Bumping into Recent Grads

At the beginning of this month I attended a lecture at the University of Portland that was given by Prof. Robert Bergman, U. California-Berkeley. His presentation was titled, “Selective Stoichiometric and Catalytic Reactions in Water-Soluble Host-Guest Supramolecular Systems”.
Bergman pointed out that most of the research in this area is performed
in collaboration with scientists in other research groups at Berkeley,
but I was completely unprepared to see “R. LaLonde” listed as the lead
author on one of the projects described by Bergman.

“R. LaLonde” is none other than Rebecca (“Becky”) LaLonde ’01. A little investigatory work at the web site of her dissertation adviser, Prof. Dean Toste, led me to an alumni page and the following information: “Rebecca got her Ph.D. in 2010 and is currently working at DOW in Philidelphia.” (sic)

And the lucky encounters just keep piling up. A week ago I visited Vancouver, BC to attend the 2012 AAAS annual meeting. I had a little personal business to attend to, but as I prepared to step on to the escalator at the convention hall, who should step off but Kate Stoll ’04. “Dr. Kate” earned her Ph.D. work in biochemistry at U. Washington back in 2010. Then, after a brief postdoc, moved to Washington, DC, where she is currently working as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation.