In 1994, Giselle Sandi received her PhD in electrochemistry and joined Argonne National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. For over 19 years, she led fundamental research at Argonne in the areas of energy storage, materials for hydrogen storage, electrocatalytic membranes, nuclear forensics, sensor development and nanoscale engineering. She was also an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she mentored several graduate students, many of whom are now faculty members at national and international institutions. She also founded a postdoctoral program (350 post-docs from 15 different areas of research), a program that, under her direction, was ranked number five in the country by The Scientist magazine and expanded to include the mentoring of junior faculty. The UChicago Argonne LLC Board of Governors honored Sandi with the Pinnacle of Education Award for her contributions and leadership in establishing Argonne’s postdoctoral program.
She is the recipient of the 2004 Luminary Award for Excellence in Science, Engineering, and Leadership, granted by the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC), as well as several awards from the Chicago Chapter of the Electrochemical Society. She was appointed as the Women in Science and Engineering Program Initiator of Argonne in 2012. Through this program, she provided support for the success of women in science and pushed for gender equity for women scientists. She was also a founding member and past president of and advisor to Argonne’s Hispanic Latino Club, which was developed to mentor middle school students and to help researchers serve as role models to students who are interested in STEM career opportunities.
In 2013, Sandi became the Director of the Office of Rush Mentoring Programs, the mission of which is to support the successful transition of junior faculty to independent investigators. Under her leadership, mentoring programs at the university underwent critical transformations, and currently host programs in mentoring for researchers (junior faculty and postdoctoral fellows), educators and educational scholars, and women faculty. She is also the mentoring liaison for the Rush Initiative to Maximize Student Development, a National Institutes of Health-funded PhD training grant for underrepresented minority students. Sandi has written more than 80 research publications and three book chapters, holds three US patents, and has delivered over 100 invited and contributed talks.