Jillian Powers, Ph.D., is an associate professor of instructional technology in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, FAU College of Education. Powers teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in instructional technology and design. Her research focuses on teachers’ adoption and integration of technology, preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology, and STEM education.  

In 2019, she was selected to be an FAU Woman Leader in STEM and in 2022, she was the recipient of the FAU College of Education Researcher of the Year award at the associate professor level. Her research has been published in journals such as Educational Technology Research and Development, Computers in the Schools, and the Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Powers has also presented at numerous conferences and currently serves on the editorial review board of Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nwadiuto (Diuto) Esiobu, Ph.D. has diverse work experience in academia, industry, professional leadership and as a science diplomat of US National Academy of Science, advising the Global Food Security Office of the US Department of State. She is currently a Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology at Florida Atlantic University where she directs the microbial biotech laboratory and is PI on a recent USDA-NIFA grant designed to create the first Microbiome Innovation Center in South Florida as a rallying theme for training highly skilled underrepresented minorities and next generation professionals in global food security and environmental conservation. Diuto is also the founder and President of Applied Biotech Inc and serves as Trustee and Advisory Board member of several professional entities, including the School of Science of Miami Dade College and the American Society for Microbiology. As current Chair of the Internal Advisory Committee of the NSF Advance project at FAU, she serves to mobilize the stakeholders to provide directional feedback to researchers and support the adoption of Best Practices in institutional policies.

Professor Diuto Esiobu earned her Ph.D. from the University of Louvain, Belgium and a Post-doctoral training in Molecular Microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has received numerous awards for service, teaching and research, including Faculty of distinction by the Greater Fort Lauderdale, and Legacy maker – one of 100 most influential women at Florida Atlantic University.

Evelyn Marques Frazier, Ph.D., University Instructor, Co-Pi of the NSF-L.E.A.R.N. and NIH-URISE training grants and coordinator of the Honors Research Thesis Pathway within the Biology Honors Research Program. Her institutional goal is to build upon successful programs and bring more research training and mentoring opportunities to undergraduate students. Her research interests involve developing research projects on insect-plant interactions and gopher tortoise ecology and biology in south Florida to engage graduate and undergraduate students in conservation biology. She has also developed research training curricula, and is interested in STEM and biology education research and developing undergraduate research mentoring programs. Dr. Frazier is also a Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching Alumni and NRMN/CIMER Principal Facilitator for the “Entering Mentoring”, the Cultural Awareness Module” curricula on professional development for faculty and the “Entering Research” curriculum for mentoring graduate and undergraduate students in research.

 

Daniela Nikolova is a University Instructor at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Affiliate Research Professor at the Department of Physics at FAU, as well as an Associate Research Professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She has a PhD in both Mathematics and Computer Science and numerous scholarships. After doing research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for 30 years and teaching for different European Universities, she joined FAU by invitation from Prof. Magliveras.

It is her deep belief that research must start early. She also believes that “the main goal of a good Instructor should be to inspire students to love and appreciate the beauty of science and its applications and provoke creativity”. In 2015 she founded an on-going research group varying from 3 to 10 undergraduates. Her students received grants from the FAU Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry and she received a Distinction through Discovery Undergraduate Curriculum Grant. 

Dr. Nikolova is very active in promoting women in STEM: she is a regional coordinator of European Women in Mathematics, a founder and President of the FAU-South Florida Chapter of Association for Women in Science. In 2018 she represented Florida women in science at the Capitol Hill Day in Washington, DC, successfully achieving an increase in the national budget for the national scientific organizations and women in science. By now she has participated in 136 conferences in various capacities, including principal organizer of two international conferences: International Conference on Combinatorics, Computing, Group Theory and Applications, and International Conference on Group Theory, Combinatorics and Computing.