News: PSD Spotlights

Adela DePavia was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and Northern California’s East Bay Area. After finishing undergrad in 2019, she spent a year on a research fellowship before joining the Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM) program at UChicago. Soon starting her second year, she studies connections between discrete and continuous time optimization, and optimization on manifolds.

PSD’s June spotlight is Melissa “Mel” Salvo-Leadingham, financial administrator for the PSD-LBC. Mel has been with the University of Chicago since November, 2019. This year she co-founded the Hispanic Latinx employee resource group called HLX.

Kyle Kawagoe was born and raised in Reedley, California. Before coming to University of Chicago, he was an undergraduate in The College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He has been a graduate student at UChicago for five years in the Department of Physics. His field of study is theoretical hard condensed matter physics and the physics of topological phases of matter. When the COVID-19 lockdowns started in the United States, he pivoted to theoretical biophysics, doing research on epidemiological modeling.

Walter Alvarado was born in South Central, Los Angeles, California. Before joining UChicago, he completed a master’s in physics at Cal State University, Long Beach. He has been a graduate student here for three years in the Department of Biophysical Sciences, where his research combines computational physics and machine learning to elucidate chromatin remodeling and epigenetic regulation.

Fernando Bañales Mejia was born and raised in Riverside, California. After graduating from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, in 2017, he attended the University of Chicago for two years as a PSD Pathway scholar in the Master of Science in the Physical Sciences Division (MSPSD) program. He completed the program in 2020, during the pandemic.

PSD’s April spotlight is Jolene Hanchar, Department Administrator for the Department of the Geophysical Sciences. Jolene has been with UChicago for 20 years, since 2001.

PSD's March spotlight is Qiti Guo, PhD, Senior Scientist with the James Franck Institute. Qiti has been with UChicago for over 28 years, since 1992.

Ahmed Bou-Rabee was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and spent the first half of his life in Kuwait and the second in the United States, mostly in California. Before coming to the University of Chicago, he received an undergraduate degree in math and a master’s degree in statistics from Stanford. He has been at UChicago for five years as a doctoral student in the statistics program. Ahmed studies probability and partial differential equations.

Mingyue Wang grew up in Hangzhou, China. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Fordham University. This is her second quarter as a student in the Financial Mathematics master’s program. She is currently taking Portfolio Theory & Risk Management, Numerical Methods of Option Pricing and Hedging, Stochastic Calculus, and Machine Learning in Finance.

Prof. Richard Kron's legacy includes helping to conceive and lead one of the most influential projects to map the sky, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as well as the creation of the astrophysics major at UChicago and the project to digitize and explore the scientific potential of 100-year-old photographic images of the sky from the Yerkes Observatory. 

Margo MacDonald was born and raised in Granville, Ohio. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and double majored in physics and biophysics. This is her third year pursuing a PhD in the Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences. We interviewed her via email about her experiences at UChicago.
 
 

PSD’s December spotlight is Joel Matos, Production Specialist & Graphic Designer, PSD Graphic Arts. Joel has been with UChicago for 9 years.

Zachary Myers was born in Michigan and grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Mathematics in May. He began his studies at UChicago this Autumn Quarter as a master’s student in the Financial Mathematics program. 

PSD’s September spotlight is Alex Filatov, PhD, Director of X-ray Diffraction Facilities, Department of Chemistry. Alex has been with UChicago for six years.

PSD’s September spotlight is Nita Yack, Manager of the Department of Computer Science. Nita has been with UChicago for 32 years.