2025 Chemistry Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
Research Lab Updates
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Dear Chemistry Department Alumni and Friends,
I am honored and delighted to take on the role of department chair. The GW Department of Chemistry has been my home for 18 years. During that time, I have had the privilege to teach outstanding students, tackle interesting research problems and work with an incredible team of faculty, staff and administrators to further our department’s mission.
For many years, GW Chemistry has benefitted from strong leadership. Professor Michael King was at the helm for over two decades and led our transition to a top-tier research department. Professor Christopher Cahill served as chemistry chair for the last six years and solidified our commitment to key research directives and an engaged community. As incoming chair, I am grateful to Professors King and Cahill for their examples of strong and steadfast leadership and hope to build on their successes, adding to our tradition of teaching and research excellence.
In the last year, our faculty have produced 20 peer-reviewed articles, one book and 22 active grants along with five submitted patent applications. Our class enrollments are up for the third straight year and they remain above the division and college averages. Our dedication in the classroom and laboratory carries over to service opportunities in the department, college, university and broader scientific community. No matter what role we are in, all of us genuinely like being in the Chemistry Department and value each other. We are good at working as a team, and we genuinely applaud the achievements of each one of us, our students and our alumni.
As with the times, our department continues to change. We are happy to welcome Dr. Vanessa Dos Reis Falcao and GW Chemistry alumna Dr. Jordan Tanen, BS ’19, MFS ’20. With our welcomes came goodbyes as well. Dr. Adelina Voutchkova-Kostal has permanently moved to ACS. Dr. Patrick Barber finished his contract with us and has joined the Department of Chemistry & Forensic Science at Towson University. Both will be missed.
As a scientific community, the years ahead will be like no other. We will work together to meet the challenges, focus on our strengths and make forward progress. I will update our community as we forge ahead, and I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Cindy Dowd
Department Chair
Department Spotlights
Welcome Dr. Vanessa dos Reis Falcão!
We are delighted to welcome Dr. Vanessa dos Reis Falcão to the GW Chemistry Department. Dr. Falcão is a committed chemistry educator and scholar whose work spans biochemistry, organic chemistry, general chemistry and inclusive STEM teaching practices. She holds a PhD in biochemistry and has accumulated over a decade of experience teaching at the college level, believing that chemistry courses should empower rather than eliminate students.
Her most recent chemistry education research, exploring how students connect symbolic and particulate representations of chemical phenomena in organic chemistry, was done in collaboration with Auburn University. She developed a web-based platform for students to actively learn stereochemistry and substitution and elimination reactions.
Dr. Falcão incorporates inclusive teaching strategies that support diverse student populations, leveraging curriculum and pedagogy to support underrepresented student populations in chemistry. She was recognized by Auburn’s Office of Inclusion, Equity & Diversity with the 2022 Inclusive Excellence in STEM Award, as she has championed efforts to embed equity and diversity in STEM curricula and departmental culture. GW Chemistry is fortunate to benefit from her commitment to creating more supportive STEM learning environments.
Welcome back! GW Alumnus Jordan Tanen Returns as a Teaching Professor
Dr. Jordan Tanen is excited to be back at GW as a visiting professor! She completed both her BS in chemistry and master’s of forensic science in 2019 and 2020 through a combined degree program offered by the GW Chemistry Department. It was in this program where she developed an interest in analytical chemistry, inspiring her to pursue a PhD in chemistry at Georgetown University under the supervision of Dr. Kaveh Jorabchi. Dr. Tanen’s PhD research focused on developing novel ionization methods for mass spectrometric detection of elemental fluorine.
During this program, she discovered an interest in teaching, leading her back to GW. Laboratory Manager Dr. Kris Noble said about Jordan, “She has already brought fresh energy to the Instrumental Analytical Chemistry Laboratory [CHEM 4123] by developing engaging new experiments for students.”
Department Kudos
The Chemistry Department started a monthly Brown Bag Lunch series where a faculty member has a casual lunch discussion with our undergraduate students. The undergrads are loving it, and so are our faculty!
