LEAP Scholar Spotlight

Two of JCOIN’s LEAP Scholars, Vanessa Bright and Kwasi Boaitey, have been accepted to the Substance Use Disorders Ventures program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Portrait of Vanessa Bright against a grey background.The prestigious National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded program focuses on generating business ideas/ventures to address and treat substance use disorders (SUDs). It invites 14 SUD Research Fellows and other selected participants from diverse fields, including entrepreneurship, engineering, and design to participate in interactive classes, webinars, and a five-day boot camp. 

 

Dr. Ekaterina Pivovarova, Faculty for the LEAP Scholars, will serve as one of the program’s featured industry experts and speak about opportunities to advance the treatment of SUDS for individuals with criminal-legal involvement.

Black and white portrait of Kwasi Boaitey.Vanessa and Kwasi have been leaders in the SUD field. In 2019, Vanessa established the Maryland Reentry Resource Center, driven by her commitment to empower formerly incarcerated individuals to reintegrate as thriving and productive members of their communities. Kwasi is the Director of Culturally Responsive Management (CRM) and the Assistant Director of the Health & Incarceration Pathway for the University of Rochester and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. As a subject matter expert, Kwasi assists the efforts of the Gravity Project which is a national public collaborative developing consensus-based data standards to improve information on social determinants of health. He is also a PhD candidate in human development at the University of Rochester's Warner School of Education, where he focuses on identity development, posttraumatic growth, and racialized trauma.

 

As JCOIN Scholars, Vanessa and Kwasi focused on conducting research in criminal-legal settings, formulating research questions, understanding elements of research design, discussing ethical issues concerning research in criminal-legal settings, and collaborator roles to ground and translate the conduct of research in criminal-legal settings.