ACADEMIC YEAR FLETCHER AWARD WINNERS 2016

On Tuesday, December 1, four Northwestern undergraduates were presented with the Fletcher Award, a $250 prize funded by the Fletcher Family Foundation, which recognizes outstanding undergraduate students for research conducted with support from an Undergraduate Research Grant. This award is given biannually to recognize both summer and academic year research. The Undergraduate Research Grants committee, made up of faculty from across Northwestern, reviewed nominations for the Fletcher Awards, taking into consideration the quality of the initial proposal, the final research findings, the statements of the faculty sponsor and the opinions of the original reviewers of the proposal. Overall, 199 students received Undergraduate Research Grants for the summer of 2015, and 22 of those students were nominated for this award. Rafael Henriquez (mentor Keith Woodhouse), Melissa Jones (mentor Cynthia Robin), Nicholas Geisendorfer (mentor Ramille Shah), and Matthew Du (mentor SonBinh Nguyen) were the selected recipients.

 

Rafael Henriquez is a WCAS senior majoring in history. He conducted his research project, “Urban environmentalism: black churches of 20th century Chicago” with mentorship from Professor Keith Woodhouse. Through his research, Rafael investigated how black Chicago residents have used communal Christian institutions to engage with environmental issues, and the ways their perspectives differ from conventional environmentalism. His research evolved to focus primarily on the United Church of Christ in Chicago, and the writings of James H. Cone, a theologian whose interpretation of the Bible contributed to the formation of an environmental consciousness at Trinity United Church of Christ. Professor Woodhouse describes Rafael’s work as highly original with the potential to lead to entirely new avenues of historical investigation and connect historical disciplines. Rafael is continuing this research and plans to apply for graduate school and continue his studies in history.

 

Melissa Jones, also a WCAS senior, conducted archaeological studies in Belize under the mentorship of Cynthia Robin. Her project, entitled “Living on the Edge of the Spanish Empire”, mapped the ancient Maya city of Adventura, focusing specifically on three historic sites (two 19th century British colonial sugar mills and Caste War era church) that were built on top of ancient Maya mounds. She collected oral histories from residents in combination with geographical surveys to understand why the historic period colonized the same sites as the ancient civilization. In addition to learning proper survey techniques, Melissa said she learned a lot about troubleshooting and adapting to circumstances when her survey equipment broke and required measurements made by hand. Her advisor, Prof. Robin, said that Melissa brought a unique skill set to the project by applying her training in historical archaeology (the archaeology of the more recent past) to the Maya civilization, and by utilizing her Spanish proficiency to integrate and interact with the local community to obtain oral histories, which granted the research team a more complete picture of the historical past.

 

Nicholas Geisendorfer is a senior McCormick student majoring in Materials Science and Engineering. His research project, “Design and Engineering of Functional 3D-printed Fuel Cell Architectures”, under the mentorship of Ramille Shah, used 3-D printing techniques to fabricate solid oxide fuel cell devices that can provide clean, efficient energy. Prof. Shah said that Nick took ownership of this project not only in terms of fabricating and characterizing samples on his own, but by working long hours to develop new solid oxide fuel designs and methods to fabricate the complex structures. Specifically, Nick demonstrated that “3-D painting”, a 3-D printing technique that builds three dimensional objects by extruding continuous self-supporting fibers layer by layer, is a more efficient and economic process than traditional methods used to fabricate fuel cells. Nick plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Materials Science and has applied for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP), a prestigious award for pre-doctoral candidates.

 

Matthew Du is a senior WCAS Chemistry major whose project, “Catalytic Conversion of Fructose to 5-HMF Using a Porous Organic Polymer” was conducted in the lab of Prof. SonBinh Nguyen. Matthew sought to synthesize 5-HMF, an important precursor in both pharmaceuticals and plastics, from the simple sugar fructose. He proposed using a porous organic polymer (POP) to catalyze this reaction because it is efficient, reusable, and non-corrosive. Matthew has been an extremely efficient researcher during his time at Northwestern, with two first author publications in preparation. His mentor, Professor Nguyen, said the most impressive thing about Matthew is his ability to take a few brief suggestions and turn them into concrete, publishable results that are graduate-level work. Matthew plans to pursue a Ph.D. in the chemical sciences and has also applied for the NSF-GRFP as well as the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship sponsored by the Department of Defense.