Socrates Fellows Who We Are
Jillian Louisa Blatti, a researcher and third year graduate student of organic chemistry in the Burkart laboratory at the University of California, San Diego happily pipettes algae as part of her daily routine. She has been working on manipulating algal metabolism to aid in efforts towards the widespread production of algal biodiesel as a renewable and sustainable transportation fuel.
Although a native to San Diego, Sarah attended Boston University in Massachusetts for her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Concurrent with her schoolwork in college and then post-graduation, Sarah worked in a research laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Ultimately, Sarah missed San Diego and moved back to be a manager in the lab of Suresh Subramani at UCSD.
Tristan is a 5th year PhD student of Dr. Lena Gerwick in Marine Biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD.
A proud owner of two dogs and a rabbit, Kristina Mitchell is a doctoral graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSD.
After graduating from Seton Hall University with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry in 2006, Emily Satkiewicz moved to San Diego to continue her studies in organic chemistry at UCSD. She is a PhD candidate in Dr. Thomas Hermann’s laboratory where her research focuses on the synthesis of small molecules targeting RNA.
Zephen Specht is originally from Joliet, Illinois and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Northern Illinois University. While there he worked as a teacher's assistant for various undergraduate labs; such as the organic, inorganic, physical and general chemistry courses.
Carmen L. Vélez was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, where she spent most of her undergraduate career studying manganese-oxo-pyrazolato complexes and discovered the joys of research.
Alyssa Wu-Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in her fourth year in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at UC San Diego. Alyssa was born in Beijing, China, but grew up mostly in the Seattle area. She attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and double majored in chemistry and biology.
BioinformaticsShawn Yost graduated with a B.S. degree in Bioinformatics from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2008. He is currently working on obtaining his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from UCSD and is part of Kelly Frazer's lab.