Meet the Core Organizers

Luis Miguel de Jesús Astacio (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. His doctoral research, performed at UIUC, focused on how microbes recycle nutrients. Luis’ involvement with the Access Network started when he joined the leadership of Illinois GPS at UIUC in 2018. Since then, he has assumed different roles within the Network: Assembly Fellow (AF), AF mentor and now as Core Organizer (CO). His current interests as a CO are to share the accumulated knowledge and resources of the Network with the intention to fund an Access site at UPR. In his free time, he enjoys camping, fishing, training and working on his life-long dream of living in an off-grid self-sustainable farm.

Mackenzie Carlson (she/her) is a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She is a part of the Sounding Rocket Group, where she co-leads the current rocket mission, OAxFORTIS, which is equipped with a far-UV spectroscopic and imaging telescope. Mackenzie first started in Access as an undergraduate student at University of Maryland, College Park where she became involved with the UMD Access site, Equity Constellation. In addition to being a leader of Equity Constellation, she also acted as an Assembly Fellow for two years. As an Assembly Fellow, she helped organize the Annual Access Assembly. In 2022, she acted as an Assembly Fellow mentor and became a Core Organizer. Experiencing each level of Access throughout a pivotal period of her career had a tremendous influence on her outlook on academia and supportive communities. In her free time, she enjoys painting and spending time in nature and with her partner and babies (furry and plant).

Noah Charles (he/him) is the Scholar in Residence in Physics at Reed College. His research focuses on the physics of electron localization in 2D materials. As a graduate student, Noah co-founded Ohio State’s Polaris Access site; in this capacity, he helped launch both a mentorship program and summer early-start opportunity for Physics and Astronomy undergrads. Within the broader Access Network, Noah has served as a task force member and now Core Organizer. Noah’s values Access both for its contributions to his own development and as he sees it creating change in many academic institutions.

Joel Corbo (he/him) is a senior research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder. He studies and implements structures for supporting institutional change in higher education at the department level (e.g., the DAT Project and the EP3 DALIs). He is an Access co-founder and Core Organizer, and he also helped to found and lead the Berkeley Compass Project (one of the original Access sites) back when he was a grad student in the Berkeley physics department. As a Core Organizer, Joel has worked on back-end logistics for the CO team and has co-mentored six teams of Assembly Fellows in planning Access Assemblies. He greatly values the relationships and community that he has formed by being part of Access.

Joel is originally a New Yorker and has a strong affinity for city life because of that. Stuff that he likes besides physics and trying to improve academia include board games, puzzle solving, musical theater, and sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction (e.g., Star Trek, N. K. Jemisin’s writing, Pixar films). You can find out more about him at .

Rob Dalka (he/him) is currently a graduate student in Physics Education Research (PER) at the University of Maryland. He got involved in Access through work with his research advisor, Chandra Turpen, and attended his first Access Assembly virtually in 2021 and first in-person Assembly in 2022. Rob has contributed to the internal evaluation of the Access Network and deeply appreciates the values that Access organizes around and the emphasis on collective student leadership. Access offers a vision of what could be different about STEM higher education through mentoring students into inclusive leadership and supporting students in taking agency over their work. In my participation on the CO team, I hope to help capture these aspects of Access in ways that can be shared for others to understand and value in their own work.

Scott Franklin is a Professor of Physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research interests include granular materials, particularly non-round particles that entangle, professional development of emerging education researchers, and how faculty change through their participation in diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice programming. He started RIT’s IMPRESS program, an original Access site, to explore student metacognition in the classroom and has been an Access CO since the Network’s formation. He is deeply appreciative of all he has learned from Access COs, AFs and NFs, and other participating students and truly values how Access centers the voices of students, an unfortunate rarity in academia. Scott’s hobbies include coffee and ultimate frisbee, and he continues to push his body to explore the limits of how much of both it can tolerate.

Emily Griffith (she/her) is an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She recently completed her Ph.D. at Ohio State, where she analyzed stellar abundances from large spectroscopic surveys to decode aspects of Galactic chemical evolution. Her current work strives to apply the methods developed in her thesis to other stellar populations, such as the MW satellites. Emily has been part of Access for six years, getting her start with Polaris at Ohio State. She is passionate about teaching, mentorship, and making STEM a place where all students feel comfortable and excited to learn. In her spare time, Emily enjoys training her pet parrot and puppy.

