Former Group Members

Bryce’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Some time in April, a man of equity and justice came into existence in South Africa. His name was Bryce Taylor Nicholls. One day, he visioned to save the whole world, using chemical bonds as a tool to bring harmony and peace to all. Upon mastering his Chemistry in Kenyon College, he, without any hesitation, flew to Princeton to rescue Professor Todd Hyster from enzyme strikes. Bryce was once defeated by natural enzymes but sprang back to rematch against them. He became a tremendously important emotional support for Todd and set the high bar for the other graduate trainees. His contribution revolutionized the field of biocatalysis, and his tear at the end of the dissertation revealed his triumph over the natural enzymes. However, his legacy never ceases but rather grows to the next level. Afterwards, he wanted to conquer the polymer field with Brett and his ducklings. He stimulated everyone with his profound knowledge and astonished everyone with his magical card that feeds hungry souls. Now, he is promoted to a happy married man and continues to practice his leadership and braveness to support the ducklings. If you meet Bryce, you will never forget how wonderful this human-being is!

written by Sewon Oh

Daniel’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Daniel (Danny, Dan, Danny Boy) was raised by the sea. The lab group was moved upon reading his biography (see the Old Man and the Sea) which went into grave detail on his journey from Texas to upstate New York. He fought tirelessly against the savage sharks (unwanted polymorphs) to bring his trophy catchy (dissertation) home. He arrived in New York, tired of fighting and decided to join the Fors group, where his life has become much lighter (usually from UV lights in the lab since Ithaca provides no sun). He has embarked on his journey with photocatalysts and polymers! In his free time, Daniel enjoys taming spiders and lobsters.

Elizabeth’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Many Connecticut potato farmers come from generations of hard working, dedicated, and passionate farmers. Elizabeth McLoughlin, however, decided to stray from her family’s lineage in academia and foster her love of potato farming after her very first taste of the Korean Yam in an elementary lunch trade with her best friend, Dana. Since that day, Liz knew her life’s destiny was to grow and share the love of potatoes with all. Attending Wellesley college, she argued with the dean about making potato farming a real major. To no avail, she lost the argument and decided to major in chemistry, in hopes of using her knowledge of organic molecules to develop a super-soil for growing the perfect Irish Yam. After graduating with a bachelors degree in chemistry, she believed the soil in California would be best suited for her endeavors. Thus, she continued to masquerade as a chemist in the Waymouth group at Stanford where she made Iron, Ruthenium, Cobalt, and Manganese compounds that she used for potato soil dopants.  While in California, she spent her time in Sonoma Valley learning the art of fermentation to manufacture some sweet potato vodka and make a bit of extra money on the side. Now a postdoc in the Fors Group, she continues to pursue her passion for potato farming as her labmates watch, enthralled, as she microwaves and then eats a plain sweet potato for lunch every day.

Erin’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Erin Stache (born June 21, 1997), is an American YouTuber and singer who gained extensive media coverage when the music video for her 2011 single “Friday” went viral on YouTube and other social media sites. “Friday” was derided by many music critics and viewers, who dubbed it “the worst song ever”. Stache went on to release other songs including her Dave Days collaboration “Saturday“. She currently uploads videos on her YouTube channel about various topics and researches the effectiveness of cookies on graduate student morale.

Read more about her here!

Quentin’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Quentin (affectionately referred to as Dr. Q, Q-bone and the big Q) comes to the Fors group from an exotic, far away land: France. After completing his Masters degree at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 2010 through a joint internship with the Baran group, Quentin went on to receive his PhD, also from the Baran group, at The Scripps Research Institute in 2015. Forsaking the warm weather of La Jolla, CA, Quentin then moved to Ithaca, NY, in order to join/babysit the Fors Research group. This was done in part to learn the ways of intentionally polymerizing small molecules, but also to become accustomed to the inevitable cold weather that could ultimately arise due to climate change (for more information, see the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow). When not complaining about the cold or the snow, Quentin enjoys offering free French lessons to his fellow members (though they are generally not needed due to the high proficiency of French already spoken in the lab), breathing in the strong aroma of his homemade lunches in front of his hungry fellow lab members, and showing off his chouette dance moves to practice for nights out in da club.

Shelby’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Sunlight. Leaves rustling. Water running through rock valleys. 

Shelby woke up with a start. She found herself nestled in a pile of autumn leaves, at the base of a roaring waterfall. Where was she? How did she get here? 

