Continued Success Beyond Ithaca College

Stavrini Tsangari, (3-2 Engineering), writes to us from her lab at Cornell University where she is pursuing a B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics. She says it has been very exciting to learn how light interacts with different materials, as she uses spectroscopic tools to expose the finer structure of these materials. As a current reseacher in Dr. Andrew Musser’s light-matter interactions group at Cornell, she is investigating the underlying processes and properties in different Photoluminescent Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) using photoluminescence spectroscopy, while creating software tools needed for data analysis. While she looks ahead to graduating in May 2021, Stavrini is also applying to graduate schools where she can continue her studies in atomic, molecular and optical physics (AMO).

Annie is currently in her last semester at Hofstra University, where she is obtaining her M.S. in medical physics. She loves the field and is so excited to pursue further into this career. While in school, she works as a physics lab instructor for the undergraduate students at Hofstra, is a quality assurance (QA) technician at Northwell Health, and is a part of a clinical research project involving summing doses from combined modality prostate cancer radiation treatments. She will be moving to Nashville, TN in June to begin her residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Currently, Ryan is a Junior Project Manager at The Toner Plastics Group in Monson, Massachusetts. He manages the laboratory for 3D printing and materials testing, and supervises engineering interns. He has also been accepted into Western New England University's M.S. in Mechanical Engineering program, with aspirations of working in research and development.
He has also been involved in a number of charitable programs, including the Western Massachusetts 3D Printing Collaborative (to produce PPE for frontline healthcare workers), as well as the local Springfield Museum.

After completing a postdoc in Taiwan, Adam is now the Department of Energy AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow Member-at-Large on the Executive Committee of the APS Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS), working with the Department of Energy. He has just published his first single-author paper on the Ising Model. You can learn more about this computational modeling project at his blog.

Rachel obtained her Masters of Arts in Teaching Adolescent Science Education at Ithaca College as a Noyce Scholar. Prior to that, she earned a B.S. from Ithaca with majors in Environmental Science and Physics. Currently, Rachel teaches Physics and Earth Sciences at South Seneca High School in Ovid, New York. While teaching, she finished a second Bachelor's degree from University of Florida in Geology.
Rachel now lives in Trumansburg and is happy to recommend careers in teaching and education!

After IC, Jeff started completed his Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he wrote code for feature extraction from scanning electron microscopic views of nanoceramics and for computational materials science models. Jeff is now a Senior Full Stack Developer for Prudential Financial where he helps develop websites, such as a page for 401K management. Jeff also maintains his musical side playing oboe as a member of the Bay State Winds chamber ensemble.

Andrey Stejko is a graduate student in the PhD program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, on a full-ride NASA graduate fellow scholarship! Andrey is doing solar physics on supercomputers. In particular, he is simulating three-dimensional non-axisymmetric magnetic field structures in magneto-hydrodynamical models of the Sun’s interior. While in graduate school, Andrey has had the opportunity to work at the NASA Ames Research center and at Stanford University. In 2018, Andrey was a visiting scientist at the Los Alamos National Lab (of Manhattan project fame). Andrey has a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal and he plans to do a postdoc at Stanford University.

Joyce Wu is now an attorney with Saxe Doernberger & Vita, in Naples Florida. Her physics degree has distinguished her at almost every juncture in her career. She attributes her skills in teamwork, effective communication, problem-solving and critical thinking to her degree from Ithaca College. She has been able to apply these skills in her work as a special project manager after earning her MBA. She says, "I cannot emphasize how grateful I am to have been a part of such a nurturing, intimate, challenging, but supportive environment found in Ithaca’s physics department.”

Ryan is building a road to space as an engineer in Blue Origin’s human spaceflight program, where he has been integrating avionics into rockets since 2019. In 2015, Ryan completed his Masters’ degree in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell, culminating in the design of an orthopedic joint replacement prosthesis. He then supported a team of biologists in Japan working to grow kidneys in vitro. After that, he spent 3 years developing PPE for orthopedic surgeons, and is now lead inventor on 5 patents.

Currently, Jill is an astronomy postdoctoral scholar at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. Jill’s research is on RR Lyrae variable stars, and using them as a standard candle for distance measurements in extragalactic astronomy. Jill visited Ithaca College in the Fall 2020 to give a talk on her research and career track thus far, for sophomore-level physics and astronomy majors. She loves her work, especially writing code for data analysis.
Jill was a student of Beth Clark and Luke Keller when she was in Ithaca. She completed a double major in Physics and Math.

Romaine Isaacs is a Senior Applications Engineer at Zeiss Additive Manufacturing Process and Control. He works in research and development with scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab who use thermodynamic models to design novel alloys for metal 3D printing. The goal is to design new alloys that are thermally stable to temperatures much higher than can be achieved by conventional processing. Romaine images these alloys, performs semantic segmentation with deep learning algorithms, and reconstructs 3D models of the microstructure to inform the thermodynamic models. By quantifying different parts of the microstructure they can calculate strengthening mechanisms in these alloys and improve the mechanical properties for moderate temperature applications.