles, and chapters on global, regional, and domestic financial regulation, stability and development.

In 2007, Douglas received the University of Hong Kong’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and in 2008, he was named Convener of HKU’s Law, Policy, and Development Strategic Research Theme. In 2009 he was selected as a member of the University Research Committee and in 2011 was elected to the HKU Senate. He currently mentors seven doctoral students from Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America, all working on issues relating to financial law and development.

He holds a BA from Drury College (where he studied literature, economics and political science), a JD (cum laude) from Southern Methodist University, an LLM (with distinction) in banking and finance law from the University of London (Queen Mary College), and a PhD from the University of London.

Stewart Coulter

Engineering Manager at DEKA Research & Development

“For me and so many others, TIP represented a chance to learn and play with like-minded students. The positive feedback from this experience was so important in helping define my educational path and find a community of peers. My experience working at TIP for four summers only confirmed to me the value of the gifted program.”

Stewart Coulter’s engineering career path has led him to work in a variety of innovation and strategic planning roles for industries ranging from automotive to semiconductor equipment to waste disposal for companies such as Chrysler, Compaq, McKinsey & Co., and the Robert Bosch Co.

He currently serves as co-general manager of the DEKA Research and Development Corp., a medical products R & D company based in Manchester, NH. Stewart directs the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which is developing an advanced prosthetic arm. This unique robotic arm, dubbed “Luke” after the Jedi with the mechanical hand, combines cutting edge advances in medicine, engineering, technology, and robotics to offer dramatically increased capability from the shoulder to the fingers to restore functionality for those thousands of individuals throughout the United States who have lost a limb. The project has been featured on programs ranging from 60 Minutes to The Colbert Report.

At DEKA Stewart also serves as project manager for the iBOT Mobility System, which offers users the ability to climb stairs, balance at eye level, and travel over a variety of terrains and slopes. Some of Stewart’s proudest professional moments have been seeing firsthand how transformational it was for the recipients of the robotic arm and the iBOT wheelchair to experience newfound mobility and freedom.

Stewart was also the recipient of the Department of Energy Integrated Manufacturing Fellowship, has authored numerous journal articles, and has served as a keynote speaker at many national conferences including the ASME Design Automation Conference.

Anu Kirk

Director and General Manager of Virtual Reality Platforms, Sony Computer Entertainment America

“TIP taught me what being gifted really meant. It also taught me there was more to life than being gifted.”

Anu Kirk is one of the creators of Rhapsody, the first digital music subscription service. He drafted the business plan, led the product team, and designed their iOS app. At Liquid Audio, he launched Wal-Mart’s MP3 music store. At MOG, the mobile apps that Anu created won Billboard’s “Best Streaming App” award in 2010 and they were named one of TIME’s “50 Essential Apps” of 2011.

A digital media innovator, Anu has also created video games, designed virtual goods marketplaces for 3D avatars, and integrated digital media platforms into virtual worlds.

Interested in music and technology from childhood, Anu studied music at Dartmouth College and graduated with a degree in economics. He spent a decade in Los Angeles, performing with bands, working in recording studios, and designing professional audio products. One of his designs was awarded Musician Magazine’s “Editors’ Pick” in 1997 for Spatializer Retro, and another was nominated in 1997 for MIX Magazine’s TEC award for Spatializer PT3D.

Anu served as the first alumni member of the TIP National Advisory Board. He returned to TIP in 1999 to teach A History of 20th Century Music, an interdisciplinary music history course he created (now known as From Bach To Rock: A History of 20th Century Music), and later turned it into an educational CD-ROM. He was also selected to give the closing remarks at TIP’s 30th Anniversary Alumni Reunion in 2011.

Anu continues to write, record, and perform music.

David Kirsch

Professor of Radiation Oncology, Pharmacology, and Cancer Biology, Duke University Medical Center

TIP gave me the opportunity to learn with an amazing group of peers and grow in important ways. I will always cherish the summers I spent at TIP.

