Session 2H: Broadening Participation - Why Are We Failing to Move the Needle?

Breaking Barriers: Cultivating Inclusivity in Physics Through Culturally Responsive Spaces

Claudia received her PhD in Physics Education from Kansas State University (KSU) in 2016. After graduation, she joined the Physics Education Research Group (CU PER) as a postdoctoral fellow doing research on the impact of participation in informal physics programs for the different stakeholders as well as directing the Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) program. She was then a Marie Curie Fellow at University College Dublin where she conducted research in informal science programs on Physics Identity development. She is currently the Head of Public Engagement at the American Physical Society and continues to collaborate with the CU PER group on different research projects.   

HBCUs: A National Security Asset

Victor R. McCrary is the Vice President for Research at the University of the District of Columbia. Prior to this position, he was Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and before that the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD. Victor serves as Vice Chair of NSB, Chair of the USRA HBCU S&T Council and recently elected to the executive committee of the Council for Research (COR) of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU). He is a former national president of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.   

Developing the Workforce of the Future at DOE National Labs

Faith Dukes, Ph.D. currently serves as the Director of K-12 STEM Education Programs within the Government and Community Relations Office at Berkeley Lab. Her work is at the intersection of STEM research, education, equity and inclusion. Prior to her work at Berkeley Lab she held positions at the MIT Museum and National Science Foundation focusing on STEM curriculum development and STEM education policy. She holds a bachelors of science from Spelman College and completed her PhD in physical chemistry studying photocatalytic semiconductors at Tufts University.   

Racial disparities in research funding

Christine Yifeng Chen is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she is developing radiochronometric dating tools for nuclear forensics investigations of interdicted nuclear materials. In 2022, Chen led a study showing systemic racial disparities in funding rates at the National Science Foundation. This work was covered in various outlets such as Science Magazine and The New York Times, and recognized by President Biden with an invitation to the White House for the CHIPS and Science Act signing ceremony.   

Going from here to there - Improving HBCUs capacity to produce more African American STEM PhDs

Raymond Samuel is a Professor in the Department of Biology at North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T). He is the PI of the NC A&T ExpandQISE Track 2: NC A&T QISE Research Workforce Programs, which aims the increase the engagement of faculty and students in the QISE ecosystem. He is actively involved in the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center and serves as the PI of a subaward from the NSF Convergence Accelerator QuSTEAM, who is developing QISE course for diverse undergraduate institutions. He is actively involved in the DOE's Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage, including serving as Moderator for the Quantum Thursdays Seminar Series. He has expertise in effective strategies to enhance the diversity of STEM research workforce, particularly in biomedical sciences, materials science, and QISE.   

Hostile policies drive brain drain from the United States

Xiaoxing Xi is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics at Temple University, AAAS Fellow and APS Fellow. Prior to joining Temple in 2009, he was a Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD degree in physics from Peking University and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, in 1987. After several years of research at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center, Germany, Bell Communication Research/Rutgers University, and University of Maryland, he joined the Physics faculty at Penn State in 1995, and was named chairman of Temple University's physics department in 2014. In 2015, the FBI raided his home and arrested him at gunpoint in front of his wife and 2 daughters, charging him for sharing US company technology with China. All charges were subsequently dropped 4 months later. Since then, he has spoken out actively for open fundamental research and against racial profiling, for which he received the American Physical Society 2020 Andrei Sakharov Prize.