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Biography for Jamie Elsila

Jamie Elsila's first stint in the Astrochemistry Lab was in the spring of 1996, when she completed a 10-week Senior Individualized Project studying CO frozen in nonpolar ices as part of her undergraduate education. After completing this project, she returned to Kalamazoo College, Michigan, and received degrees in chemistry and Spanish, graduating that June. She then spent 27 months in the Peace Corps, teaching chemistry and math at a secondary school in the small town of Masasi in southeastern Tanzania. This wa s a great chance to learn how to run a chemistry lab with no equipment and to see the opportunities to teach science with real-world applications. Upon returning to the U.S., she began graduate studies in the Chemistry Department at Stanford University with adviser Richard Zare. Jamie's graduate work involved studying the distribution, abundance, and reactions of polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons and fullerenes in a variety of terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples, primarily utilizing two-step laser mass spectrometry. She received her Ph.D. in September, 2004. Dr. Elsila returned to the Astrochemistry Lab as a NRC postdoctoral associate in November 2004, eight and a half years after her first experience there. She plans to study several aspects of interstellar ice chemistry, including the formation of amino acids, alkylation of PAHs, and the reactions of nitrogen-containing aromatic heterocycles.