About Me

I am a PhD chemist with years of teaching experience. I received my PhD in chemistry from Rice University in 2023, where I studied DNA-coated nanoparticles. I taught chemistry lab courses at Rice for 5 semesters and received the Harry B. Weiser Teaching Award for my commitment to undergraduate education. During those courses, I developed my teaching style where I use the Socratic method to help lead students to correct answers/knowledge rather than just giving them information and expecting them to memorize it. I found that helping students learn the right ways to think about chemistry and math showed better long-term success as it prepared them to repeat those strategies in the real world or on tests alone rather than getting used to a teacher feeding them answers. My final two semesters of teaching I worked as a senior teaching assistant overseeing two sections of the general chemistry lab course and managing the junior teaching assistants. At the end of those semesters, of the 44 student evaluations submitted, 95% agreed with the statement "I understand chemistry better because of my TA" with 61% responding that they "strongly agree." Chemistry has been my primary focus for many years, but I also am passionate and familiar with math due to how often it is used in chemistry as well as general/cellular biology due to how my graduate school research projects intersected with biology. In my free time, I enjoy learning how to perform practical chemistry in the kitchen cooking or baking, or relaxing with my cat, Pippin.

Education & Certifications