SSI 2017 Plenary Speaker Profile: Dr. David Asai

The fourth SENCER Summer Institute plenary address, which will take place on the afternoon of Saturday, August 5th, will be delivered by David Asai, Senior Director in Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In his plenary address, “Race Matters,” David will discuss challenges related to diversity and inclusion in science.

David directs the HHMI Undergraduate and Graduate programs, providing grants to higher education institutions, faculty, undergraduate and graduates students. Before moving to HHMI in 2008, David was on the faculty for 19 years at Purdue University and for 5 years at Harvey Mudd College.  He served as Head of Biological Sciences at Purdue and was Stuart Mudd Professor and Chair of Biology at Harvey Mudd.  Until 2010 when he closed his lab, his group authored more than 75 papers on the molecular motor dynein in sea urchins and Tetrahymena thermophila.  David served as a member of the boards of trustees of the National PTA and the Higher Learning Commission-North Central Association, and served on the BIO Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation.  He is an elected member of the Purdue Teaching Academy and was inducted into Purdue’s “Book of Great Teachers.”  Currently, he serves on several advisory committees, including the Progress Through Calculus project of the Mathematical Association of America, the Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) NSF STEP center, the University of Delaware NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation project, the Minority Affairs Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology, the Understanding Interventions project, the Committee on Opportunities in Science (COOS) of the AAAS, Research Enhancement for BUILDing Detroit, the NIH Advisory Committee of the Director’s Working Group on Diversity, and the Children’s Opportunity Fund of Montgomery County, Maryland.  David received the bachelor’s degree in chemistry and co-terminal master’s degree in biology from Stanford University, and the PhD in biology from Caltech.  

Register here for the 2017 SENCER Summer Institute, which will be held on the campus of Stony Brook University (NY) from August 3-6.

 

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