From Bench Top to the 72nd Floor: How did a PhD Chemist Become a Secret Patent Agent?

Friday, April 7, 2016
Room 1706
12-1 PM

Here is an opportunity to learn about different career options and to connect with another wonderful alumna from the chemistry department! CALC|UM is pleased to host Grace Winschel to speak at our upcoming seminar on April 7th (Friday). Grace received her PhD in organic chemistry in 2015, and she is now practicing as a Patent Agent at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati based in Seattle. (Check out her full bio below!)

Come join us for tasty lunch and a discussion led by the speaker at 12pm in CHEM 1706.n Sign up here.

In addition, Grace has offered to meet with individual and to review their resume/cover letter. If you are interested in meeting one-on-one with Grace, you may sign up in the RSVP form.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Hope to see you there!

host: Tay (Jia-Hui) Rosenthal

Grace received her B.A. with Honors in Chemistry from Skidmore College in 2010. At Skidmore, she developed analytical methodologies involving ion chromatography and inductively-coupled plasma spectrometry to investigate anthropogenic effects on the local watershed. Once she realized organic chemistry was the best chemistry, Grace turned her research attention to tandem intramolecular Diels-Alder reactions, designing systems that allowed for the very awesome one-step construction of novel tetra-cyclic scaffolds. Beginning a prolonged affair with computational analysis, Grace served as a research fellow at the Center of Computational Quantum Chemistry, working under Professor Henry Schaefer, addressing fun party topics like the systematically underestimated barriers for intramolecular proton transfer in substituted malonaldehyde systems and the design of symmetrical malonaldehydes that present as a singular well on the potential energy surface. In 2015, Grace received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Michigan, where she conducted research under Professor Pavel Nagorny, focusing on obtaining as many free bagels as possible at Welcome Wednesdays, as well as the development of chiral Bronsted acid-mediated stereoselective cyclization reactions and joint benchtop-computational mechanistic investigations thereof.