Professional Leadership
Susan Hackwood
Director
Susan Hackwood, PhD, is Professor of the Graduate Division and Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor at the University of California Riverside. She is also Dean Emeritus of the Bourns College of Engineering. Until July 2018 she was the Executive Director of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST). CCST is a not-for-profit corporation comprised of 200 plus science and technology leaders of the highest distinction. Sponsored by the key academic and federal research institutions in California, CCST advises the state on all aspects of science and technology including energy, information technologies, biotechnology, nanotechnology, stem cell research, healthcare technologies, climate change, disaster prevention technologies, intellectual property, technical workforce development, and education. Dr. Hackwood has worked extensively with industry, academia and government partnerships to identify policy issues of societal importance.
Doug Brown
Associate Director
Doug Brown most recently served as the Program Advisor for CCST's Science & Technology Policy Fellowship which places PhD scientists and engineers in the California Legislature. Brown has formerly served as Chief-of-Staff to the 2008 Governor's Conference on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and as Principal Consultant with the California State Senate. Mr. Brown is an economic development specialist who was also the Assistant Director for Business Relations at the Employment Development Department. He spent three years with the California Technology, Trade & Commerce Agency where he designed the state's Small Business Development Center program. His federal experience includes positions with the US Senate, the Small Business Administration, and the White House Conference on Small Business. Mr. Brown, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a Vietnam veteran, has a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Kansas and a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the George Washington University.
Richard M. Carpiano
Faculty Director
Richard M. Carpiano is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. A public and population health scientist and medical sociologist by training, Dr. Carpiano studies how social factors contribute to the health of adults and children. A substantial focus of his research concerns factors underlying vaccination acceptance. As part of this work, Dr. Carpiano served as a member of The Lancet's Commission on Vaccine Refusal, Acceptance, and Demand in the United States. More recently, his research and policy activities have also focused on pandemic preparedness and response. He is a co-director of Resilient, a multisector collaborative that aims to improve pandemic preparedness through fostering community resilience, and member of the California Council on Science and Technology’s COVID-19 Task Force, which advises policymakers regarding how California can improve its preparedness for public health threats. Dr. Carpiano received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Sociomedical Sciences (with concentration in Sociology) from Columbia University, M.P.H. from Case Western Reserve University, and M.A. and B.A. in Sociology from Baylor University. From 2004-2006, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Julianne McCall
Instructor
Julianne McCall, PhD, is the Director of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, housed within the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research. In that role, she oversees cross-sector health policy working groups and projects, research grantmaking, and state government interagency efforts, which include serving on Governor Newsom's COVID-19 Testing Task Force and as a writer of the forthcoming CA Surgeon General's Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences. Previously, McCall worked in public health and research policy in the California Senate Office of Research and as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. Prior to her current career in policy, she spent sixteen years in neuroscience research labs, including at the Salk Institute, Stanford University, the Cleveland Clinic, and the National Center for Microscopy Imaging Research. She conducted medical research as a Fulbright Fellow in Sweden and as a neuroscientist at the Neuroregeneration Laboratory of Heidelberg University in Germany. In the community, she serves on the Editorial Board of the California Journal of Politics and Policy, occasionally directs the International "Brain Bee" Neuroscience Olympiad for high school students across fifty countries, and is the co-founder of TEDxFulbright, the Sacramento Brain Bee, and a chapter of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network. McCall earned a PhD in Neuroscience from Heidelberg University in Germany, a master's degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Diego, and a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from Denison University.
Brynn Cook
Instructor
Brynn Cook, PhD, is a California State Senate Environmental Quality Committee Consultant. She formally served as legislative analyst at CalRecycle and a legislative analyst for California State Senator Lena Gonzalez. Brynn was a California Council of Science and Technology Science Fellow after that, she received a PhD in Ecology from the University of Virginia. Her dissertation focused on the impacts of air pollution on pollination, specifically the relationships among tropospheric oxidants, floral volatiles, and insect pollinators. She received a BA in Environmental Sciences from UC Berkeley and is a proud community college graduate of Moorpark College.
Amy Gilson
Instructor
Amy Gilson, PhD, is the Deputy Director of External and Legislative Affairs at the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). She was the Policy Manager of Californians Against Waste (CAW), a non-profit environmental research and advocacy organization focused on conserving resources and preventing pollution. Prior to joining CAW in 2021, Amy served as committee consultant for the California State Senate Committee on Transportation, where she focuses on electric vehicles, shared micromobility, and transportation data governance. Amy was a CCST Policy Fellow with the California State Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials and served the chair of that committee as a legislative aide. Prior to coming to the California Legislature, Amy was a project manager at Microsoft Research New England. Amy has created and led multiple science communication and policy programs including the Harvard Science in the News Podcast and the STEM solutions in Public Policy Competition with the University of California Center Sacramento. She received her PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard University and a PhD secondary field in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Studies from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.
Thomas Dugger
Instructor
Thomas Dugger received his B.S. in Engineering from Olin College of Engineering and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Riverside, where he also completed the Science to Policy (S2P) certificate program and served on the S2P student cabinet. His dissertation topic was sustainable plastics and his S2P focus was graduate education. He worked as a grant writer for S2P and is now a Research Strategy Officer at UC Office of the President in VP Theresa Maldonado’s Research & Innovation department. His main projects are supporting California’s burgeoning renewable hydrogen economy and state-funded climate action grants. Outside of work, he enjoys strategy games, cooking, biking, and cuddling his teenage rescue great dane, Connor.