Leadership

Elizabeth Burnside, MD, MPH, MS
Principal investigator and co-research director

Dr. Elizabeth Burnside is a Professor in the UW-Madison Department of Radiology, Deputy Director of the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research and Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Research and Team Science in the School of Medicine and Public Health. As a women’s health investigator for the past two decades, she conducts research to improve personalized risk prediction and decision support for women navigating the complex landscape of breast cancer screening.

As one of the site PIs of the All of Us—Wisconsin initiative, she is also working to determine how imaging and genomics will pave the way to precision health. With over 18 years as a mentor, she has mentored fellows, PhD students, Postdocs, and early career faculty from multiple disciplines across several UW Schools/Colleges, leading to independent research careers. Many of her mentees have assumed leadership positions at UW, in the health sciences schools, and in the women’s health clinical enterprise.

Marsha Mailick, PhD
Principal investigator and co-research director

Dr. Marsha Mailick is Emeritus Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and Vaughan Bascom and Elizabeth M. Boggs Professor at UW-Madison. She previously served as Director of the Waisman Center where she continues to lead an NIH-funded research program. Her research strives to understand the distinct life course health and behavioral phenotypes of neurodevelopmental disorders (including autism, Down syndrome, and fragile X syndrome), several of which are X-linked and show a marked sex-specific phenotype.

Dr. Mailick has over 30 years of experience mentoring early career faculty, doctoral and postdoctoral trainees in a variety of disciplines across multiple UW schools and colleges, to advance towards scientific independence.

Linsey Steege, PhD
Principal investigator and program director

Dr. Linsey Steege, is the Associate Dean for Research, Professor and Gulbrandsen Chair in Health Informatics & Systems Innovation in the UW School of Nursing. She also has an affiliate appointment with the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the UW College of Engineering. Her overall research goal is to improve health, safety and performance of health professionals in the context of their work system, and by doing so, to enhance healthcare quality. She has extensive experience using mixed methods to measure and model fatigue, stress, and burnout in healthcare professionals, particularly the nursing workforce, which is comprised of mostly women. Dr. Steege has over 10 years of experience mentoring doctoral students and early career researchers across multiple disciplines.

Key contributors

Angela Byars Winston, PhD
Career development consultant

Dr. Angela Byars-Winston is a tenured professor in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Medicine. She is nationally recognized expert in career development and mentoring in the biomedical sciences.  She recently served as the Chair for the Committee on Effective Mentoring in STEMM, commissioned by the Board on Higher Education and Workforce for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Dr. Byars Winston advances UW BIRCWH scholar career development by utilizing a career guidance model designed to facilitate scholar success and career self-efficacy.

Betsy Rolland, PhD, MLIS, MPH
Team science consultant

Dr. Betsy Rolland is the Director of Research Development and Team Science for the UW Carbone Cancer Center and the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Her work examines the design, development, and evaluation of infrastructure to support team science.

Drawing on her extensive training and experience, she utilizes an innovative evidence based curriculum to provide team-science training and coaching to the UW BIRCWH scholars. The training is designed to support scholar mastery of team science to facilitate interdisciplinary research.

Terry Little, MS
Program manager

Terry Little has extensive experience in research administration and managing NIH training grants. She serves as the primary liaison between the UW BIRCWH scholars, faculty mentors, and the Principal Investigators. She is responsible for all day to day program-related activities, management of the program budget, coordination of the scholar recruitment and application process, and contributes to program evaluation activities.

Terry also serves as liaison to the NIH/ORWH BIRCWH program personnel.