Transcriptional regulation by chromatin and RNA polymerase 2026

Blaise J. Arena is a retired research chemist and project manager with a developer of petrochemical technology. He is the author of over 50 patents and publications in the areas of carbohydrate chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis.

co-founder of Black in Microbiology (#BlackInMicro) and a member of the first cohort of the ASBMB MOSAIC program

Blanca H. Lapizco-Encinas is a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. She works with miniaturized electrophoretic systems to rapidly detect pathogens.

Evolutionary geneticist and choral singer. She has spent the past 60 years studying the wonders of evolution. She penned a secular retelling of our origin story — drawing from scientific discoveries in cosmology, molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, ecology and anthropology — and teamed up with a poet and a composer to bring the 110-minute choral work to fruition. The piece, Origins of the Universe, of Life, of Species, of Humanity, is bold, compelling and funny. She studied genetics at the University of Adelaide, won a Fulbright grant to get her PhD at Berkeley. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1999. She founded the comparative genomics department at Australian National University. She predicted that the human Y chromosome was shrinking and would disappear in about 4 million to 5 million years. She was named a Thinker-in-Residence at the University of Canberra.

Biologist who has known Graves since the 1990s. He says he was blown away by Graves's latest achievement. He says 'She’s absolutely brilliant. She’s creative. She’s original. There’s no one else like Jenny.' He invited Graves to the Wellcome Trust in London to speak at the official launch of the Earth Biogenome Project.