Speakers: 187th Association Meeting: Fall 2025

Stacie Grossman Bloom, PhD, is the chief research officer, vice provost & vice chancellor for Global Research and Innovation at New York University (NYU), where she leads research planning, operations, and global strategy across its 17 schools and colleges, 3 portal campuses, and 12 global sites. Since 2018, she has focused on strengthening and growing NYU’s research enterprise, promoting interdisciplinary scholarship, and enhancing its national and international standing, contributing to NYU’s current position as the number one research university in New York State for research expenditures and fifth among private universities nationally. Her achievements include significant growth in research revenues (24%), funded investigators (22%), and proposal submissions (30%), alongside overseeing the establishment of priority research areas, expansion of lab space, and a substantial return on seed funding (37×). Prior to this role, Stacie held leadership positions at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and The New York Academy of Sciences, and served as an editor at the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine. Trained as a molecular neurobiologist with a PhD in cell biology from Georgetown University and postdoctoral training at The Rockefeller University with Nobel laureate Paul Greengard, Stacie brings over 25 years of experience in academic healthcare and research leadership. She currently serves on boards including The New York Academy of Sciences and as a founding board member of Empire AI, while also managing research compliance, infrastructure, and NYU’s IP portfolio.

Leah Cowen is vice-president, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives. She leads the University of Toronto’s (U of T) research and innovation enterprise, representing the university to key stakeholders in government, industry, and the community. She oversees the development and implementation of policies that improve research and innovation at U of T. She is a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics. Her research examines the biology and evolution of fungal pathogens, which have a staggering impact on human health. Her lab seeks to develop new strategies to thwart drug resistance and treat life-threatening infections.

Leah is the Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics & Infectious Disease, co-director of the CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities program, and the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that leverages state-of-the-art technologies for the development of novel antifungal therapeutics.

Carla Hayden is a senior fellow at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where she pursues scholarship, writing, and research projects while also serving as a strategic partner and counsel, working in collaboration with foundation leadership and staff, advising on opportunities to support and advance libraries, archives, and other organizations in the public knowledge ecosystem.

Carla was the 14th librarian of Congress from 2016 to 2025. Nominated to the position by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the US Senate, she was the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. During her tenure, she modernized and democratized access to the world’s largest library by overseeing digitization initiatives, expanding public engagement with its vast collections, and making the institution more relevant and accessible to all Americans.

Prior to her service as librarian of Congress, Carla served for 23 years as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in Baltimore, Maryland, transforming a deteriorating library system into a vital community resource. Under her leadership, the system launched innovative programs, including after-school centers for Baltimore teens, comprehensive digital-access initiatives, and community-centered services that spanned social and economic divides.

Among her numerous civic and professional memberships and awards, Carla is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library. Carla received a BA from Roosevelt University and an MA and PhD from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

Arthur Lupia is the Gerald R. Ford Distinguished University Professor and vice president for Research and Innovation at the University of Michigan. His research clarifies how people make decisions and form or break coalitions in complex, political environments. As vice president for Research, Arthur is responsible for catalyzing, safeguarding, and supporting the University of Michigan’s $2 billion research portfolio. From 2018 to 2022, Arthur served as assistant director of the National Science Foundation, leading its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. From 2019 to 2022, he co-chaired the government-wide Subcommittee on Open Science for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Arthur is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Strategic Council for Research Excellence, Integrity, and Trust and an Advisory Board member for NASEM’s Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. Arthur has won the National Academy of Science’s Award for Initiatives in Research, is a recipient of Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellowships and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Louise Mirrer, PhD, is president and CEO of The New York Historical, New York’s first museum. Under her guidance, the institution has reinvigorated its commitment to greater public understanding of history and its relevance today, as well as to the support and encouragement of historical scholarship, and the education of young people.

During her tenure, The New York Historical has launched groundbreaking exhibitions, such as Slavery in New York, Nueva York, Chinese American: Inclusion/Exclusion, The Vietnam War 1945–1975, and Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow. Louise oversaw a $100 million capital campaign completed in 2011, and the inauguration of the first-ever Center for Women’s History within an American museum in 2017. She has initiated special projects on Citizenship and the Presidency, and has overseen the expansion of the institution’s visitorship to nearly 500,000 annually. Louise also guided the museum through its first ever rebranding, where the New-York Historical Society became The New York Historical, helping to encourage accessibility to the 220-year-old institution.

Before joining The New York Historical in June 2004, Louise was the executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she established American history as a center of excellence, introduced coursework in American history as a graduation requirement, and designed the CUNY Honors College. Louise holds a double PhD in Spanish and humanities from Stanford University, a graduate diploma in linguistics from the University of Cambridge, and a BA magna cum laude in Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania. She has received honorary degrees from Marymount Manhattan College and Fordham University, and was awarded the Order of Civil Merit by the Spanish Crown.

Sarah Thomas headed three major academic research libraries between 1996 and 2019:

Cornell University Library, a pioneer in digitization and an ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award winner in 2002
The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford’s university libraries, where Sarah oversaw a complex transformation of the Bodleian’s estate and modernization of its services, overcame significant deficits, and raised major funds in donations
Harvard University Library, where she started her career filing catalog cards and concluded her career as vice president and university librarian

Currently Sarah serves on several boards, including OCLC, Historic Deerfield, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Helen Hamlyn Trust, and she has recently consulted at the Cini Foundation in Venice, Penn Libraries, the V&A Museum, and Yale University Library.

Sarah was a member of the ARL Board from 1999 to 2005 and was ARL president in 2004.

Holden Thorp became editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals in October 2019. He came to Science from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was provost from 2013 to 2019 and professor from 2013 to 2023. He is currently a professor of chemistry and medicine at George Washington University and on leave to serve as the editor-in-chief at Science. Earlier in his career, Holden spent three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he served as the 10th chancellor from 2008 through 2013.

Holden earned a bachelor of science degree from UNC, a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, and completed postdoctoral work at Yale University. He holds honorary degrees from the Olin College of Engineering, Hofstra University, and North Carolina Wesleyan College and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Holden cofounded Viamet Pharmaceuticals, which developed VIVJOA (oteseconazole), now approved by the FDA and marketed by Mycovia Pharmaceuticals. Holden is a venture partner at Hatteras Venture Partners, a consultant to Ancora, Huron, and Urban Impact Advisors, and is on the boards of directors of PBS and Saint Louis University. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Yale School of Medicine and the Underwriters’ Laboratories Research Institutes. In 2023, STAT named Holden to its STATUS list of top leaders in the life sciences. In 2025, he was given the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Distinguished Health Communications by the Friends of the National Library of Medicine.

Leslie Weir is the librarian and archivist of Canada, leading Library and Archives Canada (LAC) since August 2019. Leslie is overseeing LAC’s work on Reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation and the implementation of Vision 2030 with a focus on transformation of service and IT infrastructure, as LAC looks forward to the upcoming move of its public services into Ādisōke in 2026, in partnership with the Ottawa Public
Library, all in support of achieving LAC’s mandate with a focus on people and access.

As university librarian at the University of Ottawa, Leslie played important roles in many transformative moments at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and in research libraries and archives in Canada. Leslie served as president of Canadiana.org, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and the Ontario Library Association. She is currently a member of the Forum of National Archivists (FAN) Steering Committee, vice-chair of the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL), and president-elect of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), taking on the role of IFLA president in August 2025.

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Program Speakers