Each spring, thousands of University of Chicago graduates follow in a single procession across the Main Quadrangles toward Convocation. Yet each student arrived at that moment though uniquely distinct paths.
Looking back on their intellectual journeys at UChicago, several members of the Class of 2026 reflected on how the University shaped them—and where their careers might take them next.
Some developed a space satellite or studied thorny municipal finance issues. Others worked in courtrooms and clinics or chased research questions across continents. Below, these soon-to-be graduates share their stories.
Ingrid Appen, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
As she prepares to receive her bachelor’s in molecular engineering, Ingrid Appen already knows her long-term goal—returning to UChicago PME in a slightly different role.
“I would love to come back to UChicago PME as a professor one day,” she said.
After Convocation, she will be spending one year as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Taiwan before starting a chemical engineering Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She hopes to study sustainable polymers, the subject of her work as an undergraduate researcher in Prof. Stuart Rowan’s lab, but is open to wherever her UChicago PME education takes her.
“I learned more here than I ever have before, both about engineering and about working hard, getting through failures, and relying on friends and professors,” Appen said. “I am so grateful to this program and highly recommend applying. For first-year molecular engineering majors, my top pieces of advice are: Go to office hours, study with friends and try out research for at least a quarter or two!”
Shaleyah Carter, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
As a first-generation college student, Shaleyah Carter understands the transformative power of education and the importance of creating opportunities for others.
She came to the Crown Family School with a clear sense of purpose: to build a career dedicated to advancing social justice and supporting young people.
Carter is graduating with a master’s degree in social work, social policy and social administration from the Crown Family School and will earn a Professional Educator License in school social work.
A graduate of Howard University, Carter chose social work because it offered an opportunity to serve communities and address the inequities that shape people’s lives. Her commitment to creating a more just and humane society led her to pursue graduate study focused on developing the skills and experience needed to support youth and families.
During her time at the Crown Family School, Carter embraced opportunities to lead, learn and engage with the broader community. She credits organizations such as the Black Student Association and the Leadership Institute with helping shape her experience and providing opportunities to grow as a leader.
Through her involvement across campus, she challenged herself in new ways and gained valuable experience that strengthened both her personal and professional development.
Carter is particularly passionate about disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and supporting the mental health and well-being of young people. She hopes to create programs that empower youth, amplify their voices and provide the resources they need to thrive.
Her accomplishments include receiving several recognitions, including the Community and Leadership Award, honors for her contributions to Student Government and the Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity Committee, and the Student Organization of the Year Award for her work with the Black Student Association.
Following graduation, Carter plans to pursue a career in school social work, community programming or forensic social work.
Reflecting on her experience at Crown, Carter offers simple advice to future students: “Get involved. You get out of it what you put into it.”
Ayo George, Harris School of Public Policy
When Ayo George graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in political science, he knew he was interested in cities and urban policy, but was still looking for the right way to make a difference.
After working at the Yale University Program on Financial Stability, where he researched financial crises and macroeconomic policy, he began to see how essential finance is to public policy, especially at the local level.
That path eventually led him to municipal finance and then to Prof. Justin Marlowe’s Public Money Pod, which inspired him to apply to Harris.
“I came here to be less afraid of numbers—and I’m happy with the results,” George said.
As he graduates with his master’s degree, George said he found the quantitative foundation he was looking for, building skills to understand finance, regulation and public markets at a time when data and AI are reshaping how policy work is done. He was especially drawn to courses that challenged him to think about regulators not simply as rule-setters, but as actors responding to incentives.
“I think that’s one of the things Harris really excels at,” George said. “It gives you this really strong foundation from which to build.”
During his time at Harris, he worked as a research fellow with the Water Finance Exchange, studying local infrastructure financing and learning how municipalities access grants and revolving loan funds. He later interned with the Metropolitan Planning Council, researching lead service line replacement in Chicago and the Great Lakes region.
“Water is something that is a marker of development,” George said. “Having a system where you get all your citizens clean water is one of these basic markers of being a developed country, and yet that’s still a challenge that we face in the richest country in the world.”
Outside the classroom, George spent time at the Institute of Politics, attending fellows’ seminars and traveling with classmates to knock doors in Michigan and Wisconsin during the 2024 election. He also built community through intramural sports, especially soccer, and still hopes to see Harris challenge the Law School’s dominance in the graduate Phoenix Cup.
Originally from Cranston, Rhode Island, he was ultimately won over by Chicago. After graduation, he will stay in the city as a senior analyst at S&P Global, where he focuses on utilities, including water and sewer systems, and plans to continue building expertise in public power.
“It really aligns with how I viewed what I wanted to do coming out of undergrad,” George said. “I like the application of municipal finance to something so basic as water.”
Connor Horn, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Connor Horn is already in his next role. As co-founder and CEO of K1 Semiconductor, the Ph.D. candidate is bringing a technology developed in Prof. Supratik Guha’s lab to revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing.
