PhD Student, Sociocultural Anthropology, Columbia University

Rishav is currently a third year PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at Columbia University. He studies articulations of, and claims around, identity and belonging in Assam, India.

Madiha Tahir

Ph.D. candidate, Film, Columbia University,

Madiha Tahir has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and is a writer, filmmaker, and former journalist focusing on drone warfare, surveillance, and empire. She is the director of Wounds of Waziristan, a short documentary essay film on survivors of drone attacks.

Jade Tan

Doctoral Student, Health Policy Management and Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Columbia University

Jade Tan is a graduate student in Public Health at Columbia University, concentrating in Health Policy Management and Infectious Disease Epidemiology. She has a B.A. from the University of Virginia in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law (PPL), as well as Biomedical Ethics. Her work and interests focus on human genetic engineering ethics, precision medicine technology, neuroscience, synthetic biology, philosophy of mind, jurisprudence and constitutional law, and the ethical, philosophical, sociopolitical, legal, and deeply human dimensions of future technologies.

Lewis Rubin Thompson

Doctoral Student, Medicine, Columbia University

Lewis is a student associate of On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics. He completed Columbia University’s post-baccalaureate pre-medical program in May 2019, and is currently in the process of applying to medical school.

Fern Thompsett

Fern Thompsett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation research explores the Anti-Civilization Movement, an anarchist environmental movement that coheres around an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist critique of mass agriculture.

Solomon Torres

Doctoral Student, Genomic Medicine, Columbia University

Solomon Torres currently works at the Columbia University’s Institute for Genomic Medicine as the Operations Manager for the All of Us Research Program. In the present-day where big-data and genomics are shaping the future of medical care and public health, he is interested in gaining the skills in epidemiological research methods and biostatistical analysis to contribute to the advancement of biomedical and public health research. Through the PMEPC project, he hopes to gain additional insight as to the research that will make use of the precision medicine approach to address health disparities, inequalities, and emerging diseases nationally and globally with an emphasis in Latin America.

Kate Trebuss

Doctoral Student, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Kate Trebuss is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her dissertation, entitled "Critical Care: Medical Life Writing, Memory, and the Politics of Health," investigates how contemporary autobiographical stoies of illness and medical care facilitate the remembering and forgetting of certain histories and current conditions of violence, oppression, invisibility and inequality, as well as the connections between them.

Brendane Tynes

Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, Columbia University

Brendane Tynes is a queer Black feminist scholar and storyteller from Columbia, South Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Education from Duke University. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University, where she studies the affective responses of Black people to multiple forms of violence within the Movement for Black Lives. Her scholarship receives generous support from the Ford Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Alanna Valdez

Doctoral Student, Philosophy, CUNY

Alanna Valdez is a Master’s student in philosophy at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. She also holds a Master’s degree in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs from American University’s School of International Service, where she wrote her thesis on how the recently ratified UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities shifts disability rights to a human rights perspective. Her philosophical interests include: personhood, agency, and non-rational justifications for human rights.

Stephanie Valentinetti

Doctoral Student, Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, Columbia University

Stephanie Valentinetti is a Project Coordinator at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center and a graduate student in Columbia's Master's in Bioethics program. She studies ethical issues related to mHealth technology, wearable devices, and data ownership. Stephanie's thesis will focus on the ethics of professional athletes' use of wearable and biometric technologies. Prior to CUMC, she spent four years at Major League Baseball working in anti-doping for the Department of Investigations.

Ife Salema Vanable

Ph.D. Candidate, Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University

Ife Salema Vanable is an architect, theorist, and historian who holds professional and post-professional degrees in architecture from Cornell and Princeton Universities. Ife is founder and leader of i/van/able, a New York based architectural workshop and think tank. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union and a Ph.D. candidate in architectural history and theory at Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Naazanene Vatan

Doctoral Student, Health, Medicine and Society, University of Cambridge

Naazanene Vatan is a medical student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her interests include the intersections of literature and medicine; pregnancy and childbirth; and philosophies of scientific progress. Naazanene graduated with a B.A. from Columbia College in Biology and Medicine, Literature, and Society.

