The Grad Slam Archive
Watch the recordings to experience Grad Slam and get to know our past judges and winning presentations.
Judges
2026
Tommy Tran
Tomy will graduate with his Master of Science from San Jose State’s Mechanical Engineering Program in May 2026. For his master’s project with Dr. Hohyun Lee, he developed software models to support the use of electric vehicle batteries in residential homes. He was the first-place winner in Grad Slam 2025.
Nerissa Draeger, Ph.D
Director of Open Innovation at Lam Research Corporation.
Dr. Nerissa Draeger works in the Office of the CTO at Lam Research, where she builds academic partnerships to grow Lam’s technology pipeline. Her vision of innovation lives at the intersection of emerging technologies, strategy, and people. Dr. Draeger has managed pathfinding for semiconductor deposition and etch processes at Lam Research and Novellus Systems. She served on the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society and as Chair of the Board of Directors for UIDP. She earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B.S.E. from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Angel Rios Jr.
Angel Rios, Jr., is a leader with 25 years of professional experience working in both the public and non-profit sectors. He currently serves as the Deputy City Manager for the City of San Jose. Angel previously served as the Director of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services. Before joining the City of San Jose, Angel served as the Associate Director of the largest Latino-based, non-profit in Santa Clara County. Angel holds a master's degree in Public Administration and a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Government. He is a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum. Angel has served as one of the chief architects of the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force, an anti-violence effort that has received national acclaim for its effectiveness in redirecting youth away from gangs and keeping neighborhoods safe.
Dr. Andrew Carter
Dr. Andrew Carter, an Associate Professor in Communication Studies and co-creator/Director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at San Jose State University, specializes in health disparities, food systems, community-based participatory research, and intercultural communication. His recent book with Oxford University Press, entitled Seeds of Sovereignty: Critical Public Health, Radical Sisterhood, and the Fight for Agricultural Justice will be released in May 2026.
2025
Jennifer Benbow
SJSU 2024 Grad Slam Winner
Jennifer graduated from San Jose State’s Masters of Bioinformatics Program in June 2024. For her master’s project with the Heller Lab, she developed deep learning computer vision models to support coral resilience research. Now based in Maryland, Jennifer works as a bioinformatics programmer with the UC Health Data Warehouse at the University of California, Irvine. In her free time, she continues to collaborate with Dr. Heller and the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology in their efforts to preserve the coral reefs.
Aaron Chan
Scouting Manager at State Farm Insurance
Aaron Chan graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Masters in Materials Engineering and an MBA. He is currently a Scouting Manager at State Farm Insurance, where his role is to learn about startups and the tech ecosystem to identify companies that may have strategic alignment to the insurance industry.
Marie Haverfield
Associate Professor of Communication Studies, San Jose State University
Keith Hertzberg
Budget and Innovation Advisor to San Jose Mayor
Keith Hertzberg is an alumnus of San José State University and the Lucas College of Business. He currently serves as a Budget and Innovation Advisor to San José Mayor Matt Mahan, where he supports the Mayor’s fiscal priorities through the annual budget process and advances the city’s innovation efforts. His work focuses on expanding San José’s innovation portfolio through public-private partnerships, innovation ecosystem development, and the adoption of emerging technologies in government. Outside of his professional role, Keith is actively involved in his community. He is working to establish a Neighborhood Association in the South San José neighborhood where he was raised and serves as the Outreach Chair for the Lucas College of Business Young Alumni Board.
2024
Jaedyn Rollins
SJSU and CSU-Wide 2023 Grad Slam Winner
Jaedyn Rollins is a graduating Master’s student at SJSU studying Physiology. As a graduate researcher in Dr. Jennifer Johnston’s gene editing lab, she has been evaluating a DNA location that has potential for being safe for gene editing with the goal of curing various monogenic blood disorders, such as Hemophilia A. Jaedyn’s passion for this research awarded her first place in both the SJSU and CSU-wide Grad Slams in 2023, as well as the Student Research Competition that was held at SDSU that same week. Upon graduation, she hopes to transition into industry and continue conducting transformative research.
