Authors
Rafael Davalos is a Margaret P. and John H. Weitnauer Jr. Chaired Professor at Georgia Tech.
Deanna Luneau is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental health sciences in the Parsons Laboratory at the State University of New York at Albany and New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH). She received her B.S. in chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2021. Her research interests include trace element analysis and their impact on human health.
Alexis Hobl is with CEA-Leti. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de Rennes in Electrical Engineering and from Grenoble INP Phelma with a specialization in photonics and semiconductor devices. He began his PhD in October 2024 at CEA-Leti, Université Grenoble Alpes. His research focuses on the heterogeneous integration of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) onto silicon-based mid-infrared photonic platforms for spectroscopic applications. He develops novel hybrid III-V/Si QCL architectures and CMOS-compatible solutions enabling efficient optical coupling between III-V active regions and silicon waveguides. His work aims to advance scalable, low-cost photonic devices and circuits for applications in chemical sensing, environmental monitoring, and integrated spectroscopy.
Jaden Force is a Graduate Research Assistant at Towson University. Force began her academic career at the University of Maryland, earning a BS in Chemistry before pursuing her master’s degree in forensic science at Towson University. She is set to achieve this degree in May 2026.
Yingchan Guo is a researcher in the Prentice Research Group at the University of Florida. Guo completed her B.S. in Chemistry at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China in 2020. Her research there involved the study of immobilized double enzyme based DNA nanotechnology and fuctionalized magnetic spheres. During the summer of 2019, she conducted research modeling Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV) infection looking into the innate immune response and a viral antagonism strategy. She joined the Prentice lab in the fall of 2021.
Wenbo Jia is with the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Henan University of Technology, in Zhengzhou, China.
David Nash is a professor of physical geography at the University of Brighton in Brighton, United Kingdom.
Mercedes Bertotto is the Founder of Vibralytics, a start-up company based in the Netherlands. Bertotto holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and a master’s degree in food science and technology from the University of Buenos Aires, where her doctoral thesis earned a perfect score. Her expertise centers on applying machine learning (ML), chemometrics, and exploratory data analysis to complex food and agricultural data sets.
Molly Lockart is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama.
Lingyan Shi is currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego. She arrived at UC San Diego in 2019, following her postdoctoral training in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. Her laboratory focuses on developing and applying super resolution multimodal nanoscopy for studying metabolic changes in aging and diseases. She was Spectroscopy’s 2025 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy award recipient.
Giulio Colnaghi has been working at Milestone since 2003. He is a chemist and started his career at Milestone as an application specialist, focusing on new method development and addressing specific needs in sample preparation. Later, he transitioned to Area Manager for most countries in Latin America and the eastern part of Europe, and then for the U.S. Since 2018, he has held the position of Marketing Manager at Milestone headquarters in Bergamo, Italy. During his career at Milestone, Giulio has worked with hundreds of laboratories and chemists to help them in overcoming daily challenges in elemental analysis by optimizing their workflow and methods. Today, Giulio aims to support worldwide laboratories to enhance their efficiency using state-of-the-art technologies.