Jessica Houston, Ph.D.
President
Jessica Perea Houston, Ph.D., is a Professor of Chemical & Materials Engineering at New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces, NM (2009-present). Jessica received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University (2005) and was a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Bioscience Division (2006-2009). She is an alumna of NMSU (’00) and was raised in Santa Fe, NM.
RESEARCH:
Her research expertise is biomedical instrumentation development with an emphasis on time-resolved flow cytometry systems development, biophotonics and optofluidics. Jessica directs a flow cytometry instrumentation lab at NMSU, has advised over 70 graduate students, undergraduate students and/or postdocs throughout her years at NMSU. Her research is currently supported by a National Institutes of Health R01 grant “ Microflow time-resolved flow cytometry for FRET and Fluorescent Protein Development.” Jessica has been active in multidisciplinary research projects that have involved many collaborators, institutions, and international partners. She and her team have presented over 400 abstracts at conferences that range from local to international. She has published over 50 papers related to her research, has one patent, and has been invited to over 30 different colloquia and conferences where she has made formal invited presentations related to her research. Jessica received a Faculty Fulbright Scholar award in 2023 to Brazil. She also was a Faculty Fulbright Scholar in Japan for 6 months in 2018. She has received numerous grants and awards including her current NIH R01 award and the NSF CAREER award in 2012. She became a Scholar of the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry in 2012 and won Best Paper in the journal Cytometry Part A in 2015. She has also received many awards at NMSU including the Synergy-One award (NMSU College of Engineering), Outstanding Junior Faculty (NMSU Hispanic Faculty and Staff Caucus); the Early Career Award (NMSU Research Council) and the Distinguished Career Award (NMSU Office of the Vice President for Research).
ISAC Service:Jessica is presently serving a 3-year term as President of ISAC (2023-2026). She has been actively involved in ISAC for over 10 years and a member of ISAC for close to 2 decades. She served as Chair for CYTO 2023, the 36th Annual Congress of ISAC in Montreal, Canada. Jessica was also President-Elect of ISAC (2022-2023) and Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee from 2018-2022. She is an Executive Committee member ISAC, helped found the CYTO Women taskforce within ISAC, and has been chair of the Scientific Communications Committee. She was on Council from 2012-2006. Jessica also is/has been a member of the following committees and task forces: Scholars, Leadership Development, CYTO Women, Mission Continuity, Awards & Nominating, and CYTO Program.
Other Creative Activities:Professor Houston’s other contributions include membership in SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics) serving as Co-Chair of the Photonics West BiOS Imaging, Manipulation, and Analysis of Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues conference held yearly in San Francisco, CA. She also chaired the Optical Society of America Biophotonics Conference on Lasers and Optics (CLEO) for 3 years (2017-2019), Jessica is currently Associate Editor for the Journal, Cytometry Part A and section editor of Stem Cell Reviews and Reports. Presently she is a Standing Member of the Cell & Molecular Technologies Study Section for the National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review (2020-2023).
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion:Jessica also has experience participating, learning, and working in the general area of diversity and inclusion. As a Hispanic female, Jessica has been quite interested in advancing minority initiatives. She is involved in many minority societies and programs, and attends workshops and meetings related to underrepresented minority (URM) priorities. She was a participant in the 2015 cohort of the Linton-Poodry SACNAS Leadership Institute, attended several Society of STEM Women of Color retreats and is a SSWOC member. She has participated in the 2019 AAHHE (American Association of Hispanics in Higher Ed) conference to formulate a strategic plan with the NMSU Vice President for Research. She and her students regularly attend the SACNAS and ABRCMS annual meetings. She participates in many workshops related to diversity in STEM including recent ones held on An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence (by authors: Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian) and a Women in STEM book club. She participates in ‘Dinners con Doctoras’ monthly meetings. She has advised >30 minority undergraduates in research, 2 Hispanic M.S. graduate students (Alexandra Arteaga, Patrick Jenkins), 2 African American M.S. and Ed.S students (Frederick Crawford, M.S., and James Thomas, Ed.S); 1 Hispanic PhD student (Jesse Sambrano), and 2 Hispanic postdoctoral fellows (Guillermo Acosta and Jesse Sambrano). In total Jessica has mentored >50 undergraduates in research, advised 6 Ph.D. degrees and 8 M.S. degrees. She is now mentoring 1 minority RISE PhD students, 1 minority MARC undergraduate researcher, 3 minority undergraduate research students, and 2 postdoctoral fellows. Some examples of minority student achievements include, former RISE advisee, Dr. Jesus Sambrano Jr’s, was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31) grant in the area of biomedical engineering, and former postdoc, Dr. Guillermo Acosta, was awarded an NIH Diversity Supplement to a U54 grant that was completed.