Diversity in the Scientific Community Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success Volume 2

Donna Nelson, Professor of Chemistry at Oklahoma University, obtained her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Texas-Austin and did her postdoctorate at Purdue, after which she joined the OU faculty in 1983. She has almost 200 publications and many honors, including NSF ADVANCE Leadership Award, SACNAS Distinguished Scientist, Women's eNews "21 Leaders for the 21st Century", ACS Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Guggenheim Award, NOW "Woman of Courage", Ford Fellow, Sigma Xi Faculty Research Award, NSF Creativity Extension, and many keynote talks. She specializes in organic chemistry, which she both researches and teaches. Nelson's career has focused on five primary topics of research generally categorized in two areas, Scientific Research and America's Scientific Readiness. Nelson served as a science advisor to the AMC television show Breaking Bad and was the 2016 President of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

H. N. Cheng obtained his PhD at the University of Illinois and is currently a research chemist at Southern Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in New Orleans, where he works on projects involving improved utilization of commodity agricultural materials, green chemistry, and polymer reactions. Prior to 2009 he worked for Hercules Incorporated where he was involved at various times with new product development, team and project leadership, new business evaluation, pioneering research, and supervision of analytical research. Over the years, his research interests have included green polymer chemistry, biocatalysis and enzymatic reactions, pulp and paper chemistry, functional foods, polymer characterization, and NMR spectroscopy.