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professors

Dr. Debbie Senesky, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Electrical Engineering,

Stanford University

Debbie G. Senesky is an Associate Professor at Stanford University in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and the Electrical Engineering Department. In addition, she is the Principal Investigator of the EXtreme Environment Microsystems Laboratory (XLab) and co-Founder of start-up Astral Materials. Her research interests include the advancement of microelectronics for extreme environments (e.g., space exploration and nuclear reactors) and synthesis of nanomaterials in prolonged microgravity environments aboard the International Space Station (ISS). She received the B.S. degree (2001) in mechanical engineering from the University of Southern California. She received the M.S. degree (2004) and Ph.D. degree (2007) in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Senesky is the Site Director of nnci@stanford and the Chair of Stanford's Community of Shared Research Platforms (C-ShaRP), In recognition of her research, she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2025, Emerging Leader Abie Award from AnitaB.org in 2018, Early Faculty Career Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2012, Gabilan Faculty Fellowship Award in 2012, and Sloan Ph.D. Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2004.

Prof. Senesky's career path and research have been featured by Scientific American, Seeker, People Behind the Science podcast, The Future of Everything radio show, Space.com, and NPR's Tell Me More program. More information about Prof. Senesky can be found at https://xlab.stanford.edu and on Instagram (@astrodebs).

Dr. Blaise-Pascal Tine, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of California Los Angeles

Blaise Tine is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, where he leads the Open-Source Research in Computer Architecture and Systems (ORCAS) Lab. His research focuses on domain-specific accelerators and hardware–software co-design, with an emphasis on CPU–GPU heterogeneity to accelerate machine learning and graphics workloads. He is a lead architect of Vortex, an open-source GPU platform designed to democratize GPU research by enabling accessible, transparent, and reproducible exploration of GPU architectures and their software stacks.

Dr. Hawa Racine Thiam, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Microbiology and Immunology,

Stanford University

Hawa Racine Thiam is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Microbiology and Immunology and Sarafan ChEM-H Institute Scholar at Stanford University. Her lab combines biophysics, cell Biology and Immunology to investigate the cellular biophysical mechanisms of innate immune cell functions with a current focus on NETosis; an intriguing process during which neutrophils respond to danger signals (e.g., pathogens) by releasing their chromatin to the extracellular environment where it can trap and neutralize pathogens but also worsen inflammation. Hawa Racine’s long-term goal is to combine the knowledge generated by studying the cellular biophysics of immune cell functions, together with engineering principles to manipulate, predict and re-design innate immune cells and improve human health.

Hawa Racine earned her high school diploma in Senegal, her B.S in Physics and M.S in Physics for Biological systems from Paris Diderot University, then her Ph. D in Biophysics working with Dr. Matthieu Piel at Institut Curie where she developed microfabricated devices and discovered a novel function of branched actin networks in squeezing the nucleus during immune cell migration under confinement. She then joined Dr. Clare Waterman’s lab at the NHLBI/NIH where she combined high-resolution microscopy and quantitative cell biology approaches to reveal the cellular mechanism of NETosis, opening a new avenue for understanding this extreme cell behavior.

Dr. Khalid Osman, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University

Dr. Khalid K. Osman is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and a Center Fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment, with faculty affiliations at the King Center for Global Development and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He earned his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. His research focuses on advancing equity and justice in infrastructure systems through community-engaged, mixed-methods research. Centering water and sanitation, his work develops measurable frameworks for water equity and socio-technical solutions to sanitation challenges, particularly in historically marginalized communities. He partners closely with community-based organizations to ensure local priorities and lived experiences shape research design and outcomes. At Osman Lab, he leads efforts to co-create just and climate-resilient infrastructure solutions.

