Deisy Carvalho Fernandes

Deisy is a Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Engineering at Brown University. She started her undergraduate studies in Brazil at the University of Sao Paulo and finished her BS in Chemical Engineering at UIC. She has had a variety of research experiences during her undergraduate studies in Brazil, and now in her graduate and post-graduate work in the US. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, June 2015. She loves working with nanomaterials for nanotechnology and biosensing.
 

During her Ph.D., she received many awards, such as The Passage Program and Bridge to the doctorate for her first two years of graduate school. In her first year, she was awarded the Graduate Research Fellowship Program from NSF (GRFP), in addition to the NSF Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) fellowship, which allowed her to research in France at the University of Bordeaux for 6 months as part of her Ph.D. thesis and was featured in an advertorial in Science Magazine. She has won awards for research presentations, including American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) Presentation Awards in the Chicago Section in 2017 and 2018.
 

Born and raised in Brazil she is passionate about outreach and working with underrepresented groups. She was involved with outreach with many organizations such as the Society of Women Engineering, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineering, and Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. In addition to participating in panels such as at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) - “International Collaborative Research: An Important Supplement to Academic and Professional Training” (Nov 15, 2019), Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence (LSMRCE)- Voices of Success Panel Discussion (Oct 26, 2019), UIC College of Engineering Advisory Board- Panel for Woman Programs (Oct 07, 2019), and Dare to Dream: Get Educated, Build the Dream STEM Conference, Fermilab National Laboratory (Apr 14, 2018). She has also won the UIC Chancellor Student Service and Leadership award and the Eugertha Bates Memorial award.

David Anton Johnson

David Anton Johnson is a Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University in the Department of Philosophy. His research focuses on the development of question-directed, fragmented models of mental phenomena such as deliberation and reasoning. To do so, he draws on contemporary work in the philosophy of mind, language, and epistemology. In addition to exploring the normative implications of question-directed, fragmented models of deliberation, he has a secondary research project exploring the reason-providing capacity of social-group membership. Johnson received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Rutgers University, NJ, and his B.A. from Amherst College, MA.

Zimife Umeh

Zimife Umeh is a Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sociology Department. Her research interests include incarceration and reentry, gender, inequality, and education. Her current project uses an intersectional approach to explore formerly incarcerated women’s pathways to prison, identity development, and navigation of institutions during reentry. She is especially interested in the role of institutions and institutional actors in transforming women from victims to perceived criminals throughout the life course.

Zimife received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University in 2020, with her dissertation titled, "Gender, Institutions, and Punishment: Examining the Experiences of Formerly Incarcerated Women,” and her research was supported by the Ford Foundation. She earned a M.Ed. in Secondary Education from Chestnut Hill College in 2011 and a B.S. in Finance from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009.