Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

Sarah Khasawinah, a recent graduate from Bryn Mawr College, has been awarded the 2009 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Khasawinah completed both a A.B. and a M.A. from Bryn Mawr.

Khasawinah has also participated in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program and founded The Solidarity Project. The Solidarity Project was founded to create a $10,000 scholarship fund at Virginia Tech in memory of each of the 32 victims from the shootings in 2007.

Khasawinah will use her award to pursue her graduate studies at John Hopkins University in biostatistics.

Three Iowa State University students received awards from the 2009 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). They were Cory Kleinheksel, Joseph Miller and Raathai Molian.

Cory Kleinheksel will be graduating with his BS in Computer Engineering this semester and will begin pursuing his PhD in embedded and sensor systems in the fall. Kleinheksel explains, “My proposed research is for a middleware system that emphasizes modular concepts for improved integration of sensor node data and high-level applications that would use the data.”

Joseph Miller is currently pursuing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His advisor, Terrence Meyer, is thrilled about Miller’s achievements throughout his academic career. Meyer exclaims, “Throughout his career and academic experiences, Joe has developed the ability to think like a researcher. He looks for the part of our understanding that is missing and develops a systematic way to address it. His excellence in academics and research deserves to be recognized with this great honor.” While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Miller was also a recipient of Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship. He later on achieved the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship in 2007.

Raathai Molian graduated with her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State in 2008 and will be attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall to continue her studies in Mechanical Engineering. Molian has yet to specify a research plan, however she will continue her research in the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity at MIT. Molian explained, “The award offers me flexibility and independence in my research. It provides me with a solid foundation to build upon as I earn my PhD.”

Mary Katherine Watson, a graduate student at Clemson University, received an award from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Watson intends to use the funding to further her research in the field of Biosystems Engineering.

Watson exclaims, “I am excited to have received an NSF graduate fellowship and I am confident that undergraduate and graduate research in Biosystems Engineering at Clemson University has prepared me to continue my graduate education.”

Watson will continue her research in Fall 2009 while pursuing a PhD in Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Sarah Latshaw, a graduate student at the College of Charleston, received this year’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Latshaw’s field of study is Environmental Studies and is currently researching “Restoration of Maritime Habitats on the Barrier Island Using The Painted Bunting (Passerina Ciris) as a Flagship Species”.

Latshaw received her bachelor’s in Wildlife Biology from the Warnell School of Forest Resources at the University of Georgia and has a significant background in the areas of wildlife biology and environmental education. Latshaw is currently working under her advisor, Dr. Paul Nolan, on Kiawah Island. She continues to lead environmental tours, scheduling school trips to learn about the local wildlife, and maintain a nature program’s monthly newsletter.

Laura Beasman is a student at John Hopkin’s Institute for NanoBioTechnology. A recipient of both the IGERT grant and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Beasman is currently working in a lab whose research will hopefully lead to treatments and a cure for blood vessel disorders.

Beasman has also accepted an offer from the NSF International Research Experience for Students (IRES). She will work on a short term project in Belgium with one of the top research labs for nanoelectronics and nanotechnology.

“The ultimate goal is to direct the cells to become blood vessels,” Beasman says. Part of their initial success in this project was simply getting the HA, which is a large sugar molecule, to stay where she put it on the surface. Recently, Beasman has started working with adult stem cells. Her work is co-advised by Kathleen Stebe, John Hopkins research professor, INBT affiliate and IGERT program director.

For more information on Laura Beasman and her work at the John Hopkin’s Institute for NanoBioTechnology, please visit http://inbt.jhu.edu/igert-student-profile-laura-beasman/2009/04/22

Four alumni from Oberlin College have received this year’s 2009 National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Associate Professor of Chemisty at Oberlin, Manish Mehta, exclaims, “This year’s outcome of four winners is a healthy one, and it is yet another national recognition of the strength of the sciences at Oberlin, including student collaborations with faculty members.

The following Oberlin alumni were awarded the 2009 NSF GRF:

Peter Collopy, who graduated from Oberlin in 2007, is currently pursuing his graduate studies in the history and sociology of sciences at the University of Pennsylvannia.

Tera Levin, also a 2007 graduate, attends the University of California, Berkeley for evolutionary biology.

Alexander Nichols began his graduate studies in Fall 2008. He is enrolled in a joint Harvard-MIT program for biophysics.

David Smith is pursuing his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Washington, Seattle.

For the next three years during their graduate research, Collopy, Levin, Nichols, and Smith will each be receiving a $30,000 annual stipend and $10,500 for annual cost-of-education allowance as part of the fellowship.