Dr. Leslie Gilliard-AbdulAziz, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Stanford University

Dr. Kandis Leslie Gilliard-AbdulAziz is an Assistant Professor in the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California, where she holds the Pasquale & Adelina Early Career Chair and leads the Sustainable Catalysis and Materials Lab. Her research focuses on the design of structured catalytic materials and reactor architectures for low-carbon chemical and energy systems, with emphasis on multifunctional materials, transport-controlled reactivity, and reactor-relevant performance. She integrates materials synthesis, advanced characterization, and reactor-scale testing to elucidate structure–function relationships in complex reactive environments. Her early-career honors include the NSF CAREER Award, DOE Early Career Research Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

Dr. Alvine Kamaha, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy,

University of California Los Angeles

Alvine Kamaha is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she holds the inaugural Keith and Cecilia Terasaki Endowed Chair in the Physical Sciences. She is the 2024 recipient of the Edward A. Bouchet Award from the American Physical Society and has received additional honors from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (Cottrell Scholar Award), as well as from the University of California system.

Professor Kamaha’s research focuses on experimental astroparticle physics, particularly the direct detection of dark matter, the unseen matter that constitutes a substantial fraction of the Universe. She earned her Ph.D. from Queen's University in Canada, working within the SNOLAB research group on the PICASSO bubble-chamber experiment. She subsequently held a postdoctoral position on the NEWS-G spherical proportional counter experiment, followed by a second postdoctoral appointment at the University at Albany, where she held leadership roles during the construction of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Time Projection Chamber, a U.S. flagship dark matter experiment.

At UCLA, Professor Kamaha continues her leading contributions to LZ, focusing on enhancing the experiment’s sensitivity to primary dark matter candidates while exploring new opportunities to search for rare physics processes beyond the Standard Model enabled by LZ’s increased sensitivity. She is also establishing a research and development facility at UCLA dedicated to the thorough calibration of key aspects of xenon detector microphysics, which will benefit both current and future dark matter experiments.

Dr. Ronald Gamble, Assistant Research Scientist, University of Maryland,

Cosmic Origins Research Scientist, NASA

Cosmic Origins Research Scientist

Assistant Research Scientist

Astrophysics Science Division

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Univ. of Maryland—College Park

Center for Research and Exploration in Space Sciences & Technology

Twitter/Instagram: @dr_gamble21 | www.theoreticallydrgamble.com

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Research Interests: Theoretical Physics, High-Energy Astrophysics, Black Holes, STEM Workforce Development

Dr. Ronald S. Gamble, Jr. is an Afro-Latino Theoretical Astrophysicist, Science Communicator, and Artist who believes the universe tells its story through light, energy, and gravity. His research explores how supermassive black holes generate relativistic jets—streams of matter accelerated to near-light speeds—by merging Einstein’s relativity with modern computational simulations. As a Cosmic Origins Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland—College Park, he studies the extreme physics surrounding black holes while leading NASA’s Cosmic Pathfinders Program, engaging early-career scientists and students to pursue professional careers. His career spans academia, defense, and space science, and his contributions have earned him multiple NASA Agency Medals and recognition for STEM leadership and mentorship. Blending science and creativity, A proud 3-time graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, Dr. Gamble unites creativity and discovery to illuminate the mathematics of the cosmos.

Ajay Kshatriya M.S., Chief Executive Officer of Aizen Therapeutics,

Operating Partner at Wilson Hill Ventures

Currently, Ajay is the Chief Executive Officer of Aizen Therapeutics, an AI-native biotechnology company pioneering oral peptides to transform the lives of patients and families burdened by chronic immune disorders. He also serves as an Operating Partner at Wilson Hill Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he invests in science-based startups emerging from the California Institute of Technology. Previously, Ajay founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Biota, a pioneer in environmental genomics, that achieved 8-digit revenue and was acquired by the industrial biotech leader, Novozymes (NZYM) in 2021. Biota scaled a University-based microbiome data platform into a genomics diagnostics business that created $400M in economic value and saved 1.2B gallons of water for 20+ industrial companies. Prior to founding Biota, Ajay was an associate in a $100M seed fund spun out from Mohr Davidow Ventures, XSeed Capital, that formed companies from science innovations emerging from Stanford and Berkeley. Ajay began his career at the world-leading biotechnology pioneer Genentech, where he held various positions in product operations, including two product core teams in early stage oncology.

