Parallel Session Speakers

Agnetta Cleland

Agnetta completed her undergraduate education at the University of Chicago, where she majored in physics. She earned her PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in the group of Professor Amir Safavi-Naeini. In her doctoral work, she developed hybrid quantum devices integrating nanomechanical devices with superconducting qubits to realize nonclassical states of mechanical motion. Agnetta now works as a Research Scientist at Google Quantum AI in Santa Barbara.

Alejandra Rosselli-Calderon

I'm Alejandra Rosselli-Calderon and I am a PhD student in the Astronomy and Astrophysics department at UC Santa Cruz, where I study high energy astrophysical events. I am interested in tidal disruption events, black holes and gravitational waves. I was born and raised in Colombia and find it fulfilling to get to know more latines in STEM. Before coming to UCSC, I got my Master's degree at Brown University and my Bachelor's degree at Clark University in Massachusetts, both degrees in physics. Before doing research in astro, I worked in a biophysics lab where we studied the motion of magnetotactic bacteria, as well as liquid crystals and active matter. I attended two CUWiP conferences during my undergrad and helped plan one at Brown and one at UC Santa Cruz. I really enjoy physics and it is very cool to get to apply it in the simulations of high energy astro. I love the fact that the knowledge that I obtained when working with tiny organisms can directly transfer to astronomical scales. I love the universality of physics that allows us to learn about our universe from microscopic to universal scales. I am excited to meet more young physicists and feel free to reach out! 

Alexandra Miller

Dr. Miller was born and raised in Northern California (in Vacaville to be precise). She received her B.S. in Physics with minors in Theatre and Philosophy from San Francisco State University. She then moved down south to study at UC Santa Barbara, where she earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Physics. Finally, she spent one year as a Visiting Lecturer at Wellesley College in Massachusetts before returning to California to join the wonderful faculty at Sonoma State University. In her free time, Alex likes to play soccer, go hiking, rock climb, and play nerdy board games. Dr. Miller's research is in the field of Quantum Gravity, which aims to answer one of the biggest open questions in physics today: How can one consistently unite Einstein′s theory of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics? This is imperative to our understanding of the universe at its most fundamental level and is especially important in finding a complete description of black holes and the universe right after the big bang.

Andrea Antoni

Andrea Antoni (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Astrophysics at UC Berkeley.  Andrea is a computational theorist who studies the deaths of massive stars.  She is a first generation-to-college student and a reentry student. She began her educational journey in community college before transferring to UC Santa Cruz to earn her B.S. in Physics. 

Bernardita Ried Guachalla

I am a PhD student at Stanford and previously I graduated from the University of Chile. My research interests scrutinize fundamental questions about our Universe:  What is the physical origin and evolution of the cosmos? What astrophysical knowledge can be inferred from astronomical surveys? What are dark matter and dark energy? And more specifically, what can we learn from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data when combining it with observations of the large-scale structure? Besides science, I enjoy doing analog photography and scientific outreach (which is mainly in Spanish). I also have a strong commitment to promote education, feminism, and human rights. 

Betsy Tanenbaum

Betsy Tanenbaum is the Associate Director for Student Success, Inclusion, and Alumni Engagement for the Knight Campus Graduate Internship Program (KCGIP) at the University of Oregon. With over 15 years of management experience within higher education, the public sector and arts and culture sector, her passion is creating access, equity and opportunity for others to thrive - personally and professionally. Betsy joined the KCGIP team in 2017;  before that time, she was a non-tenure track teaching faculty member for the Arts & Administration program, where she also did recruitment, alumni management and served as the communications manager for the Oregon Arts & Healthcare Research Consortium. Prior to her time at the UO, Betsy was the Director of New Visions Gallery, a nonprofit arts organization located in Marshfield Clinic (Wisconsin), and as the Public Art Manager for Clackamas County, Oregon. She holds an M.S. in Arts Management from the University of Oregon and a B.A. in Musical Theater and Arts Management from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Boe Mendewala

Dr. Boe Mendewala is a full-time, tenure-track professor of physics at Los Medanos College in the Contra Costa Community College district. Boe graduated with her PhD in Physics from UC Merced in 2020, and worked as a full-time adjunct professor of physics at Mills College before accepting her role at LMC. Besides teaching physics and astronomy, she is also working on developing a new co-ed athletic program at LMC for ultimate frisbee. As one of the first recipients of DACA in 2012, Boe's career path from the undergraduate level has been completed entirely through DACA, during which she has lobbied for DACA continuation and pathways to citizenship for young undocumented Americans. At LMC, Boe continues to advocate for support for undocumented students on and off campus. When she isn't working with students, her hobbies include crocheting, video games, painting and playing ultimate.

