News: PSD Spotlights

2023

Meet Riya Sheth, FinMath studentĀ 

May 30, 2023

Portrait of Riya Sheth

Riya Sheth is a Financial Mathematics student and has been at UChicago for six months. She has been deep diving into her coursework, which includes mathematics, computer science, finance, and data analysis. As part of her program, she has also been working with Bodhi Research Group on a project pertaining to tail-risk hedging.


PSD Spotlight: Megan Utley

May 29, 2023

Portrait of Megan Utley

PSD's May spotlight is Meet Megan Utley, PSD's Lab Safety Specialist. 


Meet GeoSci student, Emma Stoutenburg

April 24, 2023

Emma Stoutenburg is a second-year UChicago GeoSci PhD student, with a bachelor’s in Earth Science and a specialization in Geophysics from Ohio State University. Emma works in the field of mineral physics, where she studies the physical properties of the minerals within the deep interiors of planets.  


PSD April Spotlight: Galen Tsongas

April 21, 2023

Portrait of Galen Tsongas wearing a black framed glasses, a brown hat and a flannel shirt.

PSD’s April spotlight is Galen Tsongas, Event Administrator for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and KICP.


Meet chemistry student, Lauren McNamara

March 29, 2023

Lauren McNamara wearing a grey sweater against a vivid and colorful background.

Lauren is a third-year UChicago chemistry PhD student, with a bachelor’s in chemistry from UC Davis. She is a synthetic inorganic chemist and works primarily with a carbon and sulfur-based scaffold that she links between transition metals. We interviewed her about her experiences at UChicago. 


PSD Spotlight: Sean Hernandez

February 24, 2023

Sean Hernandez

PSD's February spotlight is Sean Hernandez, Assistant Director of PSD Graphics. Sean has been with UChicago for fifteen years.


Meet computational and applied mathematics student, Mark Olson

February 8, 2023

Mark Olson

Mark A. Olson was raised in Buffalo, New York, and San Luis Obispo, California. After studying mathematics and computer science at UC Berkeley, he joined the PhD program in Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAM). He is currently researching Liouville quantum gravity, a topic in theoretic probability, with Assoc. Prof. Ewain Gwynne.


PSD Spotlight: Justin Jureller

January 17, 2023

Justin Jureller

The PSD January Spotlight is Justin Jureller, Chemistry PhD’06, Technical Director of the Materials Preparation & Measurement Laboratory in the James Franck Institute and Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.


Meet astronomy and astrophysics student, Mandy Chen

January 5, 2023

Mandy Chen

Mandy Chen was born and raised in Guizhou Province, Southwest China. Before coming to UChicago she was studying at the University of Hong Kong, where she got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and astronomy. This is her fifth year as a PhD student in astronomy and astrophysics. Her research focuses on observations of the diffuse circumgalactic medium—the outermost envelopes of galaxies.


2022

Meet astronomy and astrophysics student, Madison Brady

November 25, 2022

Madison Brady

Madison Brady was born in a rural town in Northeastern Ohio, an hour’s drive out of Cleveland. She lived there until she attended Caltech in Pasadena, CA, for undergrad, earning a BS in astrophysics. She is in her third year as a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She is primarily interested in studying rocky planets around very small nearby stars (M dwarfs), which provide us with key information on the formation, composition, and evolution of planets like Earth.


PSD Spotlight: Meredith Davis

November 15, 2022

Meredith Davis

The PSD November Spotlight is Meredith Davis, media relations manager for the Physical Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. She began at UChicago in November 2021.


Meet computational and applied mathematics student, Phillip Lo

November 1, 2022

Phillip Lo

Phillip Lo grew up near Worcester, MA, and did his undergraduate degree at UChicago (AB’19). Currently a fourth-year student in the Computational and Applied Math PhD program, he is in his eighth year on campus, making him “a UChicago lifer.” In his research, he uses physically-informed machine learning methods to study the magnetic structure of the atmosphere of our sun.


PSD Spotlight: Shawn Manner

October 18, 2022

Shawn Manner

PSD’s October spotlight is Shawn Manner, administrative assistant to Professor John Carlstrom of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Shawn is from Michigan City, Indiana, and has been with the University of Chicago since February 2022.


Meet astronomy and astrophysics student, Dhayaa Anbajagane

October 17, 2022

Dhayaa Anbajagane

Dhayaa Anbajagane was raised in the coastal city of Madras in India. He earned a bachelor’s in physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has spent two years as a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics where he uses observations made by large telescopes to study the initial state of the Universe and its subsequent evolution into what we see on the sky today. 
 


PSD Spotlight: Ian Hoppie

September 15, 2022

Ian Hoppie

The PSD September Spotlight is Ian Hoppie, Laboratory Safety Specialist. Ian is responsible for managing and providing technical guidance, training, and inspective/risk analysis of the PSD laboratory safety program. He has been working in this role since July 2021.