7th Annual Alumni Weekend
Saturday, February 19th, 2022
First and second year WISE RP students had the opportunity to interact and ask questions in small group settings to get to know WISE RP alumni. Each year, current students rave about how much they learned from the alumni and had positive experiences.
Alumni Panelists
Ameera Choudhry ‘14
Ameera Chaudhry is a Lead in Clinical Data Analytics based in New York City. During her freshman year at the University of Michigan, she was a member of the WISE-RP and later served as a peer mentor in the program as a sophomore. After graduating from UofM in 2014, Ameera worked in clinical research and healthcare quality measurement. She now works in health tech with a focus on using data to accelerate cancer research and improve patient care and outcomes.
Catrina Letterman '18
Catrina studied Biomedical Engineering and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Engineering in 2018 and went on to complete a Masters in Biomedical Engineering through the SUGS program in 2019. During her undergraduate career, she was in the WISE RP for two years and spent her sophomore year as a peer mentor in the community. Catrina was also part of the inaugural class of Beta Mu Epsilon, the Biomedical Engineering professional fraternity, and later served as the fraternity’s Vice President of Service. Some of the most rewarding experiences during her time at Michigan came from her trips with Alternative Spring Break. Catrina spent three spring breaks with ASB and one of them as a site leader. Throughout her time at Michigan Catrina worked at the NCRB and CCRB as a lifeguard and eventually as an Aquatics Supervisor and a Building Supervisor. After graduation, she moved to Denver, CO and began working at the US Patent and Trademark Office as a patent examiner assigned to examine exercise device patent applications. As part of her work experience, Catrina joined the Women in Technology and Science (WITS) group to continue connecting with other women in her field. Outside of work she tries her best to take advantage of the Colorado mountains and enjoy skiing on the weekends. Catrina grew up in Mesa, Arizona.
Cici Lu '15
Cici Lu graduated from the University of Michigan in 2015 with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Her first experience programming was in Eng 101 – prior to that she thought she wanted to major in Chemical Engineering. What inspired her to major in Computer Science was the enjoyment of solving logic puzzles and receiving the immediate knowledge of her code working or failing.
Natasha Pacheco '10
Dr. Natasha Pacheco received her Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of Michigan. She then spent 2 years at Baylor College of Medicine as a post-baccalaureate fellow through the Human Genome Sequencing Center’s Pre-Graduate Education and Training Program. Dr. Pacheco earned her Ph.D. in Cell Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham under the mentorship of Dr. Michelle Olsen. Dr. Pacheco’s dissertation focused on genome-wide transcriptomic changes associated with postnatal astrocytic development and maturation during both healthy brain development and Rett Syndrome pathogenesis. After graduation, she spent a year and a half at Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI) as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Dale Bodian. During her time at ITMI, Dr. Pacheco studied differences in pharmacogenomic allelic and genotypic frequencies among Northern Virginian Hispanics. In 2020, she joined Dr. Michele Evans’ laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow within the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Science. Dr. Pacheco’s current research utilizes multi-omics approaches to understand biological mechanisms contributing to age-associated health disparities in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span (https://handls.nih.gov/) study.