David Kirsch completed his residency at Massachusetts General/Harvard Medical School in radiation oncology, and performed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research. He was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School for two years before joining the Duke University School of Medicine in 2007.

His clinical focus is on the care of patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas. David also leads a cancer research laboratory. This is where David and his team of graduate students, post-docs, and technicians use cutting edge technologies in mouse genetics, imaging, and molecular and cell biology to study the initiation, progression, and metastasis of cancer. He has received major biomedical research grants during his young career from NIH, NASA, and the Duke Cancer Center. In 2008 he was one of the first scientists to receive a $450,000 grant as the recipient of the Damon Runyon Rachleff Innovation Award to develop molecular imaging technology to detect microscopic residual cancer during surgery. In 2010 he received the American Society of Clinical Oncology Advanced Clinical Research Award in Sarcoma including a $450,000 grant to take the newly developed technology from the lab to the operating room through clinical trials. In 2010 he received the Michael Fry Research Award for junior scientists who have made extraordinary contributions to radiation research.

David is also a prolific contributor to the medical field. He has published over 59 articles in medical journals, written five chapters in medical books, and has served as a reviewer for numerous publications and NIH grants. He mentors graduate students, medical students, residents, and oncology fellows in his lab. David sits on major committees at Duke University School of Medicine and is a co-leader for the Radiation Oncology and Imaging Program in the Duke Cancer Institute.

Bethany Rubin Henderson

Executive Director, DC SCORES

TIP was the first time I was surrounded by other kids like me: kids who read the newspaper, who cared about more than trendy brands and the latest celeb gossip, who liked to learn. I looked forward to those three glorious summer weeks on Duke’s campus year-round. Fast-forward 20+ years, I am now running into those same TIPsters in my professional life, and they are just as supportive now as when we were 12.

Bethany is an award-winning social entrepreneur, mompreneur, and blogger. She currently leads DC SCORES, which builds teams through after-school programs for low-income DC youth by instilling self-expression, physical fitness, and a sense of community. Previously, she served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration. She also co-owns Grow With Me Tee, an online retail boutique selling products that give families a fun, interactive way to track kids’ growth.

In 2008 Bethany launched City Hall Fellows, an award-winning, nonpartisan, post-college local government service corps (www.cityhallfellows.org), raising over $4M to build it during the recession. To date, City Hall Fellows has trained 92 emerging civic leaders across 3 cities. Previously, Bethany was a trial attorney at international litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel. She also helped build out the Center for Social Entrepreneurship at George Mason University. Bethany began her career serving in NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s administration, helping to drive the city government’s adoption of (the then-brand-new) Internet technology.

Bethany earned her JD at Harvard Law School and both an MA and BA (ΦBK; summa cum laude) at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes and speaks about civic leadership, social entrepreneurship, and intellectual property. She and her husband also blog about the ups and downs of their two-career, two-kid, modern-day life at www.findingourbestselves.com.

Franklin Leonard

Founder & CEO, The Black List; Advisor to BoomGenStudios & Plympton

TIP was, in short, the only thing I looked forward to every year. And still, almost 20 years later, it remains the home of most of my fondest memories of my teenage years.

Franklin Leonard is the vice president of creative affairs at Overbrook entertainment, creator of the Black List and co-creator of Blcklst.com, a yearly publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays and its ongoing home on the web.

Prior to Overbrook, Franklin was the director of development at Universal Pictures. He has done similar work at the production companies of directors Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Paramount Pictures president John Goldwyn.

Before Los Angeles and all things film related, Franklin was – at different times – a business analyst at McKinsey & Co., a weekly columnist for the Trinidad Guardian in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and the communications director for John Cranley’s 2000 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio’s first district.

Since January 2010, he has been named one of Hollywood Reporter’s “30 under 30,” Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future,” AOL Black Voices “30 Black Hollywood Game Changers” and Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.”

