Local Organizers
Say hello to the faces of the Seattle CUWiP 20223 local organizing committee! In addition to those shown here there are dozens of volunteers making this event possible. We are all passionate about CUWiP, and excited to see everyone in Seattle in January.
Alexis Hall
Alexis Hall is an energetic administrative coordinator with over 10 years of experience providing support to UW physics faculty, students and staff members, and interfacing with facility management and IT. Before working at UW, Alexis worked for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, working with fisheries scientists. Her favorite place to be though is California, where she was born and raised. Alexis helped coordinate the previous UW CUWiP and is happy to help again this upcoming year. CUWiP is a great conference for first time conference goers.
Matthew Yankowitz
Matthew Yankowitz is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research in experimental condensed matter physics focuses on the investigation and control of strong correlations, magnetism, superconductivity, and topology in two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures using a combination of electrical transport and scanning tunneling microscopy. Prior to joining the University of Washington, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Arizona. He was recently named a finalist for the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientists (2019), and is the recipient of an ARO Young Investigator Award (2020), an NSF CAREER Award (2021), the Lee Osheroff Richardson Science Prize from Oxford Instruments (2021), and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Low Temperature Physics (2022).
Marjorie Olmstead
Marjorie Olmstead is Professor and Associate Chair of Physics and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she serves as the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor for the largest undergraduate physics program in the United States. Her research has focused on creating and investigating crystalline interfaces between dissimilar materials and the resultant ultra-thin films. Prior to the University of Washington, she was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also obtained her Ph.D, and a researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. She enjoys walking, music, reading, and spending time with her husband and two children, who are both currently in graduate school.
Heather Harrington
Heather Harrington is a PhD student at the University of Washington. She received her BS from Yale University where she worked on the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab and the AEgIS experiment at CERN. For her PhD, she is searching for chirality-flipping tensor currents in the weak interaction by using Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) to observe nuclear beta decays with high-accuracy. Her research interests include novel tests of fundamental symmetries, CP violation, detector physics, and instrumentation. Outside of lab, she reads sci-fi and grows miniature orchids.
Margaret S. Cheung
Margaret S. Cheung is a Staff Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) at the Seattle campus and a faculty affiliate of Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interest is in theoretical and computational biological physics. Prior to the PNNL, she was a Moores Professor of Physics at the University of Houston, a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, and gardening. She is also a Kraken hockey fan.
Suzanne White Brahmia
Suzanne White Brahmia is an Associate Professor with the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington. Dr. White Brahmia began her career as a Peace Corps high school physics teacher in Central Africa, and then as a graduate student in the Cotts’ Solid State NMR lab at Cornell University. As the first Director of Extended Analytical Physics program at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, she seized the opportunity to blend her interests in physics learning and social justice by developing and designing a program that targets equity and inclusion in calculus-based physics for students considered underprepared for engineering. She earned her PhD in physics at Rutgers, with a focus on mathematization in introductory physics. Dr. White Brahmia runs a vibrant research group that focuses on quantitative scientific reasoning in the classroom and in the instructional labs. She has served on the National Research Council committee that produced the report “Adapting to a Changing World -- Challenges and Opportunities in Undergraduate Physics Education”, and chaired the College Board AP Physics 1 Development Committee. She’s a longstanding CUWiP fan girl who enjoys urban and outdoor adventures, especially when it includes her family.
Alex Reynolds
Alex Reynolds is an undergraduate member currently in their senior year at the University of Washington. Their research is on student mathematical skills under Dr. Suzanne White-Brahmia in the Physics Education Group. They also have been a Teaching Assistant for the Introductory Physics series for two years, and serve as an intern for Equity in STEM for Riverways, a K-12 outreach program at the University of Washington’s Community Engagement and Leadership Education. In their free time they enjoy hiking, video games, and knitting.
Obinna Ukogu
Obinna Ukogu is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Washington. His research focuses on stochastic processes and control theory with applications to the adaptive immune system and cancer initiation. In his free time he enjoys climbing, basketball, and going on walks.
Lisa Goodhew
Lisa Goodhew is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Seattle Pacific University. Her research focused on understanding and building upon the “wonderful ideas” that university physics students have, to support more engaging and equitable science teaching. As a former gymnast, Dr. Goodhew is still delighted by the kinematics principles that describe how bodies move through the air. She enjoys skiing, hiking, rock climbing, and tending the tomatoes in her garden.
Jessica Birky
Jessica Birky (she/her) studied Physics at UC San Diego, and is now a 4th year grad student and NSF fellow in Astronomy at University of Washington. Her research interests fall in the intersection of astrophysics and data science, which includes applying computational physical models and machine learning to data from large scale surveys to infer properties of stars. In her free time she enjoys rollerblading, unicycling, skiing, and traveling.
Charlotte Zimmerman
Charlotte is a 5th year PhD student at the University of Washington, studying physics education research. After graduating from Carleton College as a physics major, she taught high school physics for three years in Connecticut where she developed a passion for better understanding how students use middle school mathematics in complex ways. She now studies graphical reasoning and covariational reasoning — how we think about changes in quantities and their relationships to one another — in introductory physics contexts.
Steve Sharpe
Steve Sharpe is Professor and Associate Chair of Physics for DEI at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research is in theoretical particle physics, with particular focus on the strong interactions—developing methods to calculate the predictions of Quantum Chromodynamics from first principles. Prior to the University of Washington, he was on research staff at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He enjoys hiking, camping, gardening, and reading science fiction, and is an avid soccer fan.
Carson Patterson
Carson Patterson grew up in Portland and studied physics and chemistry at Smith College. After graduating, she worked for several years as an optical engineer building and testing high power lasers at nLight before enrolling at the University of Washington, where she is currently a second year PhD student in atomic physics. In her free time she enjoys cooking, playing board games, and reading.
Kai-Mei Fu
Kai-Mei Fu is an Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds a dual appointment with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Kai-Mei received her PhD in Applied Physics in 2007 from Stanford University. Their research focuses on the synthesis, characterization and control of optically active quantum defects in crystals, with applications in quantum networks and sensing. At UW, Kai-Mei is the Director of UW’s NSF National Research Training Program:Accelerating Quantum-Enabled Technologies and the co-chair of UW’s interdisciplinary QuantumX Steering Committee. They are also the Deputy Director of the Department of Energy National Quantum Initiative (NQI) Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage. Kai-Mei enjoys spending time with their partner and three kids in their free time.
Jared Canright
Jared Canright (he/him) grew up in Alaska, studied physics and electrical engineering at New Mexico Tech, and is now avoiding any form of extreme weather as a fifth-year PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the University of Washington Physics Education Research Group. His PhD research project examines the applications of virtual reality (VR) technologies to physics education. His current project focuses on teaching scientific reasoning skills in introductory physics laboratories using fictitious (and thus Google-proof) physical phenomena experienced in VR. He moonlights as a conference organizer for Out in STEM, a hobbyist game designer for himself, and a functional adult for his dog and fiance.
Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo
Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo (she/her/ella) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Bothell campus. She came to the University of Washington from Humboldt State University in northern California where she was Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy. Born in Colombia and raised in Spain, she studied Physics with specialization in Astrophysics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Universidad de La Laguna (Instituto de Astrofisica) de las Islas Canarias. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Astronomy from the University of Florida and held postdoctoral fellow and research associate positions at the Pennsylvania State University and York University in Toronto, Canada. She was also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto. She loves astronomy, music, and traveling and is passionate about education and helping students succeed in their academic careers.