Science in the City Awardees

Past Awardees

2025

Societal Impact Award: Creating Pathways and Access for Student Success Foundation (CPASS) champions STEMM education and career access for underrepresented Illinois students to empower their success in healthcare and technology.

Tracie Screven is the Associate Director of CPASS Foundation. In previous years, Tracie held various roles in Research and Development at Kraft Heinz for over 16 years. And most recently she held roles at SMASH as Site Director and the Midwest Regional Program Director where she launched SMASH Illinois and developed STEMM programming for black and brown high school students to prepare them for college and careers in STEMM.

Given her passion for STEMM and understanding of this landscape as it relates to women and people of color, Tracie is dedicating the remainder of her career to opening doors for young people from underserved communities for careers in STEMM fields.

2025

Synergy Award: The Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub (MBDH) is a network of people from academia, industry, government, and nonprofits who are passionate about using data-driven approaches to address grand challenges facing science and society.

Catherine Blake currently serves as the principal investigator for the NSF’s Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub (MBDH, NSF abstract) and is leading a study to assess the use of Artificial Intelligence for targeted search (CSL/Behring).

2024

Picture of Andrea Ingram, PhD, the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award

Lifetime Achievement Award: A proven leader with extensive experience as a business lawyer, public policy advocate, social service agency executive, and cultural institution thought leader, Andrea J. Ingram joined DuPage Children’s Museum in November 2019. Ingram served for 13 years as Vice President of Education and Guest Services at the Museum of Science and Industry prior to joining the Museum.

2024

Young Professional Award: Video games are changing the future, and Keisha Howard wants to ensure everyone has a voice in that conversation. A futurist, entrepreneur, and two time TEDx Speaker, Keisha recognizes the potential for video games to transcend their role as entertainment and become a mechanism for inspiration and social change.

2024

Societal Impact Award: STEM Opportunity Landscape Project – Jessica Burgess is Argonne’s STEM Education Partnerships and Outreach Manager, overseeing the development and coordination of family-friendly outreach activities and competitions that align with Argonne’s research.

2023

Lifetime Achievement Award: Jean M. Franczyk has led the Chicago Botanic Garden as President and CEO since 2016. Prior, she served as the Director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England. Before that, she was Vice President of Education and Guest Services at the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) in Chicago and Chief of Staff for the Chicago Board of Education, a policy advisor to then Mayor Richard M. Daley, managed a grant-making portfolio for the Chicago Community Trust, and worked as a journalist for the Chicago Reporter and the Miami Herald. Jean is an alumna of the Getty Leadership Institute and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA).

2023

Young Professional Award: Brittany M. Towers is a food scientist, certified culinary scientist, and has a background in biology and food chemistry. Her work focuses on opening the door of possibility through her visibility and platform as The Black Food Scientist. She utilizes her experience with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization in Chicago to inform her commitment to bring the fun and relevance of food science to the general public, especially the minds of youth within underrepresented groups.

2022

Lifetime Achievement Award: Megan Ross, Ph.D. serves as President & CEO of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo and is the first woman and first scientist to lead the global urban zoo and science center.

2021

Lifetime Achievement Award: Edmundo Garcia-Solis is a Professor of Physics and Department Chair of Chemistry, Physics and Engineering Studies at Chicago State University.

2019

Lifetime Achievement Award: Angela Olinto, University of Chicago, Dean, Physical Sciences Division, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepting on behalf of Wendy Freedman, University of Chicago, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics; presented by Bob Arthur, Magellan Corp.

2018

Lifetime Achievement Award: Ann Lurie, President, Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation

2017

Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael Polsky, CEO of Invenergy

2015

Advancing the Public Understanding of Science & Technology Award: Gary Brinson, Chairman of the Brinson Foundation

2014

Advancing the Public Understanding of Science & Technology Award: Janice L. Feinberg, PharmD, JD., President and CEO of The Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation. Award accepted by Joeseph Feinberg on behalf of Janice Feinberg.

2013

Advancing the Public Understanding of Science & Technology Award: Eric Isaacs, Ph.D., Former Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories of University of Chicago

2012

Advancing the Public Understanding of Science & Technology Award: Paul H. Knappenberger Jr., Ph.D., Former President of Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum

2025

Lifetime Achievement Award: Erika Allen is the CEO of Urban Growers Collective, the President of Green ERA Educational NFP, and the Co-Owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners. Previously, Allen founded and was the Director of Growing Power’s Chicago and National Programs Office for 16 years from 2002 to 2018. Her work exemplifies a strong commitment to environmental justice and regenerative urban agriculture in Chicago. Allen has dedicated her professional career to public service, developing sustainable community food systems, and forging economic opportunities for low-income individuals.