He’s a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University.

Sherry Ehrlich Rauh

Children’s Author (a.k.a. Sherry North) and Doctor of Audiology

I will never forget dancing to ‘Rock Lobster’ on the quad, but TIP gave me more than fond memories. The chance to study music theory at age 12 and marine biology at 13 solidified my passion for exploring diverse and challenging topics. This constant desire to learn something new has fueled my success as a journalist and author.

An award-winning author, medical journalist, and television producer, Sherry’s recognized career includes hundreds of projects for print, television, and online media. Since 2003 Sherry has written five children’s books with a sixth in production, and she’s won numerous national awards including the Teachers’ Choice Award for Champ’s Story: Dogs Get Cancer Too in 2011, the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award for Because I Am Your Daddy in 2010, and the NAPPA Gold Award for Because You Are My Baby in 2008. In 2008 and 2010 she was a featured author at the Miami Book Fair International.

Before becoming an author, Sherry spent six years at CNN Headline News as a writer and medical producer. She continues to write as a freelance journalist and has completed more than 100 projects for WebMD, along with feature articles for Miami Herald, Highlights for Children, and CNN.com. Sherry has also written and produced dozens of scripts for programs airing on Lifetime, WE, TLC, and public television. In 2007, she won a Freddie Award in medical journalism for the TV documentary, “Healthy Body, Healthy Mind: Epilepsy Defined.” She conducts writing workshops for children and is a national speaker in the field of children’s literature.

Sherry is now a student doctor of audiology at Nova Southeastern University and a medical journalist. Her interests include diagnostics, hearing aids, and cochlear implants.

Amy J. Wagers

Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School

I still use the skills and knowledge I gained at TIP during those four summers. It was an incredible opportunity to explore new ideas and develop my own creativity and self-confidence.

Amy Wagers is a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, an investigator in islet cell and regenerative biology at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and principal faculty of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. She started her education at Johns Hopkins University and received her B.A. in Biological Sciences and her PhD in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Northwestern University in 1999, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Irving Weissman at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Wagers researches intrinsic and extrinsic regulators of stem cell function and how stem cells impact tissue regeneration and aging. She has demonstrated that transplantation of satellite cells into injured, diseased, or aged muscle can lead to cell engraftment, in some cases restoring muscle function. She has also identified novel regulators (such as EGR1) of stem cell trafficking and stem cell number in bone marrow and during immune responses, and identified blood-borne proteins, such as GDF11, that in mice can reverse some of the pathological changes that occur in aging tissues.

Her prestigious national honors and awards include the White House’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the Office
of Science and Technology (the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stage of their independent research careers), the NIH New Innovator Award, the Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Smith Family New Investigator Award, the W.M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists, and an Early Career Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has authored more than 50 publications in immunology and stem cell biology and is invited to speak to scientific assemblies both nationally and internationally as a leading stem-cell biologist.

Amy Pickar Abernethy

Chief Medical Officer & SVP Oncology, Flatiron Health

I first went to stay in the Duke dorms on East Campus when I was 14. Suddenly surrounded by lots of TIP kids just like me, I felt simultaneously normal and special. Yes, I learned my coursework, but more importantly, I learned about life, friendship, and to be proud that I liked math and computers. Last summer my dad sent me my TIP Biology transcript that he found when cleaning out closets; it said: "A-. Amy could have had an A, but she was too busy chatting."

Amy P. Abernethy, MD PhD is the Chief Medical Officer and SVP Oncology at Flatiron Health, a healthcare technology company focused on organizing the world’s cancer data and making it actionable for providers, patients, researchers and life sciences. At Flatiron, Dr. Abernethy leads the Oncology and Science parts of the organization. She is a hematologist/oncologist and palliative medicine physician, and an internationally recognized cancer clinical researcher.