Ayesha Verma

Emmanuel Von Schack

Doctoral Student, Art History, Hunter College

Emmanuel von Schack is a deaf art history graduate student at Hunter College; his master's thesis focuses on German artists who were veterans of the First World War and the works of art they created during and after the War. By interweaving disability theories with Foucauldian feminist and queer theories, he explores the complex relationship between masculinity and disability as conveyed in Weimar culture and art. He works as an educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R.

Amy Weissenbach

PhD Student, Sociology, Columbia University

Amy Weissenbach is a first-year PhD student in sociology at Columbia University. She is interested in the sociology of knowledge and expertise, cultural sociology, and law and society. She aims to understand dynamics among individuals and institutions shaping notions of social responsibility in tech, and in biotech in particular. She holds an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine from Cambridge University and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Kevin Windhauser

PhD Candidate, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Kevin Windhauser is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, writing on the relationship between Renaissance literature and the development of library systems in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.

Glenn Wolther

Doctoral Student, Neuroscience, Biobehavioral Sciences, Columbia University

Glenn Wolther is a Master of Science candidate in Neuroscience within the Biobehavioral Sciences Department. His diverse research interests include the interrelated genetic, transcriptional, and proteomic changes involved with short- and long-term synaptic potentiation; ways of better integrating research in neurobiology at the molecular, cellular and systems level with cognitive and affective neuroscience and neuropsychology; and the relationship of neuroscience to the law.

Alexa Woodward

Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University

Alexa Woodward is a newly accepted graduate student in the Bioethics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. She graduated with honors from California State University Chico with a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2015, having also competed an Honors Thesis focused on autonomy, futility, and end of life issues. After graduate school, she plans on attending medical school or pursuing a Ph.D. program. Outside of academia, Alexa is an ardent fitness enthusiast, artist, and vocalist.

Daniella Wurst

Doctoral Candidate, Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University

Daniella Wurst is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. She is a graduate member at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality and a Teaching Scholar at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.

Lee Xie

Ph.D. Candidate, Spanish & Portuguese, New York University

Lee Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at New York University. She holds a B.A. in Spanish (high honors) and Journalism (double major) from New York University. She works at the intersections of diaspora studies and feminist aesthetics: her dissertation considers how Chinese diasporas are remembered in contemporary feminist aesthetic practices in Latin America and the Caribbean

Armanc Yıldız

PhD Student, Anthropology, Harvard University

Armanc Yildiz is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. His current research interests are sexuality, race, labor, political economy, colonialism, migration, Germany, and the anthropology of Europe. He received his master’s degree (with Distinction) in International Performance Research at the University of Warwick. He has a bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in Cultural Studies with a minor on Art Theory and Criticism at Sabanci University.

Jon Zaikowski

Doctoral Student, Bioethics, Columbia University

Jon Zaikowski is the co-founder of CapCell Biologics, a NASA-spinout biotechnology startup developing implants to treat rare diseases. He is a graduate student in Bioethics at Columbia University, having previously graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with a BA in History and Philosophy.

Rafia Zaman

Doctoral Student, Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

Rafia Zaman is presently pursuing her doctoral thesis in Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India under the supervision of Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan. She is interested in the intersectionality of gender and identity politics represented by Muslim women. As part of her M.Phil, she wrote a dissertation on the topic “ ‘Islamic Feminism’: A Critical Appraisal”. Her current research focuses on Muslim women’s activism in India from the period following the Shah Bano controversy till the present.

Helen Zhao

PhD Candidate, Philosophy, Columbia University

Helen Zhao is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Columbia University, specializing in the philosophy of science and medicine. As the inaugural Graduate Fellow in Medical Humanities, she is the Network Administrator for the CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network.

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