From the 2013 Physics Alumni Newsletter
As mentioned above, Amanda Smelser and Katelyn Goetz were both awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. These Fellowships are for 3 years and provide each student with a $30,000 annual stipend and also covers the student’s tuition costs. According to the NSF webpage this year 2000 winners were selected from over 13,000 submitted applications. Amanda works under Physics Professors Jed Macosko and George Holzwarth, and also works with Professor Allyn Howlett in the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Katelyn works under Professor Oana Jurchescu.
The G. W. Greene Scholarship by the Wake Forest Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa received by undergraduate physics major Kristine Cantin is given to junior(s) with the highest GPA and who have accepted membership in Phi Beta Kappa. The Scholarship was named in honor of the Reverend Dr. George W. Greene, an 1870 graduate of Wake Forest College. The George W. Greene Scholarship was established in 1997 by Dr. and Mrs. Donald Moore. Dr. Moore is Dr. Greene’s grandson and is a 1941 graduate of Wake Forest.
At the Physics Department’s annual awards ceremony last April it was announced that Professor Jed Macosko would receive the Physics Department Excellence in Teaching Award. Also graduate student Jenny Dorand, who is working on a PhD in medical physics, won the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award and Loah Stevens received the Speas award. Loah entered Rice University this fall to begin her graduate studies in physics.
Physics graduate student Matthew Walb won first place in the Southeast Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine’s trainee poster session during the 2013 SEAAPM Annual Meeting. This session allows grad students and post docs to present their work and is held during the annual Scientific Meeting of the SEAAPM. Matt’s poster entitled “The Effects of Low Dose Radiation ± Hyperoxia on Lung Tumorigenesis” was the winning poster out of the largest number of participants to date.
The Wake Forest University Graduate School awarded Jeremy Ward’s poster as a runner-up at the 13th Annual Graduate Student Research Day. This year’s event featured 156 posters. Jeremy’s poster presented a method for patterning organic thin-film transistors by tuning interactions at interfaces between organic semiconductors and device electrodes. This research is performed in Professor Jurchescu’s group and is funded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Dr. Yuan Li, who earned his doctorate in the summer of 2012 at the Nanotech Center under the guidance of Professor David Carroll, was awarded the “Green Talents” in October 2012, in Berlin, Germany. This award is given by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and its purpose is to intensify the global exchange between young researchers in the field of environmental and sustainability research. BMBF annually announces the international “Green Talents”-competition, focusing on young outstanding scientists active in the field of sustainability research. He was among 25 young scientists all over world to receive this year’s award. Yuan Li is the first Wake Forest student to win the award. In addition Dr. Yuan Li’s Ph.D. dissertation was selected as “Outstanding Ph.D. Research” by Springer and published as a book in 2012. It was also highlighted in Nature Photonics.
Physics graduate student Chen Liu won a Young Investigator award at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine held in San Diego November 15-18, 2012. The title of his presentation was Nitric Oxide scavenging by Red Blood Cell Microparticles, co-authored by Weixin Zhao and George J Christ from Regenerative Medicine, and Daniel Kim-Shapiro.