Biology Department Student Prizes:
The William K. Purves Biology Prize is awarded to a junior biology major who combines scholarship with some kind of breadth (intellectual, cultural, athletic or service). The winner for the 2011-12 academic year is Rafer Dannenhauer '13.
The W. A. Brandenburger Biology Prize is awarded annually to a senior biology major for outstanding performance and promise in the field of biology. The Brandenburger Prize winner for the 2011-12 academic year is Adam Novak '12.
The Beckman Scholar in Biology is awarded to Russell Thompson '12 to begin May 2010 and end July 2011.
The Biology Writing Fellows for the 2011-12 academic year are Emily Putnam '12 and Will Chen '12.
Other announcements:
Daniel Garcia '10 Awarded an HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
Alicia Schep '11 Named Churchill Scholar for 2011-2012
Sara Goetz '08 Passed Away
Andrey Shur '11 Named Astronaut Scholar
Alicia
Schep '11 Named Goldwater Scholar
HMC Graduates Join Teach for America
NSF Fellowship Awarded to Study Biology
McFadden and Maloney Awarded Cotrell Funds for Coral Research
Bush Awarded NSF Grant
Daniel Garcia '10 Awarded a HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
Daniel Garcia received an HHMI Gilliam Fellowship, which will support his graduate studies for up to five years. You can read more about the program at: http://www.hhmi.org/grants/
These fellowships are very competitive. Only former EXROP students are eligible, but just a small percentage of those receive Gilliam Fellowships. For instance, last year there were approx. 81 EXROP scholars, but only 9 Gilliam Fellows.
Alicia Schep '11 Named Churchill Scholar for 2011-2012
Alicia Schep has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship for 2011-12 to study computational biology at the University of Cambridge. She was one of 14 Churchill Scholars from the U.S. this year - all but two of whom were from R1 schools. The only other Churchill winner from an undergraduate college this year was Michael Gormally, a chemistry major at Pomona College.
Schep represents 16th recipients of the Churchill Scholarship from HMC and the first time two HMC students have been honored in the same year. Thsi year, only 14 Churchill scholars were selected nationwide from 103 colleges and institutions.
Biology major Sara Goetz '08 passed away on October 23, 2010. The following is taken from her online obituary from the Kitsap Sun:
Andrey Shur '11 Named Goldwater Scholar
Senior Andrey Sergeivich Shur is among 20 recipients nationwide of the 2010-2011 Astronaut Scholarship, the country’s largest monetary award based solely on merit for science, math and engineering undergraduates and postgraduate students. This year’s scholarships totaled $200,000.
Shur, a Los Angeles native, is pursuing a joint chemistry and biology major with plans for a career in biochemistry research. His other interests include robotics, mechanical engineering and drawing. " I plan on pursuing a career as a researcher at a biotech/ pharmaceutical company," said Shur. "I feel that the future is in biology."
The awards are granted by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 by the six surviving original Mercury astronauts. The foundation supports the nation’s global leadership in science and technology by providing scholarships for college students who exhibit motivation, imagination, and exceptional performance in these fields.
Alicia Schep '11 Named Goldwater Scholar
The Barry M.
Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation announced that Harvey Mudd College junior Alicia Schep ‘11 is one of the two Mudders awarded a Goldwater Scholarship.
Schep,
a chemical biology major, plans to earn a Ph.D. in molecular
biology and conduct research in that field then teach at the university
level. She is currently doing research in the lab of chemistry Professor
Robert Drewell on the transcriptional regulation of the TERT gene in
human cells. The TERT gene encodes for the catalytic subunit of
Telomerase, which contributes significantly to the ability of stem cells
and cancer cells to divide indefinitely. “Understanding the regulation
of telomerase is important for understanding how cells become
cancerous,” Schep said.
“I am spending a few weeks at Mudd
wrapping up my research in the
Drewell lab, but I will then be spending most of the summer at NYU doing
research in a lab that focuses on post-transcriptional regulation in
breast cancer cells,” she said.
