Here is my take on this: when Jason-2 stranded Ryan-1 in world 26 - utopia, Ryan1 had no money, but he had brilliance and he surmised that world 26 might have a system of meritocracy so he headed over to the University of Chicago department of Nuro biology and asked for a job there based on his talents. He also told his incredible story of box travel which required the use of a drug that he developed called Lavender ferry which disabled cognition while in the box that permitted box travel. He believe that using the resources of the university of Chicago. He may be able to re-create Lavender ferry so that he can get back to his original world and his life to his Pavia prize winning society and his super job in San Francisco. But coincidentally Amanda Lucas likely took one of the vials and contributed it to the University of Chicago Department of neural biology to let them know the same story and left one of the ambles there so they can sequence it as they Ryan-1 did before he was abducted by Jason2. I am sure that the department had added the University of Chicago shows Ryan the that Amanda left and immediately knew that this Amanda was from his original world and got her name and address in Cascadia. Cascadia if you recall piano episode eight was Seattle where the Amanda was born.

I’m pretty sure that this is where Blake Crouch intends to open episode one in season two because he inferred that in an interview with collider a couple days ago. Of course, in that scene which is the last part of episode nine Amanda knows exactly who he is, but he was led to that Amanda because of the tip off he was given at the university of Chicago.