Dr. Chilton was a pioneer in the field of plant biotechnology. While on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, she and a team of colleagues created the first genetically modified plants while studying how to remove harmful bacterium from the DNA of trees.
Dr. Newkirk was the first faculty member of color in the College of Home Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where served as chair of the department of home economics education for 20 years. Dr. Newkirk was also the first African American elected president of the American Home Economics Association.
Dr. McKinney recently retired earlier this year as a professor emerita of music at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She served as founding director of the university's graduate and undergraduate programs in music therapy.
Dr. Benningfield taught in Virginia Tech's doctoral program in marriage and family therapy for nearly a decade. She was a leader in the broader field of counseling and was twice elected president of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
At the time of her passing, Dr. Okoro was in her eleventh year of teaching at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte School of Nursing. Her scholarship centered on chronic illness management and caregiver support.
Dr. Logan was in her 13th year of teaching as a professor of sociology at Hastings College in Nebraska at the time of her passing. She had a wide range of scholarly interests, including social justice, criminology, and women's and gender studies.
In 1965, Dr. Huang became the first woman hired to a tenure-track professorship in the physical sciences at Johns Hopkins University. An expert in genetics, she authored more than 300 papers, held 16 patents, and mentored more than 100 students and postdocs throughout her lifetime.
For the past four years, Dr. Young was dean of her alma mater, the Dental College of Georgia at Augusta University. She had been a faculty member at the college since 2012.
Dr. di Bonaventura was an academic administrator for Yale University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for nearly two decades. She ultimately served as the school's lead academic dean for students.
Dr. Warren was the founding director of the program in women's studies at Princeton University. Later in her career, she taught at Harvard University and Brown University, where she served as director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
