When Students Thrive: Strategies that Promote Student Mental Health in Boarding Schools
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16
Laura is committed to improving mental health through education and resource creation. She provides guidance on how individuals, families, schools, communities, media, and other youth-serving organizations can take actions to protect mental health and prevent suicide, and ensures that all JED content is evidence-based. Before JED, she provided crisis intervention and mental health support to patients in New York City emergency rooms, including as an attending psychiatrist and associate professor at the Columbia University Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program. Her career has focused on LGBTQ mental health, and she continues to see clients at Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBTQIA+ Youth. Laura obtained her medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School. She completed a psychiatry residency at New York University, public psychiatry fellowship at Columbia University, and consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship at Mount Sinai.
From Dorm Rooms to Mars Dunes: Reflections on a Boarding School Launchpad to Space Exploration
Friday, november 17
David Oh is a Principal Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who has worked on missions to the Moon, Mars, Asteroid Belt, and beyond. David joined JPL in 2003, led the cross-cutting systems engineering team that designed and tested the core software, thermal, and communications systems for the Curiosity Mars Rover, and was the rover’s Lead Flight Director through launch, cruise, and early surface operations. Prior to coming to JPL, David spent seven years working on communications satellites in Silicon Valley at Space Systems/Loral. David graduated from Indian Springs School boarding school in 1987, received Bachelor’s degrees in Astronautics and in Music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991, and received an Sc.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1997.
Today, David is a Chief Engineer for “Psyche: Journey to a Metal World,” a mission in NASA’s Discovery mission portfolio. This mission will use advanced electric propulsion to visit a type of world never before explored: a 150 mile diameter asteroid made largely of metal. The mission launches in October 2023.
