Recent Alumni Panel Discussion
September 2023
One of the best sources for advice in making the most of your graduate school experience is to speak to folks who have recently graduated.
This panel, which was part of the IMOD Professional Development Program (PDP), brought together recent UW alumni for a virtual discussion with IMOD graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
The panelists who participated in this discussion were:
| Dmitry Baranov | Assistant Professor, Lund University |
| Eugenia Vasileiadou | Postdoctoral Scholar, UCLA |
| Haixu Leng | Applications Development Engineer, KLA |
| Ian Murphy | Senior Manager, Twelve |
| Madison Monahan | Focused Ion Beam Engineer, Hitachi |
| Maria Viitaniemi | Datacenter Infrastructure R&D, Microsoft |
| Nayon Park | Senior Process Chemist, Natron Energy |
| Shane Colburn | Director of Optical Design, Tunoptix |
| Zheyi Han | Research Scientist, Meta |
The goal of the session was for the attendees to have the opportunity to learn more about the panelists experience, how to get the most from their graduate school experience, and how they went about navigating their next steps.
Some specific questions that were put to the panelists were:
- Identify sectors that they are interested in post-graduation.
- Identify next steps to prepare for post-graduation employment.
- Grow their network in multiple sectors and fields.
The discussions ranged broadly and gave some great opportunities for the participants to learn more from the panelists. With participants from four of our National locations the panelists provided insights to a broad group of students and postdocs.