Yanfen is a Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, where she also obtained her B.A degree in Bioengineering in 2012. She is a NSF Graduate Research fellow and her research is focused on understanding the influence of biomaterials on epigenetics and cytoskeletal organization.
Nicole Jackson is PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also obtained her B.S. in Civil Engineering and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering. She also earned an M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech. She is a member of Megan Konar’s research group, and her research is focused on the water-food nexus and big data for sustainable decision making. Nicole is currently one of the student coordinators of the Girls’ Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science camp for Environmental Engineering and Sustainability. She aspires to become a tenure track faculty member upon graduating.
Kaitlin is a sixth year PhD student in the Materials Science and Engineering department. She received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering with a concentration in biomaterials in 2012 from Michigan State. She works for Professor Paul Braun in creating new optical materials. She is heavily involved in teaching and has been the co-coordinator for the Girls Learning About Materials camp for three years now and hopes to continue this work as a faculty member at a teaching-focused institution.
Chaoyang (Chelsea) Liu is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research is on structure and mechanical properties of metallic glasses using transmission electron microscopy and synchrotron-based x-ray techniques.
Fu Sun
Fu is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where she earned her M.S. in Electrical Engineering. She works with Professor Brian Cunningham on point-of-care devices for rapid, sensitive and affordable diagnosis. She is also the Vice President in the student chapter of the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Rohit Bhargava received his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in 2000 and undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in 1996. He is a professor in the UIUC Department of Bioengineering and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute Bioimaging Science and Technology group. His fields of professional interest are infrared spectroscopic imaging, cancer pathology, probes for molecular imaging, polymer structure and numerical methods for image processing.