People

Amber Jackson is an oceanographer, environmental scientist and entrepreneur. She has a B.A. in Marine Science from UC Berkeley and a M.A.S in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her expertise is unique, using technology to facilitate to intersection of science and communication. A former Ocean Curator at Google in partnership with the Sylvia Earle Alliance, she engineered and launched intelligent layers in Google Maps that distill and relate complex concepts in ocean science for a variety of audiences. Ms. Jackson also contributed to the construction of the virtual seafloor found in Google Earth by collecting, analyzing and editing multi-beam bathymetry and acoustic backscatter data from vessels and satellites. Ms. Jackson has extensive experience as an project manager specializing in ecological impact assessments, marine biological monitoring and habitat restoration through the Rigs to Reefs program.

Amber Payne is an award-winning executive producer, editor and storyteller with a track record for creating bold content that drives conversation. Amber is the Publisher and General Manager of The Emancipator, a multimedia digital publication exploring solutions to racial inequity. Amber previously served as Executive Producer of Teen Vogue video and was a 2021 Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University. In 2015 she created and launched NBCBLK, a section of NBCNews.com dedicated to elevating the conversation around black identity, social issues, and culture. She spent a decade at NBC Nightly News, where she produced breaking news and feature stories. Amber and her husband run Tilt Shift Media, a small production house specializing in documentaries and narrative-driven branded content.

Self-taught artist based out of Boston, MA. She uses her paintings, illustrations, and other creative works to uplift others; especially women and people of color.

Professor Amel Ahmed is the Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her main area of specialization is democratic studies, with a special interest in elections and voting systems. She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance".

Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an Affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mass casualty settings and for the system of care for infectious disease emergencies. He also served as an external advisor to the New York City Health + Hospitals Emergency Management Highly Infectious Disease training program and on a US Federal Emergency Management Agency working group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America; he previously served on their public health and diagnostics committees and their precision medicine working group. Dr. Adalja is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter’s EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the National Quality Forum Infectious Disease Standing Committee, where he currently serves on the Primary Care and Chronic Illness Standing Committee, and the US Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and was also selected for their mobile acute care strike team. Dr. Adalja’s expertise is frequently sought by international and national media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Adalja has served as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association coronavirus advisory group; a consultant to various businesses, schools, and organizations; and an informal advisor to the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Adalja is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security. He was a coeditor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks and a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine, the Emergency Medicine CorePendium, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, UpToDate’s section on biological terrorism, and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization volume on bioterrorism. He has also published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Health Security. Dr. Adalja is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is a member of various medical societies, including the American Medical Association, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, and critical care medicine. Dr. Adalja completed 2 fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh—one in infectious diseases, for which he served as chief fellow, and one in critical care medicine. Prior to that he completed a combined residency in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident and as a member of the infection control committee. He was a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2010 through 2017 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor there. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He received an MD from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and a BS in industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Adalja is a native of Butler, Pennsylvania, and actively practices infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, where he was appointed to the City of Pittsburgh’s HIV Commission and the advisory group of AIDS Free Pittsburgh.

Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.

**Amir D. Aczel** is the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the international bestseller *Fermat's Last Theorem*, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award and has been translated into 22 languages. Aczel has appeared on more than 30 television programs, including nationwide appearances on the CBS Evening News, CNN, CNBC, and Nightline, and on more than a hundred and fifty radio programs, including NPR's *Weekend Edition* and *Morning Edition*. Aczel is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

**Amir Tibon** is an award winning Israeli journalist, who filmed the first-ever Israeli TV report from inside Syria's civil war. He is the diplomatic correspondent for Walla News, Israel's most widely-read news website, where he is responsible for covering Israel's foreign relations and the Prime Minister's office. Tibon has been a guest on CNN, MSNBC and Al-Jazeera, and has reported from 12 different countries in the last 2 years.

**Amira Al-Sharif** is a Yemini photojournalist who has spent the past two decades documenting the multi-cultural lives of women, the beauty of ordinary daily life, and the horror of Yemen's armed conflicts.

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, essayist, poet, and musician. He lives in Calcutta and the United Kingdom, where he is a professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia.

Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College. Kumar is the author of \_Husband of a Fanatic\_ (2005), \_Bombay-London-New York\_ (2002), \_Passport Photos\_ (2000), the book of poems \_No Tears for the N.R.I.\_ (1996), the novel \_Home Products\_ (2007) and \_Nobody Does the Right Thing\_ (2009). Kumar's prize-winning book is \_A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb: A Writer’s Report on the Global War on Terror\_ (2010). \_The New York Times\_ called it a "perceptive and soulful – if at times academic – meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions." It was also awarded the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.