2009 Undergraduate Award Winners

May 15 2009

Prof. Irving Herman presented three undergraduate awards to outstanding seniors in Applied Mathematics, Applied Physics, and Materials Science and Engineering at the annual SEAS Senior Awards Dinner on May 5, 2009 in the Low Rotunda. Each award winner this year is an outstanding student with a GPA above 4.0. The winners received a plaque and a check for $250, and have their names inscribed on plaques in the department headquarters and are listed on the department web site.

Stanley Snelson
Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Winner 

The 2009 Applied Mathematics Faculty Award winner, Stanley Snelson, has excelled in the classroom and in research. He has worked with Prof. Guillaume Bal on two intriguing projects, last year on an extension of a theoretical result in inverse transport theory and this year on variance reduction techniques in Monte Carlo simulations for transport equations. He is also this year’s class salutatorian. After graduation he will enter the doctoral program at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU.

Michael Shulman
Applied Physics Faculty Award Winner

The 2009 Applied Physics Faculty Award winner, Michael Shulman, is one of the best students to graduate from the Applied Physics program. He has an outstanding GPA and has taken a number of advanced graduate level physics classes. He has the rare combination of being very hands-on with strong analytic skills at the same time. He thinks independently and has excellent physics intuition. His extracurricular interests include running and bicycling. Combining his academic and extracurricular interests, he gave a beautiful presentation on the physics of bicycles in the Applied Physics Seminar this past fall. In the fall, he will enter the doctoral program in physics at Harvard.

Vivek Singh
Materials Science & Engineering: Francis B. F. Rhodes Prize Winner

The Francis B. F. Rhodes Prize was established in 1926 by Eben Erskine Olcott of the Engineering Class of 1874, in memory of his classmate, Francis Bell Forsyth Rhodes, School of Mines, 1874, and is awarded from time to time to the member of the graduating class in materials science and metallurgical engineering who has shown the greatest proficiency in his or her course of study.

The 2009 Rhodes Prize winner, Vivek Singh, is a 3/2 student in Materials Science and Engineering. He arrived at Columbia in the Fall of 2007 after completing a B.S. degree in Physics at Adelphi University in Long Island. He has been on the Dean’s List each semester, has carried out research on laser recrystallization in Prof. James Im’s lab, and has been active in Engineers Without Borders at Columbia. Next year, he will begin his Ph.D. studies at M.I.T. in Materials Science and Engineering, with a specialty in Electronic Materials.

Haimovich Receives Honorable Mention for Goldwater Scholarship

Adrian Haimovich, an Applied Mathematics junior from North Brunswick, NJ, received honorable mention in this year’s Goldwater Scholarship competition. The Goldwater, funded by the federal government, is the premier scholarship for undergraduates in the sciences and mathematics who plan to pursue a Ph.D. 

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