Author: Alison Regina

Congratulations Juniper on defending you thesis on September 18. We are so proud of you and cannot wait to see what the future has in store!

This past Saturday, we welcomed back our first cohort of graduate students and celebrated Juniper and Piyush moving on from the group to productive careers! It was lovely seeing everyone again and best of luck to Piyush and Juniper in your new careers!

Ben Pollara presented his summer research at the REU poster session. We are so proud of all the progress he made during his REU and can’t wait to see where he goes next!

Congrats to Jake Daniel for publishing his paper “Leveraging large language models (LLMs) to enhance student inquiry in a nanochemistry teaching laboratory: a Fenton-like oxidation using recyclable ferrite nanoparticle (NP) catalysts with the Banerjee lab. You can read his paper here. 

Congrats to Kaiyuan for passing his candidacy exam with flying colors! 

Our undergraduate researchers presented at the Multicultural Undergraduate Research Art and Leadership Symposium (MURALS). Congrats to Lucius, Deli, Catera, and Safwan for successful posters and presentations!

Congratulations to Austin Tews for being accepted into the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program for the next academic year at the National Lab of the Rockies (NLR formerly NREL). Learn more about the program here. 

We had a great time celebrating the holidays this past weekend at our annual holiday party. We played white elephant, had a cookie exchange, and played a few fun party games like codenames as well. We set some goals for 2026 and look forward to a great year ahead. Happy holidays and happy 2026!

Congratulations to Austin for completing another milestone on his PhD journey! Austin successfully completed his fourth year talk earlier this week.