Karen Saban is the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing Endowed Chair for Research at Loyola University Chicago. Since 2020, she has served as the school’s associate dean for research and scholarly innovation. Her background includes over two decades of experience as a critical care and neuroscience nurse. As a scholar, she has conducted extensive research on reducing heart disease and stroke disparities among underrepresented women.
Dr. Saban received a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in nursing from Loyola University Chicago.
Robin Bell is the Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professor for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Currently, she is overseeing research programs in Antarctica and Greenland, working to develop technology to monitor the changing planet. More specifically, her work focuses on ice sheet dynamics and mass balance, the science of diversity, continental tectonics, and estuarine processes.
Dr. Bell is a magna cum laude graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, where she majored in geology. She holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia University.
Alicia Barnes is the inaugural Urban Child Institute Endowed Chair of Excellence for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. In this role, she will oversee clinical and research initiatives focused on early childhood mental illness and its associated risk factors. A faculty member since 2023, she previously served as associate director of the Center for Youth Advocacy and Well-Being.
Dr. Barnes received her bachelor’s degree in nutritional biological psychology from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, a master of public health degree in social and behavioral health from Temple University in Philadelphia, and a doctor of osteopathic medicine degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Julie Nelson Davis is the Paul F. Miller, Jr. and E. Warren Shafer Miller Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She first joined the Penn faculty in 2002 and has served as undergraduate chair, graduate chair, and department chair. Her research centers on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese art, with a focus on prints, paintings, and illustrated books.
A graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Dr. Davis received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington.