Hannah Gruenwald, PhD

Scholarship Founder and Mentor 

Hannah is a Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an Engineering Duty Officer in the United States Navy Reserve. She was a first-generation STEM student from a rural farming community in Iowa, where careers in science and engineering were uncommon. Her path wasn’t clear early on, but she was fortunate to find mentors who helped guide and shape her journey. She earned a PhD in chemistry and has since worked at DOE National Laboratories, where her work involves multiphysics modeling. 

As she continues advancing in her own career, she is committed to supporting motivated students in achieving their goals. She created this scholarship to encourage students to set ambitious goals and to trust that passion and persistence can take them as far as they can imagine. Wherever your STEM journey leads, she hopes this scholarship helps you take that first step – To the Stars and beyond.

Mackenzie Intlekofer, DNP

Volunteer Mentor

Mackenzie is a nurse practitioner with District Medical Group, serving Valleywise Health in Phoenix, Arizona. She grew up in a town of 7,000 in Iowa and attended the University of Iowa. After graduation, she worked as a nurse at Washington Hospital Center, a 900-bed safety-net hospital in Washington, DC. While there, she earned her doctorate in nursing from The George Washington University, with a focus on adult-gerontology primary care, which she practices today. Her doctorate focuses on translating research findings and best practices into clinical systems- an area where implementation often lags seven or more years behind. 

Mackenzie is passionate about evidence-based practice, pharmacology, and systems to make health care more efficient for clinicians and patients. She is excited to mentor students interested in the health sciences or wondering how their scientific interests can benefit the clinical space.

Julian Vigil, PhD

Volunteer Mentor

Julian is a Schmidt Science Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, appointed in the College of Chemistry and at the National Center for Electron Microscopy. His research combines inorganic chemistry and the development of new methods for materials characterization. Julian completed his PhD in chemical engineering at Stanford University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Stanford Graduate Fellow, where he studied next-generation semiconductor materials for solar photovoltaics and optoelectronic devices.

Julian was a first-generation college student from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose early exposure to science came through a high-school outreach program at Sandia National Laboratories, thanks to the dedication of generous mentors. He is now motivated to offer that same guidance and support to students working to forge their own paths in STEM.