SST Instructors

Debbie Audus

Debbie is a PhD student in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research involves using simulations to understand the physics of charged polymers, like DNA, for applications such as biosensors and glues. She grew up in New Jersey and received her bachelor's degree from Cornell University in New York. Outside of research, she enjoys painting, hiking and traveling.

Curtis Asplund

Curtis got his B.A. in Physics from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio and is currently studying to get his Ph.D. in Physics at U.C. Santa Barbara. He does research on black holes and the physics of the beginning of the universe. He grew up in Orange County, which was nice because he got to go to Disneyland many times. Curtis likes to play guitar, violin, and the ukulele.

Daniel Balick

Dan Balick is a PhD student in the physics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working under the guidance of Prof. Boris Shraiman.  He studies applications of theoretical physics (such as Quantum Field Theory) to evolution, population genetics, and complex systems in biology.  Since his background is interdisciplinary, his research interests range from cosmology and string theory to fish schooling and genetic mutations.  Dan grew up in the suburbs of New York City before coming to the west coast to do his undergraduate studies at Stanford University.  He loves painting and sculpture, listens to punk rock, and has his own brand of hot sauce that he makes from scratch.

Phillip Barton

Phillip is a third year graduate student in the Materials department at UCSB. He studies relationships between chemical composition, crystal structure, and physical properties to help enable the rational design of functional materials. He grew up playing ice hockey in Washington state, went to college in Chicago, and then came to California to see what all the fuss was about. He is enjoying himself here and spends his free time at the beach surfing or up in the mountains skiing and snowboarding.

Juliana Bernal-Ostos

Juliana was born in Bogota, Colombia, and is very proud to be Colombian. When she was twelve, she moved to Washington, D.C. and attended a small international school. Juliana attended college at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, where she studied mechanical engineering and developed a very strong interest in biomaterials, though she is still trying to figure out exactly what those are. Nowadays, Juliana lives in Santa Barbara with her fiancé. When she’s not working in the lab, she’s playing sports. Some of Juliana's favorite sports are tennis, soccer, basketball, ultimate frisbee, golf, bowling, and snowboarding.

David Boy

David grew up in North Carolina with two brothers and a sister. Notably, he once did very well in a tennis tournament, though not well enough to win a trophy. He also helped start a high school and recited "Jabberwocky" at his graduation speech. He then moved to Massachusetts to attend Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, where he played Ultimate and started doing research in microfluidics. Now, he lives in California with his fiancee and is working towards a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. He continues to play Ultimate and do research in microfluidics.

Andy Carter

Andy Carter is a third year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is currently building extremely small (less than 100 nanometers long!) transistors for computer chips, cell phones, and memory cards. He went to the University of Notre Dame for his undergraduate degree, where he also studied electrical engineering. Andy has been involved in radio and electronics since the beginning of high school when he learned about amateur radio. Since then, Andy has run amateur radio clubs, been active in collaborative hobby electronics projects, and mentored undergraduate engineers.

Brett Compton

Brett studied for his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky.  Currently he is a PhD student in the Materials Department at UCSB where his research includes developing computer models to understand and predict impact damage in advanced armor materials through computer simulations and high-velocity impact experiments.  While not in the lab he enjoys hiking, pottery, and snow skiing.


Andrew Dittmore

“Teaching reinforces my passion for science, and helps me keep a fresh perspective. I believe in encouraging students to make their own discoveries and try to provide an environment in which science is exciting and meaningful.” Andrew has published scientific papers on adhesion in geckos and the nanoscale behavior of polymers. He is currently a PhD student in the materials department at UCSB.

Wade Gabrow

Wade is a second year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  His research involves studying and understanding the rules by which RNA folds into three dimensional shapes.  He uses this knowledge to construct artificial RNA molecules that can self-assemble into predefined shapes and architectures, giving them novel properties that can be used as biosensors and biologically useful nano-devices.  Wade graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO.  He spent five years as a chemist in the Air Force before enrolling in PhD studies at UCSB.  Outside of his research interests, Wade enjoys spending time with his wife and son, surfing, and going on bike rides.

