2026 First-Year Graduate Student Photo Gallery

Each year, as we welcome a new cohort of graduate students to Frick Lab, we compile individual photographs into a First-Year Graduate Student Photo Gallery. It is our way of highlighting student lives and activities before they arrived here at Princeton Chemistry – with family and friends, traveling abroad, enjoying time at home.

Here is our latest photo gallery featuring the first-year graduate students, who started their work at Frick Lab in August. To our new Princeton Chemistry community members, welcome.

Michelle Yu
Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona
Undergraduate school: Northeastern University
Lab: Rotation in MacMillan Lab and Rabinowitz Lab
Photo: Hanging out with the deer at Nara Park in Japan

Tabitha Chen-Fiske
Hometown: Winchester, Massachusetts
Undergrad school: Harvard University
Lab: In rotation
Photo: “This is a photo of my sister and me (I’m on the right) from this summer when we walked the length of Manhattan with some of our friends. It was a 13-mile walk, and there was great food and conversation along the way. We capped it off with pizza and popsicles!”

Aneesh Bhat
Hometown: Cupertino, California
Undergrad school: University of California, Berkeley
Lab: MacMillan Lab
Photo: Hanging out with friends

Thomas Reimer
Hometown: Bowie, Maryland
Undergrad school: University of Notre Dame
Lab: Hyster Lab
Photo: From a bluff in Marin overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California

Minjeong Lee
Hometown: Seoul, Korea
Undergrad school: KAIST
Lab: Knowles Lab
Photo: Hanging out around town

Elizabeth Nelson
Hometown: Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Undergrad school: Brown University
Lab: Chris Chang Lab
Photo: Elizabeth pictured with her mother and her brother in Maine

David Wang
Hometown: Fair Lawn, New Jersey
Undergrad school: University of Chicago
Lab: MacMillan Lab
Photo: “I’ve attached a photo of myself in a college production of Julius Caesar. In this picture, I am giving Mark Antony’s famous funeral oration.”

Mason Bayles
Hometown: Jacksonville, Alabama
Undergrad school: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Lab: Chirik Lab
Photo: Hanging around near home

Panhapich “Pich” Chea
Hometown: Cypress, Texas
Undergrad school: University of Texas at Austin
Lab: Roque Lab
Photo: Pich (left; pronounced “peach”) and her friend hanging out around town

Ryan Racioppo
Hometown: Baden, Pennsylvania
Undergraduate school: University of Pittsburgh
Lab: Dincǎ Group
Photo: Ryan (far right) out for a game of tennis with his friends

Spencer Lee
Hometown: Daejeon, South Korea
Undergraduate school: Harvard University
Lab: MacMillan Lab (in rotation)
Photo: Spencer pictured out jogging with his sister

Jocelyn Chen
Hometown: Taipei, Taiwan / Charlotte, North Carolina
Undergrad school: University of Michigan
Lab: In rotation
Photo: “This is my sister (left) and I (right) taking a selfie with the Tokyo Tower when we stopped in Japan for a week before traveling back to Taiwan this past summer!”

Sofia Ando
Hometown: Walnut Creek, California.
Undergrad school: University of California, Los Angeles.
Lab: In rotation with the Michelle Chang Lab and the Mo Lab.
Photo: “This is a photo of me trying some sashimi while traveling in Japan!”

William Archacki
Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland
Undergrad school: Yale University
Lab: In rotation (Materials subfield)
Photo: “Here is a photo of me in the Kinsman Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.”

Sydney Steele
Hometown: Mountain View, California.
Undergrad school: University of Michigan.
Lab: MacMillan Lab.
Photo: Sydney at the San Francisco Botanical Garden this summer.

Mitchell Walsh
Hometown: Mason, Ohio
Undergrad school: Ohio State University
Lab: Chirik Lab
Photo: “This photo is of me and my family on our vacation to Muskegon, Michigan this past July.”

Maxine van der Donk
Hometown: Champaign, Illinois
Undergrad school: Northwestern University
Lab:In rotation
Photo: “Making friends at Nara Park in Nara, Japan!”

Alyssa Xu
Hometown: Shandong, China
Undergrad school: Stanford University
Lab: Car Group
Photo: Hanging out

Madelyne Gilbert
Hometown: Clovis, California
Undergrad school: California Institute of Technology
Lab: In rotation
Photo: Hanging out in California