Makena Dettmann

Makena Dettmann is currently a Data Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, having joined in July 2023. Previously, Makena worked as an Independent Consultant at Rescale from January 2022 to July 2023. Prior experience includes serving as a Graduate Student Researcher at the University of California, Davis from January 2018 to December 2022, where research focused on simulating organic electronic materials through computational techniques such as density functional theory and machine learning. An internship as an HPC Support Engineer at Rescale involved developing efficiency tools, including a Slack app using JavaScript and MongoDB. Earlier research experience includes developing polymer microbubbles for cancer applications at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and leading a project on scintillating glasses at Coe College. Makena holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Davis and a BA in Computer Science, Physics, and Mathematics from Coe College.