Where Does Your Journey STEM From?

Dr. Zollie Yavarow is a science communicator and patient advocate focused on rare disease and gene therapy. She founded Zaris Consulting, an organization providing gene therapy consulting and science educational content with a patient focus. She earned her PhD in Pharmacology and MA in Bioethics and Science Policy from Duke University in 2022.

Anoop is a second-year Engineering Ph. D. student and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Brown University. His research focuses on the physics-informed control of aerial robot (drone) swarms in unsteady environments.

Prathic is an associate in the Software Development Program at Becton Dickinson (BD). His current work focuses on implementing systems to secure the cloud technology powering BD’s current and future products deployed in hospitals.

Bryn Loftness is a PhD candidate in the Complex Systems and Data Science program at University of Vermont and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She works in the Neurobotics Lab and M-Sense Research Group at the UVM Complex Systems Center developing machine learning and digital phenotyping algorithms. She also collaborates significantly with the MAPPS (Mobility Analysis for Pa...

Hosea Santiago Cruz is a Puerto Rican engineer and scientist. His research focuses on enhancing treatment techniques to remove and destroy pollutants from water, specifically PFAS, also called “Forever Chemicals.”

Natalie Coleman uses data science, machine learning, and disaster research to understand how communities recover after natural hazards such as Hurricane Harvey, Winter Storm Uri, and Hurricane Ida. This includes quantifying system losses, promoting data transparency, and emphasizing human values in the management and restoration of infrastructure.

Maria Zavala's research explores algal strains as a food source for humans under simulated space conditions. More specifically, Maria is ensuring a simulated environment through gravitational cancellation in a 2-D plane and evaluating algal growth under liquid and solid media for vitamin and macronutrient synthesis. This research seeks to close the gap in availability of specific nutrients for hom...

Katelyn is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and Neubauer Family Fellow. Using ultrafast laser spectroscopy, she researches how biological systems harness fundamental quantum mechanics to control light-driven processes.

Patrick is a technology executive and founder. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Shippo managing both product and engineering organizations. In his spare time he enjoys skiing, riding motorcyles and hiking in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two dogs.

Brayan focuses on studying the pathogenic ciliate responsible for the mass mortality of sea urchins who belong to the Diadematidae family.

Ben Ormond's main focus in his career has been to understand the complexities of our particular health care ecosystem, with the express purpose of turning that knowledge into more affordable, higher quality health care for patients. Doug Herta is a Principal Analyst for Optum and has a dual degree in political science as well as economics from the University of Michigan. He also has a graduate deg...

Rachel's work in the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (RNEL) studies mechanistic changes in the brain after a stroke, which can lead to visual-spatial attention and upper-limb motor dysfunction. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop technology-driven rehabilitation protocols and tools to facilitate stroke recovery.

Mai Huynh's research in the Jamieson Lab revolves around the complex relationship between the microbiome and the immune system in the context of cancer.

Meghan is a second year Ph. D. student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at Harvard University. In the group of Prof. Daniel Nocera, she studies photocatalysis and other energy-relevant reactions. (1) Meghan Sullivan | LinkedIn

Ashley Bosa is a fourth year geosciences graduate student at Boise State University. She is also a vulcanologist. The first part is to monitor rain triggered lahars (lava flows) in Vulcan de Fuego in Guatemala. The second part is to develop a collaborative vulcanic hazards training workshop for a local community in the cascades.

Kristi Boyd is the Trustworthy AI Specialist with SAS' Data Ethics Practice(DEP). With a blend of technical and ethical expertise, Kristi’s mission is to understand emerging technologies like AI, assess them in the context of culture, and translate the findings into actionable recommendations to fuel and push the boundaries of responsible innovation in ways that promote human well-being, agency, a...

Suraj is a Ph. D. student in the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Computational Biology at Weill Cornell Medical College, specializing in computational biology and bioinformatics. His research interests include the impact of data heterogeneity in federated learning, predicting the ploidy status of embryos using deep video classification, clinical trial emulation, and deep learning in genomics.

Andy was a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at Columbia University, where his research focused on ways to improve osteoarthritis-related knee surgeries. He holds an MS in biomedical engineering from Columbia and a BS in mechanical engineering from New York University.

Rachel Kozloski is a PhD student in UNR’s Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences. Her research focuses on microplastics in urban runoff and microplastic movement in connected surface and groundwater systems.

Joshua is originally from Memphis, Tennessee and matriculated to UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX in 2020. He joined the Siegwart lab in 2021 and is working on the development of three-component lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) as gene carriers. As seen with the COVID-19 vaccines, delivery of genetic material (in this case mRNA) has been very helpful and successful.

Mel Ortiz Alvarez de la Campa is a Puerto Rican & queer scientist, writer and artist. Their research focuses on finding a link between early life adversity, anxiety and the microbiome.

Have you ever wondered where people's journeys stem from? Welcome to my podcast where we explore career paths and research in STEM.