Dr. Nishi has a BS from Stanford (1975); a PhD in Biology from UC San Diego (1980), and was a postdoc in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (1980-1984). Her first academic position was at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR, where she rose through faculty ranks to full professor, then moved in 2001 to the University of Vermont (UVM) where she served as the founding director of the university-wide Neuroscience Graduate Program (NGP) as well as the Director of the Neuroscience, Behavior, and Health Transdisciplinary Research Initiative. Her research in developmental neurobiology was continuously funded by NIH for over 30 years. She became the Director of Education at MBL in 2016 and retired in 2019. Over the past 18 years, she has been actively engaged in promoting diversity and inclusion: during her tenure at UVM, 25% of the students in the UVM NGP were from underrepresented groups; she mentored participants in two NINDS grant workshops for diverse investigators; and is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director for the Working Group on Diversity for the National Institutes of Health.