With over 400 publications, Dr. Abernethy is an expert in cancer outcomes research, clinical trials, patient reported outcomes, evaluation of healthcare quality, health services research, clinical informatics and patient-centered care. She is an appointee to the National Academy of Medicine’s (formerly the Institute of Medicine) National Cancer Policy Forum, on the Executive Board for the Personalized Medicine Coalition, and Past President of the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine.

Before joining Flatiron, Dr. Abernethy was Professor of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, and ran the Center for Learning Health Care in the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Duke Cancer Care Research Program in the Duke Cancer Institute. For more than a decade, she has pioneered the development of technology platforms to spur novel advancements in cancer care, including the development of systems by which big data can support tracking cancer care, drug development, personalized medicine and scientific discovery. Joining Flatiron was the obvious next step.

Dr. Abernethy went to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, and then medical school at Duke, where she also did her Internal Medicine residency, a year as Chief Resident, and her hematology/oncology fellowship. She has her PhD from Flinders University in Australia, focused on evidence-based medicine. She is also on the Board of Directors of athenahealth, Inc.

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Assoc. Dean for International Programs at University of Florida Levin College of Law

The TIP experience was completely life-altering for me. I love being a law professor and even feel that it is my calling, but I never would have been able to imagine a life in academia were it not for my TIP experience. I grew up in a tiny, remote oil-field town in West Texas, which was a lonely existence for a girl who loved books more than sports. TIP connected me with other kids like me, and their aspirations became my aspirations. Because of TIP, I dared to think of myself as an intellectual and eventually became one.

Professor Lyrissa Lidsky joined the faculty of the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law in 1994, after clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She currently holds the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and is the law school’s Associate Dean for International Programs. She teaches Mass Media Law, First Amendment Law, and Cyberlaw. Her research focuses on the intersection of Cyberlaw and the First Amendment, and she is the co-author, with Marc Franklin and David Anderson, of the most widely adopted Mass Media Law casebook in American law schools.

She has also co-authored a First Amendment Law casebook and a reference book on Freedom of the Press. Her research on social media includes law review articles in leading journals, with titles such as Incendiary Speech and Social Media; How Not to Criminalize Cyberbullying, and Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions and Social Media, all of which are available at http://ssrn.com/author=247860.

Her research on anonymous speech has been cited in opinions by state and federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. She blogs at PrawfsBlawg, http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/, and tweets about Communications Law. She is an Editorial Board Member of Communications Law and Policy, a peer-reviewed law journal. She has previously been selected the UF Law’s teacher of the year, both by students and by a committee of her colleagues. She is a member of the Florida Bar.

Peter Singer

Strategist and Senior Fellow at The New America Foundation

TIP was a wonderful growing experience from the classes I took to the friendships I made. It was rare and special to be able to dive into classes that challenged me, to have teachers that so loved the topics they were teaching, and to be surrounded by kids who were excited to learn.

Peter Warren Singer is Strategist and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, founder of NeoLuddite, a technology advisory firm, the author of multiple award-winning books, and a contributing editor at Popular Science. He has been named by the Smithsonian Institution-National Portrait Gallery as one of the 100 “leading innovators in the nation,” by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues, by Onalytica social media data analysis as one of the ten most influential voices in the world on cybersecurity, and by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List, of the people whose ideas most influenced the world that year.

Dr. Singer is considered one of the world’s leading experts on changes in 21st century warfare. He has consulted for the US Military, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI, as well as advised a range of entertainment programs, including for Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Universal, HBO, Discovery, History Channel, and the video game series Call of Duty, the best-selling entertainment project in history. He served as coordinator of the Obama-08 campaign’s defense policy task force and was named by the President to the US Military’s Transformation Advisory Group. He has provided commentary on security issues for nearly every major TV and radio outlet, including ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NPR, and the NBC Today Show. In addition to his work on conflict issues, Singer is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. In the entertainment sector, he has received awards/support from the Tribeca Film Institute, Sloan Filmmakers Fund, Film Independent, and FAST Track at the L.A. Film Festival.