Brianne Gutmann (she/they) is an Assistant Professor at San José State University. She does physics education research, with interests in adaptive online learning tools, identity-responsive mentoring and community building, queer folks’ experiences in STEM, and conversations about ethics, science, and society in physics classrooms. They completed their doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where they were a co-founder and co-leader of Illinois GPS, which joined The Access Network in 2016. This was her introduction to the wonderful network of mentors, friends, and collaborators that is the Access Network, and she has been grateful for the chance to collectively learn, together and from each other while navigating academia and building her priorities in that space. They also enjoy knitting presents for friends, watching cheesy sci-fi, taking lots of pictures of their orange cats, and are well-known for giving the best hugs in Access.

Coming Soon

Kevin Ingles (he/him) is a NSF MPS Ascend Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Ph.D. in 2023 at The Ohio State University where he studied the properties of loosely bound molecules in a hadron bath. His postdoc will consist of developing simulations of quark-gluon plasmas in low energy heavy-ion collisions using magnetohydrodynamics, in effort to resolve ongoing tensions between theoretical predictions and experimental observations.

Kevin started working with Access as a Network Fellow in 2019. He has since served two more network fellow terms, as an Assembly Fellow and helped with grant drafting. At OSU, he helped establish an early arrival program and self-evaluation program for Polaris. Kevin is interested in affecting a paradigmatic shift in who people perceive as physicists (scientists) and believes that Access is an excellent vehicle for that mission. He is passionate about learning, mentoring and building sustainable organizations around DEI initiatives. In his free time, Kevin enjoys comics, deep dives in C++ and sleeping.

Gloria Lee (she/her) is a full-time lecturer in the Department of Physics and Biophysics at the University of San Diego, with a background in experimental biophysics research. She has been part of the Access Network in various capacities, first as a student in the Compass Project at UC Berkeley, then as co-founder of Illinois GPS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and now as a Core Organizer. She has contributed to the Access Network via grant-writing and town-hall organizing, and hopes to help with documentation and evaluation in the near future. The supportive community and justice-oriented values that Access embodies has deeply influenced her views on physics research and education, and she is so grateful for the mentorship and friendship that she has gained from being part of the network. In her free time, she enjoys trying new recipes and admiring plants.

Red Lhota (they/them) is the STEM Navigator at Chicago State University (on the south side of Chicago), where they also teach chemistry and physics classes. As the STEM Navigator, they assist students in accessing campus resources and careers in STEM, as well as advocate for student needs. Their research interests involve the physics of polymers in solution, particularly in extensional (stretching) flows. Outside of work, they enjoy playing games (of both the video and board varieties) and cooking with their household.

Sarah Monk (she/her) is a Membership Recruitment and Retention Manager at the American Physical Society (APS) where she focuses on strategy to better meet the needs to APS members. Sarah got involved with the Access Network in 2017 while an undergraduate studying physics at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. Having spent two years as a Network Fellow at UMD and assisting with the founding of the Equity Constellation, Sarah focused on expanding the reach of lessons and programs across Access sites to better support student structures within the network. The supportive and inclusive nature of the Access Network was extremely impactful to Sarah’s academic and future career, and still guides her decisions today.

Following graduation in 2018, Sarah took some time away from Access and brought the teachings and vision of the network into the workforce at APS to promote equity and inclusion within the greater physics community. In her personal life, aside from enjoying cooking and reading fantasy novels, Sarah is an avid video gamer and streams on Twitch, where she hosts fundraisers each year to support Seattle Children’s Hospital (the hospital at which she received a kidney transplant as a child). Sarah re-joined the Network in 2023 as a Core Organizer in order to continue her own growth and learning in the field of equity and accessibility in physics, as well as increase the scope of her contributions to the field.

Ben Pollard (he/him) is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. He is a physics education researcher whose research focuses on alternative grading practices, and on teaching and learning in physics laboratory courses. Before his current job, he was a graduate student and postdoc at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a graduate student, Ben was a co-founder of CU-Prime, one of the original Access sites. As an Access Core Organizer, Ben has worked on the back-end logistics of the CO team, he has co-facilitated task forces, and he has co-mentored one round of Network Fellows. Ben is continually inspired by the Access community, and feels that Access has profoundly shaped his professional outlook and identity. When not doing physics, Ben enjoys making music as a bassoonist and as a singer. He met his partner, who works as an academic coach, in a music ensemble! You can find out more about Ben at https://www.benjaminpollard.com/.

