As we start to adjust to our fall classes, this is a great time to reminisce about the conclusion of last semester. In the weeks prior to final exams, the UD Scientistas were hard at work putting together a panel discussion for our campus! 
On May 12th, the UD Scientista chapter hosted a discussion panel titled "Talk Nerdy to Me: Careers in STEM and How They Evolve." We invited 5 successful and inspiring women to answer questions submitted by Scientistas. 

A UD alumna, Sujata Bhatia, traveled all the way from Cambridge, Massachusetts to join us for our panel!  

Here is a little background information on our guests:

Dr. Sujata Bhatia is the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard, where she lectures in Biochemical Engineering and serves as an associate at the Kennedy School of Government, an assistant dean at Harvard's Summer School, and an administrative fellow at the Office of the Assistant to the President at Harvard University. Sujata earned B.S. degrees in Biology, Biochemical, and Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware. She proceeded to earn a PhD and MD from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a principal investigator at DuPont. She joined the biochemical engineering faculty at Harvard in 2011 and was voted by the class of 2014 as a Harvard Yearbook Favorite Professor. 

Dr. Catherine Grimes, assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware, earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Villanova, an M.S. from Princeton University, and a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard University in 2006. Additionally, she completed a Postdoctoral Internship at the Cancer Research Institute at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital from 2006-11. Her lab currently investigates innate immune system activation by bacterial threats.

Dr. Kristi Kiick is the Deputy Dean of Engineering at the University of Delaware. She earned a B.S. and M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware and the University of Georgia, respectively, and M.Sc. and PhD in Polymer Science in Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has also worked as a research scientist at Kimberly Clark Corporation (1992-6) and the analytical development chemist at the Martin Marietta Energy Systems (1991-2). She is currently a professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Delaware and is also affiliated with the Delaware Rehabilitation Institute and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. She has served as an invited speaker at Davidson College, University of Minnesota, and Reading University (UK).

Dr. Hagit Shatkay-Reshef, associate professor Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware, earned a B.Sc. and M.Sc. at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and a PhD in Computer Science from Brown University (1999). Her postdoctoral fellowship was at the Computational Biology branch of the NCBI. She coauthored the book, Mining the Biomedical Literature (Computational Molecular Biology) with Dr. Mark Craven in 2012.

Dr. Marianna Safronova, Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Delaware, earned a B.S. and M.S. at the Moscow State University department of Physics, Quantum statistics, and Field theory subfield, and a PhD in the department of Physics at Notre Dame University in 2001. She was the American Physical Society's Woman Physicist of the Month in August 2012 and has served on the NSF Atomic Theory panel three times.


Our only hope is to continue what we have started, and plan more events that can help our Scientistas and other STEM majors on campus!

Nicole Place
Co-Director & Web Advisor
UD '16

Thanks to all the beautiful scientistas who made it to our first meeting!