Plenary Speakers

Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, CERN

Fabiola Gianotti received a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University of Milano in 1989. Since 1994 she has been a research physicist at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and since August 2013 an honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a corresponding member of the Italian Academy of Sciences, foreign associate member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and of the French Academy of Sciences, honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and Foreign Member of the Royal Society, London. Dr Gianotti has worked on several CERN experiments, being involved in detector R&D and construction, software development and data analysis.

Vicky Kalogera, Northwestern University

Vicky Kalogera is the co-founder and the current director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. Kalogera is the lead astrophysicist in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), LIGO being the telescopes that first detected gravitational waves in 2015. An expert in the astrophysics of black holes and neutron stars and in LIGO data analysis, Kalogera has been a member of the LSC for more than 15 years, and was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Kalogera’s astrophysics research involves methods from applied mathematics, statistics and computer science, with extensive use of high-performance computing. In parallel to her gravitational-wave source studies, Kalogera also studies the formation and evolution of stars and their remnants detectable as gamma-ray, X-ray, and radio pulsar sources in the electromagneticspectrum in a wide range of stellar environments. For her research she has been recognized by numerous awards; most recently she was awarded the 2018 Heineman Prize for Astrophysics by the American Institute for Physics and the American Astronomical Society.

Angela Little, Michigan State University

Dr. Angela Little is a physics education researcher, multimedia producer, and national leader in STEM education equity initiatives. Her research focuses on how people come to develop a sense of feeling capable in physics. After being accepted into the Vocalo 91.1 Chicago Storytellers Workshop in 2015, Little began producing the Piecing Together Podcast. The podcast features inspiring stories of collaboration-gone-right in academic research and educational initiatives. Little is a co-founder of The Compass Project, winner of the 2012 APS Award for Improving Undergraduate Physics Education. Compass inspired the creation of a number of other programs across the country. In 2015, Little co-founded The Access Network, an NSF-funded national network to support these programs to network with one another. Little is a former member of both the APS Forum on Education Executive Committee and the APS Committee on Minorities. She serves on her tribe’s (Chinook Nation) Education & Scholarship Committee.

Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Northwestern University

Monica Olvera de la Cruz is a soft-matter theorist, the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. Research in the Olvera de la Cruz group is centered around the development of models to describe the self-assembly of heterogeneous molecules including amphiphiles, copolymers and synthetic and biological polyelectrolytes, as well as the segregation and interface adsorption in multicomponent complex fluids. Work by the group has resulted in a revised model of ionic-driven assembly: demonstrating the electrostatic spontaneous symmetry breaking of ionic fibers and membranes, and identifying its relevance to biological functions and to the design of functional materials. The group’s investigations into soft and condensed matter physics have advanced scientific knowledge and opened new research fields of technological importance, including: gel electrophoreses dynamics, self-organization of molecular electrolytes into bio-mimetic materials, self-assembly of heterogeneous molecules into complex nano-structures, interface adsorption and phase segregation dynamics and structure of multicomponent fluids.

Teresa K Woodruff, Northwestern Medicine

Teresa K. Woodruff Ph.D. is the Dean of the Graduate School, Thomas J. Watkins Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the Vice Chair of Research (OB/GYN), the Chief of the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Professor of Molecular Biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. She is also the Director of the Center for Reproductive Science, Founder and Director of the Women’s Health Research Institute, and Director of the Oncofertility Consortium. She is an internationally recognized expert in ovarian biology and, in 2006, coined the term “oncofertility” to describe the merging of two fields: oncology and fertility. She now heads the Oncofertility Consortium, an interdisciplinary team of biomedical and social scientist experts from across the country. She has been active in education not only at the professional level but also with high school students. To this end, she founded and directs the Oncofertility Saturday Academy (OSA), one of several high school outreach programs that engages girls in basic and medical sciences. She is civically active and is an elected member of The Economic Club of Chicago and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Woodruff served on the school board of the Chicago-based Young Women’s Leadership Charter School, served as president of the Endocrine Society and championed the new NIH policy that mandates the use of females in fundamental research.