Sitting up gingerly, she rooted around the mass of dead earth for hints of the roadmap that led her to this moment. A ripped t-shirt with a hand-drawn skull and crossbones. Tattered canvas from a sailboat sail. Slip of paper with a trivia wager. Pieces of floral fabric with the behind of a COrGI. A 300 g bag of climbing chalk??

As Shelby clambered up the steep slope out of the gorge, the edge of a world sprawled before her, a tall blue glass building sparkling in the distance. There, amidst the windowless offices and interconnected bridges, lay her destiny.

Jesse’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Jesse is an anti-social and highly-territorial ogre who loves the solitude of his swamp. His life was interrupted after the dwarfish Lord Forsquaad unknowingly exiled a vast number of fairy-tale creatures to Jesse’s realm. Angered by the intrusion, he decided to traverse town and demand they be moved elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Forsquaad was presented with a Magical Mirror, which told him that in order to become a true Clout King, he must acquire a pair of glasses possessing a sleek, yet indestructible quality. Unwilling to place a simple order on eyebuydirect.com, he organized a tournament, in which the winner would receive the privilege of synthesizing a new polymer for his so-called clout goggles. Jesse happened upon the tournament and completed Forsquaad’s silly little tasks. Proclaiming Jesse a champion, Forsquaad demanded Jesse begin right away, negotiating to have the  fairy-tale creatures relocated if Jesse succeeds. Jesse accepts.

Yuting’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Yuting splashed her face in the stream. The sun had been unrelenting today, and the water felt cool and clean as she let it run down her temples. In the summer heat, the shade of the gorge seemed almost magical. Something moved in her field of vision as she lifted her head from the water, and she let out a gasp as it came into focus.

A beast drank from the stream across from her: its broad frame was covered in a coat so dark that at times it seemed to disappear. Its great black antlers glinted iridescent blue in the afternoon light, heavy above its milky white eyes. The creature reared its head, and its knowing eyes caught hers. Yuting held her breath, spellbound.

Then, it charged.

Colleen’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Colleen Trainor was born in Colorado—the great state of the one and only huckleberry. She carried out her undergraduate studies in chemistry at Hillsdale College, Montana’s largest university, graduating in 2006. She went on to do her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Bachwuld. While there, she invented the well-known ligand, ColleenPhos, gaining recognition in the expansive cross-coupling community (see image below for purchasing info). In 2014 she joined the faculty at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and was promoted to graduate student in the Fors group in 2020. When asked how she has risen to such success, she simply replied “EyeBuyDirect.”

She has been showered with praises such as “the woman behind the ligand” by Scott Spring (Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University) and “eerily similar to myself” by Professor Brett Fors (Associate Professor, Cornell University).

Scott’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Scott may have been born in California, but he was raised in Montana by vagabonds and powder snobs on a diet of cutthroat trout and huckleberries. He spent his youth in the white room, throwing deep pow turns through Whitefish in the winter and slaying trout in the Bob during summer. He attended Flathead Valley Community College to learn carpentry, but unwittingly graduated in 2014 with an A.S. in chemistry, due to a misunderstanding. At the change of the season, Scott moved to Bozeman to pursue some new passions; mountain biking, rock climbing, and hot potting. Early mornings were spent on the Bangtail, climbing singletrack switchbacks before railing loamy banks on his steel 29er steed. You could find him in the evenings, clinging to some gneiss crimps, followed by a mandatory soak in the hot springs, swapping stories of peaks bagged and projects flashed. When bored, Scott would bike over to Montana State University and synthesize nanomaterials from the red Montana clay. He left MSU with a B.S. in Chemistry and a love for the mountain life. Since relocating to Cornell, Scott reminisces about topping out to steal first tracks down a pillowy couloir, or ripping through Bozeman cold smoke on a bluebird day.

Luis’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Far from his home of Florida, Spider-Man Luis came to New York searching for the Energy Stone—the last hope of humankind to save our planet from overconsumption of natural resources. Luis climbed onto the Empire State Building on a Friday night and caught a beam of blue light from upstate NY. Armed with his “Spidey Sense”, Luis sensed the Energy Stone buried down at the Beebe Lake, just besides Baker Lab. Right away he loaded tortillas with black beans, corns, jalapeños, tomatoes, cheddar cheese (you name it) and put them in his spidey suit and flew through mountains. He discovered that the energy stone was some kind of polymer-based perpetual energy source, now kept in the Fors Group laboratory and classified top secret. Besides the responsibility in keeping the stone safe, Luis also helps spread the good word of Kendrick Lamar via rapping in lab. A favorite song of Luis which he likes singing is “Yuting”. He was born in a big spider family and has some cool brothers (see the photo on the left).

