The California Council on Science and Technology welcomes the third class of the S&T Policy Fellows.

Mandy Arens - Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee. Mandy received a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and a Master's in Veterinary Public Health from the University of California, Davis. She is also completing a Ph.D. in comparative pathology from UC Davis. Mandy has practiced as a small animal veterinarian and has been a consultant working on animal health public policy.

Larry Baskett - Senate Office of Research. Larry has received an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford. Larry was most recently a senior mechanical engineer with Sparkfactor Design, a product design firm based in Palo Alto. He worked under contract with Apple Inc. and has previously worked on robotic aircraft.

Erika Bustamante - Office of Assembly Member Alejo. Erika received a Ph.D. from the Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford University and a B.S in molecular, cell and developmental biology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Le Ondra Clark - Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee and Office of Senator Price. Le Ondra received her M.S. in Counseling and her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She did her pre-doctoral clinical internship at the University of Southern California, post-doctoral fellowship at the UC, Los Angeles, and she also examined the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the mental health system during her policy fellowship at the Center for Policy Analysis.

Stephen Francis - Office of Assembly Member Perea. Stephen received a Ph.D. in cell biology from Yale University and a Sc.B. in neuroscience from Brown University. He concluded his Ph.D. dissertation research in Genentech's Research Oncology department in South San Francisco, where he investigated how cells control the distribution of proteins on their surface.

Matt Holland - Office of Assembly Member Mitchell. Matt received a Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, Davis and an A.B. with honors in biology from Cornell University. He specializes in ecological modeling, using mathematical and computational methods. His most recent research addressed fish populations in the context of changing climate.

Dharia McGrew - Assembly Environmental Safety & Toxic Materials Committee and the office of Assembly Member Wieckowski. Dharia received a PhD from Brandeis University in Molecular biology specializing in vision science and inherited retinal degeneration. Her B.A. in biology is from Mount Holyoke College.

Rebecca Newhouse - Senate Environmental Quality Committee. Rebecca received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in physical chemistry and a B.S. in biochemistry from Western Washington University. She studied the synthesis and characterization of metal nanomaterials for molecular sensing and cancer therapy applications. In addition, she investigated novel solid-state hydrogen storage materials at Sandia National Laboratories.

Alena Pribyl - Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee. Alena received a Ph.D. in Fisheries Science from Oregon State University, an M.A. in Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her area of expertise is Pacific rockfish and by-catch related injuries . Alena was a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center near San Diego.

Ben Rubin - Senate Health Committee. Ben received a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Duke University for his work on how the brain processes information about odors, and a B.A. in Biology and Psychology from Cornell University. As a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology and Brandeis University he has continued to study how the chemical senses guide behavior.