Invited Panelists & Presenters

Aaila Ali

Aaila Ali is a fourth year physics major at DePaul University and computer engineering major at the Illinois Institute of Technology with an interest in quantum computing and a strong desire to give back to the scientific community. Aaila actively works to help increase minority student participation in STEM fields. Over the course of her undergraduate career, she has interned in cyber security, worked as a student researcher on a Sloan Digital Sky Survey Faculty and Student Team (SDSS FAST) at DePaul University under Dr. Jesus Pando, and participated in a NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduate Students at the University of Utah in spintronics under Dr. Christoph Boehme. Aaila currently the associate zone councilor of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) for zone 9, which consists of Wisconsin and northern parts of Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana; and is heavily involved in DePaul’s SPS chapter, Society of Women in Physics chapter, and Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) chapter. Aaila will be interning with IBM research the summer of 2019, she has a passion for research and plans to pursue graduate studies in the future.

Gabrielle Allen

Gabrielle Allen received a PhD in Physics from Cardiff University in 1993. After appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Louisiana State University, the National Science Foundation and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, she moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014. She is currently a Professor of Astronomy and Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, with additional faculty appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. Since 2016 she has served as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education. Allen’s work has focused around the development and application of scientific community software, including the Cactus Framework, Einstein Toolkit, and Grid Application Toolkit. Although her work has predominantly been related to simulations of black holes, neutron stars and gravitational waves, her group’s software has also been applied in fields as diverse as petroleum engineering, computational chemistry, coastal modeling, and computational fluid dynamics. Dr. Allen has published over 100 refereed journal and conference papers and has been awarded the Gordon Bell Prize in Supercomputing in 2001, the IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge in 2009, and the High Performance Bandwidth Challenge in 2002. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Meghan Anzelc

As Head of Data and Analytics, a newly created global and firm-wide role, Dr. Meghan Anzelc is responsible for building and implementing a strategy and roadmap to advance the data and analytics capabilities at Spencer Stuart. She works with colleagues across the firm to understand their challenges and the potential opportunities for data and analytics to have a positive impact on the organization and on Spencer Stuart’s products and services for the firm’s clients. Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Dr. Anzelc held a number of leadership roles in data and analytics in the insurance industry, most recently serving as Chief Analytics Officer for AXIS Capital. Dr. Anzelc holds a Master’s and PhD in Physics from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s in physics from Loyola University Chicago. She is also on the board of the Chicago Literacy Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to the vision of a 100% literate Chicago.

Bettina Bohle-Frankle

Bettina Bohle-Frankel is a psychiatrist at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She received her MD from the University of Goettingen, Germany and completed what would be considered undergraduate work in the US at the University of Heidelberg. Her doctoral thesis is in the field of Pathology. She worked as a psychiatry resident at University of Muenster, Harvard University, and Northwestern University. Since completing her residency she has worked for over 20 years at CAPS of Northwestern University, treating undergraduate and graduate students who are facing mental health challenges. She also provides outreach programs and workshops to the Northwestern community and is the liaison to the McCormick School of Engineering. She is board certified in Psychiatry, a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and trained to teach QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer).

Rebecca Bradford

Rebecca Bradford’s career as a physicist has been a circuitous one. She completed a PhD in accelerator-based nuclear physics at Carnegie Mellon University in early 2005,. Her thesis work was conducted at Jefferson Lab in Virginia. She accepted a post-doc in the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Rochester, moved to New York, and switched fields. Rebecca spent much of the next 6 years underground at Fermilab, working as detector assembly and installation coordinator for MINERvA, a neutrino scattering experiment. After completing the post-doc, she found a permanent home at Argonne National Lab, where she works developing specialized x-ray detectors for the Advanced Photon Source. In 2015, Rebecca came out as transgender and began living as a woman, making her only the 2nd lab employee to undergo a gender transition at Argonne. Much of her transition happened rather publicly at the lab. The story is a difficult one: “I had been fighting severe mental illness (depression), and desperately needed to transition. Lacking any family support, Argonne was actually the only safe place where that could happen. I didn’t actually make a formal announcement, I was literally losing my mind at that time, and just didn’t know that I needed to announce the change. I simply started to wear feminine clothing to work, unannounced. There were actually no policies at the lab for trans employees, but management went out of their way to make sure I was safe and supported. Without Argonne’s support, I probably would not have made it.” Rebecca has become increasingly involved with Argonne’s diversity and inclusion (“D&I”) effort. Since 2016, she has served on the lab director’s D&I advisory panel, and has co-chaired the D&I effort at the light source since 2017.

