President
Nikhil Chellam (he/him/his)
Department: Chemical & Biological Engineering (4th year)
Nikhil is a 4th year Ph.D. student, co-advised by Profs. George Schatz and Chad Mirkin. His research focuses on the synthesis and theoretical investigations of metallic aluminum nanoparticles and exploiting their collective optical properties for plasmon-driven photochemistry. He received his B.A. in History and B.S. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Rice University in 2020. In his spare time, he enjoys long-distance running, playing video games (particularly in the Pokémon franchise), and drinking copious amounts of tea.
Vice President
Emma-Rose Newmeyer (she/her/her)
Department: Chemistry (3rd year)
Emma-Rose grew up in Mesquer, France before moving to the US to pursue a BS in Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She started her PhD journey at Northwestern shortly after and joined SPIE in 2022. She is currently a third-year graduate student in the Swearer group where she develops plasmonic photocatalysts for sustainably relevant reactions.
Secretary
Julian Gamboa (he/him/his)
Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering (6th year)
Events Coordinator
Xi Wan (she/her/her)
Department: Chemical Engineering (1st year)
Outreach Chair
Abhiram Devata (he/him/his)
Department: Materials Science & Engineering (1st year)
Abhi is a first year PhD student in the Barton lab, researching the effects of processing and fabrication on semiconductor materials for energy efficient photonic integrated circuits. He is originally from Northern California and attended UC Santa Barbara for his B.S. in Chemical Engineering. His prior research explored solutions for the different efficiency problems in UV, visible, and NIR optoelectronic devices. In his free time, he enjoys baking, birdwatching, and photography.
Publicity Chair
Anushka Dasgupta (she/her/her)
Department: Materials Science & Engineering (5th year)
Social Media Chair
Whitney Tso (she/her/her)
Department: Materials Science & Engineering (5th year)
Chairs
Lauren Oleksy (Events Coordinator)
Gerrit Christenson (Events Coordinator)
Riddhi Ananth (Treasurer)
General Board Members
Andrew Salij, Sydney Koehne, John Misiaszek, Ali Najjar Amiri, Nia Burrell