Meet the Executive Board!
2025-2026
Audrey Davenport (She/Her)
Co-President
Audrey is originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. She is a 5th year PhD student, specializing in inorganic materials chemistry in the Brozek Lab, where she does research on nanoparticle synthesis, characterization, and dynamics.
In her role as co-president, she is responsible for overseeing all events put on by ADSE chairs and making sure that chairs are supported when they are planning their events. Presidents are also responsible for securing funding for ADSE to be used for outreach activities throughout the academic year. Outside of the lab, she feels that being a president of ADSE has been the most rewarding activity that she has done in graduate school. She loves the outreach we do, the speakers we invite, the science we communicate, and the community that we have created for STEM students at UO and the greater Eugene/Springfield areas. She feels that our work is essential to providing accessible science education and professional development opportunities for students.
To her, ADSE means creating community for STEM students to feel welcome and supported throughout their time at UO. Through ADSE, she hopes to help bring accessible science activities to the public and provide students with opportunities to improve their science communication and professional skills.
Outside of school, she enjoys reading, working out, hiking, and playing tennis.
Katy Wyatt
Co-President
Katy is originally from Keizer, Oregon. She is a 3rd year graduate student, specializing in chemistry in the Jasti Lab where she does research on organic synthesis.
As co-president, she supports and helps the other chairs on the executive board as they plan their yearly activities (e.g. professional development workshops for undergraduates and graduate students or science communication seminars). She organizes ADSE’s bi-weekly, applies for funding from interdepartmental funding, and attends meetings that need a club head representative.
Through ADSE, she hopes to help foster a sense of community through outreach events while showcasing the excitement of chemistry and what it truly means to be a scientist.
Christopher Griffin (He/Him)
Science Communication Chair
Taylor (She/They)
K-12 Outreach Chair
Alexandra Bender (She/Her)
Perspectives in Science Lecture Series Coordinator
Noah Smith-Shoop
Public Relations Chair
Treasurer
Dr. Amanda Cook
Co-Faculty Sponsor
Amanda earned her BS in Chemistry from the California State University Fullerton in 2010, after transferring there from a community college. She then went to the University of Michigan, where she earned her PhD studying Pd-catalyzed C-H activation reactions in Melanie Sanford’s group. During her post-doctoral stay at ETH Zurich, she worked on single-site Zn heterogeneous catalysts for hydroamination reactions. In 2018, she began her independent career at the University of Oregon, where her group develops new catalytic reactions and studies their mechanisms. At UO, she is involved in the chemistry SAIL camp, the Near-Peer Mentoring Program, and most recently, ADSE!
Dr. Ramesh Jasti
Co-Faculty Sponsor
Professor Ramesh Jasti was born in Concord, North Carolina (1st generation born in the United States) and attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate. At UNC, Prof. Jasti synthesized and characterized gold nanoparticles in the laboratories of Professor Royce Murray. This early research experience sowed the seeds of his future interests in interdisciplinary research and nanoscience. After graduation in 1998, Professor Jasti worked at a start-up pharmaceutical company for three years in the Research Triangle Park. Having found great interest in organic synthesis, Prof. Jasti conducted his graduate education under the guidance of Professor Scott Rychnovsky at the University of California, Irvine. Prof. Jasti’s graduate research led to the unraveling of numerous mechanistic aspects of the Prins cyclization reaction. After obtaining his PhD in 2006, Prof. Jasti started as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi at The Molecular Foundry, a brand new nanoscience institute at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At Berkeley, he began to explore the concept of attacking problems in nanoscience utilizing organic synthesis as an enabling tool. Having joined Boston University in the summer of 2009, this basic idea continues to be the overarching theme of the Jasti Research Group. Professor Jasti has been a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, as well as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. In the summer of 2014, he moved to the University of Oregon where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Associate Director of the Materials Science Institute.
