Graduate Programs

The UW Molecular Engineering Ph.D. program celebrated 12 students who successfully defended their theses during the 2023-2024 academic year on May 31, 2024. Faculty, students, and the graduates’ family and friends were in attendance. These MolE Ph.D. graduates conducted interdisciplinary research across eight different departments and organizations. During the ceremony, Gökçe Altin was awarded the MolES Distinguished Dissertation Award for her publication, “3D printed engineered living… Read more

Congratulations to Yuting Zeng, who defended her Ph.D. work “Elucidating Human Disease Mechanisms Using Innovative Open Microfluidic Platforms” on June 17, 2024. Yuting was a student in Professor Ashleigh Theberge’s research group and worked on biomedical applications of multiple open microfluidic devices, including kidney disease, airway inflammation, and wildfire smoke exposure. She has accepted a position as a business operations manager… Read more

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

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

Congratulations to Atchuthan Gopalan, who defended his Ph.D. work “Redox Targeting Insights and Applications for High-Energy-Density Redox Flow Batteries” on August 14, 2024. Atchuthan was a student in Professor Daniel Gamelin’s research group and investigated the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of redox-active solids with liquid electrolytes found in flow batteries.

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 year in review of honors and achievements by UW Chemistry graduate students. Jump to Prizes for Best Ph.D. Thesis Jump to Prizes for M.S. Research and Thesis Jump to Merit Awards Jump to Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Awards Jump to University and External Awards Excellence in Chemistry Graduate Awards These fellowships were awarded in autumn 2023 and… Read more

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

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

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the following prizes for outstanding work by graduate students. These awards, announced each spring, recognize outstanding contributions to research by doctoral students and carry a $1,000 prize. The awards were restructured in Academic Year 2022-23 after a few years hiatus and are funded by endowments made possible through philanthropic support of faculty, friends, and alumni. All UW Chemistry Ph.D. students that have completed their General… Read more