Laura Conway

Laura Conway joined Northwestern as the ADA Coordinator in 2018. Laura most recently worked on education law issues at LAF, which provides free legal assistance for Cook County residents living in poverty. Laura, who is hard-of-hearing and uses cochlear implants, has worked in both the public and private sectors on a wide range of issues related to the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504. She holds a BA in Political Science from Macalester College and received her law degree from William & Mary Law School.

Evie Downie

Evie Downie is an Associate Professor of Physics and Associate Dean in the Colombian College of Arts and Sciences at the George Washington University. Her research is in experimental nuclear physics. She studies the structure and behavior of protons, neutrons and light nuclei, with experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland (where she is the spokesperson of the MUSE collaboration) and at the MAMI in Mainz, Germany. She got her Ph.D. in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2007, and then spent 3.5 years in Mainz, Germany, earning a Carl Zeiss Postdoctoral Fellowship. She moved to Washington DC in January 2012 and has since become the organizer of the Women and Gender Minorities in Physics Program, and APS Skills Seminar Leader, and most recently, the Chair Elect of the National Organizing Committee of CUWiP.

Michelle Driscoll

Michelle Driscoll is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University. She is a soft condensed matter experimentalist, and her research lies at the interface between soft matter physics and fluid dynamics. Her lab focuses on understanding how structure and patterns emerge in driven systems, and to how to use this structure formation as a new way to probe nonequillibrium systems. By developing a deeper understanding of patterns and structures which emerge dynamically in a driven material, we can learn not only how these structures can be controlled, but also how to use them to connect macroscopic behavior to microscopic properties.

Heidi Eichler

Heidi Eichler currently teaches AP biology, honors freshman biology, and anatomy & physiology at Regina Dominican High School. She is also the biology coach for the Academic Challenge team, a sponsor of the Marine Biology Club, and adviser to several Leadership Scholars. This is her 7th year at Regina Dominican and her 11th year teaching overall. She has also been the science department chair for the past 4 years. She studied at the University of Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and graduated with honors. Following several years working in a chemical laboratory, developing solutions and acting as a lab consultant for the printing industry; she enrolled at National-Louis University, where she earned her teaching certification in Secondary Education, with a Middle School Endorsement. She is certified to teach biology and chemistry at the high school level, and all sciences at the middle school level. Prior to Regina Dominican, she spent 4 years teaching all levels of freshman biology at Niles North High School. During that time, she worked with numerous students on independent research projects, many of which competed successfully at the regional and state levels. One student’s project was also chosen to receive national recognition by ISWEEP, recognizing student excellence and innovation in environmental sciences.

Jessica Esquivel

Dr. Jessica Esquivel is a biracial lesbian physicist working at Fermilab on the Muon g-2 experiment. She graduated with her PhD in physics from Syracuse University and her graduate research was studying neutrinos using the MicroBooNE experiment. She believes physics should be accessible to all underrepresented minorities and strives to do everything she can to increase representation by participating and organizing panels, discussions and outreach events. For more information or to contact Dr. Esquivel visit JessicaEsquivelPhD.com

Nicole Fields

Nicole Fields earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in December 2014. While in graduate school her study focused on the topic of experimental astroparticle physics and the development of low-background low-threshold radiation detectors. Novel radiation detector technology is particularly important in the search for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter candidates and in the observation of the process of coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS). Nicole’s thesis work was a prototype CsI(Na) detector and a full feasibility study for observing CEvNS at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. CEvNS was first observed in 2017 by the COHERENT Collaboration at the SNS using a 14.6 kg CsI(Na) detector, more than forty years after it was predicted. Since October 2014, Nicole has been an inspector at the Region III office of the U.S. NRC in Lisle, IL inspecting the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel.

Qiu Fogarty

Qiu Fogarty is an Assistant Director for Social Justice Education, working closely with the Peer Inclusion Educators (PIE) and Step Up. She completed her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Occidental and received her Masters in Higher Education from the University of Michigan. Qiu is believes deeply in the transformative power of dialogue and in the capacity for everyone to learn, develop, and contribute to a socially just world.