2025

Innovative Research Award: Alessandro F. Rotta Loria’s work lies at the intersection of Mechanics, Energy, and Electrochemistry, focusing on the subsurface. By harnessing theoretical, computational, and experimental studies, he address temporal problems lasting from seconds to decades and spatial problems ranging from soil particles to cities. His overarching objective is to develop a fundamental understanding of the impacts of energy transfers on the structure-property relationship of geological and granular materials, which form the backbone of the subsurface. This work aims to address pressing challenges and opportunities for cities and territories: from subsurface urban heat islands to sea-level change, and from geological energy harvesting and storage to sustainable construction and preservation of infrastructure. Through these eﬀorts, Alessandro strives to foster the renewable energy transition, decarbonize the construction sector, innovate infrastructure, and conserve the natural and built environments with underground solutions.

2025

Young Professional Award: Thomas A. Searles currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, hired under the University of Illinois System Distinguished Faculty Recruitment Program. In 2020-2021, he was a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT and served as the Director of the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center. Thomas received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Rice University in 2011, where his thesis work primarily focused on the magneto-optical properties of carbon nanotubes. Upon his appointment at Howard University in the Fall of 2015, Thomas has established a new research program in applied and materials physics, which now focuses on quantum materials, metamaterials and quantum information science and engineering at UIC. In recognition for his research in light-matter interactions and his capability to train and mentor Black students in Physics and Engineering, Thomas was recently awarded the inaugural AIP-NSBP Joseph A. Johnson Award for Excellence and an NSF CAREER Award. Thomas graduated from Morehouse College with a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics. He is a native of Albany, GA.

2024

Innovative Research Award: PSYONIC – Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the CEO and Founder of PSYONIC, a company developing advanced bionic limbs that are accessible to humans and robots.

2024

Synergy Award: Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen Hub (MachH2) – Dr. Dorothy Davidson is the President and CEO of Orano Federal Services. She is an accomplished and innovative senior executive well known for her success in developing and implementing successful growth strategies in the U.S. nuclear energy industry.

2023

Societal Impact Award: Cristina Negri is the Director of the Environmental Science Division of the Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) at Argonne National Laboratory. CROCUS is the first urban integrated field laboratory funded by the Department of Energy to conduct neighborhood-scale climate research aimed at advancing scientific understanding and empowering communities to identify climate and energy solutions for a sustainable future.

2023

Innovative Research Award: Philip Troyk is the Founder, President, and CEO of Sigenics, which specializes in customized electronic design, with an emphasis on sole source Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Sigenics supplies ASICs to the Commercial, Aerospace, and Medical Sectors, especially as related to innovative medical devices such as the development of a fully wireless brain-based visual prosthesis intended to provide artificial vision for people with profound blindness.

2023

Synergy Award: Reactivate is a joint venture between Invenergy and Lafayette Square that seeks to create positive social and environmental impact by investing in innovative projects and collaborating with local partners to deliver renewable energy benefits to underserved communities. Jordan Leventhal serves as Senior Vice President of Product at Reactivate and is a member of the Investment Committee.

2022

Young Professional Awardee: Dr. Mika Tosca researched the interconnectivity of the climate system with landscape wildfires and their particulate (aerosol) emissions using Earth system models at University of California, Irvine. She continued this work as a postdoctoral scholar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a federally-funded NASA research lab) in Pasadena, CA. In 2017 she took a position as an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is now investigating ways that artists and designers can collaborate with climate scientists in an effort to better communicate and conduct climate science research.

2021

Covid Response Awardee: Dr. Jonathan Ozik is a computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory; Senior Scientist in the Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering at the University of Chicago, with a Public Health Sciences affiliation; and Senior Institute Fellow in the Northwestern Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering.

2019

Accomplished Young Professional: Kimberly Moore, Founder KDM Engineering; presented by Gerald Blazey, Northern Illinois University, Vice President for Research and Innovation Partnerships, Distinguished Research Professor

2018

Accomplished Young Professional: Emile Cambry, Jr., Founder BLUE1647

2017

Accomplished Young Professional: Jessica Malkin, CEO of Chicago Ideas

2016

Accomplished Young Professional Award: Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, Astronomer at the Adler Planetarium