Sherilynn Black

Background

About Sherilynn Black

Sherilynn Black is the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at Duke University, providing leadership across areas of faculty advancement including support for pre-tenure and mid-career faculty, professional development for tenure and non-tenure system faculty, leadership development and mentorship. She also leads large-scale initiatives to catalyze systemic changes at the institutional and national levels. Dr. Black is an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Medical Education and engages in social neuroscience research to better understand the motivation of different behaviors in academia, including notions of belonging, and examines the effectiveness of interventions designed to promote systemic changes in the academy. She has long-standing expertise in creating interventions to increase representation among faculty and students across disciplines. Dr. Black previously served as the founding director of the Office of Biomedical Graduate Diversity for the Duke University School of Medicine and was also a principal investigator of the NIH-IMSD funded Duke Biosciences Collaborative for Research Engagement (BioCoRE) Program. She sits on several institutional advisory boards and holds a number of national appointments and roles relating to faculty development and advancement with the NIH, HHMI, AAMC, The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the Society for Neuroscience. She served on the Advisory Committee of the Director of the NIH (Working Group on Diversity) and is currently appointed as an ad-hoc member of NIGMS Council at NIH. She also serves as co-chair of the NASEM Roundtable on Mentorship, Professional Development and Well-Being and is the co-chair of the IvyPlus Faculty Advancement Network. Dr. Black has won several distinctions for her work, including the Samuel DuBois Cook Society award, the Duke University Equity, Diversity and Inclusion award, the Dean’s Award for Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education, the Duke University Centennial Trailblazer distinction, was named as a Cell Press Top 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America, and is Principal Facilitator for the national Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). She earned her B.S. in Psychology and Biology with highest honors at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She earned her Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Duke University and completed additional studies in educational statistics and intervention assessment in the School of Education at UNC–Chapel Hill.