Neil Agarwal: Following in the footsteps of a certain NSL teacher we all know and love, I spent the first couple years after college as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. I am now at Wharton getting an MBA. In my free time I enjoy Crossfitting, pontificating about health care reform, and spending quality time with my two pet turtles.
Ning Bao: I'm finishing my Ph.D. in physics at Stanford, with a focus in string theory and quantum information theory. In the fall, I will be starting a postdoc at Caltech.
Julia Bertaut: After studying religion at Swarthmore college, I worked for a while for the Episcopal Church in Spokane, WA. I recently finished my coursework and student teaching to teach high school math and biology and am looking for a position in the Boston area, where I just moved. I discovered I really love population genetics and plan to do something with that somewhere down the line.
Katherine Epstein: After graduating from Princeton in 2008, the next six years really flew by! I earned a master's degree in experimental psychology from the University of Minnesota and I am getting ready to start medical school this summer. I'm enjoying my current job in the psychiatry department at the University of Minnesota researching early onset schizophrenia and the effects of cannabis on adolescent brain development, and I want to be a child and adolescent psychiatrist when I grow up. James Gao: If I had one sentence to summarize the scribbles in my senior yearbook, it would be: "When you go to California, learn how to surf and find yourself a hot girlfriend". I've been in California now for almost a decade, where I've learned to surf, work in tech (for now), grown to love the outdoors and started a surfing & standup paddleboarding accessories retail business on the side. Jason Gordon: I spent the first 5.5 ish years after college working at a financial software firm in NYC, basically building/hosting/operating large equity trading platforms for banks. It was actually pretty fun, despite that it sounds like the opposite of that. I actually just moved to a finance/consulting-related web startup this month, and I'm the third guy there, also in NYC. On the home front, I'm engaged to a fellow software professional named Kimberly Smith, and we are getting very married this year. Han Hu: After studying finance and systems engineering at UPenn I stayed to get my MBA there too. I have been in NYC for the past few years, working at Morgan Stanley for two years and then a hedge fund for two years. I joined a private equity firm in Jan to help incubate and grow companies, focusing on the power and energy sectors. It's nice to be able to use finance to do some good, such as building renewable energy projects in developing countries. Daozhong Jin: Following the requisite college stint at UMD, I tried out public interest work and political campaigning before landing at the NIH Office of the Director. When not immersed in government bureaucracy, I’m still most passionate about soccer and traveling and am planning a trip to Brazil this summer (World Cup!!) and Australia next year to meet my goal of six continents before I’m 30. | Michael Kim: Studied biotechnology and chemistry at beautiful UC San Diego for five years. Despite Phamistry, discovered my passion was in analytical chemistry. After undergrad, started working at genentech in the bay area analyzing antibody and antibody drug conjugates for breast cancer and hematological cancers. In 2012, began pursuing a PhD in analytical chemistry at the university of Kansas while concurrently working. Joe Kramer: Finished my biomedical engineering BS (Tulane U) but not my genetics and molecular biology PhD (Emory U). Working a 9-5 at a healthcare software company that earns me money to buy stuff. Pretty much the American dream. Kevin Liu: After getting a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. from MIT, I spent a few years in the Marine Corps as an intelligence officer. Just before deploying to Afghanistan, I wrote a deeply nerdy book that people actually bought and that's launched a new career publishing health and wellness articles for millennials (75togo.com) John McManigle: After a physics degree from Penn State, I went on to a Duke University MD and Oxford University DPhil in engineering (image processing), both of which I'm finishing up now. Maria Luckyanova: Since graduating, I've been plugging away at accruing as many degrees as possible from MIT. Right now I've got two, working on my third, a Ph.D. from the mechanical engineering department. My Ph.D. research has been in the general area of applied physics, looking into nanoscale heat transfer. When I am eventually and inevitably kicked out, I guess I'll get a job of some sort. Peter Russo: I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UMD, and entered the Engineering Leadership Development Program at BAE Systems in Nashua, NH. I spent the first three years rotating around the company, trying out various roles and simultaneously getting my Master's Degree from UNH in Electrical Engineering. I eventually settled on a role in BAE's research and development branch, where I develop prototype laser systems, with a specialty in Infrared Countermeasure Systems (systems that prevent US aircraft from being shot down by homing missiles). Jessica Shang: Not a doctor yet, but close, I hope. After Harvard, I journeyed across the pond to Cambridge for an MPhil, and am finishing up my PhD at Princeton in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, specializing in fluid mechanics. John Shen: I am currently finishing up a Masters' in neuroscience at the University Southern California after research in visual attention and language development. I'll be starting a Masters' in Computer Science in the fall. I'm looking into developing computer algorithms that can tell us more about genetic risk factors for disease, language and music structure. Valerie Shen: With a Politics B.A. from Pomona College, went on to do campaigns, political internships, and legislative affairs at a think tank in D.C. Now I'm a lawyer on Capitol Hill and spend my time doing congressional investigations, which occasionally results in legitimate oversight of federal agencies. Josh Stern: I received an ScB in Geobiology from Brown, and then I began a PhD in Biology at Georgia Tech. A few years later this PhD turned into a Masters and now here I am in NYC providing technical support for financial software. Gordon Su: I graduated from U.Penn with degrees in finance, management, and material science engineering. I went to work at a hedge fund called Farallon Capital Management doing special situation and distressed investing for 3 years. Then I left to start a mobile gaming company called PennyPop. Our main title is called Battle Camp, which was Apple's Multiplayer Game of 2013 and a top 100 grossing game in 40+ countries. Download it now and give us a 5 star review! Kenny Yan: I spent four fabulous years at MIT, where I developed everlasting friendships and dual passions for music and for science. I then made the hefty decision to head to Cleveland on the path toward becoming a Doctor-Doctor (MD/PhD). Following my interests, I now have a handful of research papers, an a cappella group and a couple of YouTube parodies under my name. However, now ten years out of high school, I am... still in school. I am defending my thesis this year, and in two short years, I will be matching for residency, hopefully into a position where my interests will intersect. |
Ten-Year Check-In: The Class of 2004
collected by Kevin Liu '04