Stephen Gosnell

Stephen is a PhD student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology Department at UCSB. Growing up playing in the creeks and streams of rural South Carolina helped Stephen develop a passion for the outdoors. After a few years searching for the right major in college, including stops as an engineer, physicist, and religious studies major, he returned to nature and received a BS in Biological Sciences. Captivated by understanding how organisms and communities respond to environmental change, Stephen’s current research focuses on the impact of environmental variation on consumer-resource dynamics in west coast rocky intertidal communities. When not in the field, Stephen enjoys reading, finding new music, and cooking.

Matthew Guidry

Matthew Guidry is PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara.  He grew up in southern California, and as a high school student he enjoyed playing around with electronics.  This interest led to an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from UCSB, where he has continued on into graduate school.  For his PhD he is currently working on low-noise radio receivers which can operate in adverse environments for radar, navigation, and communication applications.  While a student, he has also worked at multiple internships in the engineering industry in diverse areas including satellite orbit simulations, radar and GPS electronics, and power electronics.  In his free time Matthew plays board games and is an avid juggler, running the UCSB Juggling Club.

Chris Hammetter

Chris Hammetter is a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering at UCSB.  His research involves the study of cellular structures and their behavior, especially concerning applications in impact absorption.  He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.  Before going to college, he grew up in Albuquerque, NM.  In his free time, Chris enjoys working on his motorcycle, playing video games, and hanging out with friends.

Ann Hermundstad

Ann Hermundstad is a graduate student in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Her research interests range from ultracold quantum phenomena to applied physics in the context of seismology, biology, and neuroscience.  Her current research focuses on the role of thermodynamics in granular systems and its influence on earthquake dynamics.  She grew up skiing and hiking in Colorado, and you can often find her painting, reading and writing poetry, and traveling."

Michael Isaacman

Michael grew up in Long Island, NY and graduated from SUNY Albany in 2006 earning a B.S. in Biology. Mike moved to Santa Barbara in 2007 and is pursuing his Ph.D. under Luke Theogarajan where he is synthesizing nanoscale capsules for site-specific drug delivery. When not in the lab, Mike enjoys playing basketball, going to the beach and spending time with friends and family.

Jason Isaacs

Jason is currently a Ph. D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UC Santa Barbara. He grew up in Kentucky and studied electrical engineering at the University of Kentucky. Upon graduation he went to work at Lexmark International as a development engineer where he spent the next six years designing control systems for inkjet printers. In 2006 he moved to Santa Barbara with his wife, a chemical engineer working for a startup company in the Santa Barbara area. Jason is advised by João Hespanha of the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation. Their research is concerned with estimation in sparse sensor networks in which ground sensors are spread too far apart to establish a connected wireless adhock communication network. Unmanned areal vehicles (UAV) are instead used to connect the network. This problem presents many interesting subproblems involving optimal UAV routing, optimal sensor placement, and minimum cost estimation of parameters. In his spare time Jason enjoys spending time with his wife and son. His hobbies include motorcycling, hiking, photography, and cooking.

Arianne Johnson

Arianne is a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Barbara in the Department of Psychology.  She completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Dartmouth College. Her research emphasis is in Cognitive Neuroscience - broadly, how the brain enables the mind.  Arianne's current project is focused on how goal-directed behavior is represented in the human brain.  She uses techniques that can measure changes in blood flow and electrical activity in the brain while people perform activities.  One of the many reasons she enjoys being a cognitive neuroscientist is because it allows her to take an intangible trait like human behavior and explain it in terms of concrete biological mechanisms.

Michael Johnson

Michael grew up in Oregon, where he developed his passion for music and physics while avoiding all the rain. His undergraduate experience at USC got him interested in mathematical physics, and he currently studies some of the most extraordinary objects in the universe, known as pulsars. They are stars the mass of the sun, but compressed to the size of Santa Barbara, that can be found spinning nearly a thousand times a second. On each rotation, we see a faint flash, so they act as cosmic metronomes, and can be as accurate as atomic clocks. In his
spare time, Michael enjoys basketball, beach volleyball, puzzles of all varieties, and going on adventures with his wife and new son.

