Sheila Flynn currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the Coordinator for Cyber Issues at the U.S. Department of State. She is responsible for the office’s work in East Asia, including developing strategic engagement on cyber policy with China, Japan and South Korea. She also supports U.S. involvement in negotiations at the United Nations on the national security, military and political dimensions of cyberspace. Prior to this role, Sheila worked on East Asia Internet policy in the State Department’s Economic Bureau. She has a masters degree in international relations from the University of Denver and an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Maryland.

Marion F. Deshmukh teaches German and European History and Art History. She received her BA from UCLA, and her MA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has been the recipient of two German Academic Exchange Fellowships, Bradley University/American Historical Association Summer Grant, and a J. P. Getty Research Support Grant. Her research and publications center on the relationship between the visual arts, politics, and society in Imperial Germany (1870 – 1914) and post-1945 Germany. In 2006 she curated an art exhibit on the German impressionist painter, Max Liebermann at the Goethe Institute and curated a show in 2009-10, also at the Goethe Institute to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.