If you attended the American Chemical Society’s meeting in fall 2025, you may have been fortunate enough to catch Dr. Cindy Dowd present her lab’s progress in developing variants of fosmidomycin. The data presented showed that some of the variants her team developed are far more potent at treating TB and malaria. She was featured on C&EN News.
Dr. Kris Noble continues to produce a well-received safety newsletter. She also showed how much fun chemistry can be at GW’s Take Your Child to Work Day. It was a very successful event. Dr. Noble continues to demonstrate her desire to make Chemistry accessible and safe.
Laboratory Supervisor Ashley Mills-Thomson designed and implemented a brand-new General Chemistry for Engineers laboratory course (CHEM 1113), creating experiments that complement the lecture curriculum and highlight chemistry topics relevant to engineering students.
Chemistry undergraduate David Bormann was asked to join GW’s Aerospace Engineering Rocket Propulsion team. This group develops rocket engines from scratch and was looking for students with chemistry backgrounds to help the team with chemical formulae to optimize the ratios and increase the rocket's reliability. Well done, David, and thank you for stepping up and representing our department!
Abigail Ladau, BS ’25, was published in The Journal of Chemical Physics. She contributed to this paper while being an undergraduate researcher in the Sadtchenko lab.
Many thanks to Drs. Edward and Virginia Caress! We hosted our 6th Caress Lecture, featuring Dr. Markus Kraft who talked about AI and chemistry. It was our most well-attended lecture to date. We also hosted our second Caress alumni speaker, Dr. Malika Jeffries-EL, MPhil ’99, PhD ’02. There is a special excitement around our alumni speaker series as our department takes great joy in the success of our alumni and being able to congratulate them in person.
For World Tuberculosis Day 2025, ACS asked Professor Dowd to be a panelist on a very important topic, “Disrupt & Destroy: Starving Tuberculosis with Smarter Science.”
Dr. Lauren Pincus was awarded an Early Career Postdoctoral-Faculty Bridge Award from ACS and received a $125,000 award from the American Chemical Society for recovering endangered elements from photovoltaic waste using ion-imprinted biopolymers.
Dr. Holden Thorp has had a busy year. He was a panelist at the AAAS Annual Meeting, where he joined the discussion on increasing harassment faced by researchers. He is often quoted in various media as an industry expert. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hofstra University. The congratulations do not stop there! His class was featured in the GW Today article “Cracking the Code of Science Denial.” And he received the Friends of the National Library of Medicine’s 2025 Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Distinguished Health Communications.
Dr. Vladislav Sadtchenko’s paper in the Journal of Chemical Physics was the Editor’s Pick from that issue: “Insights into glass surface dynamics from fast scanning calorimetry studies of softening and vaporization of ultrathin molecular films,” J. Chem. Phys. 161, 131101 (2024). Co-authors included GW alumni Rinipal Kaur, PhD ’22, Abigail Ladau, BS ’25, and Deepanjan Bhattacharya, MPhil ’12, PhD ’15. Abigail contributed as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Sadtchenko’s lab.
Professor and Chair of Chemistry Dr. Cynthia Dowd spoke with Dean Paul Wahlbeck about her work fighting disease through the development of inhibitors to human pathogens in a video conversation that appeared in the CCAS Spotlight newsmagazine.
Congratulations to undergraduate Issa Samba, who was accepted into the Enosinian Scholars Program! Issa will receive a scholarship and additional mentoring to support advanced undergraduate research during his senior year. He has been an active member of the Dowd lab since fall 2024.
Michael J. Wagner, Stephen Boyes and Kevin R. McKenzie Jr., PhD ’25, co-authored the article “Electro-driven direct lithium extraction from geothermal brines to generate battery-grade lithium hydroxide” for Nature Communications.
Stephen Boyes also received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a 2024-2026 NSF Intergovernmental Personnel Act Assignment. He is spending the majority of his time at NSF while still managing his research lab.