Patrick Keeley

Patrick was born and raised in Santa Rosa, CA and has always been interested in what makes humans tick.  Specifically, he thinks its amazing how the brain manages to control every aspect of our behavior.  That is why he went to USCB and got his Bachelor's Degree in Biopsychology.  But his studies left him feeling unsatisfied.  There were too many questions left unanswered.  So he now spends his days trying to understand how the nervous system develops as a Ph.D. student in the department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.  In his "spare" time, he loves to keep up with current events, explore new music, and play golf.  He dreams of being a world-famous keyboard player, but his girlfriend told him to stick to the science.

Evan Lobisser

Evan was born in Oregon, and moved to Santa Barbara three years ago to study for his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.  His research is in the field of high-frequency transistor design and fabrication.   Essentially, he develops methods to make the dimensions of electronic devices smaller and smaller, allowing them to work at faster and faster speeds.   One of his favorite things about his field is using clever diagrams and illustrations to explain complex technical ideas, and he enjoys finding new ways to clearly and simply explain scientific concepts.  In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, camping, and reggae music.

Loren Merrill

Loren grew up in Boston, MA and attended Cornell University for his undergraduate degree in natural resources and conservation biology. During and after college Loren worked on research projects in a variety of locations: Australia, South Africa, Tanzania, Peru, Venezuela, New Mexico, Maine, and now in California.  He is currently a PhD student in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UCSB studying the factors that influence levels of immunity in wild animals--specifically birds and fish. Loren enjoys just about any outdoor activity but has become addicted to beach volleyball since his move to California.

Daniel Malinow

Daniel Malinow is a PhD student in the physics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include theoretical soft-condensed matter, statistical physics and complex systems.  Currently he is focused on building network models of systemic risk in financial systems and studying the dynamics of feedback loops inherent in financial risk management. Daniel grew up in Baltimore, MD and pursued his undergraduate education at the University of Maryland, College Park where he studied architecture and physics.  As an undergraduate physics major he researched particle physics and participated in experiments on top of a mountain in New Mexico, deep in a mine in Japan and in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. Before moving to Santa Barbara, he received a Masters of Architecture from MIT where he focused on urban design and explored digital fabrication techniques.  Outside of school he has experience in finance, working mainly in energy and weather commodities. In his free time Dan enjoys travelling, drawing, running and the occasional attempt at surfing.

Anahita Mirtabatabaei

Anahita is a 5th year graduate student in Mechanical Engineering Department of UCSB. She was born and raised in Iran. In her first year of high school, she participated in a group project on building a solar panel for tracking the sunlight, which got her interested in mechanism design. During her undergraduate, she worked in various work environments from crane repair shop to pneumatic circuit design. In 2007, she moved to the U.S. to pursue her PhD degree in the area of dynamic systems, control and robotics. Anahita enjoys hanging out with friends and cycling from town to town.

Michael Mrazek

Mike earned his BA at Rice University in 2006. He is now a PhD student in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the opposing constructs of mind-wandering and mindfulness, with an emphasis on how cultivating a capacity for non-distraction can impact educational and professional performance. Mike also enjoys hiking, guitar, movies, and meditation.

Kevin Moore

Kevin grew up outside of Philly and didn't want anything to do with academia until he took physics in high school. He got his BA in physics from Cornell University in frigid Ithaca, NY and eventually decided he needed something a little warmer, so now he's a PhD student in physics at UCSB doing research into how stars explode. His interests are all over the place though and also include quantum computing, skepticism, linguistics, and psychology. In his spare time, Kevin does gymnastics and capoeira, and is trying not to forget his Japanese.

Alice Nguyen

Alice Nguyen was born in Bordeaux, France, but has lived in California her entire life.  She grew up in San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley.  After highschool  she attended UC Berkeley for college.  There Alice was fortunate enough to participate in a diversity of research projects including one that took her to Tahiti, French Polynesia.  These life changing experiences help her to switch gears from pursuing Medical School to pursuing Graduate School.  Now she is a PhD student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology Department, studying Parasites genetics and host-specificity. Throughout it all, her friends and her hobbies (cooking, being outdoors,traveling) have kept her grounded and sane.

