Alumni corner

We have heard from a few alumni since our last edition, and we would love to hear from more of you. Send us a short update and we will include it in the next newsletter.


  • David E. Morris (B.S. '78, Ph.D. '84) has retired after 33 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He stepped down as the division leader of the Chemistry Division at LANL. Prior to that he was the director of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a Department of Energy Office of Science Nanoscale Science Research Center National User Facility. He received several national-level honors recently, including being named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Chemists.
  • Sarah Elliot (M.S. '15) was promoted to associate scientist at Novozymes, Franklinton, N.C., in June 2018.
  • Ed D'Antonio (Ph.D. '00), was recently promoted and tenured at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort.
  • Philip Garrou (B.S. '70) recently received the ACS Innovation Award for his work on electronic materials and electronics packaging at Dow Chemical.
  • Ginger E. Sigmon (B.S. '05) went on to get her Ph.D. in actinide materials from the University of Notre Dame in 2009. She has been working at Notre Dame since 2009 as the managing director of the Materials Science of Actinides, Energy Frontier Research Center, and in 2014 also became the managing director for the Center for Sustainable Energy at Notre Dame (ND Energy).
  • Irina Koryakina (Ph.D. '14) recently started a new position at the integrated renewable products company Amyris, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, after completing a postdoc at UC-Davis and two years as a scientist at Intrexon Corporation.
  • Trang Do (B.S.'16) is now in the Communications Department of UC Synergetic, Fort Mill, S.C., as a design engineer and part of the quality control team.
  • Justin Kennemur (Ph.D. '10) is an assistant professor at the Florida State University Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.
  • Jayeeta Bhaumik (Ph.D. '07) carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School from 2007-2011. In 2011, she returned to India and joined NIPER Mohali, Punjab, as a project scientist. Currently, she is a senior scientist at Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) Mohali, Punjab.
  • Yasamin Moazami (Ph.D. '17) is now a research scientist I at Gilead Sciences in Seattle.
  • Christopher Ladner (Ph.D. '16) started a new position at the next-generation CRISPR technology company Locus Biosciences. Previously Chris was a research scientist at Bayer Crop Science.
  • Maryanne Colllinson (Ph.D. '92) was recently named the John B. Fenn Professor in Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University.