Dr. Loretta A. Moore serves as the Section Head for the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) in the Office of Integrative Activities, Office of the Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She is on detail to NSF from Jackson State University (JSU), a Historically Black University, where she is a Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Jackson State University (JSU).

Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Moore served as Vice President for Research and Federal Relations at JSU, where she increased the research competitiveness of JSU, and as Associate Vice President for Research and Scholarly Engagement, where she successfully enhanced the careers of JSU faculty members across all disciplines through the Academy for Research and Scholarly Engagement.  Dr. Moore also served as Interim Associate Dean for the College of Science, Engineering and Technology and as Chair of the Department of Computer Science, a position she held for thirteen years. She has also held positions at Auburn University, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, NASA Kennedy Space Center and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

In addition to her research contributions in Artificial Intelligence and Human Computer Interactions, she is recognized for her expertise in addressing issues related to barriers and bias in broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the scientific enterprise. As a former NSF Principal Investigator at an Historically Black University, her research portfolio included the JSU Advance project, focusing on advancing the careers of female faculty members in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and Social and Behavioral Science disciplines. Her achievements in leveraging diversity and equity to advance a globally diverse STEM workforce and promoting institutional change for inclusive and equitable STEM environments contributed to her appointment to the congressionally mandated Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering.  Her expertise in Computer Science led to her appointment to NSF’s Advisory Committee for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and an appointment to the U. S. Army’s Scientific Advisory Board.

Dr. Moore received her B.S. degree in Computer Science from Jackson State University and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Dr. Colleen Gillies-Scott was born in Kingston Jamaica where she grew up in Jones town (Kingston 12). She attended Cavaliers All Age School (St. Andrew) and Meadowbrook High School. Following high school, she accepted a track and field scholarship to Auburn University in 1993 where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry (cum laude) in 1998. She went on to obtain her Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Pittsburgh, under the guidance of Dr. Craig Wilcox. Her thesis focused on the development of methods for the synthesis of organic and supramolecular compounds. Dr. Scott then took a position as a Post-Doctoral Assistant at Southern Illinois University where she developed an interest in materials’ research focusing on silole-containing polymers. In 2010, she was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Following her tenure at Southern Illinois University, Dr. Scott took her research to Mississippi State University in 2015 where she currently remains. Dr. Scott has received several scholarly accolades of which the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2020 is most noteworthy.

Dr. Scott’s research focuses on the design and synthesis of organic compounds and materials with desired properties and functions. Some properties include electrical conductivity, electron charge transfer, optoelectrical, optical sensing of biological analytes, and biodegradation of thermoplastics. Due to the ‘design-by-properties and function’ approach, the applications of her research interest can be broad and include organic devices, chemo- and biosensors, batteries and capacitors, biodegradable thermoplastics, and upcycling of plastics materials.

Dr. Scott is married and has a son.

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Davita L. Watkins obtained her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. As an undergraduate, she conducted research under the guidance of Dr. David Hercules and later Dr. Grace Zoorob. It was there that she cultivated an interest in synthetic development and analytical characterization methods. After working briefly as Lead Chemical Analyst for a bioanalytical company, she obtained a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Memphis under the tutelage of Dr. Tomoko Fujiwara. As a doctoral candidate, she developed and established multi-step synthetic methods for a series of stimuli-responsive molecules and polymeric materials which demonstrated potential applications in phase transfer catalysis, catalytic control, and drug delivery. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida with Dr. Ronald K. Castellano, she developed novel self-assembling organic materials for photovoltaic applications. In 2014, she began her independent academic career at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on establishing design guidelines towards novel functional materials with tunable properties through molecular self-assembly. The well-defined, programmable nanostructured materials produced in her laboratory are designed to be used in a variety of applications which range from therapeutics to electronic devices.

Within her first year at the university, she received the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Ralph E. Powe Award for her studies of noncovalent interactions in organic semiconducting devices. In the early part of 2017, she earned a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to catalyze the growth and sustainability of her novel research program that exploits sigma-hole interactions to optimize organic electronic materials. She has been named a 2018 Young Investigator by the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Division branch of the American Chemical Society and was selected as an Emerging Investigator by the Royal Society of Chemistry Journal of Materials Chemistry C. Alongside her research efforts, Dr. Watkins has been an active voice for initiatives to increase minorities and women in STEM. She developed and directs a federally funded (National Science Foundation) four week science initiative for minority women called Operation ICB (I Can Be) to introduce high school scholars to the laboratory setting, encourage them to pursue STEM-related degrees and careers.

Dr. Glake Hill is a Tenured professor at Jackson State University (JSU) in the Department of Chemistry, Physics and Atmospheric Sciences. He has been at JSU for 18+ years. He received his B.S. in Chemistry at Tougaloo College in Jackson MS in 1996, and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry at Jackson State University in 2003. He was a University of California Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley from 2003-2004. Afterwards, he returned to JSU.

Over the years Dr. Hill has been successful in the development of His research group focused on using computational tools to investigate biological and material processes. He has published over 55 articles in Peer-review Journals (a sample is listed below) and Has graduated over 15 students with Masters or PhDs in the field of chemistry. He is one of the leading research advisors in the country in developing African American Doctoral Students. He has procured over $13 million in external grants and currently controls 5 active research grants worth over $5 million. 

Sabine Heinhorst was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany. She attended Universität Hamburg as a biology and chemistry double major and graduated with a Diploma in biology. She subsequently joined the Department of Biochemistry at Clemson University as a doctoral student and obtained her Ph.D. degree in 1982. Her postdoctoral research at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology centered on enzymology, control and mechanism of DNA replication in the chloroplasts of higher plants, a field of study she continued to pursue after joining the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Southern Mississippi in 1987. Her research later focused on carboxysomes, the CO2 fixing organelles of autotrophic bacteria.

She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1993 and has held the rank of Professor since 1998. In 2005, her peers elected her to be the T.W. Bennett Professor in the Sciences at Southern Miss. She was the first woman on whom this honor was bestowed. In 2013, she received the Innovation Lifetime Achievement Award at Southern Miss. After serving as chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry for six years, she assumed the position of Associate Dean of the Honors College in 2017. She has directed the Drapeau Center for Undergraduate Research since 2019 and currently serves as the Interim Dean of the Honors College.