About Danna

Danna grew up in a small town in upstate New York that might have more cows than people. She took advantage of the remote location by working at Kopernik Observatory, leading instructional programs for children and vying for telescope time on the 12″ reflector. After high school, she left upstate NY, and any semblance of clear skies, to head to Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. At Harvard, Danna performed research in Prof. Hongkun Park’s laboratory studying defect engineering in single-walled carbon nanotubes. During her time as an undergraduate researcher she had the opportunity to learn about magnetic molecules through a fortuitous collaboration between Prof. Park and Prof. Jeffrey R. Long. After graduation, Danna decided to pursue her interest in magnetic molecules and moved across the country to obtain a Ph.D. in Prof. Jeffrey Long’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley. During her time at Berkeley, Danna studied fundamentals of magnetic anisotropy in both polynuclear clusters and mononuclear single-molecule magnets. After studying zero-dimensional magnetism for six years, Danna decided to make a serious change and transitioned to two-dimensional magnetism for her postdoctoral research. She moved back to Cambridge, MA to work in Prof. Daniel G. Nocera’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Prof. Nocera’s laboratory, Danna had the opportunity to work on geometric spin frustration in Kagomé lattices and quantum spin liquids. During her time at MIT, Danna used X-ray scattering techniques to provide evidence that a compound previously synthesized in Prof. Nocera’s laboratory may be an exotic form of matter known as a spin liquid. After completing her postdoctoral research at MIT, Danna accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University. Her laboratory’s research focuses on applying inorganic chemistry to solve problems in physics. When she’s not in lab communicating with her SQUID magnetometer, Danna likes to follow politics, read contemporary fiction, and walk to faraway places.