Invited Speakers Bios and Abstracts

Kimberly Garza is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Last Karankawas, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next pick. Her stories and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Texas Highways, Houston Chronicle, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. In 2024 she was named a National Endowment of the Arts creative writing fellow. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, where she earned a Ph.D in 2019. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—Garza is a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Keynote title – Tell Me Where You’re From and I’ll Tell You Who You Are: Uplifting Identities and Places from the Margins

Where are you from? People from places like Texas know the weight in a question like this, the way it can crucially shape our identity. Books have always explored places foreign and familiar and shown us the conflicts of the people who live there. Think of the misty marshes of Charles Dickens’ Kent, where criminals and laborers clash with the upper class, or the idyllic green hills of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shire, threatened by impending war. Now, contemporary novels have begun spotlighting geographic and cultural places long excluded from canonical literature—places that many marginalized communities have always called home. The storm-ravaged Southern Mississippi of Jesmyn Ward, for one, or the concrete jungle of Tommy Orange’s Oakland, or Rubén Degollado’s border town of McAllen, where brujería and love collide. Places even like the melting pot of immigrants, history, and myth that is Galveston Island. As readers and writers, as artists and citizens of this world, reading books that showcase settings like these can teach us about ourselves and our allegiances to family, community, and the Earth itself. And we can learn how these places, where close-knit communities and communal identities reign, can also be threats to individuals, and their own dreams and desires. Where are you from? Where do you belong? The answers are not always the same. Kimberly Garza is a writer, professor of creative writing and literature, and the author of The Last Karankawas, a novel about a mixed-race community in Galveston navigating the ups and downs of life as they await the impact of Hurricane Ike. Dr. Garza will use a sample of recent books and her own experiences as a mixed-race Texas native to discuss the importance of celebrating diverse settings in books, the conflict between independence and community, and the vital need of place-driven narratives, and marginalized voices, in literature.

Dr. Jesús Jesse Esparza is an Associate Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences at Texas Southern University, where he has taught since 2009. His area of expertise is on the history of Latinos in the United States, emphasizing civil rights activism. Dr. Esparza’s manuscript, Raza Schools: The Fight for Latino Educational Autonomy in a West Texas Borderlands Town, is scheduled for release in September 2023. The University of Oklahoma Press will publish it as part of the New Directions in Tejano History series. Dr. Esparza teaches Mexican American, Texas, and Civil Rights history. He received his B.A. and a master’s degree in History from Southwest Texas State University and a Ph.D. in History in 2008 from the University of Houston.

Abstract – Preserving Pluralism: The San Felipe ISD Example

This talk will explore a Latino community in the borderland city of Del Rio, Texas, that, in 1929, established the first and perhaps only autonomous Mexican-American school system called the San Felipe Independent School District against a background of institutional racism, poverty, and segregation. As detailed in Raza Schools (September 2023), this talk traces the experiences of the residents of San Felipe who faced a Jim Crow society in which deep-seated discrimination extended to education, making biased curriculum, inferior facilities, and prejudiced teachers the norm. Moreover, this talk highlights how the people of San Felipe harnessed the mechanisms and structures of this discriminatory system to create their own educational institutions, using the courts whenever necessary to protect their autonomy. For forty-two years, the Latino community funded, maintained and managed its own school system—until 1971, when, in an attempt to address school segregation, the federal government forced San Felipe ISD to consolidate with a larger neighboring, predominantly white school district. This talk will conclude with a description of the ensuing clashes—over curriculum, school governance, teachers’ positions, and funding—as several multiracial communities in Del Rio struggled to find and maintain a sense of pluralism.

Maria T. Grimaldo is a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Biomedical Sciences student with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston, TX and is affiliated with the Immunology program. Ms. Grimaldo began her academic studies at Panamerican School in Panama City, Panama and moved to League City, TX, USA at a young age. Extracurricularly, Ms. Grimaldo partook in classical ballet training through the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Webster, TX and later through Feijoo Ballet School in Dickinson, TX. She was also a company dancer for the Bay Area Houston Ballet and Theatre where she performed in various classical ballets including Coppelia, Edward Scissorhands, two seasons of Dracula, and eight seasons of The Nutcracker as well as various contemporary repertoires including A Tribute to The Beetles. She was also an active member of the Clear Springs High School Band program in League City, TX where she played the Alto Saxophone and Oboe. Ms. Grimaldo continued her academic studies at Texas A&M University where she obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Plant & Environmental Soil Science while completing her pre-Medicine requirements. Extracurricularly, Ms. Grimaldo was President (2020) of Aggies for Charity: Water through Texas A&M as well as service leader and co-coordinator (2019) of Advocates for Christ Today and member (2018-2021) of Pescadores through St. Mary’s Catholic Center.

