Ph.D. student Caitlyn Fick (Srivastava group) is one of only five UCLA Ph.D. students selected for the 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award for Teaching Assistants.
According to the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, the award celebrates Teaching Assistants who demonstrate a pattern of effective teaching that incorporates current pedagogical best practices, aims to inspire and challenge students, and supports the success of all students. The award committee was impressed by Fick’s innovative teaching methods and her ability to inspire and motivate learners.
As the recipient of this award, Fick will be recognized at the annual Andrea L. Rich Night to Honor Teaching event in the Fall, and her achievements will be shared with the wider campus community. Additionally, she will receive $2,500 and a certificate in recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching. She will also receive a $30,000 Dissertation Year Fellowship Award from the UCLA Division of Graduate Education.
Before joining the UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry graduate program in 2020, Fick received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Scripps College, where she was a student researcher in Professor Aaron Leconte’s group. At Scripps, her research focused on the creation and screening of mutant luciferase enzymes for improved bioluminescent imaging, which may potentially be used in bio-tagging procedures. Fick also worked at the Los Alamos National Lab as a post-bachelors student in between her time at Scripps and UCLA.
Fick currently works in Professor Samanvaya Srivastava’s lab in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department of the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science conducting polymer synthesis, specifically comb polymers. Her work is interdisciplinary and seeks to address common issues in human health, disease, and eventual diagnosis and treatment.
Fick was recently one of ten finalists in the March 12, 2025 UCLA Grad Slam competition. Her 3-minute presentation was titled “Combs: For More Than Just Your Hair”.
In 2023, Fick was chosen by the UCLA Collegium of University Teaching Fellows (CUTF) program to teach a lower-division seminar titled, “PFAS, pesticides, and plastics: how revolutionary chemistry has changed our past and future”.
Fick is active in outreach to diverse communities, including serving as Booth Coordinator on the Exploring Your Universe (EYU) board for the past two years. In 2023, she also received the department’s inaugural Sammy T. Mensah Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. This past year, she served as a Co-President of the UCLA Organization for Cultural Diversity in Science and was previously President of the UCLA Graduate Society of Women Engineers.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
