Editor's note: A version of this story first appeared on the UChicago News website.
Long before the sounds of celebration reverberate across the University of Chicago campus this weekend, the spirit of Convocation fills the air.
There’s levity, some anxiety and maybe a bit of wistfulness—but more than anything, a buzz of excitement for all that lies ahead. As the Class of 2025 prepares to graduate, some reflected on their time at UChicago and the varied paths taken in their academic careers.
From immersing with monks to launching startups and fighting the opioid epidemic, these transformative experiences defined their time at UChicago. Discover some of the stories of the College's Class of 2025 below:
Eshan Dosani
After launching automated medical note-taking startup Perspectives Health with three partners in late 2024, Dosani and his group have secured funding to develop a software tool to help behavioral health providers spend more time with patients and less on administrative work. It’s currently being piloted in three clinics in three states across the country.
This undertaking is well-aligned with the work that Dosani, a first-generation college student, has tackled throughout his time at UChicago—reducing the number of “deaths of despair” caused by drug overdose, suicide and alcohol abuse, particularly in Chicago and the Appalachian region of the United States.
“I’m focused on the kinds of suffering that arise when people are cut off from stability—whether that’s housing, treatment or community. These challenges are hard, but they’re not inevitable,” said Dosani. “I’ve tried to use UChicago’s resources to figure out what actually helps and to push those ideas forward.”
Dosani has conducted research on substance use disorders with Prof. Harold Pollack of the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice. He also founded the UChicago Harm Reduction Project, which provided more than 5,000 kits containing the life-saving medicine Narcan to areas hardest hit by the opioid crisis over the past two years.
During his time at the College, he co-published multiple articles with Pollack, worked at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and founded the Appalseed Fund—an initiative that provides security deposit assistance to families in rural Appalachia.
The Fund has already helped more than 30 individuals transition from housing insecurity into stable homes.
Taryn Kim
Kim’s academic work, majoring in public policy studies and sociology with a minor in education and society, was complemented by extensive fieldwork and research within Chicago Public Schools. She wants to understand how to change a traditional, monolithic system to better address the nuanced and comprehensive needs of students.
“One of UChicago’s strengths is not only teaching us these big, complicated, theoretical ideas—but giving us the opportunity to really apply them. As I look back on my college career, I was so fortunate to access education through teaching, through research, through policy making, and through collaboration with districts and schools,” said Kim. “The University has given me so many opportunities and supports that have allowed me to pursue my passion.”
During her time at UChicago, Kim was able to learn about alternative, learner-centered education across the city by collaborating with teachers at the University’s To&Through Project and traveling to underserved schools with the Harris School of Public Policy’s Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab.
She also took internships with Chicago-based nonprofits, teaching refugee students at GirlForward and researching early childhood education at Advance Illinois, with support from UChicago’s John Metcalf Internship Program.
Most recently, she completed an honors thesis exploring teacher retention in Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic, aided by funding from the UChicago Committee of Education’s Marylyn C. Grabosky Prize for Undergraduate Research.
The Pasadena, California, native plans to work in the nonprofit education sector before attending law school, with a goal of leading legislative efforts for national education reform.
George Rose
After graduating with a bachelor’s of science in molecular engineering, George Rose will be staying in Chicago working on Rise Reforming—a startup he created with fellow PME graduate Lucas Zubillaga and rising fourth-year student Jona van Oord.
The company has developed a proprietary process for turning plastic waste into high-quality chemicals used by laboratories around the world, such as carbon-negative dimethyl ether. They’ve already raised more than $400,000 in funding for this novel approach to what they call “the plastic disaster.”
To do this, the trio reached across UChicago, finding partners and mentors in the PME, the College, the Booth School of Business and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
None of this would have been possible in the siloed structure found in many other engineering schools, Rose said.
“I found UChicago PME’s Molecular Engineering major extremely helpful because of its interdisciplinary approach,” Rose said. “In a traditional engineering program, I probably wouldn’t have ever taken a biology class and discovered an interest in synthetic biology. But the strength of the molecular engineering degree is that it forces you to try all the areas out and really find your niche.”
Walton Yan
Walton Yan arrived at UChicago with a fascination for the past—and quickly immersed himself in the religious art and artifacts of ancient Greece and Byzantium.
A triple major in religious studies, art history and Germanic studies, Yan centered his experience in the College around pre-modern Greek art, combining art, theology and cultural memory in his research.
One of the most formative experiences of this time was a 2024 summer research trip to Germany, Italy and Greece, funded by the College’s Jonathan Z. Smith and Charles Gray fellowships. With the guidance of his advisor, Assoc. Prof. Karin Krause, Yan traveled to Mount Athos, a monastic peninsula in northeastern Greece that has been a center of Orthodox Christian devotion for more than a thousand years.
There, he lived among monks at St. Gregorios Monastery, attending the Divine Liturgy and experiencing sacred art not as static museum objects, but as living presences embedded in ritual, devotion and community.
“I was struck not just by what I was seeing, but how I was seeing,” Yan said. “Icons weren’t merely viewed—they were kissed, touched, approached with reverence. The art came alive in ways that fundamentally changed how I think about religious images.”
This fall, Yan will begin his Ph.D. in the history of art at Yale University, where he plans to continue his research on Greek and Byzantine art. He describes UChicago, home to the world-renowned Divinity School, as an unparalleled place to pursue big questions.
“It’s not just that the University taught me to think. It taught me how to listen, especially to voices from the past that still shape our world today,” he said. “There is an urgency to this work—especially in moments of global crisis—because the past often speaks when we are at a loss for words.”
Contributing authors: Paul Dailing and Erin Scott