Mass-

President - Rebecca Pitts

Rebecca received her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry (with Honors) from Clark University in Worcester, MA in 2000. She went on to obtain a Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Rhode Island, where she studied peptide inhibitors of the protein tyrosine kinase Src. She was then hired by the Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) program at URI as a research associate in the Core Facility housed within the College of Pharmacy. Rebecca joined Bruker Daltonics in April 2004 as an application scientist (clinical proteomics) and focused on application development and customer support for Bruker's ClinProt system for biomarker discovery. She is currently a Chemist with PerkinElmer and develops products for neonatal screening utilizing tandem mass spectrometry. Rebecca was a founding chapter board member and served as Co-VP of the Mass chapter of AWIS in 2006 and 2007.

Vice-President -  Katrin Arnold

Katrin received her Diploma degree in Biology from the University of Leipzig, Germany in 2000. She did her PhD thesis at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, where she studied the role of BRCA2 in male breast cancer. In March 2006, she joined the lab of Konrad Hochedlinger at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Located at Mass General Hospital the lab studies stem cells, reprogramming and pluripotency genes. After being a member of the organization committee for the European Career Fair 2007 @ MIT, she is now co-chairing the European Career Fair 2008. She is also a member of the Harvard Dragon Boat team and you might see her paddling on the Charles River during the summer.

Vice President - Carol Manahan

Carol Manahan, Ph.D. is a Scientific Education Manager in the Education Office, NIBR Cambridge.  She joined the Education Office in October 2005 after completing an Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellowship at NSF.  She also was a member of the National Academy of Sciences/NRC committee, “Building Bridges: Fostering Talent in the Biomedical Sciences.”  While a postdoctoral researcher, she was one of the founders and is the founding Chair of the National Postdoctoral Association, a group that advocates for positive change in the experience of postdoctoral researchers.  She performed her postdoctoral research in Dictyostelium chemotaxis at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the laboratory of Peter Devreotes.  She received her PhD in Molecular Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in Maurine Linder’s laboratory.  Carol has been a member of AWIS since 2003, first in the Washington DC chapter and now in the Boston chapter.  She looks forward to getting more involved in the Boston chapter this year.

Treasurer - Carolyn Cho

Carolyn works at Pfizer Research Technology Center in Kendall Square.  Following her training at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Physics BSc, MSc), University of Toronto (Biological Physics PhD), and Princeton University (Molecular Biology post doc), she went on to computer-based modeling at SmithKline Beecham (now GSK), Physiome Sciences (became Predix and now Epix Pharmaceuticals), Biosystemix, and Novartis. She has also helped organize national and local-area scientific meetings.
I have been a member of AWIS and the Association for Women in Mathematics on-and-off since graduate school, and began participating several years ago in these and other mentorship programs. I discovered the volunteer organization Boston Cares since arriving here, and am involved in various activities through them.

Administrator - Natalie Catlett

Natalie earned her B.S. degree in Biology at Virginia Tech and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Iowa, where she worked on myosin-based organelle movement.  She went on to postdoc in the fungal genomics group at Torrey Mesa Research Institute in San Diego (now closed).  She is currently a scientist at Genstruct, a systems biology company, where she has worked primarily on oncology related projects.  Natalie first joined AWIS while living in San Diego nd became involved with Mass-AWIS when she moved to the Boston area in 2006.  She has helped organize many AWIS events and programs in the past years.
 

Get Involved

In addition to our Executive Board, we have many committees looking for new members - including Fundraising, Workshops, and Mentoring.  Volunteering is a great way to meet people and build new skills!

Contact us for more information!