Dr. Felicia Jefferson is a tenured associate professor at Fort Valley State University. Her work, which has been funded by multiple federal grants, has appeared in top science journals. A recent publication in the journal Frontiers in Computer Science by Drs. Paul and Jefferson is the most viewed peer-reviewed original research paper in the journal. She also has recent publications using CRISPR-Cas9 technology (2) and investigating cognitive decline in patients (3).

At Fort Valley State University, Dr. Jefferson has served as PI on seven grants, five federally funded garnering full overhead (4). She also has served as co-PI on other STEM-based grants. Funds from these grants advance research, train students in STEM and fund students to participate in conferences and other training opportunities. (4). Dr. Jefferson recently served as an invited speaker of the 475th meeting of the National Science Board, who advise U.S. congress and the President, to discuss issues of diversity in academic STEMM (science, technology, education, and medicine) (5). She was also commissioned as the lead author for a publication by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).

Dr. Jefferson presented preliminary results of this study in a public forum on November 5, 2020 to the National Academies (5). She also served as an invited panelist at The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) workshop on, “The Impacts on STEM Undergraduate and Graduate Student Experiences of Higher Education’s response to COVID-19.” September 22, 2020 (6). She serves as an appointed delegate to National CDEI under ASEE’s Board of Directors for 2019-2024 (7). Dr. Jefferson also served as the Workshop/Special Session Organizing Chair, for the Brain Informatics (BI) 2018, 11th International Conference on Brain Informatics, Jointly Sponsored by IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, International Neural Network Society, and Springer-Nature Journals.