Margaret Gardel

Margaret Gardel is a Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. Her lab’s focus is to understand how protein assemblies within eukaryotic cells that control their adhesion, shape and migration. In addition, her labs uses these building blocks to construct novel forms of active matter. She joined the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago in 2007 after earning her Ph.D. from Harvard University and completing postdoctoral research as a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT and at Scripps Research Institute. Her awards include a Packard Fellowship, Sloan Fellowship and the NIH Pioneer Award. In 2013 she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Aaron Geller

Aaron Geller is Research Faculty at Northwestern University in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), an Astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, and a Senior Interactive Visualization Specialist in Northwestern’s IT Research Computing Services group. Geller’s research focuses on how stars and planets are born and how they change with time, both through observations and numerical simulations. In particular, he is interested in how gravitational interactions between stars and planets in star clusters shape the stellar and (exo)planetary systems that we observe. Geller also develops visualizations of his and others’ work for use at Northwestern, the Adler, within classroom lessons, and for the general astronomy enthusiast. Geller is also the PI and site director for CIERA’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, and is the Chair of the NSF Physics REU Leadership Group Executive Committee.

Aprajita Hajela

Aprajita Hajela is a second-year Astronomy Ph.D. student at Northwestern University. She is a part of Observational Astronomy group and her research focusses on multi-wavelength studies of events in time-domain astronomy, mainly Gamma-ray bursts. She has also been a part of ‘pretty cool’ events of 2017/18: GW170817 and AT2018COW. She comes from an educationally diverse background having earned a degree in Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Instrumentation from India, moving onto get a Master of Science in Physics and Astronomy from Northwestern University and now continuing to get her Ph.D. in Astronomy. In her three years here at Northwestern, she has been a part of a lot of outreach activities like Girls4Science, mostly volunteering to encourage education in science among young girls.

Katherine Harmon

Katherine Harmon is a Ph.D. candidate, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow, and Ryan Fellow (Northwestern International Institute for Nanotechnology) in the Applied Physics Graduate Program at Northwestern. She received her B.A. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2012 and then joined the laboratory of Dr. Han Wen at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a post-baccalaureate research fellow. At the NIH, she helped develop grating-based X-ray phase contrast imaging tools for medical applications and developed a keen interest in using powerful X-ray techniques to probe structures down to the nanoscale. She found a perfect fit for her interests at Northwestern, which has a close partnership with nearby Argonne National Lab (ANL) and the Advanced Photon Source, one of the leading resources for X-ray studies in the world. She works jointly with Professor Michael Bedzyk at NU and Dr. Paul Fenter at ANL to study the structure-property relationships of solid-liquid interfaces. In particular, she uses X-ray reflectivity to probe the structure of adsorbed ions at electrode-electrolyte boundaries, which drives capacitive energy storage. She employs a combined experimental and computational approach in collaboration with the Olvera group and the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials to understand the fundamental atomic-scale interactions within these systems.

Deanna Hence

Dr. Deanna A. Hence is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Originally from north Texas, she received her PhD at the University of Washington and was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her current research in cloud and precipitation physics studies the interactions of high-impact weather systems at the convective- and mesoscale with their surrounding environment, primarily through intensive observations from field experiments around the world. A National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, Dr. Hence is passionate about the importance of inclusive scientific conversation for informed decision-making, and is actively engaged in efforts to broaden pathways within the atmospheric sciences.

Larry Jackson

Larry Jackson is an Assistant Director for Student Career Advising at Northwestern Career Advancement. Larry advises undergraduate STEM students in their internship and job search planning on topics such as resume/CV and cover letter development, interviewing, networking, salary negotiation and career and employer research. He is also actively engaged in professional associations related to student career development such as the Midwest Association of Colleges and Employers, and the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Camesha Jones

Camesha L. Jones, LSW is the Founder of Sista Afya, LLC. She has lived with a mental health condition for over 5 years and was able to overcome many challenges to achieve optimal mental wellness. Camesha created Sista Afya to help other Black women experiencing mental health challenges to get the information, community support, and the connection to resources necessary to be mentally well. She is a Radical Social Worker with an A.M. in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College. She focuses on clinical and systems change in mental health and interpersonal violence prevention in African- American communities.

