Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Eva-Dina Del­ga­do spon­sored Tug ILLINOIS. She is cur­rent­ly serv­ing her sec­ond term in the Illi­nois House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and is the Vice Chair of the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mit­tee. Addi­tion­al­ly, she is a mem­ber of sev­er­al oth­er com­mit­tees, includ­ing Appro­pri­a­tions-Pub­lic Safe­ty, Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion, Elementary/Secondary Edu­ca­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, Licens­ing, Char­ter Schools, and Trans­porta­tion-Vehi­cle Safe­ty. Before her tenure in the Illi­nois State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Del­ga­do held var­i­ous roles with­in the City of Chica­go and the CTA. Notably, she was the first Lati­na to serve as Vice Pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, she worked as Vice Pres­i­dent and Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions, where she col­lab­o­rat­ed with numer­ous com­mu­ni­ties and advo­cat­ed for their needs on both local and fed­er­al levels.

Tug INDIANA was spon­sored by Dr. Orla Hart, a Clin­i­cal Teach­ing Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty for the past decade. Recent­ly, she was award­ed the Excep­tion­al Teach­ing and Instruc­tion­al Sup­port Award by the Pur­due Teach­ing Acad­e­my in 2021. Dr. Hart orig­i­nal­ly hails from Ire­land and holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence degree from Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Cork and a Ph.D. in Immunol­o­gy from Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin. She is a mem­ber of var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Bio­chem­istry and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sors, and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. Dr. Hart has pub­lished mul­ti­ple research papers and fre­quent­ly presents on top­ics relat­ed to bio­chem­istry and engag­ing edu­ca­tion­al meth­ods to help stu­dents achieve suc­cess. She is enthu­si­as­tic about pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty, equal­i­ty, inclu­sion, and belong­ing and inte­grates these aspects into all areas of her scholarship.