Alumni Updates from 2022

Submitted by Diana Knight on

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: 11/07/2022

1970s

Isiah M. Warner (Ph.D. 1977) retired from Louisiana State University after an illustrious 44-year career in science and academia. His retirement and career highlights are featured in LSU College of Science news.

1980s

Craig Mitchell (B.S. 1983) is enjoying his retirement in Prague, Czech Republic, after teaching high school chemistry for 34 years.

Steven Hartenstein (Ph.D. 1985) retired from his role as chief science officer for National and Homeland Security research at Idaho National Laboratory in autumn 2021 and transitioned to emeritus status. He reflects on his career in a November 2, 2021, story titled "From a small town to a national impact: the journey INL chief science officer took to leading national security research" published by EastIdahoNews.com, LLC.

Gregory Clark (Ph.D. 1989) completed a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical chemistry at the University of Washington after earning his Ph.D. for his work with Professor Gary Christian. From there, he started what would become an “amazing” 30+ year career in clinical laboratory diagnostics. Greg’s last full-time role in that field was CEO of LABS, Inc., a lab dedicated to transplant testing. He is now semi-retired in England, but still directing POL labs. Gregory is proud to have helped contribute to the healthcare of around 15-20 million people through the lab tests he helped manage during his career.

1990s

Louis Scampavia (B.S. 1991, Ph.D. 1996) is the Senior Scientific Director of the Department of Molecular Medicine at University of Florida Health. More about his work is on the UF Scripps High-Throughput Molecular Screening Center page.

Amy Snover (Ph.D. 1998) recently announced her retirement from the UW Climate Impacts Group, where she spent most of her career and has served as director for the last 10 years. In honor of her impact in the Pacific Northwest and communities in our region, King County Executive Dow Constantine declared June 7, 2022 "Amy Snover Day."

2000s

Jeff Hammond (B.S. 2003) is a Principal Software Architect at NVIDIA, working on high-performance computing projects, some of which involve computational chemistry. Jeff earned his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2009 for work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on NWChem. He was a postdoctoral fellow and staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Principal Engineer at Intel prior to joining NVIDIA. Jeff is based in Helsinki, Finland.

Ann Morris (B.A. 2004) earned a master’s in teaching from the UW in 2006. She is in her eighteenth year of teaching high school chemistry, inspiring students daily by sharing her zeal for the subject and her awe of the patterns found in chemistry. She taught in Highline Public Schools and is now at Cedar Park Christian School. Ann says, “I hope my students sense my love for the subject and pursue knowing more.”

2010s

Patricia Tsai (B.S. Chemistry 2010, B.A. Biochemistry 2010) practices patent law and in 2021 was promoted to Equity Partner at Weaver Austin Villeneuve & Sampson LLP in Oakland, CA. Patricia's practice focuses on preparing and prosecuting patent applications and counseling clients on patent portfolio development. Patricia's technical expertise includes chemistry and materials, semiconductor technologies, and electrochemical engineering.

Ekaterina Badaeva (Ph.D. 2011) started as an intern at the Boeing Company in 2012 which helped her secure a full time position a short time later as an engineer in Boeing Research and Technology (BR&T), Chemical Technology, Advanced Research Team. In 2014, Ekaterina joined the Paints and Coatings group and in 2018, she was promoted to Senior Materials, Physics and Processes Engineer.

Aaron Whittaker (Ph.D. 2013) - After postdoctoral training at UC Irvine, Aaron spent six years at Merck in Rahway, NJ, where he led the team that developed a fully biocatalytic cascade for the manufacturing route of Islatravir. Aaron has recently returned to the state of Washington to join Seagen as a principal scientist where he is looking to expand the size and influence of the process chemistry department by building a culture of scientific excellence.

Julia Carlstad (B.S. Chemistry-ACS Certified 2016) completed her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021 and started working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 in the Air and Radiation Division the same year. In 2022, Julia and Ahmed Qureshi (B.S. Biochemistry 2015) married! They met in their general chemistry class here at the UW in 2012.

