These judges will choose the 1st, 2nd, and 3nd place awardees from among the finalists at the live Postdoc Slam event on September 22, 2026. A separate set of screening judges reviewed initial video entries and selected the finalists.
Erin Allday is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle who covers gender and sexuality. Previously, she was a longtime health writer with a focus on covering infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and the COVID pandemic. A Southern California native, Erin has lived in the Bay Area since graduating UC Berkeley. Before joining the Chronicle in 2006, Erin worked at newspapers all over the Bay Area covering topics such as business and technology, city government, and education.
Maga Jackson-Triche, MD, MSHS, serves as UCSF Health executive advisor, Organization Culture and System Level Design, as assistant vice chancellor, Office of Opportunity and Outreach, and as a professor of Psychiatry in the UCSF School of Medicine. Before joining UCSF, Jackson-Triche was chief mental health officer for the VA Sierra Pacific Network, where she oversaw the mental health care services of a network responsible for a population of more than 1 million veterans. Jackson-Triche is a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine and the UCLA School of Public Health. An experienced health services researcher with numerous academic studies, articles, books, and book chapters to her credit, she has also served as a reviewer for several journals.
Jennifer Nazareno, PhD ʼ15, is the associate dean of academic affairs in the UCSF Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs, where she oversees academic programs, faculty development and support, academic policy development, and student academic support. Before joining UCSF in July 2024, Jennifer was an associate professor and associate dean for academic affairs and innovation at Brown University. She earned her PhD in medical sociology from UCSF, and her master’s and undergraduate degrees from UCLA. Her research and teaching expertise encompass medical sociology, structural and social determinants of health, qualitative methodology, women’s migration, labor, and entrepreneurship.
Katherine Nielsen, MS, MA, is director of UCSF's Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP) and co-founder of the Bay Area Science Festival, which annually brings together tens of thousands of STEM role models, families, youth and adults to experience the wonder of science. This year’s festival will take place here at UCSF Mission Bay on Saturday, October 17. Her experience in education and science includes teaching science at the middle and high school, community college, and undergraduate level, and conducting research in developmental neurobiology. Katherine completed an MA in education at Stanford University, and an MS in biological sciences from Montana State University.
Jason Sello, PhD is a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. He is also associate director of opportunity in basic science faculty within UCSF’s Office of Opportunity and Outreach, and serves as co-principal investigator for UCSF’s Advocacy and Community through Empowerment (ACE) Program. He earned a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University, and did postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School with Dr. Christopher T. Walsh. In his independent career, Dr. Sello develops chemical tools for the study of complex biological phenomena, with the goal of creating new therapeutics for the treatment of infectious diseases, cancers, and neurological disorders. His findings have been reported in more than fifty journal articles and have led to five issued patents, and he has been the recipient of several awards, including career awards from the Burroughs Welcome Fund and the National Science Foundation.