Ajay holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley, an M.S. in engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas School of Business. He is an active member in Life Science Cares, a non-profit addressing economic and educational empowerment, and was previously a member of YPO, a global organization for CEOs. Ajay resides in San Diego with his wife Krista and two children.

postdoctoral researchers

Dr. Sierra Marable, Postdoctoral Researcher in Biology, California Institute of Technology

Sierra Marable, Ph.D. is a developmental biologist and postdoctoral researcher in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. After earning her doctorate in Molecular and Developmental Biology from the University of Cincinnati, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Marianne Bronner to study craniofacial development in avian and mammalian species. Dr. Marable’s research investigates how multipotent progenitor cells known as neural crest cells develop into craniofacial cartilage and bone during embryogenesis.

Dr. John Hood, Postdoctoral Scholar in Astrophysics, University of Chicago

Dr. John Hood is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Chicago, specializing in the study of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). A graduate of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge program, Dr. Hood earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, where he gained distinction as part of the South Pole Telescope Group at the University of Chicago. His fieldwork has taken him to the edge of the world, helping to continue seasonal observations at the South Pole. Today, he is leading efforts to deploy the SPT Treasury Record of AGN With Historical Activity and Time-Series or "STRAWHAT" catalog, using Cosmic Microwave Background observations for high cadence AGN monitoring.

Dr. Don Dixon, Postdoctoral Scholar in Astrophysics, Vanderbilt University

Dr. Don Dixon is a second-year postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University and alumnus of the illustrious Cal-Bridge and Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge programs. His research includes a range of stellar astrophysics topics, with an emphasis on connections between stellar rotation, stellar activity, and binary star evolution. Through these connections, he has helped to characterize several interesting magnetically active binaries and was awarded the most outstanding graduate student publication award by Vanderbilt’s Physics and Astronomy department for his work on developing empirical relationships for rotational activity of red giant branch stars. In addition to scientific research endeavors, Don also acts as the lead organizer for the BLack Academic Support and Advisory gRoup (BLASAR), which serves as a networking apparatus for Black scholars in STEM. He has also previously served on a graduate student and postdoctoral council to support the NASEM Roundtable on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development in their goal to develop a more inclusive and equitable higher education research ecosystem for the sciences. Apart from academia, Don volunteered as project lead for the Open Jails project created by Code for Nashville, where he developed a web scraper pipeline to help identify candidates for nonprofit bail funds in the Nashville-Davidson County area.

graduate students

Gilbert Bahati, PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

I am a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and part of the AMBER Lab, advised by Dr. Aaron D. Ames. My research is focused on perception-based safety and nonlinear control for robotic systems. I am particularly interested in leveraging tools from applied analysis and partial differential equations to address challenges in real-world autonomy that arise from perception-driven tasks, and validating these methods on hardware across various robotic platforms (e.g., humanoids, quadrupeds, drones etc).

Myles Sherman, PhD Candidate in Physics, California Institute of Technology

Myles Sherman is a 5th-year PhD Candidate studying Physics at Caltech. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an additional major in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021. Myles now conducts his research with the DSA-110 radio observatory under Professor Vikram Ravi. His work focuses on deciphering the polarization properties of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and investigating their connections to magnetars and other neutron stars.

Sarah Weisflog, PhD Candidate in Biology, California Institute of Technology

Sarah is a fifth-year graduate student from Libreville, Gabon working toward a Ph.D. in biology at Caltech. Her overall research interest lies at the intersection of microbiology and chemistry. As an undergraduate student at the University of Viriginia (#GoHoos), Sarah’s research focused on main-group element doped materials under the guidance of Dr. Robert Gilliard. Specifically, she investigated the optical properties of materials that are important for the advancement of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. Now, under the supervision of Dr. Dianne Newman, she studies mechanisms of bacteria survival in the context of chronic infections. She is particularly interested in metabolic processes involved in anaerobic respiration. During her time at Caltech, Sarah served as the Vice-President and Co-President for BSEC and helped launch CEBAS.

