Alumni

Recent Alumni News

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Alumni Updates from 2025

Content will be added on this page as alumni submit updates, so check back periodically! If you have an update, please let us know. Last update: 1/13/2025 1980s ManYee Betty Tsang (Ph.D. 1980) won the 2025 Glenn T. Seaborg Award for Nuclear Chemistry from the American Chemical Society "for exceptional research contributions… Read more
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Support UW Chemistry this Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of giving. The University of Washington Department of Chemistry is joining the PNW community for #GivingTuesday on December 3, 2024! Your gift to the Friends of Chemistry Fund provides unrestricted support so we can use it where it’s needed most. In the past year, your gifts have made a tangible impact on: Support for undergraduate and graduate students in the forms of scholarships, fellowships, merit… Read more
Portrait of Munira Khalil standing in front of a flowering rhododendron

From the Chair – December 2024

Dear Friend of Chemistry,  It’s been an eventful start to the new academic year on campus! We recently hosted our annual colloquium on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, a newer tradition we have quite a bit of fun with. This year was especially meaningful, as UW’s own Professor of Biochemistry David Baker was recognized with half the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work in computational protein design. We were honored to have David join us at the colloquium, sharing his insights alongside… Read more
A montage of giant unilamellar vesicles for which the lipids in the membrane are either uniformly mixed, or have phase separated into coexisting liquid phases. Microscopy and artwork by Aurelia R. Honerkamp-Smith ‘10.

Dissertation defense traditions: Keller group

What are your group’s dissertation defense traditions? Keller group Sarah L. Keller, Duane and Barbara LaViolette Endowed Professor of Chemistry: One year, on a lark, I made a cake that illustrated a graduate student’s research project and used it as a visual aid during my introduction of their dissertation defense. Somehow, the next couple of students’ projects also lent themselves to cakes. (Our lab’s main research focus is on lipid vesicles and cell membranes, which tend to be round. See… Read more
Two people wearing nitrile gloves and surgical masks touch a globe with their index fingers

Dissertation defense traditions: Vaughan, Cossairt, and Khalil groups

What are your group’s dissertation defense traditions? Vaughan Group Professor Joshua C. Vaughan: We do a Doktorhut (German-style “doctor hats” or mortarboard) decorated with memorabilia, miniature interpretations of research papers, sculptures of volcanoes, and blinking lights. These are lots of fun. (Lauren Gagnon '19 is pictured above.) We also do a "lightning wisdom transfer" from each successive graduate student to the next using a plasma… Read more
Munira Khalil and Dianne Harris stand in front of the Legislative Building in Olympia, WA

A New Building to Enable Modern Chemical Research

The UW College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) is preparing to launch a capital campaign to fund a new, cutting-edge Chemical Sciences Building (CSB), slated to open in 2028. The new building will replace all existing chemistry research labs in Bagley Hall and the Chemistry Library Building and will propel UW Chemistry into the next generation of research and teaching excellence. Many of the world’s most complex challenges will be addressed through interdisciplinary research in the chemical… Read more
The hands of two people are visible on a table top where a microphone sits between them.

Capturing Success: Oral Histories of PhD Students

Graduate students are more than their science. They influence the trajectories of our research groups and institutions in a multitude of ways. And yet, when we look around after our Ph.D. students leave, all we have left are their theses sitting on a shelf and the science they contain (and maybe… Read more
A graduate partakes in the PhD hooding ceremony.

Degrees Awarded Summer 2023-Spring 2024

Jump to MSACST Degrees DOCTORAL DEGREES AWARDED Summer 2023, Autumn 2023, Winter 2024, and Spring 2024 Alex Bard, PhD Chemistry Probing the Interplay Between Chemical Mechanisms and Crystal Growth in Synthesis using Sodium Yttrium Fluoride (Professor Peter Pauzauskie, Materials Science & Engineering)… Read more
Lingafelter, an older white man wearing glasses and a bolo tie, stands to the left of Santarsiero, a young Latino man wearing a dark suit and red tie.

Alum Profile: Bernie Santarsiero, PhD

Bernard “Bernie” Santarsiero ’80, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1980, where he worked with crystallography pioneers Professors Edward C. Lingafelter and Verner Schomaker. His postdoctoral training included work as a Myron A. Bantrell Research Fellow in Chemical Catalysis with Professors Dick Marsh, Harry Gray, John Bercaw, and Bob Grubbs at Caltech where he was also Director of the X-Ray Laboratories in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Deputy Master of Student Houses… Read more
Gillian Shen works in the lab

The Impact of Your Support

Our capacity for excellence in research and teaching is a direct result of hundreds of friends and alumni coming together to support the department’s work each year. With your help, we are educating the next generation of leading scientists, advancing the field of chemistry, and accelerating vital scientific discoveries.  In the past year, your gifts have made a tangible impact on:   Recruiting top graduate students: Your generous fellowship support attracts… Read more
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