Board of Advisors
ChemTalk is actively growing our advisory board. Contact us if you are interested.

Fiona Lin, PhD
Vaccine Process Development and Manufacturing Lead, Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute
Fiona received her undergraduate and master’s education at UNC-Charlotte, Ph.D.at UC-Berkeley and postdoc at UC-Irvine. She is currently the Vaccine Process Development and Manufacturing Lead at Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, contributing to efforts to improve access to life-saving vaccines and therapeutics for low- and middle-income countries.
She spent more than a decade in the biopharm industry specializing in analytical development and quality control. Fiona also had a brief stint working as a Technology Specialist / Patent Agent at a global IP law firm. Her proudest achievement as a scientist to-date was her contribution to the development of the highly complex 20-valent Pneumococcal

Wilson Hago, PhD
Chair-Elect, ACS Los Padres Section; CEO Hago Energetics

Lauren Zarzar, PhD

Bruce Weiller, PhD

Selma Duhović, PhD
Dr. Selma Duhović is an entrepreneurially oriented chemist. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA, where studied electrochemical, spectroscopic, and magnetic behavior of organouranium complexes for activation of heterocyclic nitrogen- and sulfur-based contaminants in crude oil. She conducted her postdoctoral work at MIT, where she designed highly porous materials for photovoltaic applications and air conditioners that run on heat and water instead of electricity and ozone-depleting refrigerants. Currently, Dr. Duhović works at Kebotix, a Harvard spinout that is using AI and robotics to accelerate chemical research and development.
She enjoys talking with students and graduates interested in chemistry, graduate school, PhD work, research, entrepreneurship, investing, startups, and the business of science.

Michael Sobolewski

Michael Evans, PhD
Michael Evans graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2008 with a B.S. in Chemistry. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign he studied organic chemical education under the guidance of Professor Jeffrey Moore. In 2013, he graduated from Illinois with a Ph.D. in Chemistry and joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he serves as a Senior Academic Professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. In this role, he teaches introductory chemistry laboratories, organic chemistry courses, freshman seminars, and special topics courses. He also serves as an undergraduate academic advisor and serves on Institute and School committees. Outside of work, he enjoys running, chess, video games, and hanging out with his wife Jess and two children, Wallace and Winston.

Ron Furstenau
ChemTalk Supporters

Jen Heemstra
Dr. Heemstra considers herself a huge supporter of ChemTalk and it’s mission. Her interview with ChemTalk appears on both our podcast and are youtube channel.
Jen Heemstra received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, in 2000. At Irvine, she performed undergraduate research with Prof. James Nowick investigating the folding of synthetic beta-sheet mimics, which instilled in her a love of supramolecular chemistry. Jen then moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she completed her Ph.D. with Prof. Jeffrey Moore in 2005 studying the reactivity of pyridine-functionalized phenylene ethynylene cavitands…

Eric Scerri, PhD
Eric Scerri is the founding editor of the Springer journal, Foundations of Chemistry. He was educated in the UK and moved to the US in 1995 as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech in Pasadena. He is currently in his twenty-second year in the Chemistry Department at UCLA where he teaches chemistry as well as history and philosophy of science. Scerri is the author/editor of fourteen books (more info on his website) including eight with Oxford University Press among which are – A Very Short Introduction to the Periodic Table (2011), A Tale of Seven Elements (2013) and A Tale of Seven Scientists (2016), The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, 2nd edition, (2020) and What is a Chemical Element? (2020) . Scerri has also published about 200 scholarly articles on chemistry, chemical education and history and philosophy of the physical sciences.