Kentaro Toyama

W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor at University of Michigan's School of Information; Fellow, Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT

Algebra in three weeks; frisbee every day; lifelong friends; Journey on the radio (it was the 80s)... My fondest memories are memories of TIP!

Kentaro Toyama is W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor at University of Michigan’s School of Information and a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. He is the author of “Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology” (http://j.mp/GeekHeresyAm).

Until 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world’s poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. The group is known for projects such as MultiPoint, Text-Free User Interfaces, and Digital Green. Kentaro co-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in this field.

Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana.

Trey Ideker

Chief of Genetics and Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at University of California, San Diego

“TIP did wonders to stimulate my interest in science. Maybe even more importantly, it put me together with an entire community of like-minded students who are genuinely interested in living and discovering life to its fullest. It is a rare thing to be around a group of people who are so much like you in so many ways.”

Trey Ideker is the Chief of Genetics and Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His research uses genomic data in order to construct network models of cellular processes and diseases

Ideker gained his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from M.I.T. in 1994, his M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from M.I.T. in 1995 and his PhD in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Washington in 2001 under the supervision of Leroy Hood. While working with Hood, Ideker was one of the first researchers to publish an integrated computational model of a metabolic network. As of 2014, the paper describing this model has been cited over 1,900 times.

Ideker has served as Adjunct Professor at the Moores Cancer Center and has acted as a consultant for companies including Monsanto and Mendel Biotechnology.^[1]

Ideker serves on the Editorial Board of Bioinformatics and the Editorial Advisory Board of PLOS Computational Biology. In 2005, Ideker was named by the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.^[10] The following year, Technology Review named him as one of the top 10 innovators of 2006. In 2009, he was awarded the Overton Prize by the International Society for Computational Biology in recognition of his significant contribution to the field of computational biology

Ananth Natarajan

Founder at Infinite Biomedical Technologies

“It is difficult to overstate the impact that Duke TIP has had on the lives of its students and alumni. In my own case, it significantly expanded my intellectual horizon. Perhaps more importantly, it introduced me to many kindred spirits, some of whom I am still close to more than 20 years later.”

Dr. Natarajan is a physician and engineer who specializes in utilization of advanced technology to solve pressing clinical problems. He founded Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT) in 1997 and served as the Chief Executive Officer of the company for over ten years.

IBT spun out two companies: Ikona Medical and Vigilant Medical. The latter developed a healthcare IT solution which was used to help over 20,000 patients last year. Currently IBT is developing an advanced dexterous prosthetic system for upper limb amputees, and today over 500 amputees are using one or more components of this system. For the past several years, Ananth has also been an active angel investor and has helped fund over a dozen early-stage companies.

Ananth has several publications, presentations, and patents to his credit. He has received the TR35 award from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review and the Duke University Engineering Distinguished Young Alumnus Award. He has been featured in the Red Herring magazine in a cover story as one of “5 Technology Innovators Changing the World.” He is a member of the California Club, the Athenaeum, and the Economic Round Table. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Caltech Associates (Past President), Innovate Pasadena and Vigilant Medical (Chairman). In the past he has served on the Boards of the Duke University Alumni Association of Southern California, HIVE Lighting, the Pasadena Angels, and the Pasadena Symphony. He is Past President of the Physicians’ Wine & Food Society and continues to serve on its Executive Committee.

Dr. Natarajan received his BSE in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering from Duke University (at age 18, with Distinction). He received an MSE in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Additionally, he completed his residency training in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Southern California.

Jane E. Willis

Partner and Co-head of the Business & Securities Litigation Practice at Ropes & Gray

“TIP exemplifies what W.B. Yeats wrote: ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.’ TIP was invaluable in opening a series of educational doors throughout my life.”