Carolyn Kanagy

Carolyn Kanagy is a clinical psychologist and has worked with Meridian Psychiatric Partners in Chicago and Evanston since 2011. She sees patients from these areas with the classic range of psychiatric disorders and, given proximity of the Evanston office to the NU campus in Evanston, sees many students from Northwestern’s campus. Prior to her working at Meridian, Carolyn worked as a psychologist in a private practice in NY, in an inpatient hospital setting in North Carolina, and at the CAPS center at UNC Chapel Hill where she received her doctorate. She is a career change psychologist: Prior to her psychology doctorate, Carolyn had received a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania as well as MS in physical chemistry from the University of Maryland. Her career included post doctoral work with Bruce Furie at the New England Medical Center, research in the lab of David Johnson at GSU Chemistry, and 5 years in High Performance Computing Support in the Office of Information Technology at Georgia Tech. She had the luxury of growing up at a time when research an teaching funds were plentiful and fairly noncompetitive and received the standard awards along the way (magna cum laude, undergrad scholarship for women in chemistry, University fellow, NIH training grants, Individual NRSA award, and an NIH Grant award for women returning to research). Funding in psychology was less readily available and she taught undergraduate psychology classes through her entire graduate career at UNC.

Young-Kee Kim

Young-Kee Kim, an experimental particle physicist, is the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago. She has devoted much of her research work to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles by studying two of the most massive particles with Fermilab’s Tevatron, and the Higgs particle with CERN’s LHC. She was the spokesperson (scientific leader) of the CDF experiment at the Tevatron between 2004 and 2006 and Deputy Director of Fermilab between 2006 and 2013. Kim was born in South Korea, and came to the U.S. for her Ph.D. in 1986. She was Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley between 1996 and 2002 and moved to the University of Chicago in 2003. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Sloan Foundation. She received the Ho-Am Prize, the Women in Science Leadership Award, and South Korea’s Science and Education Service Medal.

Vidya Madhavan

Professor Madhavan received her bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering in 1991 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, and a master of technology degree in solid state materials in 1993 from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. She held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Berkeley from 1999 to 2002, before joining the physics faculty at Boston College in 2002. She joined the faculty at Illinois in 2014 as a full professor. Professor Madhavan investigates fundamental problems in quantum materials where interactions between the spin, charge, and structural degrees of freedom lead to emergent phenomena. She uses the tools of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS), spin-polarized STM (SP-STM) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to unravel the mysteries of complex systems at the atomic scale. Her group carries out challenging, high-risk experiments, wherein the possibility of discovering new phenomena is high. Her team’s recent work has focused on STM studies of complex oxides and thin films of topological materials.

Renée Manzagol

Renee Manzagol is a Physics PhD Student in the Figueroa Group at Northwestern University. She is working on Micro-X, a high resolution Microcalorimeter x-ray imaging rocket, that just had its first flight on July 22. Renee is interested in keV dark matter and designing new detectors for future Micro-X flights. Renee earned her BSE in Chemical Engineering from University of Michigan and worked in R&D for DuPont and in Global Supply Chain for Ecolab before deciding to pursue a PhD in Physics.

Megan Mikota

Megan N. Mikota is a Master of Science candidate, physics education researcher and graduate of DePaul University. Her thesis concentration is on pseudo-student questions. Pseudo-student questions are questions in which fictional students provide answers along with dialogue to a conceptual physics question. Then, students are tasked to identify which, if any, pseudo-student they agree with or think is correct. Interest in this research came as an extension of her undergraduate research, which was on the language issues associated with the physics topic center of gravity. While serving as a teaching/graduate assistant, she helped facilitate the transition to studio style teaching for DePaul’s introductory physics sequences. During Megan’s time at DePaul she has been very involved in running DePaul’s SPS (Society of Physics Students) and SACNAS with Women in STEM (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) chapters. After attending last year’s CUWiP, Megan went on to co-found and head DePaul’s SWiP (Society for Women in Physics).

Katrina Miller

Katrina Miller is a PhD candidate in the physics department at the University of Chicago. She is a recipient of the 2018 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship as well as the 2018 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Katrina has a passion for probing unsolved mysteries at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Upon her arrival to the University of Chicago, she joined the XENON collaboration to contribute to detection efforts of theoretically-motivated dark matter candidates. Specifically, she investigated single-electron events in the XENON1T detector as a source of low-energy background that could mask potential dark matter signals interacting via electronic, rather than nuclear, recoil. Katrina is now a collaborator of the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where she studies electron neutrino interactions in liquid argon.

Michelle Paulsen

Michelle Paulsen is the director of education, outreach, and communication programs at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University. She is the co-founder and director of RSG—Northwestern’s research communication training program for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Paulsen is a co-PI on Reach for the Stars, an NSF program designed to introduce computational modeling to middle and high school STEM students and teachers. Paulsen is an alumnae of the University of Illinois, Illinois Institute of Technology, and National Louis University where she earned degrees in Chemistry, Environmental Engineering, and School Leadership. Before coming to Northwestern, Paulsen spent ten years teaching at Deerfield High School, chaired the science department at Maine South High School, and spent two years teaching physical science teaching methods to graduate students in the National College of Education at National Louis University in Chicago.

