Over the last five years I have driven next gen smart and connected communities strategies, technologies, policies, and implementation both with the National Science Foundation and the nonprofit US Ignite. While we as a nation have made great progress in smart cities, data science, and next generation technologies, city residents are less involved in decision making and digital inequity is increasing, both of which are unacceptable. I founded mohuman to mobilize 1 billion city residents to engage their city governments for city technologies that serve everyone. mohuman is a nonprofit committed to building community movements that focus on a humans first approach for technology. We care about creating, incentivizing and fostering human decision making toward development and deployment of science and technology solutions for faster, more inclusive and sustainable quality of life increases. mohuman.org. digivide.org. digifime.com.

Connected Communities Collaborative is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to helping local governments strategically integrate and leverage technological innovation to enhance economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and quality of life. Technology is bringing rapid change in many sectors including personal mobility, transportation, land-use, wireless, goods-movement and more. Connected Communities Collaborative works to give local governments the strategies, tools and training they need to take advantage of connected and smart city technologies.

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships (STPF) provide opportunities to outstanding scientists and engineers to learn first-hand about policymaking and contribute their knowledge and analytical skills in the policy realm. Fellows serve yearlong assignments in the federal government and represent a broad range of backgrounds, disciplines, and career stages. Each year, STPF adds to a growing corps over 3,000 strong of policy-savvy leaders working across academia, government, nonprofits, and industry to serve the nation and citizens around the world.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a 501c3 organization, provides science-based analysis of and solutions to protect against catastrophic threats to national and international security. Specifically, FAS works to reduce the spread and number of nuclear weapons, prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism, promote high standards for nuclear energy’s safety and security, illuminate government secrecy practices, as well as prevent the use of biological and chemical weapons.Founded in November 1945, as the Federation of Atomic Scientists, by scientists who built the first atomic bombs during the Manhattan Project, FAS is devoted to the belief that scientists, engineers, and other technically trained people have the ethical obligation to ensure that the technological fruits of their intellect and labor are applied to the benefit of humankind. In early 1946, FAS rebranded as the Federation of American Scientists to broaden its network of supporters to include all caring citizens like you who want to reduce the risks to humanity from global catastrophes.

I have led US Ignite’s Smart Gigabit Communities Initiative from inception to a rapid growth of 25-member cities program within just two years. I have championed the creation of sustainable smart cities movements by growing strong local multi-sector city and regional leaderships (city government, universities and research institutions, innovation and entrepreneur developer groups, investors, and the federal government), providing technical leadership for advanced smart cities networking technologies, and fostering local incentivized innovation ecosystems that support next gen smart cities technologies development from ideation to deployment. From managing leadership personalities and city steering committees to national reverse pitches and hackathons, my team and I have developed data-backed smart cities models that work, are agile and scalable across cities, states and regions. We are actively involved in managing urban and rural communities to embrace and create advanced technologies that make their cities smarter. This is an exhilarating continuation of my science and technology policy work from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Ignite Program and a unique opportunity to champion a national public private partnership as both a public and private stakeholder.

I was honored to be appointed at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of the Assistant Director of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) to learn, lead, advise, organize and create national science and technology policy for the NSF, the White House, and multi-agency collaboratives. I undertook the creation the Federal National Big Data Initiative for the US Government through strategic coordination of the NITRD Interagency Big Data Senior Steering Group and the NSF Data Science Priority Goal, creation of the NSF Big Data Regional Innovation HUBS program, founding of the US Government’s Data Science Seminar Series open to the public, and coauthoring of The Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan national policy from the White House. I also participated in strategic planning and managing the White House and NSF US Ignite Program as well as the Mozilla Gigabit Fund to complementarily develop next generation gigabit applications and services to form the foundation of America’s future smart cities. Additionally, as a recovering biologist, I helped to catalyzed NSF and NASA cross-agency strategies and incentives for crowdsourced innovation in smart and connected healthcare. The AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship was very empowering on a national level and equally so on a personal level, with executive level leadership training in science and technology policy, strategic planning and management and a lifetime affiliation with a powerful network of national and international impact-driven science and technology superstars.

I founded Pandemic Academic to create a cognizant biosurvelliance data analytics platform, Pandemic Watch, for the public to track public health and infectious diseases trends in real time. The platform was also used to provide citizens with location-based biosecurity education and preparedness for epidemics and pandemics. Pandemic Academic provided biosecurity, biosafety and bioweapons nonproliferation consulting services as well as a sandbox for experimenting with data analytics in the public health sector to over 18,000 users. Creation of this company challenged me to learn and build a successful for-profit business that could provide public benefit.

I created the Virtual Biosecurity Center (VBC) out of a biology policy project while at the Federation of American Scientists to build an international public health and biosecurity clearinghouse with over 30 governmental and non-governmental collaborative partnerships. In addition to brave new programs, the VBC strategically assimilated existing biosecurity programs from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The VBC grew to become the world’s number one biosecurity nonprofit center of excellence that convened working groups, workshops and conferences, and created biosecurity policies and codes of conduct, with multimillion dollar support from numerous government agencies and foundations. Some of the smaller but most exciting initiatives included the creation of the first biosafety organization in Bangladesh, a Hollywood video documentary, The Anthrax Diaries, about the ethical concerns of scientists from the Russian biological weapons programs, the Virtual Biosecurity Center Graduate Fellowship Program, and the Annual International Biosecurity Conference.

After my PhD studies, I pursued science policy in Washington DC to impact science at a broader level beyond the laboratory bench. I was fortunate to catalyzed my career at one of the oldest nonprofits in the US, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), firstly as a Program Manager followed by Director of the Biology Policy Program, Biosecurity and Chemical Weapons Programs, and the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) Archives. My programs focused on the responsible use of science and technology though analysis, collaboration, education and outreach. Notable products included the world’s first comprehensive and interactive agricultural biosecurity and agroterrorism online training course, an educational Bio Agent mobile app for biohackers and citizen scientists through a collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, scientific advisor to award-winning Hollywood director and writer Matt Reeves, the book “Innovation, Dual Use, and Security: Managing the Risks of Emerging Biological and Chemical Technologies, and the Virtual Biosecurity Center, an international bioweapons nonproliferation collaborative.