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Samara is an undergraduate studying neuroscience at Rice University in Houston, TX. She works as a research assistant for Dr. Yvette E. Pearson in the George R. Brown School of Engineering. Her primary research focus is the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering education.

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Dr. Canek Phillips is a Research Scientist at in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University where his research interests touch broadly on efforts to promote greater equity for underrepresented groups in engineering. Canek earned his PhD from the Purdue School of Engineering Education in 2016 and worked as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Alice Pawley’s Feminist Research in Engineering Education Lab. Canek was brought on at Rice originally as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2017 on an NSF-funded study that investigates the efficacy of an audio-based method of learning mathematics where he now serves as Co-PI. In 2019, he began working as Co-PI on another NSF-funded study to reduce barriers in the hiring of underrepresented racial minority faculty in data science and data engineering fields.

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Dr. Yvette E. Pearson holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering and M.S. in Chemistry from Southern University and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from the University of New Orleans. She is Associate Dean for Accreditation and Assessment in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University, a Program Evaluator for the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, a registered Professional Engineer in Louisiana, a former Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation, and a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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Reginald DesRoches is the Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As School Chair, he provides leadership to a top-ranked program with 100 faculty and staff and 1,100 students. His primary research interests are in design of resilient infrastructure systems under extreme loads. He has published more than 250 articles in the general area of resilience and seismic risk assessment.

Dr. DesRoches has served as the key technical leader in the United States’ response to the Haiti earthquake and led a team of 28 engineers, architects, city planners, and social scientists to study the impact of the earthquake. He has also participated in numerous congressional briefings to underscore the critical role that university research must play in addressing the country’s infrastructure crisis and resilience to natural hazards. Dr. DesRoches has served as thesis advisor to 29 Doctoral and 17 Master’s thesis students.

Dr. DesRoches has served as Chair of the ASCE Seismic Effects Committee (2006-2010), Chair of the executive committee of the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (2010), and Board of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). He is currently a member of the executive committee of the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Risk, Resilience, and Extreme Events, a member of National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate Advisory Committee, and is a member of the National Academies Board on Army Science and Technology (BAST). Dr. DesRoches has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2002 — the highest honor bestowed upon scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. Most recently, he was a recipient of the 2007 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, the 2015 ASCE Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award, the Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award (2010), and the Georgia Tech ANAK Award (2008). The ANAK award is the highest honor the undergraduate student body can bestow on a Georgia Tech faculty member.

Dr. DesRoches earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1990, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering in 1998 — all from the University of California, Berkeley. He was inducted into Berkeley’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni from Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2015.

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STEPHEN MATTINGLY is a Professor in Civil Engineering and the Director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Previously, he worked at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Irvine and University of Alaska, Fairbanks. His most recent research projects address a variety of interdisciplinary topics including developing an app for crowd-sourcing bicycle and pedestrian conflict data, transportation public health performance measures, policy and infrastructure improvements resulting from bicycle and pedestrian fatality crashes, linking physical activity levels to travel modes, transportation mobility for the transportation disadvantaged, and the development of planning and transit performance measures for access to opportunities, integrating sustainability into the engineering curriculum and creating an engineering sustainability minor.

He has published several articles in the Transportation Research Record, other journals and conferences on these and other related topics. He is currently serving on the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Aircraft/Airport Compatibility and is a past member of the TRB Committees on Traffic Flow and Characteristics and Transportation Network Modeling. Stephen is also a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

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