Jane Willis is a partner and the co-head of the business & securities litigation practice at Ropes & Gray. She is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in Applied Mathematics in 1991, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994. In school, she had a reputation as a mathematical whiz, and was recruited into the MIT Blackjack Team. The book Bringing Down the House and the film 21 are based upon the team’s success. Willis is portrayed as a character named “Jill” in both the book and film. As a lawyer, Jane has twenty years of experience representing clients in complex business litigation and antitrust matters, including business disputes and class actions. As a part of her antitrust practice, Jane has represented many of the firm’s clients in mergers and acquisitions subject to antitrust merger review and investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission. Jane has been interviewed for her litigation and antitrust experience by various publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Legal Times, Competition Law360, Modern Healthcare, Reuters and Bloomberg News Services.

Stewart B. Davis

CEO and President, Bioceptive

Dr. Stewart B. Davis, M.D. is a Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, President and a Director of Bioceptive, Inc. Stewart also serves as a Director of Locust Walk Partners, LLC. He served as the Chief Operating Officer of Cellular Technical Services Co. Inc. and SafeStitch Medical, Inc. He had also been Managing Partner and Medical Director of Parasol International, LLC. Dr. Davis was Assistant Medical Director for Innovia LLC and its affiliates, including InnFocus LLC, InnoGraft LLC and InnCardia LLC.

Dr. Davis has approximately ten peer-reviewed articles and three NIH grants and has published a book. He holds an MD from the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, as well Bachelors of Science in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Miami Honors Program.

Anne E. Vivian Gorden

Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at Auburn University

Anne is was honored for her contributions to the field of chemistry and society. In addition to her teaching and research, she is an author of numerous publications and has filed for two patents. Throughout her career she has been active in her community with groups who are proactive in improving educational opportunities for women in the sciences and in providing support for personal and professional development for female students in chemistry.

Anne currently leads the Gorden Research Group at Auburn University which aims to develop broad-ranging, state-of-the-art programs based on combining chemical synthesis and inorganic metal coordination chemistry, and to apply these to characterization of fundamental chemistry as well as practical applications. The Group’s current projects include ligand supported transition metal catalysts for green chemistry, the development of sensors and sensing materials for actinides,and fundamental actinide chemistry.

Anne holds a B.S/B.A, Chemistry/Literature from Emory University and a PhD in Chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin in synthetic organic and coordination chemistry with a specific interest in porphyrins and expanded porphyrins and their use in ion selective sensors.

Ronald S. Temple

Portfolio Manager/Analyst and Director of US Research at Lazard Asset Management

Ronald Temple, CFA, is a Managing Director, Co-Director of Research, Portfolio Manager, and Analyst at Lazard Asset Management LLC. Mr. Temple joined the firm in 2001, is a member of the US equity teams and the global equity select team, and is responsible for primary research coverage of the financials sector. Previously, he was a Director of Deutsche Bank from 1996 to 2001. Mr. Temple has been a member of the Advisory Board of Financial Accounting Foundation Inc. since January 01, 2013. He has extensive investment experience. Mr. Temple is a C.F.A. charter holder. He received an MPP in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 1992.

Karen Russell

Fiction writer

Karen Russell is a fiction writer whose haunting yet comic tales blend fantastical elements with psychological realism and classic themes of transformation and redemption. Setting much of her work in the Everglades of her native Florida, she depicts in lyrical, energetic prose an enchanting and forbidding landscape and delves into subcultures rarely encountered in contemporary American literature.

The vividly realized stories in her debut collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006), revolve around a cast of adolescents, often parentless, caught between the worlds of childhood and adulthood, wilderness and civilization, island and mainland, the living and the dead. In her novel Swamplandia! (2011), Russell revisits and expands on the opening story of her earlier collection, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” to explore the intricacies and consequences of a family’s grief following the death of their matriarch. Narrated primarily by its thirteen-year-old protagonist, Ava, the novel weaves together a chilling odyssey into a swampland netherworld; lush descriptions of the flora, fauna, and history of the Everglades region; and profound observations about human nature in the face of irreparable loss.

