Dr. Gaskins is the Assistant Dean of Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement in the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science, the only African-American female currently teaching in the faculty of the College of Engineering. Whitney earned her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, her Masters of Business Administration in Quantitative Analysis and her Doctorate of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering/Engineering Education. In her role as Assistant Dean, Dr. Gaskins has revamped the summer bridge program to increase student support and retention as well as developed and strengthened partnerships in with local area school districts to aid in the high school to college pathway. She serves as the Principal Investigator for both the Choose Ohio First Program (COF) and Ohio LSAMP grants. Through these grant programs the students receive competitive scholarship funding and professional development workshops which help prepare them to enter into the STEMM workforce. 

In 2009, she founded The Gaskins Foundation, a non-profit organization, whose mission is to educate and empower the African American community. Her foundation recently launched the Cincinnati STEMulates year round K-12 program, which is a free of charge program that will introduce more students to Math and Science. She was named the 2017 K12 Champion by the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAMEPA). In 2015, Dr. Gaskins was awarded the Janice A Lumpkin Educator of the Year Golden Torch Award. In 2019, she was recognized by the Greater Cincinnati Chamber as a Black History Maker. She was a recipient of the Dr. Terry Kershaw Faculty Excellence Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Cincinnati for her innovative honors course Sticky Innovation (stickyinnovation.com). She was inducted in the 40 under 40 class of 2019 and was recognized as a 2021 Career Woman of Achievement 

Aaron M. Kyle recently joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University as a Professor of the Practice. At Duke, he will continue is efforts to enhance undergraduate education while teaching First Year Design, Senior Design and Bioinstrumentation.  Dr. Kyle aspires to create new courses that will provide robust design experiences for undergraduates between their first and final years of study. He is also devising methods and researching the efficacy of  intentionally addressing DEI issues in design projects and engineering education. 

In 2014, Dr. Kyle created and launched the HYPOTHEKids (Hk) Maker Lab, an NIH-funded set of programs focused on introducing underprivileged and underrepresented minority high school students in New York City to engineering design and biomedical research.  As a result of this program, over 160 high school students have learned and applied a bio-engineering design process. The program has propelled students to biomedical laboratory and biotechnology industry internships and the pursuit of STEM majors.  He also guided NYC teachers in the development of engineering design-centric courses for middle and high school students. These courses are currently being taught in seven (7) NYC high schools, impacting over 1000 students. With his move to Duke, Dr. Kyle will work to replicate these efforts for students and teachers in Durham, NC, and surrounding communities. 

Dr. Kyle received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Kettering University in '02 and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University in '07. After conducting postdoctoral research at the Indiana University School of Medicine, he joined the faculty in BME at Columbia University in 2010 where he proudly served as a Senior Lecturer for twelve years. He joined the faculty at Duke University in 2022. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor societies. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and delivered the Diversity Award Lecture at the 2020 BMES Annual Meeting. 

Dr. Soranno is a pediatric nephrologist at Riley Hospital for Children and an associate professor at Indiana University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. She earned a BS in Biomedical Engineering (2003) and MD (2007) at Case Western Reserve University. She performed her residency training in Pediatrics at the University of Colorado (2007-1010) followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2013). She spent the first 9 years of her academic career at the University of Colorado/Children’s Hospital Colorado, where she established her basic science lab using animal models to investigate the long-term kidney and systemic outcomes after acute kidney injury (AKI). Her research lab uses injectable hydrogels to delivery therapeutics to the kidney after AKI to improve outcomes and reduce the progression to chronic kidney disease. Dr. Soranno also collaborates in numerous multi-centered clinical research projects investigating the outcomes of children and neonates who develop AKI. She was recruited to IUSM/Riley in 2022 and will continue to work in the pediatrics/bioengineering/AKI fields.