Judy Nagai
Vice President for University Advancement and CEO of the Tower Foundation, San José State University
Judy Nagai joined San Jose State University as Vice President of University Advancement and Chief Executive Officer of the Tower Foundation in September 2023. Vice-President Nagai previously served as the University Hawai'i Foundation’s Sr. Executive Director of Campaign Planning, with the responsibility to prepare for the University of Hawai'i’s $1 billion comprehensive campaign launch benefiting the university’s 10 campuses. She has worked in a variety of advancement roles at California State University, Sacramento, University of California, Davis, University of Nevada Las Vegas, University of the Pacific, and the Stanford Alumni Association. Throughout Vice-President Nagai’s career, she has worked to advance the student-centered mission of each university through advancement, fundraising, and alumni relations activities. Additionally, she is a co-author of research focused on the motivations of volunteer advisory board members, which are published in The International Journal of Volunteer Administration (2013) and Innovative Higher Education (2013).
Ryan Skinnell
Associate Professor at Department of English & Comparative Literature, San José State University
2023
Stefan Frazier
Stefan Frazier is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development at SJSU. An 18-year veteran of the university, he has promoted student success and celebration whenever possible, especially in his role as Chair of the SJSU Academic Senate (2017-2019). He is a long-time educator of English as a second language and a trainer of ESL teachers. Above all, he is interested in how people display their individuality and creativity, whether via language or through the arts, sciences, or education.
Dr. David Kosmeyer
Dr. David Korsmeyer is the deputy center director for Research and Technology at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, and is responsible for the overall scope and direction of the center’s operations and facilities. He also manages the NASA Research Park – co-located at Moffett Field – which hosts academic, industry, and other government organizations. He is one of four senior center leaders guiding and managing NASA’s virtual institutes based at Ames, competitive internal research and development projects, and external research collaborations.
Meenakshi Goel
Meenakshi Goel is a Principal Scientific Researcher in the Department of Small Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences at Genentech, a member of Roche Pharmaceuticals, a leading international biotechnology company. As an analytical chemist, she supports research, development, and clinical manufacturing of best-in-class therapeutics using state-of-the-art analytical techniques like High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography, Gas Chromatography, High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry, Supercritical fluid chromatography, multi-dimensional liquid chromatography and more.
Kate Forrest
Kate Forrestis a current student at SJSU, studying for her Master’s degree in Meteorology and Climate Science. She was our first place winner at last year’s Grad Slam competition, and represented SJSU at the Western Association of Graduate Schools Grad Slam a few weeks ago. You may have seen her winning presentation today in the pre-show reel. She is a graduate assistant at SJSU’s Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. Kate’s passion for fire weather was ignited after following California’s 2020 wildfire season and has since taken an interest in fire weather forecasting. In exciting news, she has just accepted a meteorologist position at the National Weather Service in Sacramento upon graduation this spring.
2022
Amanda del Castillo
Amanda del Castillo is an Emmy Award-winning reporter for ABC7 News. She has spent the last decade traveling the country and telling impactful stories from Wyoming to Texas, and from Denver back to the Bay Area. She believes there's always a story to tell, interviewing people suffering from the worst of the pandemic to 49ers fans cheering on their team at Super Bowl 54 in Miami, and everything in between. She values the power of communication and recognizes the weight our words carry. Amanda graduated from San Jose State University's School of Journalism and Mass Communications in December 2012. As a San Francisco native, she is thrilled to be back in the Bay Area with her husband and one-year-old son and is honored to be telling stories about the place she calls home.