“We are using a semiconductor wafer splitting technology to upend the traditional wasteful and restrictive processes for semiconductor device manufacturing,” Horn said.
K1, which Horn co-founded with Guha, fellow UChicago PME Ph.D. students Xella Doi and Sagar Kumar Seth and UChicago Booth School of Business student Joe McDonald, is already turning heads in the startup world. It has received a slate of recognitions, including taking second place at the Polsky New Venture Challenge and joining the Chicago Quantum Exchange and the inaugural cohort of the Alchemist Chicago Accelerator.
Horn and Doi were also named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Manufacturing & Industry category, two of the seven UChicago PME-affiliated young researchers to be honored in the 2026 list.
Horn said UChicago PME’s interdisciplinary lens and focus on solving the world’s most challenging problems made his time here “rewarding and fun due to the freedom to develop and pursue many new ideas.”
“The scientific directions pursued by UChicago PME researchers are uniquely shaped by a collaborative approach to tackling real-world grand challenges,” Horn said. “My Ph.D. work began as a very pie-in-the-sky idea that did not fit neatly within the silo of a traditional department. With the support of UChicago PME I was able to pursue this unusual project which ultimately led to very exciting results.”
Seth Knights, College
Seth Knights came to UChicago planning to study computer science, but his longtime interest in space began pulling him in another direction.
Near the end of his first year, Knights joined what was then UChicago’s chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, a small group with fewer than 10 active members. The group had been launching model rockets—soon they began discussing the possibility of building a satellite.
Since its formation, Knights has helped transform that small startup organization into the UChicago Space Program. As president, lead engineer and a founding member, he has created something entirely new at the University: the first student-run organization dedicated to developing a space satellite. Now with 130 members across three divisions, the group focuses on rocketry, satellites and scientific instrumentation.
As an engineer but also as a leader and mentor, Knights has inspired fellow students to ask questions, take intellectual risks and work together to create something new.
“To inspire others is to show them that they are more capable of understanding and of creating than they may think, and my goal has always been to create a space where this self-discovery is possible,” said Knights.
“At their best, science and engineering are collective disciplines, ones that require us to respond to, critique and engage with our own and each other’s ideas. Ideas that we must be bold enough to share but humble enough to revise.”
For Knights, the space program’s growth matters. There isn’t a major focused on engineering for space, so he and the team built their own path.
Lessons from his experience with the organization and his wider journey through the College will stay with him after he leaves Hyde Park.
“I think UChicago really challenged me to think and to care deeply—whether it’s in my classes and the reading I'm doing, or the work that I'm doing outside of class with [the space program] or other groups,” he said.
After graduation, Knights will begin a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he plans to continue studying optics.
Kassidy Mahoney, Law School
Kassidy Mahoney always knew she wanted a career that involved helping people. Her lightbulb moment to do that through lawyering came when she read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative—which detailed the author’s work defending the marginalized, the incarcerated and the wrongly condemned.
“I believe each of us has a responsibility to use whatever skills we have to help those most in need in our communities, and I knew that going to law school would give me the skills to be able to do this in the best way possible,” she said.
As a student, Mahoney did not waste any time putting her budding legal skills to use. Starting her 1L year, she sought out pro bono opportunities to help those impacted by civil rights and criminal justice issues. She got involved in organizations such as Life After Justice, the Juvenile Law Center and the National Lawyers Guild, a leftist legal professional organization. She spent time working in the Cook County Public Defender’s Office—where she’ll be working after graduation—and in the Law School’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic.
Mahoney clocked in nearly 900 pro bono service hours in her three years as a student, more than anyone in her graduating class. Her dedication earned her the Law School’s Pro Bono Award of Excellence in May 2026.
“I think it’s easy for students to revert to the safety within our school’s walls and forget that there are real crises occurring outside every day. But we can’t be insulated,” she said. “I couldn’t simply attend my classes and debate the meaning of justice, equality and freedom without feeling as though such conversations call for us to use these lessons outside the classroom.”
Alex Rosencrance, Pritzker School of Medicine
Growing up in the rural Appalachian town of Elkins, West Virginia, Alex Rosencrance, AB’22, knew leaving home for college would be difficult. But he worked multiple jobs throughout high school and as an undergraduate in the College to make it happen.
As chair of the Rural Student Alliance, he sought to increase access to private higher education for students from rural backgrounds.
When it came time to graduate, Rosencrance knew he wanted to stay at UChicago, which had come to feel like home, and he chose to attend the Pritzker School of Medicine. He continued his advocacy for rural communities as chair of the Rural Medical Student Association and JOURNEES, for which he led a service trip to Elkins, exposing classmates to rural health care.
While developing his leadership skills as a member of Pritzker’s admissions and Curriculum Review committees, Rosencrance also forged a deeper bond with the communities surrounding UChicago as someone tasked with caring for them.
“At Pritzker there is a shared sense of responsibility to the South Side that is both inspiring and deeply meaningful,” Rosencrance said. “This shared commitment helped me develop both the skills and perspective needed to care for the underserved.”
