Where does your journey STEM From?
by Carina Minardi, PhD MPH
An exploration of careers and research all having to do with the glorious STEM.
Podcast episodes
Season 2
S2 Ep 16: Brianna Jepsen Indiana University Chemistry PhD Candidate
Brianna Jepsen is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Indiana University, focusing on Materials and Organic Chemistry. She is a 3rd-year graduate student in Dr. Liang-shi Li’s lab and an NSF-GRFP Fellow. Previously, she received a B.A. in Chemistry from Colgate University. Her current research focuses on developing an alternative cancer treatment by synthesizing a new photosensitizer, a molecule that can absorb light and be used in photochemical reactions, to be used in photodynamic therapy, where light is shined on a photosensitizer to destroy tumor cells. Ideally, the treatment will be more localized than current methods to minimize patient side effects. She also co-founded and is president of a club called Science Looks Good on Anyone (SLGA) that encourages younger students to build interest and confidence in STEM through science outreach, mentorship, and communication. The club performs demos and leads hands-on labs for students.
S2 Ep 15: Dr. Marilu Perez Garcia, AMES National Lab
Dr. Marilú Pérez García is a first-generation college graduate. She started her academic career at the College of Southern Idaho, then transferred to Idaho State University to complete her bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She took a year off to travel before enrolling in the Chemistry Graduate Program at Iowa State University. After completing her doctorate in 2014, focusing on analytical and computational chemistry, Dr. Perez stayed in Ames for a post-doc position in the Critical Materials Innovation Hub, studying primarily rare earth elements. Now pursuing independent research, she examines ways to combine empirical and computational data to understand and predict metal ion complexation in solution. She hopes her research will contribute to creating more environmentally friendly processes for obtaining the materials needed to reach a sustainable energy future.
S2 Ep14 Emma Peterman, MIT Chemical Engineer
I’m Emma Peterman, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Galloway Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My current research is focused on engineering genetic circuits to perform more reliably in mammalian cells for applications like cellular therapies. Prior to MIT, I completed my B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, where I researched pulmonary delivery of polymer nanoparticles with the Fromen Research Group. In addition to my research, I am passionate about outreach in my community, specifically focused on empowering young female scientists. I mentor local seventh grade students with Cambridge School Volunteers and high school researchers with MIT’s Homeschool Internship Program for Science and Technology.
S2 Ep13 Etienne Palos, UCSD Computational Chemistry
Etienne Palos is a Ph.D. candidate in Theoretical & Computational Chemistry, working in the group of Prof. Francesco Paesani at the University of California, San Diego. His work is founded on a data-driven approach for molecular simulation, and encompasses method development, implementation, and making conceptual connections between electronic structure theory and many-body representations of molecular systems, particularly in the condensed phase. His work resides "on the border" between quantum chemistry and statistical physics, seeking to improve our understanding of the complexity of molecular interactions, from the dimer to the thermodynamic limit. Etienne earned his M.S. from UC San Diego in 2022 and his B.S. from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2020. As a graduate student, he is the recipient of the UC San Diego "Stars Graduate Fellowship" in 2020, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "Graduate Scholarship" in 2020, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) in 2022, and the ThinkSwiss Research Scholarship in 2024. For his research in theoretical physical chemistry, he received the Bruno Zimm Prize (2023), the TD-DFT Student Award (2023) and the Quantum Multiscale Student Award in 2021. Etienne Palos lives in San Diego with his wife and their daughter, with whom he enjoys the little and not-so-little things that life offers, including going to the beach and skateboarding. He considers himself a "fan" of theoretical chemistry living his dream, and hopes to convey to young people that, regardless of your background, it is never too early and no step is too small for you to begin transforming into the person you want to be in this world, and so it is never too early to and no step is too small to make this world a better place for future generations.
S2 Ep 12 Emmaleah Jones
Emmaleah Jones is a recent graduate from Northeastern University's Master's program in Urban Informatics-- a blend of data science and urban planning. Her background is in urban planning, social science, and resilience studies. In undergrad, she conducted research with 100 Resilient Cities on urban governance and climate change-related natural hazards (flooding, land subsidence) in coastal villages of Semarang, Indonesia. In 2022 she was a Fulbright researcher in Chile, where she worked with an interdisciplinary team at CIGIDEN (the Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management) and the National Office of Emergency to build a simulation-based visualization and decision-support tool for integrating risk assessments into urban planning nationwide in a mid-size coastal city called San Antonio. She still lives in Santiago, Chile where she also works for The Cities Observatory of UC (OCUC) on a data infrastructure project for the regional government of Santiago, part of a larger project to promote interoperability between various city ministries through the design of a functional data infrastructure. This upcoming year she will be working on two new projects; one with the Chilean Department of Hydrology to assess damage caused during extreme flooding that occurred in the last year, and the other with the Regional Government of Valparaiso on a decision-support tool powered by a computational simulation of losses for assets exposed to 5 major hazards that occur in the region: tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, landslides, and floods.