Professor Martin Zysmilich continued serving as deputy chair and director of graduate studies in the Chemistry Department and serving on the University Student Discrimination Report Committee. He worked in the Office of Higher Education (OHE) at the American Chemical Society (ACS) while on sabbatical in fall 2024, where he gained valuable insight into chemistry education at the national level and contributed to several major initiatives.
As part of his work with the ACS OHE, Professor Zysmilich engaged in the evaluation and approval process for undergraduate chemistry programs. He also participated in developing the office’s new strategic vision and collaborated closely with ACS staff to revamp the New Faculty Workshop, a professional development program for new chemistry educators. The updated version launched in 2025 to excellent feedback. Professor Zysmilich has been a facilitator for the ACS New Faculty Workshops since 2022 and continues to contribute to national efforts that enhance chemistry education and faculty development.
Building on this work, he also designed a Mid-Career Faculty Workshop, which is planned to launch in summer 2026. In partnership with the ACS Green Chemistry Institute, Professor Zysmilich reviewed instructional modules that promote sustainability and environmental responsibility in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. He submitted a proposal for a symposium on Integrating Green Chemistry in the Undergraduate Curriculum for the 2026 ACS Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting.
Research Lab Updates
Cahill Lab
It has been another great year for the Cahill Group! Professor Cahill is adjusting to “regular” faculty life after two terms as department chair. Thankfully, his graduate students have let him back in the lab! New graduate student Mary Elias is hard at work with some interesting uranium photochemistry, which was very well received at the Denver X-ray Conference where she took home the Best Poster award. Veterans Liz Decoteau and Haley Guthrie continued their globe-trotting with presentations in Hawaii; Livermore, Calif.; Gainesville and Orlando, Fla.; and Princeton, N.J. Master’s candidate Ruzan Alsrori has her first paper in preparation, and a veritable army of undergrads (Sofia Horowitz, Sophia Broz, Caroline Banholzer) is churning out new compounds at an alarming rate. And what a pleasure it is to see them determining crystal structures on our diffractometer—the looks on their faces when a crystal structure is solved never gets old! And on top of all this, we remain well-funded with grants from DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Here’s to 2026! Postdoc and Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Adharsh Raghavan (2022-2025) has started his independent career as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Dowd Group
For the Dowd Group, it is hard to believe another year has gone by! This year saw some new faces in the Dowd lab as we said goodbye to some dear lab members. Dr. Lara Skibbie is now a postdoc at NRL and stops by every so often to visit! Henry Schrecker started a PhD in chemistry at UC Irvine. And Rory Smith began medical school at Trinity College in Dublin. All are greatly missed! We hosted Hannah Hoffman from Haverford College for the summer, and welcomed Jada Traynor and Abdelrahman Moharram to the lab. Our group participated in the American Chemical Society meeting here in Washington, D.C., this summer—a great opportunity for everyone to experience a (huge!) scientific meeting, present their work and listen to Cindy give a talk! Cindy also participated in the ACS webinar on World TB Day (March 2025) and the Tuberculosis Drug Discovery and Development GRC meeting in Barcelona. Three undergrads received fellowships to support their work in the lab this summer. Issa Samba earned a Robert Vincent Fellowship, Jada Traynor earned a Madeleine Jacobs Fellowship and Hannah Hoffman earned a KINSC Fellowship from Haverford. Congratulations all! Cindy became chair of the department on July 1 and is looking forward to leading our faculty and students for the next several years. We remain grateful for our ability to make new molecules against important infectious diseases and educate the next generation of organic medicinal chemists.
Massiah Group
The Massiah Group has been actively optimizing conditions to produce proteins to perform ubiquitination assays, an important regulatory process in cells. During AY 24/25, graduate students from Ghana (Suley Mohammad) and Nigeria (Ayodeji Adedayo) and four undergraduate seniors worked in the lab: Clare Trainor, Nikita Holtz (Johns Hopkins University), Ben Little (Haverford College) and Asha Jaikarran (Vanderbilt University). The group identified a single-step approach to purify grams-quantities of the Ubiquitin. In fall 2025, Clare continues in the lab, and she is joined by two new undergraduate students, Peri Roper and Mohib Ahmed. They are currently working on projects for new directions in the research focus, building on past results and experience.