HMC Graduates Join Teach for America
Harvey Mudd College seniors Ben Keller and Maureen Ruiz (Neuroscience '10) have been selected to join Teach For America, the national corps of top recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity. The organization seeks students who demonstrate achievement, leadership, perseverance, and a commitment to expanding opportunity for children in low-income areas.
Ruiz, the outgoing president of the Associated Students of HMC, is a biology major with a focus in neuroscience. She will join the more than 7,000 corps members teaching in 35 regions across the country and 17,000 alumni working from within education and many other sectors to create the systemic changes that will help end educational inequity. Ruiz will be teaching in Denver, Colo.
Keller said he decided to join Teach for America because he felt it would have a more direct impact than grad school. “I believe that I have an opportunity to use what I've learned at Mudd to make a real difference in the lives of children underserved by our nation's education system,” he said. “I also think that it will broaden my own perspectives and help me to grow as a person.
Keller will be teaching in a charter school in Washington, DC. He plans to resume his electrical engineering education by pursuing graduate studies at UC Berkeley, where he has deferred admission.
After approximately 30 hours of independent work and observation of experienced teachers, corps members attend an intensive five-week training institute and a regional orientation to the schools and communities in which they will be teaching. At the institute, corps members teach in summer school programs, receive feedback from veteran teachers, and complete a regimen of seminars and practice sessions designed to build the capabilities required to advance student achievement. During their regional orientation, corps members complete additional training sessions on establishing clear goals for their students’ achievement, planning for instruction, and preparing to use data to inform their approach.
Keller said his time at HMC served as an impetus to join Teach for America. "The most important aspect of my Mudd education was the development of an understanding that science is not a goal in itself, but rather a means to furthering the betterment of society.”
Admission to Teach For America is highly selective, with 15 percent of applicants earning acceptance to the 2009 corps.
In 1989, Wendy Kopp proposed the creation of a national teacher corps in her senior thesis at Princeton University. Convinced that many accomplished recent college graduates seek work that offers significant responsibility and makes a real difference in the world, the 21-year-old Kopp raised $2.5 million of start-up funding, hired a skeleton staff, and launched a grassroots recruiting campaign. During Teach For America’s first year (1990), 500 corps members taught in six low-income communities. Today, 7,300 corps members are teaching in 35 regions.
Teach For America is a member of AmeriCorps, the national service network, through which corps members are eligible to receive loan forbearance and interest payment on qualified student loans, as well as an education award of $4,725 at the end of each year of service.
NSF Fellowship Awarded to Study Biology
Other recent graduates received honorable mentions this year, including Hallie Kuhn '09 who will study Systems Biology at Harvard University and Ben Schiller '08 who is studying Molecular Biology at UCSF.
McFadden and Maloney Awarded Cotrell Funds for Coral Research
A $157,489 grant from the NSF is contributing to the training of
undergraduate HMC biologists with strong quantitative backgrounds.
Additionally, through research opportunities and coursework, the
project, entitled “RUI: Characterizing Context Dependent Biases
iNucleotide Substitution,” will help introduce students to molecular
evolution and computational biology.
“Nucleotide substitution is an important mechanism by which genomes
change over time,” explained Eliot Bush, principal investigator and
assistant professor of biology. “This project seeks to improve our
understanding of nucleotide substitution by focusing on an aspect that
is currently poorly characterized: how the context of neighboring
nucleotides biases substitution.”
He noted that currently the best-described bias effects are those due to
immediately adjacent nucleotides. However, more distant nucleotides
also affect substitution. “The goal of the project is to develop and
apply a method to systematically characterize more distant context
effects.” The information gathered from Bush’s study can be used to
further improve models of nucleotide substitution.
“Twenty-five percent of HMC’s graduates receive a Ph.D. within nine
years of graduation,” noted Bush. “This project will contribute to the
training of a new generation of biological researchers with exceptional
quantitative skills. An additional benefit of the research grant is that
the software we develop for this project will be available at no cost
to a wide range of audiences via the Web.”
Copyright 2012 Harvey Mudd College