Oral History Interview, Desiree Bates (2313)

Abstract

In her 2023 interview with Troy Reeves, Academic Staff Award Winner Desiree Bates describes her career at UW-Madison as the high performance computing chemist in the Chemistry Department. She describes some aspects of her job, which include overseeing a facility, providing data and results for researchers, training students and researchers how to perform computational chemistry, and teaching a course on basic software and computations. She also speaks about how Covid affected her career, as students and researchers lost access to physical labs. This led to an uptick in interest in computation chemistry, as the process could be performed remotely. Bates also describes how she is in charge of performing service work and details some programs, including the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, the Bridge Committee, Chemistry Opportunities recruiting program, and the Catalysts peer mentoring program. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the Academic Staff Award Winners Project of the UW-Madison Archives and Records Management oral history collection.