Innovation and the Power of Transdisciplinary Collaboration

The webinar took place on Thursday, March 25th, at 3:00pm EST for an interactive webinar on Innovation and the Power of Transdisciplinary Collaboration.

Attendees had the opportunity to hear from two entrepreneurs, Dr. Ronald Williams, Director of the Center for Strategic Entrepreneurship at Coppin State University, and Dr. Diana Yousef, Founder and CEO of change:WATER Labs.  Our speakers talked about the importance of having a transdisciplinary approach to their careers as an academic and entrepreneur.  They navigated how bridging multiple disciplines are beneficial in pathway from being a student to a professional.  We also discussed how this approach is critical to providing solutions to social justice issues such as those that our AAAS HBCU Making & Innovation teams seek to address.  A moderated discussion and audience Q&A followed the presentations.

You can view the recording here

The slides from the webinar are available here.

About the Speakers

Dr. Ronald (Ron) C. Williams has served in higher education for 35 years, spending the past 25 years as a faculty member of the Coppin State University (CSU) College of Business where he also served as interim dean from 2013 until 2017. In 2016, he established a formal relationship between Coppin State University and Open Works Baltimore, a 34K sq. ft makerspace, a relationship that is the first of its kind in the country. In another trailblazing accomplishment, Dr. Williams served as principal investigator for the 2019 “Turning Makerspaces into Greater Places: An Organizational Assessment and Economic Impact Study of Open Works,” (www.GreaterSpacesAndPlaces.com). His articulation of the value of  makerspaces continued in 2020 as principal investigator for the case study of the Open Works application of Lean Manufacturing principles during the initial months of the pandemic which produced over 28,000 face shields in 56 days for over 100 clients. Extending his work beyond the makerspace movement, he also serves as academic consultant for the Manufacturing Workforce Development Industry & Inclusion Study, a joint research project by The Century Foundation and Urban Manufacturing Alliance. His passion for advancing the socio-economic position of underrepresented communities led to his development of the unique concept of  ingepreneurship (inge… as in ingenuity) as described in a 2017 Metropolitan Journal article “Creating a University Driven ‘Ingepreneurial’ Ecosystem in West Baltimore: A Strategy for Rust Belt Revitalization.” He is currently developing a trust framework for collaborative economic development across cultural and geographic divides.  

Dr. Williams holds a Ph.D. in management and organization from George Washington University with a concentration in the management of science, technology, and innovation. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Open Works and is president-elect and incoming chair of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance Board of Directors.

Dr. Diana Yousef, PhD, MBA, MA is Founder and CEO of change:WATER Labs, a mission-driven cleantech venture to extend safe water and sanitation access to poor and vulnerable communities around the world. Diana’s career spans the arenas of academic life sciences research, international economic development, strategy consulting, finance and venture capital/private equity investing. She co-founded the Life Sciences Investment Group of the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, investing in growth-stage biotech and agritech companies in India, China and other emerging markets. She also co-founded the United Nation’s Inclusive Markets incubator, to help companies develop innovative products and services for the base-of-the-pyramid. As a consultant with McKinsey and Company, Diana worked with clients across several sectors and functions. She was a seed-stage venture investor with Battelle Ventures and Kidd and Company, investing in and catalyzing companies around emerging technologies in the cleantech, biotechnology, and IT. As an entrepreneur, she founded and co-founded a number of cleantech and social ventures, including: WeCyclers (social venture to clean up urban slums and create recyclables supply chain linkages in Nigeria), Immerse Global (Stanford-spin out to develop atmospheric water capture technologies), SachSiSolar (MIT-spin out to develop revolutionary new materials to lower the cost of solar energy); and her current venture, change:WATER Labs (to commercialize frugal yet disruptive innovations to expand access to safe water and sanitation in the developing world). She is a former protein biochemist (B.A., Harvard; Ph.D., Cornell), and holds an MBA and an MIA in International Affairs (Columbia). She was an inaugural member of TED Fellows Advisory and Selection Committee, a Founding Council Member for NASA/USAID’s LAUNCH Accelerator, and a 2017-8 Inventor Ambassador for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the Lemelson Foundation. She was a 2018 finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award; one of 5 Global Winners of the 2018 Chivas-Regal Venture Competition; and currently a 2018-9 Top 10 Finalist for the African Innovation Prize. Her work and the work of change:WATER Labs have been recognized globally. She was invited to speak at the 2019 UN Climate Summit on Private Sector Innovations to address the SDGs. In 2018, her venture was announced as one of a select group of global awardees of the inaugural Humanitarian Grand Challenges Awards (funded by USAID, DFID and the Dutch Foreign Ministry). The work of Diana and her team has been covered such publications as Forbes, Fast Company, BOSS Magazine (on the cover of April 2018 issue), Bloomberg, the Discovery Channel, The Daily Beast and the Boston Globe.