Engineering a More Inclusive Science

Nina grew up on Roosevelt Island watching her siblings navigate the world with vision impairment — an early education in how differently bodies work and how much design matters. She became an electrical engineer, then a tissue engineer, then one of biotech's most visible women CEOs, and along the way a guest lecturer at Columbia and MIT and a mentor whose student tribute videos keep arriving year after year.

This talk pairs her personal path with a practical argument: the future of biology will be built into everyone's bodies, so it should be built by people who reflect everyone. Audiences — from first-year students to executive sponsors of inclusion programs — leave with concrete ways to widen the pipeline and the conviction that doing so is a scientific advantage.