President
Carole Ziegler was raised in Chicago and received her B.S. in Chemistry (Senior thesis - chelation of zinc in insulin) with a minor in physics at Mundelein College, Chicago, in 1968. In 1979, she received her M.S. in Geochemistry (Thesis - heavy metal analysis using atomic absorption in Fairfax County, Virginia) from George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Carole joined SDE/GWIS in 1987 by invitation from Doris Brown when she started teaching at the University of San Diego. An informal discussion with Shari Cole at a GWIS social gathering about ways to support teachers who did not always have the support of their principals in their endeavors to teach proper science in the classroom, led Carole to send out solicitations to schools, PTAs and other interested parties to nominate teachers for a GWIS Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. To level the playing ground between middle school teachers and high school teachers, who might have better resources, the award was rotated between them each year. The awarding of the Outstanding Teacher Award has been the central focus of the spring luncheon sponsored by Tau Chapter for many years.
Carole served as the chairman of the National's committee for Honorary Membership in GWIS (2006), remained on the committee, and is currently chair again. Carole has been an active member in the Tau Chapter serving on the Planning Committee for several years and is currently acting as President of the chapter..
Currently she teaches geography, geology and oceanography at Southwestern College, Chula Vista; Managing Editor for the "Geology and History of Southeastern San Diego County Field Guide, 2005/2006"; and is on the board of the American Earth Science Editor's Association. Carole is wife to Michael (also known as Big Mike or Big Z, surfer); mother to Barbara (married to Bo), and son Matthew; and Grammy to Little Mike. So far she has hiked the first 300 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail and hopes to reach Canada by her 100th birthday. She belongs to the San Diego Recyclers bicycling club; riding about 35-40 miles every Sunday morning to explore the San Diego region and enjoy the coffee houses along the way. Carole crochets when she finds time to sit still. Membership Outreach
Sheila Kennedy has a B.A. in Chemistry and English. She has worked at UCSD since 1997 and is the Safety Coordinator for the Teaching Laboratories in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the University of California, San Diego. Sheila has been married to her first husband for 32 years.
Sheila trained in hazardous materials management through UCSD and is certified as a chemical hygiene officer through the National Registry of Certified Chemists. Her long-term project is to communicate the principles of hazardous materials management to chemistry lab students and instill in them a culture of safety awareness.
Sheila has been a member of the Tau Chapter for many years and was the 2007–2008 President of TAU Chapter and represented the chapter at the June 2007 National Meeting in St. Paul. She currently is in charge of email contact with Tau Chapter members and those interested in attending chapter events. She also serves on the Planning Committee.
National Liaison
Sister Pat Shaffer, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart, has spent 40 years as a professor of chemistry at the University of San Diego, specializing in biochemistry. Sister Pat received her M.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University and came to the San Diego College for Women (later merged with the College of Men to become the University of San Diego, USD) in 1959 as a chemistry instructor and an academic counselor for the third year students. She was the first woman in the Joint Doctoral Program between SDSU and the University of California San Diego (UCSD). She returned to USD as a part-time assistant professor of chemistry while completing her research at SDSU, receiving her Ph.D. in 1975, and becoming a full professor of chemistry in 1982.
During her studies at SDSU she heard of SDE/GWIS and its research grants. She joined in 1971, received a small research grant, and served as the president of Tau Chapter from 1973-4. In 1987-88, she received an NSF Visiting Professorship for Women to learn gene-cloning techniques at the U. of Georgia, Athens, and established a GWIS chapter in the Athens –Atlanta, GA, area. While in Georgia, she worked with Barbara Jur to organize the GWIS National Meeting at the U. of Tennessee, Chattanooga, in 1988. Sr. Pat served as National SDE/GWIS President from1989-1990. She has continued to be active in GWIS on both the local and national levels and is the heart and driving force of the Tau Chapter.
GWIS awarded her an Honorary Membership (1999) and a Meritorious Service Award (2007). Since her retirement from teaching in 1999, she has continued her research concentrating on the cloning of a gene for L-asparaginase, used to treat childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia and hopes to finalize this by 2009. She has received financial grants from both national and local GWIS groups to complete her research. Sr. Pat always says that she “…joined SDE/GWIS for the money, and it paid off!” Planning Committee
Planning Committee
Kathy Grako received her Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology (Thesis: Mechanisms of the Dominant Negative Effect of the A/K1018 Insulin Receptor) from UC San Diego in 1993, an M.A. in Microbiology from San Francisco State University in 1982, and a B.S. in Biology (Magna Cum Laude and honored as Outstanding Student) from Dominican University of California, San Rafael, CA, in 1979. She also has a Specialized Certificate in Clinical Trial Management (2002) and a Specialized Certificate in Biotechnology Project Management (2008), both from UC San Diego. In addition she has taught biology courses at Dominican University of San Rafael and Cal State University San Marcos. She also holds the Project Management Professional credential (PMP) which she earned in May 2009.
Kathy joined SDE/GWIS and Tau Chapter in 1995 at the invitation of Sr. Pat. She served as Tau Chapter Vice-President and President, assisting in the 1997 and 2003 National Meetings hosted by Tau Chapter. Kathy was National GWIS President for 2002-2003 and is currently Chair of the GWIS Board of Directors. She has served on the GWIS Chapter Establishment Committee for over 10 years and has assisted in the development of many new chapters and continues to be involved in this important function of GWIS. She currently is the liaison for GWIS’ partnership with MentorNet (www.mentornet.net). Both organizations are dedicated to helping students, postdocs and early-career scientists to achieve their highest potential. Throughout her tenure as a National Officer, Kathy has focused on the growth of GWIS through chapter establishment.
Currently, Kathy is a Scientist in the Clinical Strategy group for Cato Research, a contract research organization, specializing in drug development from discovery through clinical trials and marketing. Prior to that Kathy was at MediVas, LLC, as Associate Director of Biology, overseeing all the preclinical studies for the drug delivery program. Before that she was at MitoKor, a biotech focused on mitochondrial diseases, as a Research Scientist in the Metabolic Diseases group. She is an author on several patents held by MediVas and by MitorKor. Kathy did her postdoctorate at La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation (The Burnham Institute). She is also a member of AAAS, the American Diabetes Association, and past member of the American Heart Association.
Planning Committee
Molly Bigger has served on the planning committee and assists in getting Tau Chapter events advertised.
Past President
Rommie Amaro is a native of the south side of Chicago and earned her bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering with high distinction from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (UIUC) in 1999. After graduating, she joined Kraft Foods, Inc., as an Associate Research Engineer for two years, working with condensed matter. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry in the lab of Professor Zan Luthey-Schulten, where she worked mainly on computational methods to reconstruct free energy profiles from non-equilibrium pulling experiments of ammonia conduction through a beta barrel protein involved in histidine biosynthesis and studying mechanisms of allosteric regulation in proteins. While a graduate student, she also worked closely with the NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics, where she helped develop a series of workshops that have now been taught on three continents.
Rommie currently is on the faculty at the University of California Irvine. Rommie was a NIH Kirschstein-NRSA postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor J. Andrew McCammon at the University of California, San Diego. She has developed new methods to incorporate receptor flexibility in computer-aided drug design, working mainly on targets involved in infectious diseases. Rommie was the GWIS Tau Chapter Vice President for 2007-2008 before becoming President in 2008-2009. She is also an alternate councilor for the American Chemical Society’s Division of Computers in Chemistry.
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