Flanked by his parents and his girlfriend, recent Master of Engineering (MEng) graduate Ryan Yetishefsky took the next step into his future on Saturday.
Yetishefsky, who studied Bio- and Immunoengineering, is one of scores of UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) recent Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD graduates who participated in the University of Chicago’s 539th Convocation. Yetishefsky will now head to Rice University to pursue his PhD in Materials Science and Nanoengineering.
“Ryan’s experience here has been filled with a lot of great memories, and the education he's gotten here has certainly prepared him for everything that's next in his life,” his father Matt Yetishefsky said.
After the University-wide Convocation ceremony on Saturday, June 7, UChicago PME held its own hooding ceremony and diploma presentation at the David Rubenstein Forum.
In her remarks, UChicago PME Dean Nadya Mason told the assembled crowd that modern science and engineering must be fundamentally interdisciplinary, and they represent this vision.
“You have trained in a uniquely collaborative environment, surrounded by leading researchers and partners across the UChicago ecosystem, from the Polsky Center to Argonne and Fermilab,” she said. “You’ve learned to ask bold questions, to seek rigorous answers, and to move across boundaries in the service of discovery. Your breakthroughs do more than push the boundaries of knowledge—they address challenges that impact our economy, our national security, and our daily lives.”
The event’s keynote speaker, Michael Polsky, MBA’87, reflects this interdisciplinary approach in everyday life. Polsky, the founder and CEO of Invenergy, the world’s largest privately held developer and operator of sustainable energy solutions, earned his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a member of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees.
Polsky shared three main pieces of advice for the graduates. First, make the work visible. Second, make it human. Third, recognize that engineering is a team sport.
“So much of engineering happens behind the scenes—in codes, in calculations, in prototypes tucked away in the labs—but the impact of this work is always public,” Polsky said. “It is in the bridges we drive over, the water we drink, the devices we use, the data that drives the decisions, the energy that powers all of this, and yet, too often, we allow those systems to remain invisible, even to ourselves.”
While some students are choosing to stay in academia, others are taking the skills honed at UChicago PME directly to industry. Newly minted PhD Eric Schultz is heading back to his native Wisconsin for a job with biotechnology company Promega Corporation.
Schultz said many of his best UChicago PME memories come from outside the lab with the community he and his colleagues created.
“I was at a conference in Berlin that my UChicago PME advisor co-organized. It was a really cool experience just to connect to other scientists across the world,” he said. “We had a summer softball league. We arranged student events and even went to a White Sox game.”
Master's degree graduate Enoma Ereyimwen, however, will miss UChicago PME’s rigor. He particularly recalled a bioengineering laboratory course where students split into groups of five and had to run a different standard experiment every week.
“It was tough, demanding, but it was amazing how we were able to multitask, work within groups and by ourselves, and be able to provide those results at the end of the day,” Ereyimwen said.
After Convocation, recent PhD Uri Zvi plans to spin off the revolutionary new quantum biosensor he created at UChicago PME or possibly join the startup world.
He was joined by his partner Michelle Klosinski and his mother Neomi, who flew across “two continents and 18 hours” to see Zvi take this next step in his career.
PhD graduate Anchita Addhya was similarly surrounded by loved ones from abroad, with her mother and her partner’s family coming from India for the event. Her next adventure will take her to California as an R&D Engineer for quantum computer manufacturer PsiQuantum.
“The ceremony was beautiful, but what touched me the most was the love and kindness showered on Anchita by her advisor and friends,” her mother Anulekha Addhya said. “I am extremely proud of her for completing a PhD, but I was the happiest to know how she has been a kind and friendly presence in everyone's life here.”
Chuqiao Chen defended her PhD last August and is now a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara working on next-generation batteries.
“I really miss this place a lot,” she said. “PME has taught me so much, and I'm really grateful for everything that happened here.”
As families celebrated and former students looked forward with excitement and a touch of nerves, the conversations weren't about qubits, vaccines or polymers, but about the impact their work will have on people’s lives.
“The best engineers are the ones who never forget that what they built touches others,” Polsky said.