Talia Saeid, PhD Candidate in Astrophysics, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arizona State University

Talia is a fifth-year astrophysics PhD candidate at Arizona State University in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She specializes in astronomy instrumentation, working on the development of the Terahertz Intensity Mapper (TIM), a balloon-borne telescope designed to study star formation by observing ionized carbon emission lines in early galaxies. Her research focuses on the characterization and optimization of the kinetic inductance detector (KID) arrays to be employed on TIM. She is currently at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory through the Strategic University Research Partnership (SURP) and JPL Visiting Student Research (JVSRP) programs, where she builds on her work with KID arrays to determine and quantify resonant frequency scatter in large-format superconducting detector arrays. This research addresses a key limitation in advancing next-generation detector technologies in fields such as astronomy, supercomputing, remote sensing, and beyond. Talia earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she double-majored in physics and philosophy, with concentrations in astrophysics and in philosophy and science. Beyond her thesis work, Talia is passionate in STEM education and broadening participation in science by harvesting cultural and lived experiences to encourage diverse thinking in traditional education, aiming to shape not only what we build in science, but who feels empowered to build it.

Thomas Henning, PhD Candidate in Social and Decision Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology

Thomas Henning is a PhD Candidate at Caltech studying Social Decision Neuroscience; his research focuses on the neuroscience of human-AI interactions. He is a former Goldman Sachs trader and community activist. He co-founded the Conference for Emerging Black Academics in STEM (CEBAS) an annual interdisciplinary research conference hosted at Caltech, dedicated to highlighting the work of Black academics in STEM.

Nelly-Wangue Moussissa, PhD Candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California Berkeley

How do we track the health of an aquifer we cannot see or access? Nelly works at the crossroads of seismology and hydrology to address this challenge.

By analyzing permanent but subtle ground vibrations recorded in California’s Central Valley, she tracks mechanical weakening driven by hydrologic perturbations (e.g. the water cycle, extreme weather events), to monitor the evolving health of aquifer systems.

Her goal is to quantify small variations in seismic wave propagation velocities (dv/v), which are highly sensitive to microcrack evolution and changes in effective stress. Leveraging coda wave interferometry methods, she explores how dv/v measurements can serve as proxies for basin-scale effective stress redistribution, poroelastic response and the accumulation or relaxation of subsurface damage.

This year, she'll present ways in which her research aims to better understand how atmospheric river events interact with aquifer systems and the shallow Earth's crust. Nelly is also arguing that dv/v monitoring represent a powerful avenue to support the currently scarce well-based groundwater level observations in California.

Nelly-Wangue Moussissa is a PhD student at the Berkeley Seismology Laboratory (UC Berkeley), working in Richard Allen’s research group under the supervision of Richard Allen and Taka'aki Taira. She earned her BSc. in Earth and Planetary Science from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in 2022 and completed her Master’s degree in Earth and Planetary Science at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) in 2025.

Patricia Fofie, PhD Candidate in Astrophysics, University of California Irvine

My name is Fofie (she/they), and I am a 4th-year PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. I study galaxy formation and evolution theory with my advisor, James Bullock, by analyzing simulations of galaxies to understand the role of supermassive black holes in galaxy evolution. Although I am a computationalist by training, I began my galaxy research with observations and have been working to bridge observations and simulations since. For outreach, I am a facilitator for Rising Stargirls, a summer workshop that teaches girls of color astronomy through art. I am a co-founder of the Race & Queer Feminist Theory (RQFT) Reading Group, a collaboration between UCI Physics & Astronomy and the Logic & Philosophy of Physics Department, and I am the Librarian for the UNITY (Underrepresented Gender in Physics & Astronomy) Library.

Judah Bates, PhD Candidate in Biology, California Institute of Technology

Judah is a 5th year doctoral candidate in Bioengineering. She investigates how metabolic contributions from feeding Lactobacillus can promote regenerative responses to limb amputation in the poorly regenerating, adult Drosophila model. Outside of her research, Judah serves as a mentor for Caltech's Summer Research Connection and WAVE programs, as well as a graduate volunteer coach for Caltech's women's basketball team.

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