Annette Salmeen

Annette Elizabeth Salmeen (born December 7, 1974) is an American biochemist, a 1997 Rhodes Scholar and a gold medalist at the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Swimming career

Salmeen was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was a competitive swimmer by the age of 9, and became a standout swimmer at Huron High School in Ann Arbor, where she was co-captain of the girls' swimming team for two years. While at Huron, Salmeen was three-time state champion in the 500-yard freestyle, and once in the 100-yard butterfly. Salmeen went on to swim at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she was a co-captain, four-time All-American, and a NCAA national champion in the 200-yard butterfly. She won a bronze medal in the 200-meter butterfly at the 1995 World University Games in Fukuoka, Japan. Salmeen qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, where she earned a gold medal for swimming for the winning U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the women's 4×200-meter freestyle relay. In individual competition at the Olympics, she finished 4th in the B Final (12th overall) in the women's 200-meter butterfly.

Rhodes Scholarship

Salmeen graduated from UCLA in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue a Doctorate of Philosophy (D. Phil.) in biochemistry at Oxford University. During her four years at St John's College, Oxford, she was a member of the Oxford University Swimming Club, where she set three long-course records and six on the short-course.

Stanford University

She earned her doctorate in 2001, and returned to the U.S. as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. In 2005, she was named to the board of the United States Anti-Doping Agency and again came back to Stanford University where she teaches as of 2015.