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Alex Hanson is a PhD candidate in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT and a tutor in the Communication Lab. He earned the S.M. degree from MIT in 2016 and the B.E. degree from Dartmouth College in 2014.

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Dr. Peter Lindahl graduated with his Ph.D. in Engineering from Montana State University in 2013. He is currently a postdoctoral associate in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT working under the direction of Dr. Steven Leeb. His research interests include sensors and instrumentation for energy and power systems; renewable energy generation, integration, and control; and energy policy. In addition to research, Dr. Lindahl aids Dr. Leeb's instruction of several courses related to power electronics, microcontrollers, and product design. He also serves as a Communication Lab advisor in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, where he provides peer-coaching services regarding technical communication to fellow EECS postdocs and graduate students.

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Samantha Dale Strasser aims to elucidate how cell signaling dysregulation contributes to disease, e.g., neurodegeneration and cancer, to advance therapeutics through development of predictive mathematical models. She is presently an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) graduate student at MIT. Specializing in computational analyses, her Ph.D. research is supervised by Douglas Lauffenburger (Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA) and Kevin Haigis (Harvard Medical School, MA). In 2011 she received B.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University, IL, with a concentration in electromagnetics. During her undergraduate research in Backman’s Biophotonics Laboratory she developed near-field penetrating optical microscopy (NPOM) to quantify the refractive indices of biological cells at nanoscale resolution. As a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, UK, she characterized the structure-property relationships of polymer materials for use in optoelectronic devices. A member of the Optoelectronics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, she earned her Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) in Physics in 2012.

In addition to her studies at MIT, she serves as a communication advisor in the EECS Department Communication Lab providing peer-coaching on a variety of technical communication topics.

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Alison loves wading into a good science story. Her first was her MIT doctoral thesis project, unlocking the gastronomical genome of a Vibrio bacterium. For some of the Vibrio’s meals, she collected seaweed from the rocky, Atlantic coastline at low tide. (Occasionally, its waves swept her off her feet.) During grad school, Alison was also a fellow in MIT’s Biological Engineering Communication Lab. Helping students share their science with their instructors and peers, she began to crave the ability to tell the stories of other scientists, and the marvels they discover, to a broader audience. So after graduating in 2015 with a microbiology doctorate, she trekked to the Pacific coast to study science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There, she learned how to interview people, write feature stories, create podcasts, shoot videos, and finally, drive. Her stories were about pesticide residues in children, HIV in South Africa, rainforests in Australia, calorie-burning brown fat, and what hide behind Jupiter’s clouds. Alison graduated in 2016, and like a homing pigeon, has migrated back to MIT. Now the EECS Communication Lab manager, she’s thrilled to support the learning and growing of early scientists—eager to share their own stories.

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Dirk Englund received his BS in Physics from Caltech in 2002. He earned an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in Applied Physics in 2008, both from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University until 2010, when he started his group as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Applied Physics at Columbia University. In 2013, he joined the faculty of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Englund's research focuses on quantum technologies based on semiconductor and optical systems. Englund engages in developing new teaching methods for the STEM fields, for undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and engineering physics. Recent recognitions include the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2012 IBM Faculty Award, an 2016 R&D100 Award, the OSA's 2017 Adolph Lomb Medal , and the 2017 ACS Photonics Young Investigator Award.

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