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Rich Wildman: personal background
where I'm from
I am currently a sixth-year graduate student, supervised by Janet Hering, an aquatic
chemist.
In the fall of 2003, I started graduate school at Caltech. In early 2007, Janet moved to
Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, located in Dübendorf,
just outside Zürich. I have followed her to Eawag, where I am now a visiting student as I wrap
up my Ph.D. I expect to defend my thesis in February 2009.
Between undergraduate and graduate school, I worked with Robert Berner, a carbon-cycle geochemist
in the Yale Department of Geology and Geophysics.
I attended Yale University as an undergraduate, where I graduated in 2001 with a B.S.
degree in chemistry.
I attended high school at Pinewood School, Los Altos Hills, California. There, Ayn Lavagnino
and Burt Spencer got me interested in chemistry. I graduated as my class's valedictorian in 1997.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, we had drought for 7 of the first 13 years
I was alive. That provided my first motivation to study water resources problems!
other than graduate school
I rowed on the varsity lightweight crew team at Yale. Little did I know that our many
practices and (highly successful) races would teach me more about life than about rowing. I'm very
grateful to my coach, Andy Card, for the profound positive influence he had on me.
Currently, I play pickup Fussball (soccer) with the Eawag-EMPA group each week.
I'm the only American there -- I work really hard just to hold my own against
Europeans! The high level of soccer has been one of the great things about moving to
Switzerland.
From 2004 to 2006, I led a volunteering effort at the Environmental Charter High School
in Lawndale, CA. There, Caltech graduate students co-taught an elective class called Science
and Society during the 2005-2006 school year. I followed this by mentoring a student in the
class of 2007, both with summer research and the college application and selection process.
In college, I led the Yale Outdoors club. I still try to get out on various adventures
whenever I can, which is easy, with so many mountains so close to Zürich!
(this page last updated October 5, 2008)
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