Lupe Franco
Lupe Franco (she/her/ella) is the 2021 SJSU Grad Slam winner as well as the CSU Grad Slam People's Choice Award winner and will be representing SJSU at the Western Association of Graduate Schools at their upcoming annual conference in late March. Lupe graduated from SJSU with an MS in Environmental Studies in 2021 and is now in her first year in the Ph.D. Geography program at UC Davis (unceded Patwin land). She is a social scientist doing work on the connections between climate change and environmental justice and has a current focus on the impacts that climate change will have on the well-being of unhoused populations. Lupe hopes that with this work she can bring awareness and develop action-oriented research that will address the injustices faced by the most vulnerable. Following our Grad Slam tradition, our first-place winner from the previous Grad Slam is invited back as a judge.
Meenakshi Goel
Meenakshi Goel is a Principal Scientific Researcher in the Department of Small Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences at Genentech, a member of Roche Pharmaceuticals, a leading international biotechnology company. As an analytical chemist, she supports research, development, and clinical manufacturing of best-in-class therapeutics using state-of-the-art analytical techniques like High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography, Gas Chromatography, High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry, Supercritical fluid chromatography, multi-dimensional liquid chromatography and more. Meenakshi is an author on several research articles in the fields of two-dimensional liquid chromatography-supercritical fluid chromatography and accelerated release of peptide from long-acting polymer matrix. Meenakshi is also a team member of the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) representation pillar at Genentech and serves as a University Ambassador for her department to reach out to different universities for recruitment and building connections with eligible students. Meenakshi is the recipient of the 2021 Key Researcher Award at Genentech in recognition of her key contributions to the clinical manufacturing of a new drug candidate. Meenakshi graduated from SJSU with a Master's in Chemistry in 2009. Her graduate research was on the synthesis of inositol-glycans with selective anti-cancer activity. She was the second-place winner of the 2010 Annual California State University Student Research Competition. Outside of work Meenakshi volunteers for HSS, a non-profit social Hindu organization, enjoys spending time with her family, loves gardening and cooking.
Matthew Spangler
Matthew Spangler is Professor of Performance Studies and Interim Chair of the Film & Theatre Department at San José State. His teaching and research publications are in the areas of immigration studies, intercultural theatre, scriptwriting, and Irish Studies. He is also an award-winning playwright. His adaptation of The Kite Runner will open on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre in July. His plays have been produced in London’s West End, off-Broadway, at the Dubai Opera House, and at many theatres throughout the United States and worldwide. Dr. Spangler was the recipient of SJSU’s President’s Scholar Award in 2021, an annual award given to a faculty member who has achieved widespread recognition based on the quality of their scholarship, or creativity activities.
Event Recordings
2024
2023
2022
Winning Presentations Recordings
2026
First Place SJSU Grad Slam
Vaness Ly
Transportation Management, MS
Second Place
Jason Ly
Mechanical Engineering, MS
Audience Choice
Katherine Hamilton
Creative Writing, MFA
2025
First Place SJSU Grad Slam
Tomy Tran
Mechanical Engineering, M.S.M.E.
Second Place
Lydia Durunguma
Applied Economics, M.A.
Audience Choice
Anjali Sharma
Environmental Studies, M.S.
2024
First Place SJSU & CSU-wide Grad Slam
Jennifer Benbow
Bioinformatics, M.S.
Second Place
Timothy Tan
Materials Engineering, M.S.
Audience Choice
Shruthi Srinivasan
Biomedical Engineering, M.S.
2023
First Place SJSU & CSU-wide Grad Slam
Jaedyn L. Rollins
Biological Sciences, Systems Physiology, M.S.
Second Place
Hoang-Vi Vu
Biological Sciences, M.S.
Audience Choice
Peace Lu
Speech Language Pathology, M.S.
2022
First Place
Kate Forrest, Meteorology, M.S.
Second Place
Nathaniel Pergamit, Music, M.M.
Audience Choice
Punit Sundar, Bioinformatics, M.S.
2021
First Place
Lupe Franco, M.S. Environmental Studies
Second Place
Remie Gail Mandawe, M.S. Biological Sciences, Physiology
Audience Choice
Holt Hanley, M.S. Meteorology
