Keynote Speakers

Kelvin K. Droegemeier, PhD
Presenting Thursday, April 30; 4-5 p.m. EDT

As Director of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier serves as President Donald J. Trump’s science advisor and leads OSTP in its coordination of science and technology initiatives across the Federal Government. Kelvin’s background is in extreme weather, numerical weather prediction, and data assimilation.

Before joining The White House, Kelvin served as Vice President for Research and Regents’ Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, where he joined the faculty in 1985 as Assistant Professor of Meteorology. In his 33 years at the University of Oklahoma, Kelvin generated more than $40 million in research funding and authored or co-authored more than 80 refereed articles and 200 conference publications. He also co-founded, directed, and led the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) and served as co-founder and Deputy Director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sense of the Atmosphere (CASA).

Kelvin served two six-year terms on the National Science Board, the governing body of the NSF, including the last four years as Vice-Chairman, having been nominated by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and twice confirmed by the United States Senate. He has also served on and chaired numerous national boards and committees and is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was appointed in 2017 as Oklahoma Cabinet Secretary of Science and Technology.

Born in Kansas, Kelvin earned a B.S. in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Suzi Iacono, PhD
Presenting Thursday, April 30; 12:30-1:30 p.m. EDT

Dr. Suzi Iacono is the Head of the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since she joined NSF in 1998, she has served in many leadership roles, including Acting Assistant Director in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Deputy Assistant Director for CISE, Senior Science Advisor, Acting Division Director in Computer and Network Systems (CNS) and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS), and Program Director in IIS.

Prior to coming to NSF, she held a faculty position at Boston University School of Management, was a visiting scholar at the Sloan School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was a research associate at the Public Policy Research Office at the University of California, Irvine.

Over the years, she has written journal articles, book chapters and conference papers on social informatics, an area of interdisciplinary research and education that integrates aspects of computer and social sciences. Dr. Iacono received her PhD from the University of Arizona in information systems and her MA and BA from the University of California, Irvine in social ecology.

Mohamed Noor, PhD
Presenting Tuesday, April 28; 3-4 p.m. EDT

Dr. Mohamed Noor is the Dean of Natural Sciences and a Professor (and, previously, Department Chair) of Biology at Duke University. His specialties include evolution, genetics and genomics. He specializes in Drosophila evolution. His team's research approaches have included both classical genetic mapping, as well as analyses of whole genome sequences. More recently, his research team has focused on understanding variation in recombination rate within and between species, and its impact on DNA sequence variation.

He has won numerous awards for his research, including the 2008 Darwin-Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society of London — an award which is only given out once every 50 years.

He served as editor-in-chief of the international journal Evolution, is or was associate editor for several other journals, and the author of over 100 publications. He has served as president of the American Genetic Association and Society for the Study of Evolution, and as a board member for the Genetics Society of America.

Dr. Noor has been active in education and outreach, receiving numerous teaching and mentoring awards from his institution, and teaching one of the first MOOCs (massive open online course) in genetics and evolution. He and his group have also developed laboratory activities for implementation in high schools and colleges, including a commercial kit for observing natural selection in Drosophila. He also published a book that uses Star Trek to teach principles in genetics and evolution, and gives classes and talks at various venues, including ComicCons, using science fiction to teach science.

Noor has a BS from the College of William and Mary and a PhD from University of Chicago.