Meisel Lab
PhD candidates Dani Rodrigues, Chris Grubb and Brysa Alvarado are all writing manuscripts and preparing their theses, and Fai Alotaibi, MS ’24, has continued in the lab to pursue her PhD. Brysa presented at the 2024 Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry conference and at the NOBCChE regional meeting. All PhD students and the PI presented research at the fall ACS National Meeting in D.C. Undergraduates Haley Bolton, BS ’25, and Sydney Reiser, BS ’25, graduated—they will be missed! Haley has joined the MS program in Personalized Medicine and Applied Engineering at Yale University, and Sydney has joined the Chemistry PhD program at Johns Hopkins University. The lab welcomed GW Cancer Center SPARC student Vincent Espinoza (Cal State U Dominguez Hills) as a summer researcher. This fall, the lab welcomes new undergraduate researcher David Bormann. And we are happy to announce our newest member, Annelise Meisel, who joined the lab (and the world) in April 2025!
Miller Lab
The Miller Lab congratulates Monica Flores, MS ’20, PhD ’25, and Jennifer Giaccai, PhD ’24, who were both hooded at the 2025 Commencement ceremony. Monica began a new postdoctoral position at NIST, continuing to bridge the Optical Measurement Group and the National Fire Laboratory. Jen continues doing great things at her “day job” at the National Museum of Asian Art. Current graduate student Erin McCaughey collaborated with Miller group alumna D. Michelle Bailey (NIST) to complete a study of full-scale fire tests. She is now a first author of a manuscript submitted to Applied Optics. Erin is also an author on a paper in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, in collaboration with researchers at Université de Lille and the collected National Center for Scientific Research. Erin spent part of fall 2024 working there. Houston Miller has a new NSF grant, allowing Erin to build not one, but two prototypes of sensors for potassium radiative emissions from fires. Whew! Nice work, Erin and the Miller Lab team.
Sadtchenko Group
The Sadtchenko Group has grown significantly and now includes two new graduate students, Chloe D. Waldt and Momotaz Begam. Over the past year, the group’s main research focuses shifted toward fundamental experimental studies of structure and dynamics of water under nanoscale confinement using two distinct experimental methods; an advanced attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy and the unique fast scanning calorimetry. The new team members are fully engaged in research and have already obtained significant preliminary data. The group also continues collaboration with former undergraduate student Tania Ryzi, who is the first author of a manuscript on calorimetric studies of nanoscale films of amorphous solid water.
Wagner Lab
The Wagner Lab is happy to share that Michael Scarberry (second-year graduate student), Dr. Kevin McKenzie (postdoc) and Dr. Nathan Banek (research professor) have continued to refine our graphitization process to enable the City of Estevan, Canada, to transition their lignite mine to one in which the “carbon ore” is converted to Li-ion grade graphite. Jack Poland, a first-year graduate student, and AJ Wood, a senior, are helping them in the effort. Ritu Manickavelu successfully completed her chemistry MS degree in June. Sumayya and Dustin Abele continue to write their MS thesis and PhD dissertation, respectively—Sumayya while raising her newborn child and Dustin while fulfilling his responsibilities as the CTO & co-founder of Lukera Energy.
Alumni Class Notes
Cargill Alleyne, BS ’86, is a neurosurgeon on staff at Piedmont Augusta and former chairman of Neurosurgery at Medical College of Georgia (Augusta University). He was recently appointed vice-chair of the Clinical Governance Committee for Piedmont Neurosciences.
Michelle Bailey, PhD ’18, who works in the Optical Measurement Group at NIST, spends her spare time co-organizing technical sessions at international and domestic meetings, volunteering at regional STEM events and serving on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization that supports undergraduate and graduate students pursuing STEM degrees. She also serves as a Community Science Fellow in the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange program. Michelle, as a member of the U.S. National Committee for IUPAC, attended the 51st IUPAC General Assembly and 48th World Chemistry Congress.
