Governance

Executive Committee Biographies

Chair:

Chair-Elect:

Vice-Chair:

Dr. Kay Kinoshita (she/her/hers)

Kay Kinoshita is a Professor at the University of Cincinnati and served as Head of the Department of Physics in 2009-16. Under her initiative, U. Cincinnati became an APS Bridge Program Member Institution in 2012, an APS Bridge Partnership Institution in 2016, and a member of the APS-IDEA network in 2020. The department's engagement with these APS programs has triggered a significant evolution of the graduate program that include multiple paths to PhD candidacy, professional development, and community building.

Kinoshita's research in experimental particle physics has primarily been focused on heavy flavors, most recently with the Belle/Belle II experiment at the KEK laboratory in Japan. In 2016-8, she served as the inaugural chair of the Belle II Diversity Committee. Her other work includes accelerator searches for magnetic monopoles and models of biological effects of radiation.

She earned AB and AM degrees in physics at Harvard University and her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She then returned to Harvard, first as a postdoc and then as the second woman Assistant Professor in the history of the Physics Department. She joined Virginia Tech in 1993 as a Professor and moved to the University of Cincinnati in 1998. She was elected a Fellow of the APS in 2001.

Past Chair:

Secretary/Treasurer:

Dr. Helen Jackson

Upon receiving her Doctor of Philosophy from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, she was recorded as being the 83rd African American female to graduate with a Ph.D. in Physics. While carrying out her Ph.D. research, she developed a patent for radiation hardness for heterostructure semiconductors. For this, she was honored at the US patent office (2016).

Her education also includes a Bachelor of Science from  Tennessee  State University in Physics and a Master of Science in Physics from Fisk University. Prior to completing a Doctor of Philosophy in Nuclear Physics in the Department of Engineering Physics at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology in 2014, she did Ph.D. studies in Nuclear Physics at Vanderbilt University. In addition to APS, she is with the ANS, IEEE, MRS,  NYAS, and the African Scientific Institute, who inducted her as a fellow.

Dr. Jackson’s university-level experience includes a  Fisk University Research Associate and as a Nuclear Medicine Research Associate with Vanderbilt University. She had visiting scientist stays at 3 of the National labs: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she did research for nuclear nonproliferation and advanced detectors. She was a visiting professor at Wright State University where she mentored physics students with disabilities.

She publishes a daily technical newsletter that is curated for artificial intelligence and physics: https://paper.li/The-Helen-Jackson-Daily#/. She has technical publications on: https://helenjackson.academia.edu and has published in the arena of STEM diversity, inclusion, and equity. ( “The Role of Women in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion”, Thomas & Drake, IGI Global, 2019).

Assigned Council Representative:

Member-at-Large:

Dr. Lisa J. Kaufman (she/her/hers)

BS Physics and Mathematics from William and Mary in 2000, MS (2000) and Ph.D. (2007) Physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst working on parity violation at Jefferson Lab.  While a grad student, Lisa was involved with Women in Physics groups, served as a representative for departmental and laboratory graduate student groups, and was involved in many outreach activities such as BEAMS at JLab, Science Bowl volunteer, and JLab Open House volunteer.  After a post-doc position with the University of Maryland, she was an assistant professor at Indiana University (IU) working on neutrinoless double beta decay research with the EXO-200 and nEXO collaborations.  She has given public lectures, performed outreach at local schools, served as both mentor and mentee in various programs, organized Women in Physics group and events, volunteered with LSAMP Indiana, and worked on establishing the APS-Bridge Program at IU.  In 2017, she became a scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory where she is an active member of the Committee for Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement Employee Resource Group emphasizing work with underrepresented groups in physics and engineering.  She spearheaded the application for, and is co-leading, the SLAC APS-IDEA team.  Within her collaboration, she helped to create the Code of Conduct and is now chair of the Code of Conduct committee and is an active member of the collaboration EDI committee.

Brian Zamarripa Roman (he/him)

Born and raised in the metropolitan borderland of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Brian earned his bachelor's degree physics degree at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2015. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Central Florida working on qualitative re-conceptualizations of success in physics to expand cultural notions of success through the amplification and inclusion of the perspectives of women in physics. In addition to scholarly contributions, Brian maintains an active engagement with the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP), the AAPT Committee on Diversity in Physics, and the Physics Education Research Consortium of Graduate Students.