Women’s History Month

Diane Eshelman is a Project Manager working on some of our biggest projects, such as the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP). She is motivated by the prospect of organizing teams and facilitating efficient workflows. Diane recently completed a project management certification program with Google, paving the way for her to begin her career at PSC. 

“I used the knowledge and language gained from the project management certificate to transition from higher education to managing multi-million dollar NIH-funded projects and working specifically with the NIH developer team,” she says. Obtaining the certificate also helped her become a professional scrum master within six months of joining PSC.

Mariah Kenney has been at PSC for the past year and is the primary data curator for the Brain Image Library (BIL) project. She also contributes to HuBMAP and the Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet) projects. Mariah is passionate about sharing research data and making it widely available for researchers in an effort to promote the advancement and innovation of science. Her excellent troubleshooting skills, in conjunction with her background in biology, make her a perfect fit for the Biomedical Applications group at PSC.

Hawa Na Aata joined PSC in December 2022 as an IT Security Engineer and Analyst. She enjoys crafting technical documents to help support and demystify security efforts across the Center. Not only new to PSC, Hawa is also new to the city of Pittsburgh.

“I noticed everyone is very friendly and I do enjoy the little shops around,” she says. “Very walkable city and working here has been great.” After ambling around the neighborhood shops, she likes to go to the park and play soccer in her free time.

Gesina Phillips is a Senior Systems Software Engineer working primarily on HuBMAP. She has been with PSC since November 2022 and worked as a Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Pittsburgh prior to joining us. Gesina says she “enjoys solving data-related problems, determining project goals and requirements, and working with a team of technically-minded people.”

When not at PSC, she volunteers with local social justice-related organizations, DJs at Carnegie Mellon’s radio station, dabbles in fabric arts, and bakes.

Holly Shephard is the newest addition to PSC’s Project Management team, joining in 2023. She is working on streamlining the NSF-funded Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) Track 3 and HuBMAP’s Infrastructure and Engagement Component processes. Her favorite aspect of working at PSC is getting to work on the biomedical projects that have real, lasting impacts on our society. Her dynamic background in project management, user experience design, and business development makes her a valuable asset to the team. Holly keeps busy outside of work by tending to all of her animals: two dogs, two cats, three bunnies, and one horse.

Colleen Storm joined PSC in early 2022 as the grant writer. She helps write, edit, and format federal, state, and private grant applications. She enjoys the technical aspects of the writing and is excited to be working on projects that have such a great impact on community health and the advancement of medicine. One of her current focuses is learning user experience/interface writing skills and concepts to better assist with designing of some of our web-supported project deliverables.

“User experience/interface writing is a really fun way to use my rhetoric skills in a positive and strategic way to ensure users get the most out of our online offerings, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about this niche subset of writing,” she says.

Marissa Thompson is the Web and Graphic Designer for PSC, most recently working on internal style and branding guidelines and web experience and styling for HuBMAP. She enjoys flexing her creative side and has established herself as the Center’s creative guru. She was once a competitive ballroom dancer, but has traded her dance shoes for hiking boots more recently. Marissa enjoys the outdoors, camping, and would love to own enough land to support small scale animal husbandry and dog breeding.