Ms. Grimaldo has been actively participating in biomedical research through various summer experiences including a Tissue Engineering lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX  (2015, 2016) and a Reproductive Immunology lab at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN (2019). She has also partaken in long-term research experiences through a Neuroscience lab at Texas A&M University Health Science Center in Bryan, TX (2020-2021) and a Tissue Engineering lab at the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Houston, TX (2021-2022). Currently, Ms. Grimaldo is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center where she is actively working on her master’s thesis project that is focused in better understanding the role of mucin in modulating lung cancer progression using a K-Ras mutant mouse model of lung adenocarcinoma. Following graduation, she intends to pursue medical training with the goal of becoming a physician-scientist in the future.

Abstract – Embracing Contradictions while Framing and Defining your Career – Perspective from a Student and Young Professional

Maria T. Grimaldo, MSc Student at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UT Health Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

From a young age, we are asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” with the natural response being one simple thing – a doctor, engineer, fire fighter, dancer, or musician. Later, when making our plans post-high school, we continue to seek simplicity in our response but are uneasy about choosing one role for the rest of our lives. However, it is not until we realize and embrace that one’s position is to fulfill multiple multi-faceted roles that are constantly transforming and evolving that we find true freedom in our decision. In this talk, I will outline various relatable crossroads I have experienced in the student and young professional stages of my life and discuss their simple and complex nature. The crossroads to be discussed include deciding between being a professional dancer or pursuing a more traditional career as well as choosing a terminal degree or embracing a career that requires graduate and post-graduate education. The goal of this presentation is to 1) highlight the contradictions when defining our careers, 2) stimulate discussion about the multiple multi-faceted roles that will be constantly present as we go about life, and 3) provide a few tips and tricks to help you embrace the contradictions in your own crossroads as you frame and define your next steps.

Patricia V. Aguilar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) and Associate Director of the Center for Tropical Diseases at UTMB. She graduated with her PhD from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UTMB in 2005 and conducted postdoctoral studies at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York where she studied alphaviruses and their interaction with innate immune responses. At Mount Sinai, she also engaged in influenza research and participated in the successful recovery of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus. Upon the completion of her postdoctoral studies, she accepted a research scientist position at the Naval Medical Research Unit-6 in Lima, Peru and participated in studies on the epidemiology, genetics, and understanding of human disease caused by multiple arboviruses. In 2010, she accepted a faculty position at UTMB where she studies the molecular pathogenesis of arthropod-borne viruses and the host immune responses to these viruses. She is also heavily involved in global capacity building efforts and in training the next generation of scientists to provide them with the skills and tools to recognize and study future viral outbreaks.

Abstract: Emerging Arboviruses

The current COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has demonstrated the seriousness of viral threats. Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) are a group of medically important viruses transmitted by arthropods and represent a major threat to urban populations. In recent years, these viruses have gained significant attention due to rapid spread and explosive outbreaks involving dengue, Zika, and chikungunya viruses.  However, there are other arbovirus causing human disease in the Americas that are hiding under the umbrella of dengue.

This presentation will focus on the mosquito-borne Mayaro virus. I will discuss studies conducted in patients infected with Mayaro virus, including clinical outcomes and immune responses. Then, I will present the results of vector transmission studies and discuss how the virus might be adapting to be better transmitted by mosquito vectors.  Finally, I will briefly discuss my scientific career path and how it exemplifies the power of education and training.

Andrzej Stewart is an experienced spacecraft operator for a wide variety of NASA missions. He’s worked as a spacecraft mission controller for the Spitzer Space Telescope, Juno, GRAIL, and NASA’s Mars orbiter fleet. Andrzej now works in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, training as a Navigator for the upcoming Artemis missions of the Orion spacecraft. He is also a 1^st Lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, serving as an Assistant Aerospace Education Officer and Assistant Public Affairs Officer, and is currently training as a Search and Rescue/Disaster Relief Mission Pilot.

Andrzej earned degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He aspires to be a NASA astronaut. In pursuing that, he has served as the Flight Engineer of HERA C2M2, a two-week asteroid mission simulation at the Johnson Space Center, and as Chief Engineering Officer of HI-SEAS IV, a year-long Mars simulation in Hawaii.

