Class Notes: 2001

Meredith Walters ’01 just had her debut novel published by SparkPress. The story is based in part on Meredith’s experience at Cal and centers on UC Berkeley grad student Frankie Conner, who after multiple failures and several false starts, has finally found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who know things she doesn’t, like scientific facts and what happened in the years before her adoption. This Animal Body follows Frankie as she risks her career, her goals, and her mental health to uncover the truth about these animals and the urgent, life-changing message they claim to have but refuse to share. Meredith’s writing can also be found in Eden Magazine, Tiny Buddha, elephant journal, and at https://meredithwalters.com.

Jate Samathivathanachai ’01 joined Foundery Innovations, an immunotherapeutics-focused venture fund and studio, as Chief Business Officer in December 2022. Foundery validates and develops early drug concepts to produce pre-IND candidate packages in collaboration with academic investigators that are spun-out into independent NewCos or out-licensed to industry partners for clinical development.

Brad Boyce, M.S. ’98, Ph.D. ’01, a Sandia National Laboratories materials scientist, was elected president of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. Brad has been involved in the society for more than two decades, starting as a doctoral student at Cal.

Class Secretary: Christina Noz, chrisxnoz@yahoo.com

Julie Pham has authored 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work (2022), which shows how respect is relative, contradictory, and subjective. “This book will help people specify what they want in terms of respect and help identify what others want,” she wrote. “People can then say, ‘These are my forms of respect. What are yours?’” 

Class Secretary: Christina Noz, chrisxnoz@yahoo.com