Guess which one is Luis. The winner gets the Energy Stone.

Renee’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

The world got a little bit brighter at the wee hour of 5 o’clock in the morning, when Renee Jack Sifri was born. Amazingly, after only a few hours in this world, Renee was already talking. In fact, her first word was coincidentally poly(aryl ketone), something at the time her parents mistakenly heard as “mama.” Some would say that Renee’s destiny to be a chemist should have been realized in this moment, however, due to the unfortunate timing of NPR playing Beethoven’s Fifth da capo during their car ride home from the hospital, baby Renee felt the distinct Allegro con brio influence, and so she began her life as a prodigal pianist. At age 5, Renee’s parents enrolled her in the world famous Austrian conservatory, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, where after an inspiring performance at Hofburg palace, Renee became regarded as the next Chopin by the Viennese. Much like Chopin, Renee traveled far and wide performing original compositions, eventually traveling to India, where her love for channa masala and naan bread was discovered. After catching a glimpse of beloved TV series, Friends, at an airport, Renee mistook the show as reality TV, and believing that Ross and Rachel were actually her real parents, decided it time to return to the US to track them down. After the devastating realization that her birth city of Mission Hills, CA is nowhere near NYC where Rachel and Ross have called home for many years, Renee accepted that they could not be her parents, and decided to move back to California. There, she enrolled in college at the University of California, Berkeley. Sitting in her favorite Berkeley coffee shop, Café Strada, Renee overheard a conversation between John Hartwig, Bob Bergman, and her future PI, Felix Fischer. Enchanted by their talk of C-H activation, Renee understood that her next  move had to be a career in chemistry. Now, a graduate student in the Fors Group, Renee is known for her aptitude for breaking glassware, perhaps to elucidate the pitch at which glass breaks.

Stephanie’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

In her past life, Stephanie was born into a gentle yet playful flock of Macaws in the Amazon Forrest. As she scavenged for food with her flock, Stephanie was the first to realize that eating damp soil could help neutralize the acid from the fruit consumed in a typical Macaw diet. It is no surprise that Stephanie is the great chemist we know her as today. However, due to an unfortunate accident with a gated doorway and the loss of a quarter inch of her middle claw (the details will be spared), Stephanie was reincarnated into her present day Atman. Her parents found her on the main line, a few miles away from Wynnewood, Pennsylvania where they decided to raise her as their own. Stephanie showed early interest in singing and had a special interest in mimicking bird calls. Furthermore, her aptitude for rock climbing stemmed directly from the large, gripping claws which were key to Stephanie’s survival as a Macaw, yet were also responsible for her fatal end. It took a while for Stephanie to adjust to the human life. This was most evident by her experimentation with clothing during her early stages of childhood. Trying to mimic the feathers of her flock, she constantly wore a multicolored reggae beanie as a child. Growing up, Stephanie showed an interest in paleontology. In an effort to reunite with her past, she would sleep walk through Philadelphia digging in the back yards of local houses trying to find any bird-like bones that may reunite her with her past. Finally realizing that Macaw’s were not indigenous to Pennsylvania, Stephanie applied to Pennsylvania State University as a wild life biology major, hoping her studies could take her back to the depths of the Amazon one day. To this day, it is unclear what drove Stephanie to the field of chemistry, but some have hypothesized that she plans to research a brush polymer that will have identical properties to that of Macaw bones.

Niko’s Tale of Woe and Triumph is forever a work in progress.

Mike’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Michael Joseph Supej was born (almost) on the Ides of March in 1993, in a dark hidden alley behind Portillo’s in Oswego, Illinois. Growing up with a large dose of Portillo’s Italian beef sandwich made him into the mustache-wielding sarcastic freedom-fighting American patriot we know today. Attending the Liberal Arts Knox College from 2011-2015 unveiled Mike’s secret musical alter ego. When he picked up his first trombone, a strong chemical bond formed between man and instrument. By day, you know him as Mike Supej, the elaborate chemist, by night, he is the talented Jazz legend “Duke Silver”. With his black fedora, sunglasses and Jazz trombone, “Duke Silver” mesmerizes mature Ithaca night life. As a cover for his true aspirations, the young “Duke Silver”, aka Mike Soupi, is pursuing his PhD at Cornell University in the Fors Lab.

