WSU GLOBAL SUMMIT

On February 6, 2025, the Washington State University (WSU) Board of Regents met in a special session to announce the selection of Dr. Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell as the university’s 12th president. She is the first woman to hold the position in the university’s 135-year history. 

Cantwell came to Washington State University from Utah State University, where she successfully led a $1.3 billion annual operating budget spanning across the state of Utah in a 30-campus system. As president, she made significant achievements, including securing a record-breaking $495 million in sponsored research expenditures, increasing student scholarship funding by 10%, and overseeing the expansion of physical infrastructure with the groundbreaking of new education buildings and facilities. She is also credited with strengthening academic partnerships with industry leaders and with the reorganization of the Academic Enterprise. Beyond her academic accomplishments, Cantwell demonstrated strong leadership in intercollegiate athletics, successfully navigating the complex landscape of modern college sports and engaging in the revitalization of the Pac-12 Conference. 

Prior to her role at Utah State University, Cantwell held senior leadership positions in research and innovation at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. At the University of Arizona, she oversaw a research portfolio exceeding $825 million annually. During her tenure at Arizona State University, she spearheaded the impressive growth of their research enterprise, increasing annual research expenditures from $435 million to $680 million in just three years. 

Cantwell’s career also includes extensive service to US national security. She held leadership roles at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national laboratories. Her work advanced critical missions in energy, defense, and space exploration, collaborating with key federal agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). 

Cantwell holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley; and a BA in human behavior from the University of Chicago. 

Doug Burger is a research leader in artificial intelligence, computer architecture, and computer systems. Not only has his research has been highly influential in the field of computer architecture, but he has also led engineering teams that have designed and shipped novel computing systems at data center scales and made key contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. He is currently a both a technical fellow and a corporate vice president at Microsoft, serving as the managing director of Microsoft’s Research’s worldwide labs. In that role, he oversees a global organization of over 1,000 researchers and engineers, steering the organization to generate strategic breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and computer science. 

Burger received his BS in computer science from Yale University in 1991, then went on to earn his MS and PhD in the same field from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993 and 1998 respectively. From 1998 to 2008, he was a member of the computer sciences faculty at the University of Texis in Austin, where he co-led a research lab that generated a stream of innovations in computer architecture. Hundreds of millions of microprocessors worldwide contain advanced technologies (such as non-uniform caches) that were invented in his laboratory.  

In 2008, Microsoft recruited him to build a computer architecture group in Microsoft Research. From then to 2018, he led teams that pioneered advanced large-scale system designs such as Brainwave (for service ultra-efficient AI for Bing and Office), Accelerated Networking, and Catapult. Every server deployed in Microsoft’s Cloud now incorporates a hardware platform designed by Doug’s research team.  

In 2018, Microsoft asked Burger to move with his team into Azure to co-found their custom hardware division, where he then served as an engineering executive, designing AI supercomputers for Microsoft’s Cloud. During that time, Doug and two of his team members co-invented a new class of number formats called MX, which were released in 2023. These number formats define ultra-efficient numerics for AI (four, six, and eight-bit formats) and have been widely adopted by the AI industry. This standard will be shipping as the primary performance improver in Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips, which are slated for release later this year. These number formats are expected to save Microsoft tens of billions of dollars in AI serving costs and hundreds of billions of dollars for the broader industry.   

In 2023, Burger was asked to move back to Microsoft Research to take on a leadership role as a director of Microsoft Research Core, the organization’s worldwide labs. He supervises over 1,000 scientists and engineers and is chartered with steering Microsoft’s research organization through the transition to the AI era.  

Burger has received many awards for his research, including the 2006 ACM Maurice Wilkes Award. He has published over 100 scientific papers, which have been cited over 41,000 times. He is also the co-inventor of more than 100 US patents. He is also a fellow with the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Kimberly Clark is a seasoned technology leader with a passion for innovation, audacious goals, and developing high-performing teams. She joined Arizona State University in March 2023 as deputy chief information officer. In this role, she is chartered with advancing digital transformation and driving operational excellence.

Prior to joining ASU, Kimberly was head of strategy and operations for IT, information security, and privacy engineering at Twitter. Clark led strategy formulation and execution and provided oversight of mission-critical projects and regulatory commitments. Her organization was also responsible for data analytics, technical program management, M&A activity for the chief information security officer and the global head of IT, and organizational culture.

Prior to Twitter, Kimberly was the managing director of analytics at Charles Schwab, where she enabled executive and senior leaders to make data-driven decisions across the institutional and advisory lines of business while informing regulatory, legal, and media responses. Later, she successfully established a decision support and governance practice within Schwab’s 20,000-member technology organization to support their chief information officer in leading technology as a business.

Clark started her career in management consulting at Accenture, working across aerospace and defense, insurance, telecommunications, and transportation industries. It was in this early career role where she built stamina and learned to voice her perspective unapologetically.

Clark holds her MS in information management from Arizona State University. She is a board member of Girls in Tech – Phoenix as part of her ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Clark’s most fascinating role, however, continues to be “the best auntie ever”. 

Nairanjana “Jan” Dasgupta is a Boeing Distinguished Professor of science and mathematics and a professor of statistics in the department of mathematics and statistics. She is also the director of the data analytics program. She was the founding director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Statistics Education and Research (CISER). She has been a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) since 2018. She is part of the Advisory Board for Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA). She is the president elect for the Caucus for Women in Stats (CWS) and chairs the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) section for the Western North American Region’s (WNAR) International Biometric Society. She is passionate about data literacy for all. 

