Alumni Ambassadors

Kimberly Jackson

Image
Kimberly Jackson
Job title
Chair and Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Academic year
January 2016 - July 2016
Discipline
Chemistry
Project
Communicating Chemistry through the Local Cuisine
Institution
Countries

Dr. Kimberly M. Jackson is the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Associate Professor of Biochemistry, and Director of the Food Studies program at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She serves as founder and co-director of the LINCS Scholars program, a living and learning community for STEM scholars, whose goal is to improve access to STEM research careers for women of color through professional and social networks and social justice empowerment. As a Fulbright Scholar, she maintains robust and active research programs focused on novel therapeutic agents for advanced prostate cancer and the identification of strategies to improve access and equity for women of color to diversify STEM pathways. 

Kimberly redesigned and taught the introductory biochemistry course at Antigua State College for students to understand chemistry using food as a model through lectures and hands-on activities using the local cuisine. Because of her Fulbright experience, she was given a framework to create an international component to here home Food Studies program. As such, Dr. Jackson helped her students develop a comprehensive and comparative perspective about food's cultural, social, and biological significance, and introduced them to examining the ways food is centered in political discourses in both domestic and global spheres.
 

Ask Me About:

  • Being a Black woman in foreign spaces
  • Taking a family (three children and a spouse who travels back and forth to the US for his job) on Fulbright
  • Navigating a disability abroad
  • Being a scientist abroad with limited resources (persevering through)