2010 Undergraduate Award Winners

Prof. Irving Herman presented undergraduate awards to three outstanding seniors in Applied Mathematics, Applied Physics, and Materials Science and Engineering at the annual SEAS Senior Awards Dinner on May 4, 2010 in the Low Rotunda. Winners received a plaque and a check for $250, have their names inscribed on plaques in the department headquarters, and are listed on the department web site.
 

Seth Davidovits

Applied Physics Faculty Award Winner

Seth is one of the best students we have had in our Applied Physics program. He worked in Prof. T. S. Pedersen’s CNT lab, where he made MiniCNT glow brighter than ever and explained some puzzling data from that device which had perplexed other bright students. He has been the SciCortex APAM cluster administrator for over a year, has served as Vice President of the CU Engineers Without Borders, and has been on the Dean’s list every semester. He was accepted at several top graduate schools and will enter the Ph.D. program in Princeton where he plans to study computational plasma physics. Seth is the recipient of the SEAS Illig Medal, a prestigious Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, and is this year’s SEAS class valedictorian!
 

Wayne Shu
Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Winner

Wayne has a GPA of 3.98 and has been on the Dean’s list every semester in his tenure at Columbia. His applied mathematics presentation was on “Data Compression and Gambling.” He will start working at Google this summer, and has promised to return to present a seminar about his life in industry in an effort to promote “math” being “applied.”
 

Grace Chen
Materials Science and Engineering: Francis B. F. Rhodes Prize Winner

Grace is an accomplished pianist and flautist and has performed with the CU Wind Ensemble. She has worked with Prof. I. C. Noyan’s group on the theory of line broadening for the past four semesters, which evolved into her senior thesis. She loves mathematics and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA in the summer of 2009. She has been on the Dean’s list every semester in her tenure at Columbia. After graduation she will be attending the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She hopes to specialize in patent law.