Russell’s recently published collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (2013), navigates new and diverse terrain, from a nineteenth-century silk factory in Japan, to a drought-ravaged homesteader settlement on the plains of Nebraska, to the traumatic memories of an Iraq War veteran. Through the wildly inventive premises of these and other stories, Russell is widening the scope of her already far-reaching and distinctive imagination.

Karen received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 from the MacArthur Foundation.

Karen Russell received a B.A. (2003) from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. (2006) from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and Oxford American. She was a fellow at the Cullman Center (2010) and at the American Academy of Berlin (2012), and she has taught writing and literature at Columbia University (2006–2009), Williams College (2009), Bard College (2011), Bryn Mawr College (2012), and the University of Rutgers, Camden (2013).

David V. Wilson, II

Shareholder, LeClairRyan

David was honored for his outstanding legal career in both the public sector and private practice. He has received many honors as a result of his expertise including selection for the Child Advocate of the Year Award, naming to Who’s Who in American Law and to Houston’s Top Lawyers Under 40, and admission to practice before the United States Supreme Court. He was instrumental in getting his law firm to be named an Equal Access to Justice Champion by the Houston Bar Association and serves as an adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law teaching law students about courtroom advocacy.

David holds a BS in Animal Science from Texas A&M University and a JD from South Texas College of Law.

Jocelyn Benson

Dean of Wayne State University Law School

Jocelyn Benson is the Dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan, where she was appointed in December 2012 at the age of 35, becoming the youngest woman to lead a top 100 law school in United States history. Jocelyn is a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan and a board member of the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Michigan Secretary of State in the November 2010 election and is the author of “State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.”

Benson graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College, where she founded the now-annual Women in American Political Activism conference and was the first student to be elected to serve in the governing body for the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts. She subsequently earned her Master’s in Sociology as a Marshall Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom, conducting research into the sociological implications of white supremacy and neo-Nazism. Prior to attending law school, Benson also lived in Montgomery, Alabama, where she worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center as an investigative journalist, researching white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. Benson has also worked as a summer associate for voting rights and election law for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and as a legal assistant to Nina Totenberg at National Public Radio.

Benson received her J.D. from Harvard University Law School, where she was a general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Ben Greenman

Contributing Editor, The New Yorker

Ben Greenman is contributing editor at The New Yorker. He is the author of ten books, including the novel “The Slippage” and the best-selling memoir “Mo’ Meta Blues” that he co-wrote with Ahmir-Khalib Thompson. His writing has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and Time Out New York. Greenman joined the staff of The New Yorker in 2000, and edited the magazine’s Goings On About Town section until 2014, when he became a contributing writer.

Julie Martin

Assistant Professor, Dept of Engineering and Science Education, Clemson University

Julie Martin, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Engineering and Science Education with a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson University. Her research interests focus on social factors affecting the recruitment, retention, and career development of under-represented students in engineering. Dr. Martin is a recent NSF CAREER award winner for her research entitled, “Influence of Social Capital on Under-Represented Engineering Students Academic and Career Decisions.”

Julie has been an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation as well as the National President of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network.

Julie holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from North Carolina State University and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Karl Douglass

Political Director at Jason Carter For Governor

An insightful and proven leader in political strategy and corporate communications with close to 20 years of diverse experience in government relations, community relations and business consulting. An entrepreneur, thought leader and game-changing consultant, Douglass is passionate about business and public affairs that impact the community. As a result, he is a frequently sought after source for the news media on issues of politics and government.

During his multifaceted career, Douglass has successfully led political campaigns and business ventures at the national, regional and local levels. He served as regional political director for the Obama-Biden Campaign for Change in 2008. He was also appointed to the Board of Examiners for psychologists by former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat, and re-appointed by Republican Governor Sonny Perdue. In 2010, Douglass served as Finance Director for Congressman Sanford Bishop’s successful re-election campaign.

