Hidden Figures: More Than Just Numbers - Tickets at the Door

Patricia Ordóñez, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras. She received her B. A. in Hispanic and Italian Studies in 1989 from Johns Hopkins University and her MS in 2010 and PhD in 2012 in Computer Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her research centers on using visualization and data mining to improve the state of medicine in intensive care units. She is also interested in developing assistive technologies for programming and creating a quality equity-based computer science curriculum for public high schools in Puerto Rico. She is a former National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and she is passionate about diversifying the field of computer science.

Lynn Johnson Langer PhD, MBA, is the Director of Regulatory Science and Enterprise Programs at JHU AAP and is on the National Directors Emeritus board and is President emeritus of Women In Bio, an organization of professionals committed to fostering and encouraging entrepreneurship and career development of women active in the life science industry. Dr. Langer headed the sales and marketing department of several biotechnology companies and later founded BioPlan Associates, a management and marketing consulting firm. She has published over fifty articles and several book chapters mainly in business areas of biotechnology and has taught a variety of graduate courses in biotechnology and business.  She attended Tulane University and the University of Maryland for her undergraduate degree in microbiology, Johns Hopkins University for her MBA where she received the Stegman Award for academic excellence in Administrative Science, and her PhD in Leadership and Change from Antioch University.

Dr. Kenneth Sembach became Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in October 2015. In taking over the 600-person institute responsible for the science operations of Hubble Space Telescope (HST), as well as the future mission and science operations of its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Sembach said, "I am delighted to serve the Institute and AURA in this new role. I look forward to keeping STScI at the forefront of astrophysics and enabling revolutionary science for NASA and the nation in the coming years."

Dr. Sembach has been deeply involved in the scientific, operational, and managerial aspects of the Hubble Space Telescope for the past 15 years. He has served as interim deputy director, Hubble mission head, and Hubble project scientist. Previously, Sembach was the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) deputy project scientist for Large Science Programs from 1996 to 2001 at the Johns Hopkins University. He also was a NASA Hubble Fellow from 1992 to 1995 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sembach received a B.A. in physics with honors in 1988 from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1992 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Camille Daniel, USW Analyst & Assistant Group Supervisor at APL, is a mathematics and statistics analyst at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, received a 2016 Women of Color Technology Award for her accomplishments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields. She was honored in October during the 21st Annual Women of Color STEM Conference in Detroit.

Since joining APL in 2005, Daniel has had a major impact in several areas of importance to the Laboratory. She was assigned as the APL Liaison at Commander, Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and as the APL representative to the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command (NMAWC) in San Diego, California. She also served as the operations manager, analyst and project manager for projects focused on defensive cyber for the latest generation of U.S. nuclear submarines. She is currently a project manager in APL’s Force Projection Sector for a program investigating cyber resiliency and ship safety for Navy submarine platforms as well as the operations manager for an electronic warfare program, where she ensures that the work being done by the Laboratory is aligned with the sponsor and the Navy’s needs for its warfighters. She also serves as the assistant group supervisor for the Signal and Systems Analysis Group, a technical group of 60 professionals.

Beverly Wendland, PhD earned her bachelor’s degree in bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, and her doctoral degree in neurosciences from Stanford University. She joined the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins after completing her postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. A recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, Dr. Wendland and her team study fundamental cellular processes using yeast cells as a simple model system. Discoveries about how yeast cell function can also teach us about human diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases or cancer. Her lab’s work may ultimately identify new targets for treatments, such as enhanced delivery of gene therapies.

Throughout her tenure at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Wendland has supported graduate and undergraduate students, serving as their mentor and a collaborator. An advocate for training future scientists to engage the power of interdisciplinary research, she was a member of the lab advisory committee during the construction of the new Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories, designed to foster collaboration across Homewood’s scientific community. Dr. Wendland was also a member of the Krieger School’s advisory committee on the status of women.