Diversity Keynote Given by Michelle Estrada

Michelle (Mica) Estrada, an associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco,  presented the 2021 Diversity Keynote address at Cell Bio Virtual 2021. 

This invited presenter is chosen by the co-PIs of the Innovative Programs to Enhance Research Training grant and approved by the ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee.

Estrada received her PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University. Her research program focuses on social influence, including the study of identity, values, forgiveness, well-being, and integrative education. Currently she is engaged in several longitudinal studies, which involve the implementation and assessment of interventions aimed to increase underrepresented minority student persistence in STEM careers (funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute). With the NSF Climate Change Education grant, she directed an interdisciplinary team to provide learning opportunities to San Diego leaders about the changing climate. She continues to advise on the Climate Stewards project.

Estrada’s scholarly work has had two areas of emphasis. First, her work is theory driven. Specifically, she assesses how educational interventions result in greater integration into a community and increased engagement in the normative behaviors of that community. She utilizes the Tripartite Integration Model of Social Influence to inform the design of educational interventions as well as form the basis of evaluation and research used to assess if and why educational interventions work (or do not work). Second, her work focuses on ethnic populations that are historically underrepresented in higher education, most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and have the potential to provide diverse and creative solutions to the pressing challenges of our day. As a leading scholar on issues of diversity and inclusion, she is currently serving on a National Research Council Roundtable.