Gayle Ratliff

Dr. Gayle Ratliff received her Ph.D. in physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology where she conducted research with the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (the VERITAS Collaboration) based in Amado, Arizona and the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum where she served as a research assistant as well as a public education fellow. She holds a B.S. in Physics from the Florida State University and an S.M. from the Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has served as a research engineer in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as well as a postdoctoral research associate at the Adler Planetarium. A former professional dancer, she is currently working on a number of dance projects and this year was named a National Visiting Fellow at the School of American Ballet in New York City. She is currently an adjunct professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a senior faculty member at the Hyde Park School of Dance. Dr. Ratliff works on a variety of dance, art and science, and science education projects and continues to work actively to promote inclusion in the arts and in STEM fields.

Jax Sanders

Jax Sanders is an Assistant Professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. They have a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Kalamazoo College, and a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Physics from University of Michigan. They design subsystems for gravitational wave interferometers and work to design new detectors to expand the scope of the new field of gravitational wave astronomy. They worked at LIGO Hanford Observatory as an Advanced LIGO commissioner, installing and characterizing the sensing and control systems that keep the complex optical system aligned. After getting their Ph.D. at University of Michigan, they worked at Syracuse University as a postdoc, where they became involved with conceptual design for future interferometers. Jax has two interesting distinctions in their field: they’re the last person to publish a gravitational wave thesis that doesn’t mention the first detection of gravitational waves, and they’re the first person to get a tattoo of the GW150914 black hole inspiral signal (It’s on their left forearm, ask if you want to see it!).

Nora Shipp

Nora Shipp is a PhD student at the University of Chicago. She obtained her ScB in Astrophysics from Brown University, and worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center before beginning her graduate studies. She studies stellar streams in order to explore the distribution of dark matter in our Galaxy, and is a member of the Milky Way Working Group within the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration. In addition to her scientific research, Shipp is active in several initiatives to communicate science and to facilitate the participation of underrepresented groups in Astronomy. Shipp is a writer for the astronomy blog Astrobites, and is conducting a study on the effectiveness of Astrobites as an educational tool. She is also the graduate student representative on the UChicago Department of Astronomy’s Equity and Inclusion Council, and a co-founder of the UChicago Astronomy Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Journal Club.

Candice Stauffer

Candice Stauffer transferred from Clackamas Community College to Portland Sate University where she received her B.Sc. in Physics and University Honors. She was a BUILD EXITO Fellow and President’s Scholar. Her undergraduate education and research was focused on applied physics and material science. Candice is currently a first-year Astronomy Ph.D. student at Northwestern University where she observationally studies peculiar supernovae using radio and X-ray wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Byron Stewart

Byron is adjunct lecturer for Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, Office of Personal Development. He designed and co-teaches two courses titled, Engineering Improv I & II targeted to undergraduate engineering students. Since its inception, Byron has been a science communication instructor for Northwestern’s RSG science communication program where he uses his theatre background as a performer/director to help graduate students take command of the stage and have a presence. Byron has facilitated theatre-based communication workshops and individual coaching sessions for Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Research Experiences for Undergrads, Summer Research Opportunity Program, and Design for America, IIT’s Institute of Design, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Chicago, Columbia College, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Economics. He has provided job talk and tenure talk coaching to graduate students as well as faculty at various research institutions. Byron is a graduate of Howard University, Washington D.C.

Aziza Suleymanzade

Aziza Suleymanzade is a 5th year PhD student in Simon Lab and Schuster Lab at the University of Chicago. She is working on hybrid quantum mechanical systems, creating a bridge between the fields of cold atoms and circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) to harvest quantum phenomena for fundamental research as well as quantum communication. After getting her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, she pursued a Master of Philosophy in Physics from the University of Cambridge, working on ultra-cold potassium (39K) Bose Einstein Condensates (BEC) in uniform potentials. She is an active member of the University of Chicago Women and Gender Minorities in Physics (WAGMIP) group and responsible for creating biweekly talks by women and minorities, which has been flourishing for several years now. Her awards and fellowships include the Lionel de Jersey Harvard-Cambridge fellowship, University of Chicago Chair’s Distinguished Service Award and MRSEC graduate fellowship.