Brian’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Brian grew up in a van down by the river in Milwaukee Wisconsin where he developed a love of cheese, bratwurst, and Packers football. He then moved to Wisconsin – La Crosse where he became player hater of the year for four consecutive years. After a well deserved victory lap, Brian decided to move to Ithaca in a futile effort to get away from Wisconsin’s “winters.” Now in 2016, the world has called on one man who could make a difference. With hopes to improve national security and independence, Brian is pursuing his PhD in chemistry in the Fors research group. When not bogarting the rotovap, Brian enjoys asking questions such as “Why are we here?” and “What does it all mean?”

Veronika’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Bold, intelligent, dedicated: To the untrained eye, Veronika Kottisch may seem to be just another Cornell University PhD student. However, her dark, mysterious past tells a different story. Some claim she was raised by owls deep within the Black Forest. Others believe her to be a supernatural being who has come down from the heavens to usher in the age of the cucurbituril. Or perhaps she is the result of Coca Cola’s reckless experimentation involving two dozen Starbucks’ Pumpkin Frappuccinos and 40 liters of diet coke. Nonetheless, 24 years ago the well-caffeinated Veronika appeared on this Earth in Cologne, Germany ready to begin her life as a chemist. While pursuing her B.S. at Jacobs University, Veronika discovered her passion for designing vegetable-shaped molecules and vehemently petitioned for the pumpkin to become the national squash of Germany. Upon arriving at Cornell University, Veronika’s visions of her pumpkin past have been replaced, and now she spends her evenings toiling away in the lab, knitting strands of polymers together to design the latest line of Fors Group merchandise. This clothing line, soon to be published in Victoria’s Secret’s scientific catalog, will soon be available for $105 per gram plus shipping and handling (PROMO CODE: Pumpkin).

Dillon’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Dillon was born amidst salt and smoke in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where a great red comet hailed his coming into the world. Dillon’s affluent upbringing sheltered him to the troubles of the world, but after a tragic incident involving some bats and an aggressive theatrical performance, Dillon was transformed into the caped crusader we know him as today. Wielding the great round bottom flask Lightbringer, Dillon spent his undergraduate career at the Pennsylvania State University studying chemistry by daylight and using his vast wealth to combat crime by night; for he is the Prince that was Promised, and his is the song of Ice and Fire. Realizing that it was his destiny to combat the Great Other in the Battle for the Dawn, Dillon pursued a graduate education in Chemistry and is currently a fifth year in the Fors Research Group at Cornell University. He spends his time laboring away in the lab, because Dillon was the chemist that we deserved, but not the one we needed right now. And so we’ll grill him at group meetings, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero… he’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector… a Dark Knight. For the Night is dark and full of terror, but Dillon’s chemistry burns them all away.

Jacob’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

Jacob was born in Boston and grew up in Peabody, Mass., with three older sisters. On a cloudy Ithaca day, I sit down with him to find out more about his life. Although he’s fresh out of his senior year of college at Villanova University, which he fondly recalls as the best time of his life, the light in his eyes is already beginning to wither. He begins to reminisce the darker years of his past, such as in seventh grade, when he liked Green Day. I try to console him by encouraging him to discuss his celebrity crushes. He is positively giddy as he gushes about Olesya Rulin, whose iconic role as Kelsi in the film High School Musical immediately comes to my mind. When I ask him to choose a person he can meet out of anyone in the world, dead or alive, he tells me, “Quentin, dead,” then he begs me to keep his answer off the record. I inform him that it’s already on the record. Either way, he changes his answer to T Swift, his other celebrity crush. He also likes Carly Rae Jepsen. It is heartwarming, the crushes he has. Some of Jacob’s favorite movies are V for Vendetta and Zombieland. When I offer Interstellar, he grimaces in disgust. It is the most overrated film in the history of cinema, he says. I had many opinions as well but I won’t include them here. Amiable as he is, he maintains he is both a dog and cat person and his favorite chemistry course was organic chemistry.

Parker’s Tale of Woe and Triumph

S. Parker Singleton III was raised by wolves deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. While pursuing a B.S. in chemistry from the University of South Carolina (Go Cocks), Parker never forgot his childhood companion Issac, a small woodland sparrow residing in his beard. Parker’s beard provides Isaac with a safe and warm environment, while Isaac keeps his beard clean. This ensures Issac never misses a meal and strengthens their symbiotic relationship. After a short stint in professional wrestling as El Whiskers, Parker is currently pursuing a PhD at Cornell University. He continues to donate his beard trimmings to an organization that builds the self esteem of whiskerless cats.