Dr. Kawtar Hafidi, PhD (Moderator)

Dr. Hafidi is Argonne National Laboratory’s Associate Laboratory Director in the Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate. Prior to this appointment, Kawtar was the Division Director of Physics and the Associate Chief Scientist for Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD). She is an experimental nuclear physicist with more than 19 years of experience in leading and conducting fundamental research at major accelerator facilities in the United States and Europe. 

Kawtar had been on detail assignment to the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society who has received numerous awards recognizing her effective advocacy for increased diversity, both at Argonne and within the broader physics community. She is a co-author of more than 200 publications and has given more than 60 invited talks at international conferences, universities and laboratories. 

Dr. Alex Helman

Dr. Helman is a Program Officer with the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. During her time at the Academies, Dr. Helman has led the Prevention Working Group for the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education and was the co-lead for the recent report, Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in STEMM: Opening Doors. Currently, Dr. Helman is leading a new consensus study focused on inclusion of women and minoritized populations in clinical trials. Before joining the National Academies full time, Dr. Helman was as a 2018 Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies, where she worked on the 2018 report “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, Consequences in Academic, Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine”. Dr. Helman received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry from the University of Kentucky, and her B.S. in Biochemistry from Elon University. Dr. Helman is passionate about issues of health equity, dementia, and creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable scientific workforce. 

Dr. Blair Schneider

Dr. Schneider is an Associate Researcher and Science Outreach Manager for the Kansas Geological Survey. She is a co-PI for the NSF funded ADVANCEGeo team, which aims to improve workplace climate conditions in the geosciences through bystander intervention education and training. In addition to this work, Blair is a Past-President of the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) and the 2019-2020 chair of the Women’s Network Committee for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). She has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Geophysics from the University of Kansas, and completed a postdoc in STEM Education at the University of Kansas Center for Teaching Excellence.