Abstract – Life in Simulated Space

Astronauts undertaking missions to deep space destinations like the Moon and Mars will face a number of unknown challenges caused by the vast distances and durations involved in these journeys. To identify, study, and prepare to meet these challenges, NASA is conducting a variety of space analog missions, which recreate aspects of life in space here on Earth. Andrzej Stewart, who has served as a crewmember for simulated space missions in the HERA and HI-SEAS analogs, will talk about what life is like as part of an analog crew, as well as what life may be like for astronauts living on Mars in the future.

Diane Neudorf is a professor of biology at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. She has studied bird behavior for 30 years. She obtained her BS and MS degrees in Zoology at the University of Manitoba in Canada where she became interested in bird behavior, specifically reproductive strategies and parental investment. She obtained her PhD from York University where she studied female control of extra-pair mating in the Hooded Warbler. She has directed over a dozen MS student research projects and many undergraduate projects in songbird behavior and conservation. Currently her research involves how bird behavior is impacted in urban environments using the Carolina Wren as a model species.

Abstract – The secret lives of birds: female tactics for extra-pair mating in the Hooded Warbler

Most people think birds are monogamous and mate for life. That is only partly true. Although 90% of bird species are socially monogamous, we know through genetic studies that many bird species are not sexually monogamous but instead cheat on their mates.

I studied female extra-pair mating tactics in the socially monogamous Hooded Warbler (Wilsonia citrina) to understand how and why female birds may cheat on their mates. Female Hooded Warblers give conspicuous vocalizations through the nesting period that partially function to advertise their fertility. In addition, through radio tracking I discovered females left their territories regularly when they were fertile, providing opportunities to engage in extra-pair mating.

Female birds may cheat to ensure their eggs are fertilized or to gain genetic and direct benefits for their offspring. There is a large range of variation both within and between avian species in their participation in extra-pair mating strategies. Why some species rarely use this strategy and others use it regularly remains to be determined.

I will conclude by discussing hypotheses proposed to explain this variation and touch on ideas regarding mate attachment in birds.

Jennifer Bieszke was born and raised in Michigan. She attended Delta Community College and later Oakland University where she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry. She then transferred to the University of Texas-Health Science Center in Houston to complete her doctorate degree in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics where she studied the effect of green light on the development and reproduction of the fungus Neurospora crassa. She developed her love of teaching in graduate school and taught at DeVry University for nine years until she became a full-time faculty at College of the Mainland (COM) in 2013. In addition to teaching at COM, Dr. Bieszke has been active in promoting the STEM fields to seventh and eighth-grade girls at the annual STEM conference held at COM for the past four years. When she isn’t working at COM, Jennifer loves to spend time with her husband Steve and their daughter Rose.

Abstract - “My love-hate relationship with NOP-1, the evolutionary link in rhodopsin photobiology between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.”

Reception of light in the world of prokaryotes, single-celled organisms without a nucleus, has always been achieved in part from using a specific type of rhodopsin photoreceptor to help with energy production or cell-signaling. Another type of rhodopsin photoreceptor is used by eukaryotes, multi-cellular organisms with a nucleus (humans), for the purpose of perceiving dim light by rod cells in the eye. There was no evolutionary link between these two photoreceptors until the discovery of a light receptor, NOP-1, identical to prokaryotic rhodopsins, in the fungus (a eukaryote) Neurospora crassa.

As part of my graduate work, I was excited and thrilled to used recombinant DNA technology to show that this photoreceptor in a eukaryotic organism functioned similarly to the prokaryotic rhodopsins. I hate that after six years of research, the role of NOP-1 in the fungus Neurospora crassa is not well understood, but it seems it may have a minor role in reproduction.

In this presentation, the evolutionary significance of this discovery will be discussed and how this discovery back in 1999 has impacted the current research in the field of light reception (photobiology) in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Dr. Nicholas Castle graduated with a BS in geology from Lehigh University in 2004 before becoming an environmental consultant. After working for a few years in assessment and remediation, he decided to pursue a life-long dream of working for NASA and applied for graduate school. He initially earned a MS from the University of Washington in 2012 before heading to the University of Alberta to finish a PhD in 2017. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, working with a number of scientists there and at the NASA Johnson Space Center. His core research projects focus experimental studies of Martian meteorites and asteroidal basalts, but also include studies of Martian surface compositions as a member of the CheMin X-ray crystallography team for the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) mission. Although a field geologist at heart, he now performs laboratory studies to examine how the Earth and other planets formed and differentiated, both in the beginning of the solar system and today.

