Ten undergraduates chosen to receive 2008 Deans’ Awards
Nine undergraduate science majors and one humanities major were recently selected to receive the 2008 Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment.
Stanford created the award in 1988 to celebrate exceptional scholarly achievements by undergraduate students. Faculty and staff submit nominations, and a committee established by the deans of the three schools that award undergraduate degrees—Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences—selects the winners.
The names and areas of academic interest of this year's winners follow:
Christopher Aakre, of Gig Harbor, Wash., a senior in biology who is carrying out his honors research on molecular plant host-pathogen interactions, was honored for brilliant work throughout his undergraduate years, including research on the evolution of phosphoglucose isomerase in butterflies and the dissection of the molecular mechanisms that underlie plant pathogenesis.
Emily Abrash, of Kirkland, Wash., a senior in biology, was honored for combining her efforts in biological research with a commitment to increase awareness about political and human rights. In the lab, she initiated a project that addresses how the rules for creating specialized cells change in different parts of the body. In the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, she won an award for an essay about the Stanford Labor Action Coalition that was later published as an article.
Lucas Berla, of Walnut Creek, Calif., a senior in materials science and engineering, was honored for his graduate-level academic success and independent research in materials science. He has contributed original theoretical work to a problem related to the reliability of thin metal films, and his identification of a new way to numerically solve for the growth of hillocks controlled by nonlinear creep processes appears in a published paper with Berla as first author.
Erica Cherry, of Evanston, Ill., a senior majoring in physics with a minor in mechanical engineering, was honored for her work with mechanical engineering Professor John Eaton to develop a new experimental program on three-dimensional separated flows. "Her experimental results have become a major benchmark for testing computational flow models, and they will be the focus of an international workshop to be held in Graz, Austria, in 2009," Eaton said.
William East, of Charlotte, N.C., a senior in physics, was honored for his research of particle acceleration in astrophysical plasmas. His research results have yielded a paper based on the problem of particle acceleration in clusters of galaxies that will appear in The Astrophysical Journal later this year. The paper resolves the hotly debated issue of production and lifetime on nonthermal high-energy electrons in the very hot intra-cluster gas.
Anna Reichardt, of San Francisco, a senior in chemistry, was honored for her research on ambipolar organic semiconductors. Her studies help others to understand correlations between molecular structure and electronic properties of organic semiconductors, a key to designing new molecules with optimized properties. She has co-authored several publications. Her work will appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Takeo Rivera, of Pinole, Calif., a senior in comparative studies in race and ethnicity, was honored for exceptional contributions to spoken word performance. His honors thesis analyzes spoken word performance and slam poetry as a form of cultural memory, and brings together his passions for spoken word, social theory, critical writing and scholarship. His play, Goliath, was performed last February at the Kennedy Center Regional American College Theater Festival.
Samuel Rosenthal, of Berkeley, Calif., a senior in materials science and engineering, was honored for his contributions to processing techniques used in electronics, photonics and biotechnology. With Alberto Salleo, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, Rosenthal grew zinc oxide nanowires using a solid-source, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition furnace after refurbishing the system, which had been decommissioned five years earlier.
Benjamin Vincent, of Stanford, a senior in biology, was honored for his focused, disciplined approach to research, resulting in novel, ground-breaking work. As assistant curator of the Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD), Vincent's efforts were essential to completing a thorough review of biochemical pathways that exist at SGD pathways used daily by scientists worldwide.
Hao Zou, of Shanghai, a senior in electrical engineering, was honored for his outstanding research in data transmission and storage. "He has delved into one of the most complicated mathematical areas of electrical engineering, one involving very sophisticated concepts in optimization theory and modeling of communications paths, found mistakes in the leading work of others in the field, corrected them and improved significantly the state of the art," said John Cioffi, professor of electrical engineering.
