Upcoming Events

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 | 7 - 9 PM

Celebrate the most haunting season of the year with New York Times bestselling author, historian of medicine, and Illinois Wesleyan alumna Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris ‘04. Join us for her talk History in the Flesh: Pain, Patients, and the Price of Progress, followed by a book signing. 

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 | 7 - 9 PM
Hansen Student Center
300 E Beecher St
Bloomington, IL 61701

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Thursday, November 5, 2026 | 6 - 7 PM

Join the Office of Alumni Engagement, the Hart Career Center, the Undergraduate Research Advisory Council, and the Center for Engaged Learning for the webinar panel discussion Beyond IWU: Young Alumni and Their PhD Experience. You’ll hear from IWU alumni about their journey from IWU to advanced degrees to professional careers. Meet our panelists:

Zachary Silver is a comparative psychologist exploring the evolutionary origins of social cognition and decision-making in domestic dogs. After beginning his academic journey with a B.A. in Psychology and Music from Illinois Wesleyan University, Silver completed an M.S., an M.Phil., and PhD from Yale University, where he led the Yale Canine Cognition Center. As a member of the Department of Psychology at Occidental College, Silver founded the Occidental Canine Intelligence Lab in 2024. His present research explores the canine-human bond, how dogs form and retain impressions of novel human agents, and canine mental health. Silver's research has been featured in both academic journals, such as Animal Cognition, and popular media, such as Smithsonian Magazine. 

Jennifer Chlebek graduated from IWU with a major in Biology in 2015. She earned her PhD in Microbiology from Indiana University in 2021. She is currently a Research Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. Her expertise is in microbiology, genetics, synthetic biology, biochemistry, protein engineering, and evolution. She is interested in genetically engineering bacteria and developing high-throughput tools to support biomanufacturing and pandemic response efforts. Her current work focuses on Antibody Discovery and training machine learning models to predict antibody-antigen binding interactions.

Patrick Foster is a research chemist whose work is at the intersection of organic photochemistry, materials science, and synthetic methodology. He completed his PhD at the University of Georgia in 2026, where he focused on developing photoresponsive systems for advanced drug delivery and targeted therapeutics. His work culminated in his doctoral dissertation, "Controlling Reactivity with Light: Photochemistry in Optically Opaque Media and Photo-Click Macrocyclization," which primarily aimed to expand the frontier of photomedical therapies beyond current topical and subcutaneous limits. Since then, Patrick has continued his postdoctoral work as a research chemist, working on technology that enables non-cryogenic transfer of cell media using photodegradable cross-linked polymers.

 

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