Rosencrance specifically sought opportunities to support LGBTQ+ patients, and his research with Assoc. Prof. Julia Rosebush led to a peer-reviewed publication on provider barriers to prescribing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adolescents to prevent HIV transmission.
Next, Rosencrance will continue his pediatrics training as a resident physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
“UChicago gave me a framework for how I want to move through the world: boldly, curiously and unapologetically myself,” Rosencrance said. “I was surrounded by people who will change the world in their own unique way, and knowing that pushes me to dream bigger for myself.”
Cazmier Tymoch, Chicago Booth School of Business
When Cazmier Tymoch reflects on his time at Booth, he thinks of his superpower as connection.
An extrovert with an “unusually deep social battery,” Tymoch came to UChicago hoping to grow as a leader, sharpen his business foundation and build a career in consulting. What he found was a community that transformed not only how he thinks, but how he shows up for others.
During his time at Booth, Tymoch served as student body president, leading with a platform rooted in approachability, transparency and community. His proudest accomplishment was launching the inaugural Fall Ball, a new tradition designed to bring the full-time MBA cohort together and celebrate the start of the academic year. But what has fulfilled him most deeply are the relationships he built across the first- and second-year communities: friendships, mentorships and everyday conversations that expanded his worldview.
“UChicago shaped my life through the people,” he reflected. “I was constantly surrounded by classmates, faculty and practitioners who were curious, collaborative and willing to challenge my assumptions. That diversity of thought made me a better thinker, leader and friend.”
Academically, Booth gave Tymoch a stronger foundation for consulting by connecting business theory with real-world application. Personally, it gave him opportunities to lead through ambiguity, receive feedback and practice building trust at scale.
“I leave UChicago more confident in who I am and how I lead,” he said. “This community built me up, and I’ll carry that with me long after Hyde Park.”
Ruby Velez, College
Ruby Velez wants a future focused on helping people.
Originally from Tucson, Arizona, she’s preparing to step into a career shaped by law, public health and international human rights. A participant in the University’s BA/MA program, she will graduate with degrees in both human rights and Law, Letters, and Society alongside a master’s in international relations.
“I think what really changes at this school is your belief of what is possible,” said Velez. “You don’t really realize what you can actually accomplish until you’re given the resources.”
A major influence in her academic journey was the Pozen Center for Human Rights, where she researched corporate accountability and strategic litigation, working with legal practitioners in Colombia and South Africa.
Beyond campus, Velez has been involved with numerous advocacy groups, including the Latino Policy Forum, The People’s Lobby and the Jail Solidarity Network.
Much of her growth was shaped through the UChicago Harm Reduction Project’s Appalseed Fund initiative. Supported by the Stamps Scholars Program, Velez and fellow students traveled to Berea, Kentucky, to support overdose prevention and housing stability initiatives. What began as a focus on Narcan distribution evolved into providing security deposit assistance and short-term financial support for those transitioning out of homelessness.
At the same time, she emphasized that some of her most meaningful intellectual growth came from small spaces on campus.
“I’ve had some of the most world-changing conversations in the Cobb Café basement,” she said.
After graduation, Velez plans to travel to Hong Kong to research alternative treatment approaches for opioid use disorder while continuing work with the Clean Lead Coalition, a policy initiative focused on reducing industrial lead pollution in countries such as Nigeria and Ghana.
As commencement approaches, Velez credits mentors, peers and organizers for shaping her journey. She said her father’s experience navigating undocumented status and financial barriers profoundly influenced her interest in immigration and justice systems.
“It’s not just me graduating,” she said. “It’s a culmination of collective work.”
Anna Zeisel, the Divinity School
Anna Zeisel came to the Divinity School by a path she didn't expect. Already drawn to work as a “death doula,” accompanying people through the final chapter of their lives, she learned that chaplaincy training was open to her as a non-Christian student.
She was enrolled at a seminary when she discovered the Divinity School. Since she was already living in Chicago, the choice felt clear.
“I heard that the University of Chicago has a nice divinity school,” she recalled, with characteristic understatement, “and that's how I ended up here.”
What she found exceeded the description. Zeisel completed her first hospital chaplaincy internship during her time earning her master’s at the Divinity School and emerged from the experience certain of her direction. She has now completed her thesis, “On Longing, Absence, and the Uses of Traditional Prayer in Contemporary Jewish Life,” and will be a clinical pastoral education resident at Rush University Medical Center, working toward board certification next year.
The Divinity School also reshaped how she understands herself. Surrounded by students from a wide range of traditions, many of whom were actively renegotiating their beliefs while in the program, Zeisel found herself identifying more deeply with her own Jewish background than before.
“I feel so lucky to look around and know that I'm going to know the future of religious leadership in this country,” she said. “I trust them, and I think they're amazing people.”
By Andrew Haffner, Paul Dailing, Tonishea Jackson, Colin Terrill, Lily Maxson, MacKenzie Tucker\, Nadia Alfadel Coloma, Tyler Lockman and Erin Keane Scott
