Feb 14, 2025

EFF Resources - Building Infrastructures to Enhance Community Engagement Work

Session Title: Building Infrastructures to Enhance Community Engagement Work
Date and time: Friday, February 14, 2025 | 12pm ET US / 9am PT US
Moderator: Heini Natri, PhD
Presenters: Ishita Das, PhD, PMP; Alycia Halladay, PhD; & Celia van der Merwe, PhD
CERA Coordinator: Mildred Cho, PhD
The Broad Liaison: Alham Saadat, MBE
Staff: Ashlin Amano, David Lamb, Faryn Fairweather, Grace Morris

Biographies

MODERATOR: Dr. Heini Natri, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor within the Division of Bioinnovation and Genome Science at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. Their research is focused on uncovering the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms underlying phenotypic diversity, disease risk, pathogenesis, and treatment response. Dr. Natri pursues highly collaborative translational studies for the development of precision medicine interventions, as well as basic and applied studies widely relevant to human diversity, health, well-being, and the responsible use of genetic information in research and clinical decision making. Their ELSI-related work has focuses on community involvement and responsible research practices.

Link to Heini’s biography: https://www.tgen.org/faculty-profiles/heini-m-natri/

PANELIST: Dr. Ishita Das, PhD, PMP is a director in the Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC) at Milken Institute Strategic Philanthropy, where she leads the cross-disciplinary programmatic area. Her expertise lies in biomedical research, science policy, stakeholder engagement, workforce diversity, strategic planning, and project management. At the Milken Institute, she uses this knowledge to guide philanthropic investments to have a meaningful impact on science and health. Das advises philanthropists and foundations and implements strategies to deploy philanthropic capital to advance health research priorities. Previously, Das was at a management consulting firm where she led cross-functional teams to implement science/health initiatives for federal agencies, nonprofits, and public-private partnerships, including the National Institutes of Health, the Office for Human Research Protections, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Das received her bachelor's degree in biology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and her doctorate in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Link to Ishita’s biography: https://milkeninstitute.org/experts/ishita-das

PANELIST: Dr. Alycia Halladay, PhD is the Chief Science Officer for the Autism Science Foundation, where she oversees all of the scientific activities, grant programs, funding projects and scientific initiatives of ASF. Prior to joining ASF in 2014, she served as the Senior Director of Clinical and Environmental Sciences at Autism Speaks. She has authored over two dozen peer-reviewed papers in science journals around autism spectrum disorder, with a focus on the needs of the underserved and underrepresented in scientific research. She received a PhD in biopsychology from Rutgers in 2001 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ in 2004. She still holds a faculty appointment at Rutgers. She is the parent to a 14 year old daughter with ASD.

Link to Alycia’s biography: https://autismsciencefoundation.org/teams/dr-alycia-halladay/

PANELIST: Dr. Celia van der Merwe, PhD is the Research Director for the NeuroDev study, taking an active leadership role in study coordination, team management, collaboration, and operational oversight. She obtained her PhD in Human Genetics at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa in 2015, where she studied the molecular effects of mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease. She completed a 3-year postdoc at the University of Cape Town with a focus on genetic variation and correlation between psychiatric disorders and brain structure.

Link to Celia’s biography: https://gingerprogram.org/profiles/celia-van-der-merwe/

Resources Shared by the Panel

Ishita Das, PhD, PMP

Health Equity in Science: A Giving Smarter Guide:

https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports/reports/health-equity-science-giving-smarter-guide

Alham Saadat, MBE

Building Institutional Capacity for Engaged Research

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/28337/building-institutional-capacity-for-engaged-research-proceedings-of-a-workshop

Celia van der Merwe, PhD

Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D., Kapp, S. K., Baggs, A., Ashkenazy, E., McDonald, K., Weiner, M., Maslak, J., Hunter, M., & Joyce, A. (2019). The AASPIRE practice-based guidelines for the inclusion of autistic adults in research as co-researchers and study participants. Autism, 23(8), 2007–2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319830523

CERA Resources

We invite you to browse ELSIhub Collections. ELSIhub Collections are essential reading lists on fundamental or emerging topics in ELSI, curated and explained by expert Collection Editors, often paired with ELSI trainees: https://elsihub.org/resources/collections

This session’s featured ELSIhub Collection: Science and Technology Studies (STS) for ELSI Research curated by Julia T. Gordon, BA, Sociology PhD Student, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco and Janet K. Shim, PhD, MPP, Professor, Doctoral Program in Sociology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco

Visit the ELSIhub website: https://elsihub.org/

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