Dasgupta got her BSc (honors, 1990) from Presidency College, Kolkata. She received both her MS (1994) and her PhD (1996) from the University of South Carolina. Since 1996, she has been at Washington State University as an assistant (1996-2002), associate (2002-2008), and full professor (2008 to present). 

Dasgupta’s forte is interdisciplinary research, solving real-life problems from other disciplines by developing statistical methodology with a focus on multiple testing and categorical data. She is involved with all three areas of faculty life: research, teaching, and service. Her interest in interdisciplinary research is apparent in her 62 publications. Exposing her students to real-life problems and teaching them how to communicate their solutions has always been her mantra in her classes. She has served as an advisor to 77 graduate students. She is on the editorial boards of “The American Statistician” and “Journal of Statistical Computations and Simulations.” She has an active research profile and has been funded by NIST, NSF, NIH and is currently co-PI on two funded grants.  

Outside of work, her family keeps her busy. She is a very involved mother and is an active advocate for special education and those with learning disabilities. She enjoys reading, poetry, art, and cooking, especially using Indian spices in other cuisines.

Jesus Trujillo Gomez is an industry executive for Google Cloud Public Sector. In his current role, Gomez leads the definition and implementation of the go-to-market strategy and next-generation solutions for Digital Natives. He has over 16 years of experience launching solutions and services across regulated industries that currently support hundreds of millions of daily users across telecommunications, financial services, and public sectors. 

Karina Hottinger is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in psychology and minoring in neuroscience. After spending time outside of class learning about the nature and scope of the opioid epidemic in America, Hottinger became aware of the need and opportunity to make a positive contribution in the field of addiction. This realization inspired her to focus her own research interests on opioid use disorder, pain threshold, and relapse prevention.

With the goal of entering a clinical psychology doctorate program, she is actively engaged in research-related activities on campus, intent on learning as much as possible about all aspects of the research process. This fall, she looks forward to working as a teaching assistant and helping other behavioral science students prepare to conduct research by learning statistics. Hottinger is excited to participate in Dr. Fales’s lab and contribute to the important work being done regarding pediatric chronic pain.  

Outside of work and school, she enjoys hiking, rock climbing, reading, and spending time with family.

Steve James’ research focuses on the interaction between physical stressors (such as sleep-related fatigue), law, policy, training, and practice relating to operational performance for high-consequence occupations, such as military, law enforcement, and nursing. He strives to better understand the dynamics of performance in a wide variety of tasks: driving, social interactions, crisis intervention, and deadly force encounters. He utilizes neurophysiological measurements and simulation technology to evaluate training and performance of military and law enforcement personnel. This research will lead to more effective and economical training and greater public safety.

Prior to becoming an academic, James spent more than 23 years in the British infantry as a solider and officer, serving in Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and Afghanistan. 

Jeonghyun “Jonna” Lee is the research in education innovation director at the Center for 21^st Century Universities (C21U). Her research covers the intersection of learning sciences and educational technology, focusing on understanding and enhancing student motivation, engagement, and success. She leads evidence-based studies on how technology, such as AI-powered systems, digital credentials, and predictive analytics, can support effective learning in higher education and beyond. 

Lee collaborates on cross-functional initiatives that translate research into practice, aiming to improve outcomes for diverse learners in large-scale online and blended programs. She also serves as the lead instructor for the data-driven education class in Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program, mentoring undergraduate students in research on learning analytics and educational innovation. 

Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of higher education, educational technology, and online learning. She has presented her findings at national and international conferences, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), UPCEA, Learning@Scale, the Digital Credentials Summit, and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Innovate. 

Before joining Georgia Tech, Lee was a research associate on the nationally recognized Chatbot Scaling Project at Georgia State University, where she studied the use of behavioral nudges to promote college completion. 

Lee enjoys reading books, listening to classical music, learning new languages, and solving puzzles. 

Dr. Andrew Perkins is an associate professor of marketing and international business. Dr. Perkins’ research explores numerous facets of what is generally termed Implicit Social Cognition, broadly defined as the cognitive processes that affect our behavior but are unavailable to introspection by consumers and not directly observable by researchers.

Within the general domain of Implicit Social Cognition, Dr. Perkins examines the cognitive and behavioral effects of linking new or novel objects to the consumer self-concept, how the metaphorical relationship between psychological and physical experience affects behavior, and how implicit, or unconscious, attitudes and cognitive processes affect perceptions of race, gender, and nationality.

Dr. Perkins has published numerous articles in top Marketing journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Management. Dr. Perkins is also the director of the Center for Behavioral Business Research (CBBR). The mission of the CBBR is to bring together industry leaders, academics, and students for the study of various behavioral issues relevant to business, consumers and broader society.

Will Smith, a 23-year veteran of Capitol Hill, brings to Cornerstone a deep knowledge and expertise in the federal appropriations and budget process. Prior to joining the firm in March 2017, Will served as the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations staff director. In this role, Will supervised and organized all aspects of Committee operations, including personnel, financial, oversight, communications and outreach – serving as the principal strategic and political advisor to Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY). During his time on the Committee, he managed a robust agenda, to include over 200 investigations, over 600 budget and oversight hearings, and helped shepherd nearly 150 appropriations bills across the House floor.