The University of Utah’s Women of Color Academics (WoCA) Collective, Asia Center, and the Asian University for Women, Chittagong, Bangladesh are proud to host a panel to celebrate Women’s History month.

This panel is the first of its kind to work toward a collective initiative to enhance awareness and access to academic careers for undergraduate women from diverse backgrounds in Asia and the United States. We aim to facilitate conversations and gain insight about reaching and engaging students that have historically faced obstacles in accessing graduate school and academic careers as a result of social, economic, and institutional barriers.

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FACILITATOR: ANNIE ISABEL FUKUSHIMA, Ph.D.
Assisstant Professor Ethnic Studies & Presidential Leadership Fellow, 2020-2021, University of Utah

• Dr. Anu Asnaani, Assistant Professor, and licensed Clinical Psychologist in the Psychology Department at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Utah

Anu Asnaani, Ph.D., is a licensed Clinical Psychologist who currently is the Principal Investigator of the Treatment Mechanisms, Community Empowerment, and Technology Innovations (TCT) laboratory and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT, USA. Her research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms of effective treatments for fear-based disorders such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder in diverse local and global community settings.

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• Dr. Chathuri Illapperuma-Wood, Post-doctoral Fellow, in the Department of Educational Psychology at the College of Education, University of Utah

Chathuri Illapperuma-Wood, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Utah’s Technology in Training, Education, and Consultation Lab housed within the Department of Educational Psychology. She graduated with her Ph.D. in School Psychology from Mississippi State University. Chat is involved in overseeing projects carried out in the Lab, supervising students, providing consultation to school administrators and teachers, and conducting research. 
Apart from these roles and interests, Chat is passionate about advocacy and research on the recruitment and retention of students from diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds into school psychology training programs. She is also a member-at-large on the American Psychological Association of graduate students where she serves as a united voice to enrich and advocate for graduate student development.

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• Dr. Haimanti Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of Economics in the Economics Department at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Utah

Haimanti Bhattacharya, Ph.D., has interests in the fields of environment, resource & food; behavioral economics; gender-based violence. A common underlying thread that ties my research topics is the challenges for the sustainability of human society - economic, social, and environmental sustainability. The primary geographic focus of my research is India.

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• Dr. Jaehee Yi, Associate Professor at the College of Social Work, University of Utah

Jaehee Yi, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the College of Social Work, University of Utah. She worked in many different fields, such as translation, school teaching, finance, and accounting before coming to the United States in 2003. She earned MSW from University of Michigan, and PhD from University of Southern California. She has studied about the impact of traumas on individuals and families in the cultural context using different methodologies from advanced statistics to visual images.