An advocate for positive social change, Douglass is not only a well-respected campaign strategist and corporate consultant; he is a change agent. Douglass was recognized by Georgia Trend Magazine as one of Georgia’s 40 under 40. A native of Columbus, Georgia, he provides weekly radio commentary on the market’s top-rated morning show.

Dean Karlan

Professor of Economics, Yale University

Dean Karlan is an American development economist. He is Professor of Economics at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Karlan is also the President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a New Haven, Connecticut based research outfit dedicated to creating and evaluating solutions to social and international development problems. Along with economists Jonathan Morduch and Sendhil Mullainathan, Karlan serves as Director of the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a consortium of researchers focused on substantially expanding access to quality financial services for low-income individuals. He is also a co-founder of stickK.com.

Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Jennifer Wiley

Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago

Jennifer was honored for her expertise and research in the field of cognitive psychology. She is currently a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a faculty affiliate at the UIC Learning Sciences Research Institute, and a member of the Spatial Learning Network, Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC). Jennifer has published articles in prestigious journals and has been awarded numerous large research grants from highly competitive agencies.

Rachael Goodhue

Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis

Rachael Goodhue is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis. Her research interests center on agricultural organization and marketing, agricultural contracts, agri-environmental policy and regulation, pesticide use and regulation, applications of fuzzy logic in economics, economics of invasive species, property rights and natural resources.

Stacy Klein-Gardner

Director, Center for STEM Education for Girls at Harpeth Hall School

Dr. Stacy Klein-Gardner serves as the Director of the Center for STEM Education for Girls at the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, TN. Here she leads professional development opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for K-12 teachers and works to Identify and disseminate best practices from successful K12, university and corporate STEM programs for females. This Center also leads a program for rising 9th through 12th grade girls that integrates community service and engineering design in a global context. An engineer by training and in her ways of thinking, she received a BSE in biomedical and electrical engineering from Duke University in 1991. She then earned her M.S. from Drexel University in 1993 and her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1996.

Dr. Klein-Gardner’s career focuses on K-12 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, particularly as it relates to increasing interest and participation by females.

She continues to serve as an Adjoint Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering and Radiological Sciences at Vanderbilt University where she partners with other universities in NSF-funded research to develop the Engineering Design Process Portfolio Scoring Rubric. She ran NSF-funded programs such as Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) for nine years. She served as the Associate Dean for Outreach in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering from 2007-2010. She established the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) engineering pathway from K-12 with Race to the Top funding in 2010-2011 and is working with the state of Tennessee on potential adoption plans for the new Next Generation Science Standards.

Marc Starnes

Statistician, US Department of Transportation

Marc is a statistician in the Office of Safety, Strategic Integration Team, where he provides statistical analyses of many databases and works with many groups toward the goal of reducing fatalities, injuries, and other crashes. He also researches trends in fatalities, injuries, and property-damage only crashes and publishes Technical Reports and Research Notes. Marc also makes presentations at a variety of traffic safety conferences throughout the United States on topics including lives saved estimates, passenger restraint use, motorcycle helmet use, alcohol involvement in crashes, and trends in non-fatal traffic injuries. He chaired the NHTSA Training Council for two years.

Marc also taught math at Duke TIP for four years.

Kevin Young

Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emory University

Kevin Young is an American poet and teacher of poetry. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, held a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University (1992–94), and received his Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group the Dark Room Collective. He is heavily influenced by the poets Langston Hughes, John Berryman, and Emily Dickinson and by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers, Blues Poems, Jazz Poems, and John Berryman’s Selected Poems.

His poem “Black Cat Blues,” originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young’s poetry has also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.

His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award. Young was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2003, as well as an NEA Literature Fellow in Poetry.

After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.

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