Abstract – Science and the Art of Storytelling

We all know the story of “one small step for man,” as astronauts walked on the surface of the Moon. It was the first time that anyone had stepped off of the Earth and on to another world. Recently, many of us watched Elon Musk launch his Tesla Roadster into space on a Falcon Heavy rocket, the biggest rocket anyone has launched since the days of the Saturn V. Others found the story of the Martian rovers so interesting and compelling that Andy Weir wrote a fictional account of a future man exploring the surface of Mars and it made it to the top of the New York Times best seller list.

And isn’t that the role of storytelling? To capture the imagination and to inspire others? Story telling can be how we share our dreams, but dreams only become reality through hard work. Much of that hard work can be inspiring others to share a vision, to buy in to the dream, so that they want to take part in the work of transforming that dream into reality.

There are any number of reasons to tell a story. My own story started early, discovering a passion for science as a four year old while playing in the mud after a visit to the Grand Canyon. From those early days of ill-conceived flume models to the present day working with meteorites and the Mars rovers, I love to tell stories. They are how I communicate – the tool I use to share what I know to others around me, and, I hope, to inspire others to dream of new realities.

In my talk, I aim to do two things. The first is to tell a bit of my story, sharing who I am, what I do, and how I got here. The second is to ask a question – what is storytelling? Certainly, we all recognize story when we’re reading a work of fiction, or when we’re sharing tales around a campfire, but does story exist in science? In classes we all learn that observations are at the heart of the scientific method of discovery, but I argue that story is how we synthesize those observations, to create the rational laws we use to describe nature. I hope by the end of my talk to convince you that story has a valid role in my work, and is as critical to use well in the sciences as it is in the humanities.

Elaine Childs grew up on a chicken farm in East Texas. Since then, she has lived in Lubbock, TX; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Osijek, Croatia. In 2010 she received her doctorate in 20th-century literature from the University of Tennessee for a dissertation about the symbol of the holy woman in W. B. Yeats’ poetry. Her current research interests include the internet, care ethics, blank space, and existential dread. She is Professor of English at College of the Mainland and lives in League City with her husband and a pack of four rescue chihuahuas.

Louis Markos holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and history from Colgate University and a master's and doctorate in English from the University of Michigan. He is a professor of English and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, where he teaches courses on British romantic and Victorian poetry and prose, the classics, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and film. Dr. Markos holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities and lectures on Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and Romanticism for HBU’s Honors College.

He has produced two lecture series with The Teaching Company/Great Courses (From Plato to Postmodernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author; The Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis), published over 130 book chapters, essays and reviews in various magazines and journals, given more than 300 public lectures in two dozen states as well as Rome, Oxford and British Columbia, and had his adaptations of "The Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides," "The Helen of Euripides" and "The Electra of Sophocles" performed off-Broadway. He is committed to the concept of the professor as public educator and believes that knowledge must not be walled up in the academy but must be disseminated to all who have ears to hear. Visit his webpage at www.Loumarkos.com.

He is the author of 13 books, available at www.amazon.com/author/louismarkos: "From A to Z to Middle-Earth with J.R.R. Tolkien" (Lampion Press, 2016), "The Dreaming Stone" (a children’s novel; Lampion Press, 2015), "From A to Z to Narnia with C.S. Lewis"(Lampion Press, 2015), "C.S. Lewis: An Apologist for Education" (Classical Academic Press, 2015), "Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition" (Wipf & Stock, 2013), "On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis" (Moody, 2012), "Literature: A Student’s Guide" (Crossway Books, 2012), "Apologetics for the Twenty-First Century" (Crossway Books, 2010), "Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True and the Beautiful in the Writings of C.S. Lewis" (IVP, 2010), "The Eye of the Beholder: How to See the World like a Romantic Poet" (Winged Lion Press, 2011), "From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics" (IVP, 2007), "Pressing Forward: Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Victorian Age" (Sapientia Press, 2007) and "Lewis Agonistes: How C.S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World" (Broadman & Holman, 2003).

Kristy Peet was born in Dallas and completed her undergraduate work at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and her Master of Fine Arts in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

She is a large format analog photographer focusing primarily on staged images conceptually related to the internal personal state. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the U.S. including a solo exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Savanah College of Art and Design.

Kristy also serves as vice president of BOX13 Artspace, an artist-run exhibition and studio space devoted to the creation and advancement of experimental contemporary art in Houston. Kristy lives and works in Houston. She is currently professor of art at College of the Mainland.