Caolionn O'Connell

Caolionn (pronounced Key-Lin) O’Connell is a Principal Director at the Aerospace Corporation. Caolionn's background focuses on national security. She has research experience in assessing the operational implications of new technologies, supply chain disruptions, and cyberattacks; space contributions to a terrestrial fight; conducting cost-benefit analyses; and monitoring acquisition programs. Prior to joining Aerospace, she held research positions at the RAND Corporation and the Institute of Defense Analyses. She has government experience working in the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) and Office for the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L).  She received her Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University, specializing in advanced accelerator technology, and her B.A. in physics from Harvard University.  

Chaitrali Duse

Chaitrali is a third-year PhD candidate at Stanford and a Shoucheng Zhang doctoral fellow in quantum science. She got her undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics from IIT Bombay, India. As one of very few women in her program there, she got involved in mentorship and advocacy for inclusion early on, and has continued to participate in DEI efforts at Stanford. Before moving to the US for graduate school, she was fortunate enough to have international research experience working at IST Austria, KEK Japan and IQC Waterloo, Canada. Her graduate resarch focuses on assembling and probing heterostructures of 2D materials like graphene to explore the behavior of strongly-interacting electrons in solid-state systems at low temperatures. In her free time, Chaitrali enjoys reading, painting, playing music and hiking.

Cleo Lepart

An unconventional path has now led me to research superconducting quantum computing with Lawrence Berkeley Labs Advanced Quantum Testbed; my life so far has been varied and full of things I would never have predicted. Having transferred to UC Berkeley in 2023, I will be graduating with a BA in Applied Physics in Winter 2024, and moving on to grad school. I can't wait to start employing some of my experience as a non-traditional, transfer, re-entry woman student/researcher in STEM to make a scientific and personal contribution.

Connie Miao

Hi! I am a 3rd year physics PhD student at Stanford working on superconducting qubits/experimental quantum information. I did my undergrad at Princeton, where I spent two years working on experimental high energy physics (CMS/CERN) before switching into quantum. I was also at UChicago for the 1st year of my PhD, until my lab moved to Stanford. In undergrad, I was heavily involved in our women in physics group and also attended CUWiP once myself. I'm looking forward to speaking with you all! :)

Deepika Sundarraman

I began to dabble with research in Physics as a student at the College of Wooster, OH, where I primarily worked on developing theory and performing experiments to untangle some of the mysterious ways in which quantum and classical interference operate in our real world. During college, I also immersed myself in studying German and ended up studying abroad and majoring in German as well.  After college, I did the Teach for India Fellowship learning about the many facets of the educational landscape in India, while focussing on a single classroom. I was then drawn back to physics, now using optics to probe the workings of living things and started graduate work in Raghuveer Parthasarathy's lab at the University of Oregon and completed my PhD studying how biophysical aspects of microbial communities, such as spatial structure, impact their interactions. I am currently a scientist at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub SF, working on dissecting the complex dynamics during viral infection in vivo. Outside of physics, I spend my time playing sitar and violin, gardening, yoga and spending time in the woods. 

Deepthi Gorthi

As a PhD student in Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, I worked on software operating radio telescopes and processing the signal at the receiver into images of the radio sky. Now I use that experience to design software for Lidars at Waymo, for sensing the environment around the autonomous driving vehicle. In my free time I love hiking with my dog and playing board games.  

Ella Banyas

I am a sixth-year graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, working in condensed matter theory. I try to describe and search for "interesting" polar materials -- for example, those that have an unusually strong current response when we shine light on them. My research group tackles these types of problems by using computational tools to model the quantum-mechanical behavior of ions and electrons in solids. I had no prior experience in condensed matter physics when I started my PhD, and I'd taken a year to work in high school student services after finishing my undergraduate degree at Reed College; all that to say that it was daunting to jump into a brand new field after some time away from physics! Ultimately, though, it's turned out to be a fascinating and rewarding experience.

Gauri Batra

Gauri is a second year graduate student at Stanford University interested in quantum gravity and the AdS/CFT correspondence. She is from New Delhi, India, and in her free time enjoys reading, writing, hiking and learning the piano.

Helen Quinn

Helen Quinn has had a distinguished career as a researcher in theoretical particle physics (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Quinn for details). Throughout her career she played multiple roles in outreach efforts for SLAC, for example running workshops for physics teachers or managing the labs tour program and training graduate-student tour guides. She also played roles to influence science policy, particularly in her term as President of the American Physical Society in 2004. Her work for equity in the profession included many years of managing  a summer undergraduate program at SLAC that strove to offer research experiences to a diversity of students who might not otherwise had such opportunities and serving on some panels of the APS committee on women and minorities in physics that advised University departments on how to improve the climate in their department to be more welcoming of diversity.   