For more information on the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, please visit www.nsfgrfp.org

Cornell University researchers, Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt, have discovered that their algorithm can be used to clarify fundamental natural laws. This is done with the use of a swinging double pendulum and other simple systems.

The algorithm was able to determine through the use of the pendulum, specific fundamental laws, without being provided any prior knowledge of physics. What had originally taken Sir Isaac Newton years to decipher, took the algorithm only a matter of hours.

The algorithm is based on Lipson’s previous research which he conducted with the NSF CAREER Award. The project was a Starfish, a robot with a ‘self-image’, that could repair itself when damaged.

Lipson’s colleague, Michael Schmidt, also worked on the algorithm research project while being funded by the NSF GRFP. In the future, both Schmidt and Lipson hope to use the algorithm to apply to biological systems as well.

For more information on Lipson and Schmidt’s work, please visit the following NSF Press Release.

Douglas D. Osheroff

1968 GRFP Fellow, Douglas D. Osheroff,received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 for discovering the superfluid phase of 3He. He shared the prize with fellow physicists David Lee and Robert C. Richardson.

Osheroff made the discovery of the superfluid phase of 3He while pursing his Ph.D at Cornell University in 1973.

“We discovered our mysterious phase transitions in my Pomeranchuk cell in November 1971, and almost by magic, Venky called me up in early December with good news,” Osheroff explains.

Osheroff continues his accomplishments as a professor at Stanford University in the Departments of Physics. He was also elected to serve on the Space Shuttle Columbia Investigation Panel, and currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Scientists and Engineers for America.

For more information on Dr. Osheroff as well as many other GRFP Fellows, please visit the NSFGRFP Profiles of Fellows site.

Related Links
Douglas D. Osheroff: Nobelprize.org Autobiography
Stanford University Department of Physics Profile
Osheroff’s presentation on “How Advances In Sciences Are Made”

Shane Migliore, a 2001 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, is currently a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Migliore spent 2001 to 2007 getting his master’s and doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT). His specialties at GIT were guidance, navigation, and control of high-performance aerospace systems and design and control of robotic systems.

It is no surprise Migliore went to work for the Sandia National Labs where he helps to develop science-based technologies that support national security efforts with solutions to solve national and global threats to peace. Magliore lead a project performing neuromuscular experiments using a robotic leg that moves more naturally than any other before it.

Robot Leg Takes A Natural Swing

Human-like locomotion requires a mix of complex joint movements–some needing actuation, others needing a more passive approach. Migliore gives the forward swing of a human leg as a prime example. “It’s almost entirely passive with very little contribution from the muscles,” he says. This mix of active and more passive movements, in turn, has created some actuation challenges for Migliore. Whereas traditional robots legs benefit from stiff joints capable of error-free actuation–the better to achieve their precisely calculated trajectories and positions–Migliore’s robotic leg actually takes the opposite approach and has somewhat compliant joints. His biggest design challenge has been finding motors and actuators strong and stiff enough to deal with the forces required to move a human-scale leg while still providing enough compliance for the leg to swing naturally and respond to unforeseen obstacles. One key to the project has been using brushed DC motors from Thin Gap. They’ve eliminated cogging problems that make robot legs seem to index though its cycle of movement rather than swing.

Migliore eventually intends to build a complete biped robot. For now, though, he continuing work on the fundamentals of leg movement, which have implications for both a robot’s overall energy usage and its ability to navigate unfamiliar environments.

Related: NSF Fellows at UT-Austin – Two BYU seniors take NSF Fellowships to MIT

“I want to build robotic vision systems that understand the visual world around them.”

Tomasz Malisiewicz is currently a third year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a recent recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Malisiewicz did his undergraduate work at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating with a dual major in Computer Science and Physics and a minor in Mathematics.

Malisiewicz used his NSF Fellowship to study at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. He is studying Machine Learning and Computer Vision although his main interest is in the later, especially in the application of machine learning techniques for detecting and segmenting objects in real scenes. On his profile for CMU’s Robotics Institute profile page Malisiewicz explains, “I study computer vision, and I am interested in the problems of unsupervised image segmentation and object recognition. I enjoy applying machine learning techniques to vision problems in combination with large amounts of training data. I am also interested in statistical text modeling and knowledge extraction from unstructured text.”

One of Maliziewicz’s most notable accomplishments was when he secured a coveted Software Engineering Internship at Google in the Summer of 2008. There he focused on the computer vision problems Google was encountering. He was also a student researcher from February to May of 2008 at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris as part of the WILLOW Research Team.

Related: NSF Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon Robotic’s Institute, WILLOW Research Team, École Normale Supérieure de Paris