Raj Purkayastha

Raj is a fourth year graduate student in the Materials Department. Her research involves simulating the charge/discharge processes within a Lithium-Ion Battery, with an emphasis on the stress within storage particles. Using these simulations we can start to asses the effects of aging on a battery and evolve strategies for increasing its lifetime. Raj is from Mumbai, India and has (predictably) fallen in love with jalapenos in the three years she has lived in California. In her spare time she co-hosts a radio show on KCSB 91.9 FM called the 'India Show' (also on Saturdays) where you can hear all sorts of music from the Indian subcontinent.

Aaron Rowe

Aaron grew up in Los Angeles, and got hooked on chemistry after watching lots of Mr. Wizard episodes. But his interest in outdoor products led him astray. After high school, he moved to the University of Illinois to earn a degree in materials science. His plan was to start a company that makes first aid equipment and camping gear. That was a huge mistake! Medicine is way cooler. So he moved back home, got a Master's Degree in organic chemistry, and then came to UCSB where he is earning a PhD in biochemistry. He is building some super speedy blood tests that could be used in hospitals or even at home. For fun, he reads a lot of science magazines, attends scientific conferences, and tries lots of interesting ethnic food.

Danielle Schultz

Danielle grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island and moved to Santa Barbara to begin graduate studies in the chemistry department at UCSB, where she investigates the properties of fluorescent silver-DNA complexes. Most recently, she has been working on a collaborative project in Munich, Germany, involving fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to probe solution dynamics. Outside of the lab, she enjoys pretty much all outdoor activities, especially hiking and running.

Seeta Sistla

Seeta Sistla is a 3rd year doctoral student in the department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara. Originally hailing from upstate NY, Seeta completed her undergraduate work at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania majoring in Biology and minoring in Sociology and Anthropology. Having initially discovered a love for the Arctic while working in Alaska for the Student Conservation Association before entering college, Seeta has focused her academic work on the ecological impacts of climate change in northern areas of the world. Seeta's dissertation research is on the effects of rapid Arctic warming on carbon cycling in that region. Her research involves field work in the Alaskan tundra as well as laboratory studies closer to home. When not immersed in ecological exploration, Seeta enjoys traveling, music, biking aimlessly around Santa Barbara, and is most recently learning to surf.

Beck Streit

Becky is a fourth year PhD student in the Earth Science Department at UC Santa Barbara. Growing up in South Florida, she was not exposed to the joys of geology until leaving her flat and rock-less home for the geological wonderland of California to attend college at Caltech. Since then her adventures in earth science have taken her throughout California and the Western U.S., as well as to Hawaii, China, Greece, Argentina, and Nepal. Her current research focuses on how climate, sedimentation and erosion, and tectonics interact to affect plateau growth in the Andes. Becky spends her summers working as a director at an international summer camp for kids. She also enjoys playing volleyball and golf, scuba diving, skiing, rock climbing, cooking and playing oboe.

Nate Way

Nate grew up in Northern California, but received his BA in psychology from Colgate University in upstate New York.  After his undergraduate years he worked for a couple of professors on sleep research at Stanford University, while thoroughly enjoying his return to a California lifestyle.   He is currently pursuing a PhD in social psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UCSB and conducts research on stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.  When Nate isn’t conducting research or teaching at UCSB he enjoys playing the guitar, reading good novels, and most importantly: fresh-water fishing.

Irene Whitney

Irene was born in Santa Barbara when both of her parents were attending UCSB.  She moved to Georgia and quickly picked up a southern drawl, but lost it after moving back to the West Coast where she lived in Santa Cruz.  Finally, coming full circle, Irene attended UCSB as an undergraduate studying Biopsychology.  After graduating she stayed in Santa Barbara working as a research technician, before starting her graduate career in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology department at UCSB.  Her research focuses on understanding the factors involved in the specification of cell fates in the developing retina.  Being a Pisces, Irene has always had a great passion for the water, starting competitive swimming when she was nine, and playing water polo through high school and her first year at UCSB.  She still sneaks out of the lab for the occasional ocean swim.