Katy Grimm

I am a professor at Cal State East Bay in Hayward. I am an experimental particle physicist on the ATLAS experiment at CERN, so I often get to travel to Geneva, Switzerland, for work. Fun fact: besides Higgs bosons, you can also find excellent chocolate and cheese in Geneva.

Lillian Santos-Olmsted

Lillian Santos-Olmsted is a 2nd year PhD student in physics at Stanford University. She received her B.S. in physics from UC Santa Cruz, but spent the first two years of college at Santa Rosa Junior College. As an undergraduate, she did research in computational astrophysics and particle phenomenology (with a focus on dark matter). Currently, she continues to do research in dark matter phenomenology in the Particle Theory group at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, badminton, board games, and Star Trek. 

Luana Melnek dos Anjos

Luana is an astrophysics student at San Francisco State University. Currently delving into machine learning techniques with LSST's dataset preview and exploring science communication. As a Planetarium Presenter at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, she shares the wonders of astronomy with the public. Beyond academia, Luana finds a sense of connection and adventure as an avid scuba diver. Her dedication to research and public engagement highlights a passion for innovation while making science accessible to diverse audiences.  

Lydia J. Young

I am currently the Deputy Director for Engineering in the Accelerator Directorate of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where I have oversight of 4 divisions with nearly 300 staff. I have a BA in Physics from Mount Holyoke College, and a MS in Applied Physics and PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering from Cornell University.  I went directly from school to working for more than 20 years in semiconductor capital equipment industry and held various roles starting from technical contributor to technical product manager, line manager, VP Technology, Chief Technical Officer, business/general manager. I left industry to join the Dept. of Energy (DOE) laboratory community, first at Berkeley Lab and now at SLAC.   I am a U.S. Patent Agent (ask!) and am a named inventor on 13 patents in 4 fields. My family includes 2 grown daughters (both in STEM fields).  Likes: Building stuff; puzzles of all sorts (Wordle average is 3.8), and pickleball (started before it became a craze and still play whenever possible).    

Lynn R Cominsky

Professor Cominsky grew up in the snows of Buffalo, New York, and attended college at Brandeis University, where she studied Chemistry and Physics. After graduating from college, she worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, analyzing data from the first X-ray astronomy satellite, Uhuru.  When she found out that she could get paid for studying black holes, she went to graduate school in physics at MIT, and after getting her PhD there in 1981, she moved to California. She has been on the faculty at Sonoma State University for over 35 years, and chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy for 15 years before stepping down in 2019. She is also the director and founder of SSU's EdEon STEM Learning, formerly known as the Education and Public Outreach group. EdEon is involved in programs that build rocket payloads and CubeSats, as well as developing and testing STEM curricula and other education products. EdEon also runs a robotic telescope north of campus that can be used over the internet by high school and college students nation-wide. On a personal note, she lives at the Little H-bar Ranch in Petaluma, California, where she is the servant to three horses, two miniature horses, three cats, six chickens, a three-legged goat and one dog.  

Martha Escalera

Martha is an Assistant Director of Career Coaching and Education at Stanford University's Career Education center, where she works with undergraduate and masters students at the Stanford School of Engineering and Doerr School of Sustainability. She is a board-certified coach and has a background in organization development, managing diversity programs and project management. She has over 20 years of experience working in higher education, student affairs, student services and leading and training professionals early in their career.  

Mary Cirino

I majored in Computer Science at Stanford, with a minor in Geological Sciences. I came into undergrad intending to pursue a career in the sciences but like many others, after my first CS class I was hooked! After graduating with a bachelor's, I got a job at AMD as a software engineer working on GPU (graphics card) performance. I've been at AMD for seven years now and am now a senior GPU performance engineer, working to benchmark the latest datacenter GPUs for HPC and AI workloads. 

Nicole Neveu 

Nicole Neveu was born and raised in Houston, Texas. As a high school student, she had the opportunity to visit CERN through a competition sponsored by the NSF and DOE. It was this first overseas trip of her life that sparked her goal to work towards a career with particle accelerators. In 2013, after receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Houston, she went on to pursue a PhD in Physics, at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She completed her thesis work at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and her research focused on photoinjectors, a type of linear electron accelerator where electron bunches are created via the photoelectric effect. After receiving her PhD in 2018, she became a Research Associate at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, home to some of the largest accelerators in the US, and specifically photoinjectors. Her initial work at SLAC focused on simulation, optimization, and experimental measurements of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) and LCLS-II photoinjectors. She has since transitioned to a Staff Scientist position where she supports the superconducting LCLS-II. Throughout her time at SLAC, she has also partnered with laser scientists to study how to improve accelerators through laser shaping. 