Chloe Corning, BS ’24, conducted undergraduate research in the Vertes lab at GW. The research paper that she worked on at GW is now published, and she is the first author. Her co-authors include other Vertes lab alumni: Marjan Dolatmoradi, Tina Tran (undergrad researcher at the time as well) and Laith Samarah—and of course Dr. Akos Vertes.
Larry Fertel, BS ’81, has spent the last 35 years in the chemical industry. He is currently research director with Actylis at their Buffalo site in Grand Island, N.Y., as the technical leader of the R&D group.
Jennifer Giaacai, PhD ’24, won the American Institute for Conservation Publication Award for her 2024 paper “Differentiation of pine and oil-based soots in East Asian inks using Raman Spectroscopy.”
Ricardo Gonzales, BS ’75, is a retired child psychiatrist. He has been spending time with photography, hiking and travel.
Dr. Mark Kalaj, BS ’17, is a science, engineering, & technology advisor at ARPA-H.
Dr. Karah Knope, PhD ’10, is a full professor at Georgetown University.
Kira Lueders, BS ’62, MS ’65, is continuing to enjoy their 20th year of retirement after 43 years working at NIH. They are doing lots of travel to remote places on small ships, and enjoying gardening and swimming while home in Kensington, Md.
Tina Tran, BS ’20, is a resident physician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
Vicky Wang, BS ’24, MFS ’25, attended the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) annual conference in Baltimore, Md, in February and presented her fiber research. She is currently a forensic chemist at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
And our class of 2025 is off …
- Haley Bolton, BS ’25: Yale University, pursuing an MS in personalized medicine and applied engineering
- Jasmina Gafurova, BS ’25: Medical school
- Isabel Gredler, BS ’25: Postbac researcher for the Boyes Lab with plans to pursue a PhD program
- Abby Ladau, BS ’25: MS in forensic chemistry at GW
- Mohamed Messouak, BS ’25: Medical school at Alice Walton School of Medicine
- Massimo Pavan, BS ’25: Quality control scientist
- Jack Poland, BS ’25: Pursuing a PhD with us at GW
- Lori Preci, BS ’25: Biotech at Johns Hopkins
- Sydney Reiser, BS ’25: PhD at Johns Hopkins
- Tanya Ryzi, BS ’25: MS forensics science at GW
- Eva Scheiderlochner, BS ’25: Assistant chemical engineer at Argonne National Labs
- Henry Schrecker, BS ’25: UC Irvine PhD Program
- Jamison Shih, BS ’25: PhD in Biochem at UMD with Dr. Hao
- Rory Smith, BS ’25: Medical School at Trinity College in Dublin
- Jennifer Van Zandt, BS ’25
- Zach Weeks, BS ’25: Master’s degree in Germany
- James Heldman, MS ’25: EGC biologist with the EPA
- Vittoria Valentine, MS ’25: EGC program specialist for the Industry Roundtables at the ACS Green Chemistry Institute
- Abby Bierschbach, MS ’25: Nuclear forensics analyst
- Dee Bague, PhD ’24: Postdoc at NCI
- Dominique Brager, PhD ’24: NNSA Graduate Fellowship at the National Nuclear Administration
- Monica Flores, PhD ’24: Postdoc at NIST
- Jennifer Giaccai, PhD ’24: Conservation scientist at the Smithsonian Institution
- Jordan Herder, PhD ‘24: PhD Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Christopher Hossack, PhD ’24: Postdoc researcher at the Pacific Northwest Lab
- Kevin McKenzie, PhD ’24: Postdoc at GW in the Wagner Lab
- Nicole Conte, PhD ’25: Scientist at NRL
- Ashley Frankenfield, PhD ’25: Scientist at Astra Zeneca
- Haorong Li, PhD ’25: Scientist at Biogen in Boston