Carissa Roper, PhD was a PANTHER Poster Competition winner in 2025 and earned Second Place in 2024. Where do PANTHER trainees go after their time in PANTHER? In Carissa’s case, it was an industry job.

After completing my PhD in Computational Electromagnetics at UW Madison, I started a job two miles down the road at Type One Energy. Instead of using microwave frequencies to heat up biological tissue, I now use terahertz frequencies to generate plasma. The work I did at UW Madison with the Panther program provided me a strong foundation to understand the multiphysics phenomena that goes hand-in-hand with microwave-based heating, the importance of integrated computational analysis with experimental campaigns, and how invaluable it is to have a smart, dedicated community to support you in a professional setting.