UW–Madison inducts 2017 Bouchet Graduate Honor Society class of scholars

2017 Bouchet Society Inductees

Albert Burgess-Hull

Albert Burgess-Hull was an Advanced Opportunity Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and achieved a PhD from the School of Human Ecology. Albert studied how an individual’s social network influences substance-use behaviors. In addition, he is interested in the use of advanced quantitative methods to inform behavioral research. In this area, he is particularly interested in classification methods such as finite mixture modeling as a way to uncover individual heterogeneity in a population.

Rastafa Geddes

Dr. Rastafa I. Geddes was born in St. Thomas, Jamaica and raised in New York City. Dr. Geddes, or Ras, is a product of several socially-driven educational programs aimed at reaching an underrepresented portion of the population (i.e., poor young black males). Armed with a passion for his discipline and a determination to improve “how we educate our biomedical professionals and the masses”, Dr. Geddes has dedicated his career not only to researching therapies for neurological diseases, but to providing similar opportunities that were afforded to him as an impoverished youth. Dr. Geddes is an underrepresented minority in the biomedical field, and as such continues to be in communication with, and hopes to provide ample opportunity to, youths with a similar backstory that are interested in learning more about biomedical research, more specifically TBI and aging-related neurological disorders.

Natalie Guerrero Cofie

Natalie Guerrero Cofie achieved a PhD in Population Health Sciences from UW–Madison. Her research interests include racial/ethnic health disparities in maternal and child health, as well as poverty and immigrant health. Natalie has been the lead author of manuscripts in these research areas, publishing her work in multiple peer-reviewed journals, including the Wisconsin Medical Journal and Preventing Chronic Disease. She has presented her research at national conferences of the American Physician Scientist Association and the American Public Health Association. In her dissertation, she examined the relationship between maternal depression and child problem behavior.

Evelyn Hammond

Evelyn Hammond achieved a PhD at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Her dissertation explores public perceptions of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin. Preliminary results of her research were presented at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management last summer. Hammond’s research findings will not only inform state and national policy on frac sand mining, but will also worldwide policy on mineral and non-mineral resource management. In April 2016, she was inducted into the UW–Madison Teaching Academy as a Future Faculty Partner.

Nadia Khan

Nadia Khan achieved a PhD in the Cellular and Molecular Biology graduate program at UW–Madison. She was a member of Dr. Avtar Roopra’s lab where she focused on how gene expression in the brain can become reprogrammed after events like traumatic brain injury, which can lead to epilepsy long-term. She currently holds three publications with Dr. Stephen J. Gray in the journals Gene Therapy and Discovery Medicine. She was an active member of the SciMed GRS Peer Mentoring Committee where she helps first-year underrepresented students navigate the first year of graduate school.

Alexandra MacMillan Uribe

Alexandra MacMillan Uribe achieved a PhD in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her experience interning for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and her commitment to resolving health disparities inspired her to shift her research focus to maternal and infant nutrition among low-income populations. She worked for Dr. Beth Olson and investigated how to increase the effectiveness of maternal and infant nutrition education to positively affect behavior change. Within this focus, she investigates the mother-infant dyad relationship and how the food environment, created and controlled by the mother, influences maternal and infant nutrition and health outcomes.