Elizabeth Leake

Elizabeth Leake is a project manager of advanced cyberinfrastructure IV at Texas A&M University. In 2012, she founded STEM-Trek, a global, grassroots nonprofit organization that supports travel, mentoring and professional development opportunities for science, technology, engineering and mathematics scholars from underrepresented groups and regions. STEM-Trek is supported by 100 percent volunteer effort.

Prior to founding STEM-Trek, Leake served as a high-performance external relations specialist and storyteller. She first became engaged with advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) when she led a nationally distributed team of 18 science and technology communicators as the U.S. National Science Foundation TeraGrid project’s external relations coordinator. In that role, she was a point facilitator for the DEISA/PRACE and TeraGrid/XSEDE EU-US HPC Summer Schools in Catania, Italy and South Lake Tahoe, California-U.S. That experience sparked a lifelong interest in scholarly travel. Her fascination with high-throughput, cloud-enabled and VM technologies was ignited when she corresponded for U.S. Open Science Grid All Hands meetings and European Grid Infrastructure (EGEE/EGI) Community Forums (2008—2012).