Members

Stuart Feldman is Co-CEO and Chief Scientist of Schmidt Futures where he is responsible for the Scientific Knowledge programs, including creating fellowship programs, supporting nascent innovative research projects, and driving new platforms and larger research projects that aim to change the way scientific research is done.

Stuart did his academic work in astrophysics and mathematics and earned his AB at Princeton and his PhD at MIT. Stuart is best known for writing “Make” and other essential tools. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Mathematics by the University of Waterloo. He is the former President of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and a former member of the board of directors of the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). He received the 2003 ACM Software System Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. He is the Board Chair of the Center for the Minorities and Disabled in IT, serves on a number of university advisory boards and National Academy panels, and has served on a wide variety of government advisory committees.

Edem seeks to investigate and understand the dynamics and the spread of infectious diseases using mathematical models.

Dr. Trina L. Fletcher is an Assistant Professor at Florida International University and has extensive experience across industry, the non-profit sector and academia when it comes to underrepresented minorities (URMs) and women in engineering and computing education. Her research areas include diversity, equity and inclusion within K-12 STEM education and the role of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the production of Blacks in STEM. Additionally, Dr. Fletcher is focusing on how proven industry best practices, such as Six Sigma, can be used to recruit and retain women and minorities in engineering and computing for both higher education and industry. She is currently a steering committee member for EngineerGirl, an initiative by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to increase the number of girls going into engineering. She is also an associate editor for the Journal for Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering (JWM). Prior to FIU, Dr. Fletcher worked for Johnson and Johnson and served as the Director of Pre-college Programs for the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). Within that role, Dr. Fletcher planned and managed a team and annual $3 million budget that provided free access to STEM education for thousands of minority students across the United States. Dr. Fletcher currently serves as Principal Investigator for two different grants totaling over half a million dollars from the National Science Foundation focused on researching the best practices in STEM at HBCUs and the impact of COVID-19 on the institutions. She also works as the lead faculty member for research linked to programming through the Center for Diversity and Student Success in the College of Engineering and Computing (CD-SSEC) at FIU.

As a research engineer at the Institute for Disease Modeling, Kurt Frey has worked on two projects: (1) Global Health - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he worked on estimating the burden of congenital rubella syndrome in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under various vaccine introduction scenarios, characterizing the impact of supplemental immunization activities on the spread of SARS-CoV-2, epidemiological modeling and (2) Global Good - Intellectual Ventures where he worked on campaign planning for vaccine-preventable diseases, evaluating strategies for measles control in Nigeria using supplemental immunization activities, and epidemiological modeling and campaign planning for vaccine-preventable diseases.