After several years of professional civil engineering practice, Mark Hernandez joined the University of Colorado faculty in 1996, and was tenured 2001. He currently serves as the director of the Colorado Diversity Initiative, which coordinates major diversity efforts among major science, math, and engineering departments to promote underrepresented students through graduate schools and into the professorate. Dr. Hernandez maintains an active environmental microbiology research program which focuses on the remediation of polluted air and water. He won the Water Environment Foundation’s Canham Award to support technology transfer between the US and England, and was a recent recipient of a National Science Foundation early CAREER award. Dr. Hernandez has authored over 36 archival journal articles, holds a US patent for wastewater reclamation, maintains a modest consulting practice, and serves as an expert witness in the remediation field. During his tenure at Colorado, Professor Hernandez has mentored numerous undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral fellows from student groups that have been historically underrepresented in engineering and the sciences.

Glake Hill Jr., is a 1996 graduate from Tougaloo College. In 2003, he graduated from the Computational Center for Molecular Structure and Interactions at Jackson State University with a Ph. D. in theoretical chemistry. During his time at Jackson State University, Dr. Hill as published 6 articles in peer reviewed international journals. He has given over 40 poster presentations and 7 oral presentations at international conferences. He has receive a number of awards, including the QEM Graduate Student Award and the ChemFirst scholarship. In 2002, he was selected as one of 32 students from the United States to attend a meeting of the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry in Lindau, Germany. After graduation, he received the prestigious President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship to research at the University of California, Berkeley. He has now received an appointment as an assistant professor at his alma mater, Jackson State University. Finally, he is the CEO of the Foundation for Educational Excellence, a non-profit organization he started to address inadequacies of public K-12 education.