Throughout her engineering education and research career, Cassie Mitchell hasn’t seen many role models who look like her.

Mitchell developed a neurological condition at 18 that has resulted in quadriplegia, and she rarely has encountered other professionals in STEM fields with similar disabilities. That’s made it imperative to her to be the role model she didn’t have.

“As a disabled professor, I want students from diverse backgrounds and disabilities to feel empowered and included,” Mitchell said, “and to know they have professors who can relate to them.”

The assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University has made a point to involve students from all kinds of backgrounds and with all kinds of abilities in her lab — from high school interns to Ph.D. students.

She’ll get to build on those efforts as one of the first awardees under an initiative from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to recognize and support excellent early career biomedical researchers who have a record of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Science Diversity Leadership award program includes $1.15 million in grant funding over five years. The organizations announced the initial round of recipients Oct. 19.

Read the full story on the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering website.