Melissa Kerr Chiovenda is a cultural anthropologist and served as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science as an Equity Research Adviser at the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. She has a PhD in cultural anthropology from University of Connecticut and an MA in Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University. She worked for 5 years as an assistant professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, and has conducted extensive research on ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan and Afghan refugees in Athens, Greece.