Winter 2024
Students are listed in presentation order. Recordings are linked where available.
Understanding Enteric Pathogens in Zimbabwe Urban Wastewater Using Metagenomics -- Sammi Cheung
Sammi Cheung is a second-year Master of Science student studying Environmental Health Sciences. She graduated from UW with a BS in Medical Laboratory Science while completing wolf conservation research as a Levinson Emerging Scholar. She previously served the local and national patient population as an MLS at the UW Medicine Molecular Microbiology lab. Her current research, advised by Dr. Scott Meschke, is understanding enteric pathogens in Zimbabwe urban wastewater with environmental surveillance using metagenomics. Sammi aims to utilize both her lab medicine and environmental health training in future One Health research.
Why do We Talk about Race So Much? -- Hsin-Jung (Sara) Li
Hsin-Jung (Sara), Li is a fourth year PhD student in CoE and instructional coach in the Elementary Teacher Education Program (ELTEP). She earned her master in Language Teaching Specialization from U of O and her bachelor in English Literature and Language in Taiwan. Prior to joining UW, she taught EFL to Taiwanese students for a total of 8 years and then Mandarin and ESL in a Chinese Immersion elementary school in Beaverton, OR. Her research focuses on East-Asian immigrant elementary teachers’ and families’ ethnic-racial socialization approaches pre-and-post migration and how it shapes their racial identity and literacy development.
Charge Matters -- Elizabeth Fawcett
Elizabeth Fawcett is a chemist, a data scientist, and an educator. She grew up and attended undergraduate studies, biology and chemistry, in rural Texas after which point she relocated for medical school to the big city. Deciding that becoming a physician wasn't for her, she pivoted into working in infectious disease and in the process ended up mentoring high school students in robots. This event led to her choice to teach and eventually learning to code and preform machine learning. She started at UW Chemistry this past fall for a graduate degree in the field of chemistry.
Engaged Body, Bewildered Eyes: The Design Strategy of Framing and Sequence For Embodied Landscape Experience -- Hongfei Li
Hongfei Li is an interdisciplinary Ph.D. student in the College of Built Environments with a background in Landscape Architecture, Architecture, and collegiate teaching art and design. She has extensive experience working on various projects as a landscape designer with leading design studios. Her research focuses on how design attends to human sensory and perceptual features to impact environmental experiences. She investigates this topic via interdisciplinary theories that acknowledge bodily relationships with space, including Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, enaction in cognitive science, and East-Asian spatial concepts.
A Walk-Through of Wearable Robots -- Annika Pfister
Annika Pfister is a PhD student with the Ingraham Lab in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department at UW. She earned her BA in Neuroscience at Wellesley College, along with a Certificate of Engineering from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, in 2023. Annika's current work investigates how to jointly optimize exoskeleton training and non-invasive spinal cord stimulation for rehabilitation with people who have spinal cord injuries. Her broad research interests include (neuro)prosthetics, user-collaborative engineering, and closed-loop control of wearable robots.
Automation/IoT (Internet of Things) Knowledge for Graduate Research and Career Preparation -- John O'Donovan
John is earning his master’s degree in Material Science and Engineering. He is also employed full time as a Process Engineer in the semiconductor industry. He recently became interested in how hardware and software interfaces. More specifically, how devices and gadgets communicate with each other and how this can be optimized when said devices interact with the real world. Open-source software packages and relatively cheap hardware can be used to automate and/or simplify tedious research related tasks. John’s main passion outside of work is travelling. He has spent more than 5 years living outside of the US in various countries.
The Blood-Brain Barrier; The Avengers of The Brain -- Sydney Floryanzia
Sydney Floryanzia is an NSF GRFP-funded Ph.D. student and ARCS Foundation scholar at the University of Washington. She graduated with her B.S. from NC State University in 2021 and her M.S. from U.W. in 2023. In her doctoral research, Sydney currently combines chemical engineering, neuroscience, and microfluidics to model drug delivery in the brain. She is also an award-winning Science Communicator and has shared her experiences in a TEDxTeen talk, a Chevron Superbowl commercial, news articles, and podcasts. In her free time, Sydney enjoys playing music and spending time in nature.