Michelle Tantillo

Michelle Tantillo earned her bachelor’s degree in 2005 in physics education from Illinois State University, and a masters degree as a reading specialist in 2011 from Olivet Nazarene University. She has been teaching physics at Prospect High School, in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, for 14 years. She is also a certified yoga instructor. After a loss of a friend to suicide in 2014, she became less focused on students learning content to perfection and was refocused on students having fun while learning content. She worked to incorporate teaching stress management, balance, and coping skills alongside physics content. As important as physics content is, helping students to find balance in their lives became equally important. That balance has allowed for continued success with mastering content, but has allowed her students to rediscover the joy in learning. Michelle is also the current volunteer coordinator for the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention Illinois Chapter. She has participated in four overnight and four community walks to help raise money and awareness for the cause. Michelle has presented the AFSP’s “Talk Saves Lives” and “More Than Sad” programs on behalf of AFSP impacting over 600 high school students. She has been trained and co-facilitates a suicide survivor loss support group. As an active alumnae member of Sigma Sigma Sigma Sorority Michelle has done various educational presentations on mental health for over 200 sorority women at the Tri Sigma Education Summit, for the entire sorority’s staff, other alumnae chapters. Outside of her high school classes, Michelle teaches a course for other district staff called “Mental Wellness for Students and Teachers”, impacting so far over 50 staff members in her school district. Michelle has been through the Mental Health First Aid training, QPR (question, persuade, refer) training, and various AFSP volunteer trainings. She has been certified and teaches Character Counts! curriculum, as well as serves as a Compassion It advocate.

Tracy Thomas

Tracy Thomas is a Program Management and Operations leader. She is currently Director of Program Management at Cloudability, working to craft process and run programs in Product & Engineering as well as across the business. Prior to Cloudability, Tracy executed and led software development and project management in business areas including embedded software, solutions for the military, outsourced software development, and social business software. Tracy has a B.S. degree in physics from University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in physics from Northwestern University. She is involved in running several programs in the Portland community: Technology Association of Oregon’s Project Management Community, PDX Women in Tech’s “Seasoned Women in Tech” subgroup, and the Portland chapter of UPWARD, an organization for executive women.

Leah Turner

Leah Turner earned her BS in Physics from Lehigh University in 2016 and her Master’s in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2018. She is currently a PhD student in Medical Physics at UW-Madison with the UWMRRC. The University of Wisconsin Medical Radiation Research Center primarily focuses on the science of metrology as applied to radiation therapy physics. Work from this group has resulted in the development of several primary standards for radiation measurement as well as advancements in the development and characterization of novel radiation detection instruments. Leah has conducted research relating to both clinical and preclinical radiation therapy physics and she has completed a summer internship in the radiation therapy industry.

Abigail Vieregg

Abigail Vieregg is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. She received her Ph.D from UCLA in 2010 and was an NSF Office of Polar Programs postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Vieregg is an experimental physicist, who uses the universe as a laboratory to explore physics at the highest energies. She searches for the highest energy neutrinos in the universe by looking for the radio emission they create when they interact in Antarctic ice, with the ANITA and ARA experiments. She also builds telescopes that look at the Cosmic Microwave Background (BICEP and CMB-S4), to learn about the physics that drove the first moments of time after the Big Bang.

Amy Ziegler

Amy Ziegler is a shareholder with the law firm Greer Burns & Crain in Chicago. Her practice focuses on intellectual property, Internet and technology law. Ms. Ziegler manages global trademark portfolios for a variety of businesses, including companies in the software, data, manufacturing, luxury and consumer goods industries. She routinely handles high-profile trademark, anti-counterfeiting, patent and copyright enforcement matters. As a result of her ample experience managing and protecting IP, she is frequently consulted regarding the intellectual property aspects of mergers and acquisitions. Ms. Ziegler received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a J.D. (with honors) from DePaul University. Prior to attending law school, she operated a superconducting linear accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory and conducted fiber optic research. She has been named one of the Top 1000 Trademark Professionals in the World by World Trademark Review, one of “The Top Women Attorneys in Illinois” by Chicago Magazine, a Super Lawyer by Illinois Super Lawyers for Intellectual Property and Intellectual Property Litigation, DePaul University College of Law’s 2011 Outstanding Young Alumna, and received the Linn Inn Alliance Distinguished Service Medal.