James Hamilton (B.S. 2018) was accepted to the Basic Biomedical Sciences PhD program at UT Southwestern!

Evan Crites (B.S. 2019) is a third-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in the research group of Prof. Tyrel M. McQueen where he specializes in materials. Evan earned a master’s in chemistry upon successful completion of his Graduate Exams.

Michael Enright (Ph.D. 2019) was awarded a Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure seed grant for "Anisotropic nanomaterial heterostructures for photocatalysis." He is an assistant professor of chemistry at Western Washington University.

James Gaynor and Katie Corp's baby wearing a shirt that reads "carbon transformer in training"
  James Gaynor (Ph.D. 2019) and Katie Corp (Ph.D. 2019) welcomed their first child, Penelope, on March 21. Katie is a Technical Program Manager at Twelve, a start-up in Berkeley, CA developing CO2 electrolyzers. James is currently a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley and will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University in the fall of 2023. 

2020s

Sharon Nguyen (B.S. 2020) is a research assistant focused on patient safety in the UW School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. Along with her coworkers, she has presented their study titled "Automated Transducer Leveling System for Pressure Measurements" at Academic Evening (UW) and the Society for Technology in Anesthesia. The current system for continuous BP measurements of critically ill patients in the operating room and ICU requires the transducer (a device which converts hydrostatic forces into an electrical signal which is displayed as a blood pressure reading on the monitor) that is connected to the artery catheter to be level with the patient's heart. Their aim is to introduce an automated system for adjusting the blood pressure with patient movement so the healthcare provider doesn't need to adjust the transducer manually. The goal of the automation is to avoid inaccurate BP readings and inaccurate treatment, and to improve patient safety and provider workflow.

Victor Lee (Ph.D. 2020) works as data scientist at a local start-up.

Louisa Reilly (M.S. 2020) worked on an NLP project during the "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" phase of the pandemic while she was a graduate student at the UW. She then decided to pivot her career trajectory from chemistry to data science. After earning her M.S. in chemistry in autumn 2020, she completed a Data Science and Machine Learning boot camp in 2021. In 2022, Louisa became a Google Cloud Platform Cloud Security Consultant at Deloitte in the Cyber and Strategic Risk division.

Jacob A. Busche (Ph.D. 2021) was recently awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Commission to pursue research at the Autonomous University of Madrid’s Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) into the fundamental performance limits of optical logic circuit components built of nanostructured polar crystals. Enhorabuena, Jake!

Claire West (Ph.D. 2021) won an Isaac Newton International Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Royal Society and is conducting postdoctoral research in the Department of Earth Sciences and the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. The Newton International Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled Claire to investigate the photothermal properties of magnesium nanoparticles. While at Cambridge, Claire also has been appointed as a Research Fellow with Hughes Hall, a college within Cambridge. 

Shrikant Sharma, Ph.D. is moving to Florida to start a new position as a Senior Scientist with Expansion Therapeutics. He conducted postdoctoral training with Prof. Gabriele Varani from August 2018 through April 2022.

Submit your update and we'll add it here!

We love hearing from our former students and postdocs! Up to something new? Career advancement? Honored with an award? Retirement? New hobby? Marriage or addition to your family?

FILL OUT THE ALUMNI UPDATE FORM 
We’ll publish brief updates to share your whereabouts and doings with the broader UW Chemistry community. Notable or substantial news can be published as its own story with the help of chemistry student science writers.

UPDATE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION FOR UW ALUMNI RECORDS
Help the UW and its departments keep our records current by telling us about any updates to your name, contact or employment information. This will help insure that you receive any relevant communications from the University of Washington and the UW Alumni Association. You don’t have to be an Alumni Association member to use this form.

See also Alumni Updates from 2020-21.

News Topic
Share