The inaugural winners of the Annual BSD Diversity Committee (BDC) Trainee Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Awards have been announced. The graduate student awardees for 2020-21 are Cody Hernandez (Cell and Molecular Biology), Elaine Kouame (Immunology), Christina Roman (Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics) and Juan Apiz-Saab (Cancer Biology), whose award is from the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The BDC works to enhance diversity in UChicago Biosciences by providing a central office and administration that coordinates and promotes social, cultural, and scientific interactions, awareness of issues facing underrepresented students, and recruitment from and networking with established regional and national marginalized-serving organizations. The BDC established the Annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) awards to celebrate graduate student’s outstanding accomplishments during the past year.
These awards highlight the wide breadth of DEI work done across campus and in the greater Chicago community, including community outreach, recruitment efforts, internal initiatives, and other diversity, equity and inclusion endeavors. A BDC Diversity and Inclusion Committee, led by graduate student Grace Schulz (Development, Regeneration and Stem Cell Biology), BDC Co-Chairs Dr. Eileen Dolan (GGSB, Cancerbio) and Dr. Adam Hammond (Biophysical Sciences), Dr. Jill Mateo (Evolutionary Biology) and postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Megan Rowton (Moskowitz Lab), sought nominations of deserving awardees from students, postdocs and faculty, with a brief description of that person’s DEI efforts.
The impact of this diversity and inclusion work on the University of Chicago, the greater Chicago community, and the larger field of biology is highly significant.
Awardees will be honored at a congratulatory ceremony and lunch to be held later this summer.
From left to right, Juan Apiz, Cody Hernandez, Elaine Kouame and Christina Roman