2024 SLAM MCs and Finalists

Lydia Rachbauer (LBNL) 

2021 finalist

At the inaugural 2021 BARS, I won 1st Place & People's Choice award with my talk "From Waste to Wanted: The Seaweed Story" on how we can harness the power of microbes to convert seaweed into biofuels, bringing home the BARS trophy to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. I have been a SLAM fan ever since, supporting other contestants on their Slamming Journey.
My current research still revolves around microbial communities to utilize a variety of waste carbon streams (e.g. industrial CO2 emissions, agricultural residues, and municipal solid waste) into low-carbon bioproducts, biochemicals, and biofuels. 

Karuna Jetty (SNL) 

2023 finalist

Karuna Jetty, currently a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratories, earned first place for her presentation at the lab's Technical Showcase last year. Her research focuses on the sustainable production of biochemicals and biofuels.

Benjamin Ofori-Okai (SLAC) 

2021 finalist

Ben participated in the 2021 Bay Area SLAM. He works on studying materials under extreme conditions using high power lasers.

Brandon Zimmerman (LLNL) 

2023 finalist

Brandon Zimmerman participated in BARS in 2023, representing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and talking about designing additively manufactured materials for extreme environments. He is a member of LLNL’s Computational Geosciences group and studies shock waves in heterogeneous materials.