Panel Discussion and Reception at UMass Amherst: October 17, 2023

Stephanie Couch

Executive Director, The Lemelson-MIT Program

In this role, Stephanie leads a team which help educators and students across the U.S. learn ways inventors find and solve important problems.

She has dedicated her career to K-12 and higher education policy issues and is an active participant in a national invention education research group. Her research as an ethnographer in education focuses on issues that are key to advancing equity within the field of invention education and STEM learning opportunities. She studies ways invention education impacts students (especially those from underrepresented backgrounds), schools, and local communities. She also works to understand the developmental trajectory of inventors as opposed to their inventions.

Locally, she is spearheading a consortium in Cambridge, MA that will operate a new 50,000 square foot community center for STEM and the arts opening in 2022. Prior to joining the Lemelson-MIT Program, Couch was the Interim Associate Vice President of Research and Professional Development at California State University, East Bay, served as Bayer Executive Director of the Institute for STEM Education, and was the Director for Gateways East Bay STEM Network. These opportunities came about as a result of her work in teaching and learning with technologies while employed by the Corporation for Education Networking Initiatives in California (CENIC).

Stephanie received an Associate of Arts Degree from Modesto Junior College; a Bachelor of Arts Degree, Political Science, from University of California, Davis; and a Master/PhD in Education, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Ina Ganguli

Professor of Economics at UMass Amherst and Director of the UMass Computational Social Science Institute 

Ina’s research areas are labor economics and the economics of science and innovation. I have recently studied topics such as the international migration of students and scientists, gender disparities in labor markets, and the formation of scientific collaborations.

Ina is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), an Affiliated Researcher at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) at the Stockholm School of Economics, and a Faculty Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Laboratory for Innovation Science (LISH) at Harvard University.

I received honorable mention for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Dissertation Award and in 2018 received the Russian National Prize in Applied Economics, awarded biennially to recognize published research on the Russian economy. I was a Fulbright scholar in Ukraine in 2004 and have served as a U.S. Embassy Policy Specialist Fellow in Russia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan.

April Burrage

Phd Candidate, Economics of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

April's research fields are labor economics, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Her research encompasses three primary areas of focus: (i) investigating gender and racial disparities in the knowledge economy, (ii) evaluating the productivity of workers in high-growth sectors, and (iii) exploring the determinants that drive individuals to engage in inventive pursuits. Her dissertation research focuses on the impact of state-level policy interventions on high-tech firms' interest in federal funding for their businesses, as well as the role of underrepresented groups in the invention process.

Dr. Rae Walker

Associate Professor of Nursing, UMass Amherst

Rae (they/them) is an Associate Professor, Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and the first and only nurse to be selected as an Invention Ambassador for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They direct the PhD Program at the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing and serve as an Associate Director of the IALS Center for Personalized Health Monitoring, a translational science center specializing in critical analysis and co-creation of A.I., sensors, and mHealth. Following service in the U.S. Peace Corps, they completed their nursing training, PhD, Certificates in Nursing Education and Health Inequities, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. They teach courses on data narratives, measurement, and power, and their scholarship focuses on community-directed health innovation and digital defense against technologies and data regimes that cause harm. Their advocacy for nurse-led innovation, design justice and more inclusive invention ecosystems has been featured on numerous podcasts, on the TEDx stage, and in magazines such as Forbes, Scientific American, Science and on NPR

Dr. Juan M. Jiménez

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, UMass Amherst

Juan received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.  His Ph.D. work focused on turbulence conducting the highest Reynolds number wake measurements ever conducted.  He transitioned to the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Medicine and Engineering as a postdoctoral fellow to study the effects of fluid flow on implantable biomedical devices like stents.  He stayed at Penn as a faculty member for several years studying the fundamentals of fluid dynamics that are relevant in the development and progression of diseases like atherosclerosis, response of vascular endothelial cells to fluid flow stimuli, blood fluid flow parameters that can lead to the development of blood clots within the vascular system and implantable devices, and development of biomedical devices that incorporate the fundamentals of both engineering and biology for clinical success. He is a triple early career grant awardee of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) K25 Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award, National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, and Biomedical Engineering Society Innovation and Career Development Award.  He is also a recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the Gordon Research Conference on Biomechanics in Vascular Biology & Disease."

John Fabel

Inventor, Entrepreneur, Teacher, Amherst Regional High School; Faculty, UMass Amherst

John is widely recognized both for his pioneering work in sustainable technology innovation and commercialization, and for his work as an educator in entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability. Originally trained as a climate scientist, much of his work focuses on developing meaningful markets and methods for low-carbon products, manufacturing, and a circular economy.
As an inventor and designer, he holds or is named on numerous patents ranging from structural engineering to microbial genomics. John’s work is held in the collection of several museums, including the Smithsonian. He was a featured inventor in the Smithsonian’s “Invention at Play” exhibit that ran for a decade at the National Museum of American History. He was featured in author Daniel Pink’s best-selling “A Whole New Mind”, on the new wave of innovators and design-thinkers driving change. He is also a featured inventor in the new “Invention” Merit Badge publication of the BSA. John and his work have been widely featured in the media, including Discovery, NPR, The New York Times, Popular Science, and so on.
Throughout his career John has bridged commercial and academic sectors. Within the academic sector, John has worked extensively to develop & deliver innovative pedagogy for innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainability education. As a serial clean-tech and social entrepreneur, John has founded several companies, and involved in the development and mentoring of many others. These include the ecotrek company, which pioneered the comprehensive use of recycled polymers and “cradle-to-cradle” design in outdoor products (an early effort to create high-value markets for sustainable materials), and Sunethanol (now Qteros) a sustainable biofuels company co-founded with microbiologist Dr. Susan Leschine. Recent work includes founding the bicycle and materials development company Sylvan Cycles. Sylvan uses bicycles as an R&D platform for high-performance structural materials based on low-carbon footprint manufacturing.

Angelina Caggiano 

Master’s and PhD Student, Department of Civil Engineering, UMass Amherst

After completing her undergraduate studies at UMass Amherst, Angelina decided to conduct research in the areas of transportation safety and driver understanding of traffic control devices with emphasis on vulnerable road user infrastructure. Angelina has internship experience as an Intelligent Transportation Systems Intern (IBI Group) and Highway Safety Intern (VHB).  Angelina also serves as the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter President and Joint Transportation Organization (JTO) co-chair. Within these organizations, Angelina strengthens her industry networking skills by attending conferences and presenting her research. Additionally, this year she joined together with a group of Civil engineering students to create the Civil & Environmental Engineering Graduate Student Organization to foster inclusivity and community within the department. 

To culminate her admiration for ITS and vulnerable road user safety, Angelina plans to pursue research of mid-block crosswalk systems to develop a mental model of thought processes when both drivers and pedestrians interact with infrastructure and each other. 

In the beginning of her graduate studies, Angelina was motivated to participate in the Technology Challenge with a cohort of transportation and electrical engineering students. Together they pitched the design and small-scale prototype of GlowSafely: a passive detection system that uses a unique lighting array to light the way of pedestrians and cyclists to foster safe and efficient travel. GlowSafely was awarded the 2^nd place prize of $8,000 to advance their startup. Now, GlowSafely aims to develop a larger-scale prototype and begin field data tests or driving simulator experiments. 

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