Ellie Crone (2025; Climate Studies and Public Policy Studies; minor in Earth and Environmental Sciences) works as a Research Associate at the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in Washington, DC. At ELI, Ellie’s work spans a range of environmental law and policy research topics, including judicial education on climate science, plastics and toxics, nature-based solutions in the Mississippi River Basin, and state and local environmental governance. She previously interned at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Ellie’s passion for environmental policy was shaped during her time at Vanderbilt, where she worked as a Research Assistant at the Vanderbilt Drinking Water Justice Lab and the Vanderbilt Climate, Health, and Energy Equity Lab and completed an honors thesis on youth-led climate litigation.
Jason Hwong (2024) was just awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship towards his doctoral research on sodium-ion batteries. Jason is pursuing this work as a member of Professor Will Chueh’s Materials Science & Engineering Lab at Stanford University, where his research is motivated by both intellectual curiosity and the renewable transitions potential of his work. Sodium-ion batteries present a potentially more affordable grid-scale and EV complement to current lithium-ion batteries. After graduating from Vanderbilt, and before starting at Stanford, Jason spent six months as a visiting researcher at the University of Sydney studying zero-carbon polymers and plasma electrochemical synthesis to replace some of the most polluting industrial chemical processes.
Danait Issac (2024) was recently awarded a full-tuition scholarship as an AnBryce Scholar at NYU Law School. There, she will prepare for a career in public interest environmental law, focusing on community-driven climate solutions and advocating for sustainable policies that support communities in building healthier, more self-determined futures. Her upcoming legal work is deeply informed by her two years as a community manager at G+E, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to empowering Black and Brown women to take climate action.
Sophie Lopez (2025) recently started work for the Alabama-based startup Nyad, where she is helping build practical, operator-focused
tools to help wastewater treatment plant operators better understand the microbiology of their systems. This current work builds on her work at Vanderbilt, where she conducted glacial geology research in Professor Dan Morgan’s lab, research that took her to both Colorado and Antarctica, served as a teaching assistant for Professor Zee Tzankova, and travelled to Zambia as a Nichols Humanitarian Service Project Scholar, where she assisted communities develop waste reduction programs through ecobricking and other innovative approaches.
Maya Maciel-Seidman (2025, Earth and Environmental Sciences) is pursuing doctoral work in glaciology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, where she joined the Ryan Lab. In the first year of her PhD, Maya has been developing deep learning models to predict meltwater runoff from catchments on the Greenland Ice Sheet, and she just received an Honorable Mention for the highly competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She partook in a field campaign in Utqiagvik, Alaska last summer as an intern at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, mentored by Vanderbilt EES PhD alum Dr. Trina Merrick. This August, she will conduct fieldwork on the Greenland Ice Sheet as part of a science team validating NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite. In her free time, Maya plays soccer on a team with fellow Vandy enviro alum, Samuel Lu, who is currently teaching first grade in nearby Raleigh, NC!
Catie Scannell (2025, CES & MHS) spent the past year as a Keegan fellow, travelling to countries across Europe, Africa, South America and Asia to research how climate change impacts women’s health. In each country she has met with nonprofit organizations and local leaders to gather women’s stories and experiences. Most recently, she met with indigenous women in Northern Chile about the impacts of lithium mining on their communities and the role of SQM (one of the largest lithium mining companies) in funding local community centers. This fellowship work builds on her academic and research preparations at Vanderbilt, where she interned for the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health (VIGH) and the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), attended Climate Week NYC through Immersion Vanderbilt funding, and created a “Climate Stories” art installation in collaboration with Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Responsibility (SPEAR). She is incredibly grateful for the knowledge and connections she gained through the Vanderbilt Climate Studies program and knows her time with this department continues to define her passions and career path.
Hannah Testa (2025) is embarking on the next step in her environmental career at the Yale School of the Environment, where she is starting Master’s work in Fall 2026. While visiting Yale, Hannah was delighted to reconnect with Vandy alum and current YSE student Davis Recht, who showed her around New Haven, and answered all of Hannah’s questions about the MA program. Hannah’s upcoming work will build on knowledge and commitments she built at Vanderbilt, where she served in the student environmental group SPEAR, co-founded a Vanderbilt chapter of a nationwide food waste reduction organization, and also actively engaged in climate and environmental advocacy and activism through an internship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she conducted environmental justice research on waste management systems, and through thousands of environmental volunteer hours in her role as a Vanderbilt Ingram Scholar.