Gina Quan (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at San José State University in San José, CA. She is a co-founder of the Access Network and current co-mentor for the Network Fellows. Prior to coming to SJSU, she was a Research Associate at the University of Colorado Boulder where she studied institutional change. She received her Physics PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park Campus where she studied physics education research and was co-founder of the UMD Access Site (now called Equity Constellation). As an undergraduate student, she was a participant and leader in the Compass Project. As a current Core Organizer, Gina loves supporting student leaders in helping enact their goals and participating in consensus-based decision making. Outside of work, Gina enjoys powerlifting and cooking with lots of butter.

Marisa Romanelli (he/she/they) is a graduate student in experimental condensed matter physics at UIUC. They joined Access in 2021 and became a Core Organizer in 2023. Marisa is passionate about improving documentation to preserve the resources that we’ve put together, but her underlying reason for becoming a Core Organizer is that Access is the best way she has found to live her values in STEM. When he’s not taking data or dreaming about the future of academia, Marisa can be found reading, gaming, and petting his rabbit.

Bio Coming Soon

Robert Strausbaugh (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Physics and the Observatory Director at Eastern Illinois University. He obtained his PhD in 2019 from Arizona State University, with a research focus on studying astronomical transients the infrared. At ASU, he was introduced to the Access Network through his mentoring work in the Sundial Program. After leaving ASU and the Sundial Mentoring programs, he became more involved in the Access Network, especially through grant writing efforts. He is currently working to bring all that he has learned from the Access Network to his new institution as well as fostering new connections with nearby Access Network sites. The Access Network itself is an excellent model for the kind of open and inclusive community that he hopes to foster at his current institution. In his free time, you can find him running, playing soccer or video games.

Chandra Turpen (she/her) is a co-founder of the Access Network and collaboratively established the University of Maryland site, Equity Constellation, along with student leaders. Since the founding of the Network, she has served as a core organizer. Through this role, she has mentored multiple cohorts of Network Fellows and one cohort of Assembly Fellows (for the 2021 Access Assembly). She has led the Network’s evaluation activities and has mentored student leaders in conducting pilot research studies on the Network’s impacts on student leaders. She deeply values the opportunities to learn and grow that arise from relationships with Access student leaders and fellow COs. For her, Access Network is an essential space for learning to share power and to lean into critical feedback.

Dr. Chandra Turpen is also a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. She has expertise in physics education research and engineering education research. Her work involves designing and researching contexts for learning (for students, educators, and faculty) within higher education. Her research draws from perspectives in anthropology, cultural psychology, and the learning sciences to focus on the role of culture and ideology in science learning and educational change. Her research interests include how to: (a) disrupt problematic cultural narratives in STEM (e.g. brilliance narratives, meritocracy, and individualistic competition); (b) cultivate equity-minded approaches in educational spheres, where educators take responsibility for racialized inequities in student success; and (c) cultivate more ethical future scientists and engineers by blending social, political and technological spheres. She prioritizes working on projects that seek to share power with students and orient to students as partners in educational transformation. She pursues projects that aim to advance social justice in undergraduate STEM programs and she makes these struggles for change a direct focus of her research.

Chandra enjoys listening to live music, gardening, cycling, camping, reading books in a hammock, and taking adventures in her camper van.

Mayisha Zeb Nakib (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in soft condensed matter physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed her B.S. in physics and math and B.A. in biology at Southern Methodist University. She is currently working on energetics of epithelial cells along with information theory of biological computing. Mayisha served as a GPS mentor at Illinois since 2017 and later joined the Access Network as a Network Fellow in 2020, 2021, and 2022. She feels she greatly benefited from the mentorship received as a Network Fellow and participation in a healthy, equitable collaboration environment and wants to spread the Access Network norms in other work environments. She joined the core organizer team in 2023 due to the desire to give back to the Access and continued passion for Network Fellow projects. In her free time, she enjoys painting, piano, and hiking. Her future goals include living with her cats and owning a farm while maintaining a physics research-based career.