Olive Eilbott 

Olive Eilbott is an NSF graduate research fellow and Ph.D. candidate working in experimental atomic physics at UC Berkeley. They advocate for programs that normalize and support gender diversity in physics, and they currently study an intricate magnetic dance performed by levitated laser-cooled atoms as choreographed by light. When they're not photographing atomic dances, they're photographing larger-scale things and dancing. 

Olivia Long 

I am currently a 4th year PhD student at Stanford studying computational nanophotonics. Growing up, I always found math and science interesting, so I decided to pursue physics and computer science in college. In my free time, I enjoy pilates, cycling, and exploring cute cafes! 

Patricia Burchat 

Pat Burchat is a Professor of Physics at Stanford University and is a past-Chair of the National Organizing Committee for the APS Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Her research interests focus on fundamental questions in physics: What is the Universe made of? What are the laws of physics that govern the constituents of the Universe? Prof. Burchat is a member of an international collaboration called the Dark Energy Science Collaboration, which is preparing for operation of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope project completing construction in Chile. The observatory will provide the most complete census of the Universe to date -- the Legacy Survey of Space & Time (LSST).

Prof. Burchat grew up in a very large family in a very small town in Canada; she is a first-generation high school graduate. She majored in Engineering Science at U of Toronto and co-founded the Engineering Physics program at Stanford. She is passionate about teaching and instilling enthusiasm for science in her students. At Stanford, she has received many awards for excellence in teaching. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.   

Sanghamitra Deb

Sanghamitra Deb is Engineering manager: Generative AI and ML at Chegg INC. She works on improving student learning with LLMs. Prior to being a  manager she was a Lead Staff Data Scientist for several years. Her work involves building conversational interfaces using LLMs, recommendation systems, computer vision, graph modeling, NLP , architectural decision-making, data pipelines and machine learning. Previously, Sanghamitra was a data scientist at Accenture where she worked on a wide variety of problems related to data modeling, architecture and visual story telling. She is an avid fan of python and has been programming for more than a decade. 

Trained as an astrophysicist (she holds a PhD in physics) she uses her analytical mind to not only work in a range of domains such as: education, healthcare and recruitment but also in her leadership style. She mentors junior data scientists at her current organization and coaches students from various field to transition into Data Science. Sanghamitra enjoys addressing technical and non-technical audiences at conferences and encourages women into joining tech careers. She is passionate about diversity and has organized Women In Data Science meetups. 

Sarah Gaiser 

Sarah Gaiser is a third year Physics Ph.D. student at Stanford working for the Dark Sector group at SLAC. Her research project is focused on searching for experimental evidence of freeze-out thermal relic dark matter with the Heavy Photon Search (HPS) experiment. Before starting her Ph.D. at Stanford, she received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany. During her Master's studies, Sarah interned with the autonomous driving research group at Mercedes Benz in California, but quickly discovered that Physics is way more interesting than self-driving cars. When she is not working on discovering dark matter, Sarah likes to spend time in nature, cleaning up and maintaining trails with a group of volunteers in the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve.

Shankari Rajagopal 

Shankari is a postdoc working on cold atom experiments. Before coming to Stanford, she was a graduate student building a lab at UCSB, and before that, an undergraduate at MIT. She loves all things quantum, designing and building optical and mechanical systems, and doggos. She has been a part of CUWIPs since 2017, and co-chaired the 2019 conference at UCSB. She is currently vaguely regretting signing up for her first marathon.

Shiva Abbaszadeh

Shiva Abbaszadeh is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. She received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) in 2014 and joined Stanford University as a postdoctoral Stanford Molecular Imaging Scholar. She established the Radiological Instrumentation Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining UCSC. Dr. Abbaszadeh’s research focuses on detectors, data acquisition, and computational processing to improve image quality and noise reduction. Her projects have been funded by NIH, DOD, and DOE. She was named Fellow of the National Initiative by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement to advance bioimaging.  She is the recipient of many awards such as the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology Fellowship, SPIE Optics and Photonics Award, Stanford’s Jump Start Award for Excellence in Research, Society of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award.

Thomas Madura

Dr. Thomas Madura is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University. He is a theoretical and computational astrophysicist who specializes in the study of massive stars, as well as astronomy outreach and education for students with blindness/visual impairments. He is a first-generation student, the son of a Portuguese immigrant, and received his PhD in physics from the University of Delaware. He is a former NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program Fellow and NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, during which he worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He has expertise in various 3D printing technologies, having produced the first 3D print of a nebula based on astronomical observations and the first 3D prints of a supercomputer simulation of an astrophysical system. He is currently the PI of a National Science Foundation ITEST research grant aimed at developing and studying the use of 3D printing technologies for astronomy education for students with blindness/visual impairments.