Congratulations to the STIA Class of 2023

The reception included  STIA majors, minors, and graduate concentrators along with their friends and families, and the faculty and staff from the STIA Program.

This year, STIA has 70 BSFS majors graduating- 24 concentrating in biotechnology and global health; 15 in business, growth and development; 20 in energy and environment; 11 in science, technology and security. This year there are also 17 STIA minors, including students from the college who majored in biology, biology of global health, biological physics, computer science, government, Italian, physics and anthropology, and 2 minors from the business school majoring in finance. There are also 19 students graduating in the second ever cohort of MSFS-STIA concentrators.

This year, 7 STIA students received honors in the STIA major: Marie Couturier, Esme Kalbag, Kenton Kaplan, Evan Navori, Eva Saville, Anya Wahal and Sarah Weber. Each completed an impressive honors thesis that in most cases required over a year of research.

This year the Charles Weiss Medal, awarded for the highest excellence and achievement in the field of science, technology and international affairs, went to Kenton Kaplan. Kenton also completed a minor in biology—his original major before he made the smart move to STIA. An aspiring physician, he has also worked at Georgetown Hospital’s Lombardi Cancer Center and at Children’s National Hospital as a medical scribe in the pediatric emergency department.

Below we include some examples of where STIA students are headed after graduation based on student submissions.

• Elise Chapman will be interning at the department of defense before heading to the University of Iowa for a master of public health in community and behavioral health.
• Atharv Gupta received a Rhodes Scholarship and will be headed to Oxford for a Master’s in Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute
• Jacob Cohen plans to work as a research Technician for the Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute, a tribally managed marine research facility located in Seward, Alaska, and plans to pursue a graduate degree in marine science.
• Gillian Meyers will be working as the first environmental, social and governance (ESG) associate for the international business consulting form McLarty Associates.
• Divjot Bawa received the Cybercorps Scholarship for Service and will be interning this summer at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency within the Office of the Technical Director.
• Mark Schiller will be joining the Peacecorps as a youth health facilitator in Panama
• Evan Navori will be heading to Yale for a master’s in public health
• Dilan Gangopadhyay will be pursuing a masters in financial engineering at Duke University and working in trading & research at an investment bank
• Eshan Gupta will be heading to India as part of the Fulbright research program to study the barriers to solar microgrid deployment in rural India.
• Ruslana Kochmar will be working at Longnecker & Associates on clean energy demonstration projets.
• Alexandra Pyne will be working in corporate strategy consulting at Capital One focusing on sustainable finance strategy.
• Alfred Alexopoulos will be heading to McKinsey in Greece, and Sabria Kazmi will be heading to McKinsey in New York.
• Sarah Weber will be working as an overdose prevention coordinator in rural northern California.
• Lilian Beckwith will be working as an operations associate for the Voleon Group (a machine learning driven hedge fund).
• Ciara Weets will be completing her MS in Global Infectious Disease at Georgetown and working at the Center for Global Health Science & Security.
• Kayla Zamanian will also be completing her Master of Science in Global Infectious Disease at Georgetown and then in fall 2025 will be heading to Harvard Law School to pursue a JD.
• Caden Koontz will be heading to Mexico as part of the Fulbright English Teaching assistant program.