Student Scholars Engage in High-Level Research
Archived article from Apr 26, 2004
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“This is really an ideal situation for students,” Cali said, noting that the 21 openings in the program include scientific research in areas as diverse as biology, chemistry, psychology, physics, neuroscience and nursing. “This is doing things right.”
Edward Kirby, dean of Rutgers–Newark’s faculty of Arts and Sciences, sees the program as an excellent example of the importance that the university places on offering educational opportunities to students from diverse backgrounds. “The MBRS program epitomizes our long history of commitment to training minority undergraduates and doctoral students for careers in biomedical research and training,” Kirby said.
The 21 MBRS students accompany their mentors to academic conferences to observe how professional scholars present papers, and the students share their own work at biweekly meetings. “They learn what people are doing in other labs, and how to present and communicate what they are doing,” Cali noted.
The MBRS program’s success in producing exceptional young researchers year after year provides the best measure of how well this educational strategy works, Cali said. In the past two years, for example, four MBRS students have gone on to post-doctoral study at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the NIH.
—Mike Sutton
Graduate student to represent Rutgers at Nobel laureate meeting
Tim Koeth, a graduate student in the department of physics and astronomy, will travel to Lindau, Germany, to represent Rutgers at a meeting with dozens of Nobel laureates in June. Koeth gained recognition at the university for building a cyclotron while still an undergraduate. The atom-smashing particle accelerator continues to be used in undergraduate and graduate physics laboratory courses.
Since 1951, Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics and physiology/medicine have gathered annually in Lindau to meet informally with students and young researchers. This 54th such meeting at the tiny island town on Bavaria’s Lake Constance will concentrate on the field of physics.
“Tim was one of only 50 U.S. students chosen for this highly selective program,” said Professor Ted Williams, graduate program director for physics and astronomy. “The decision was based upon his research, professors’ recommendations and the outstanding work Tim has done in the university’s graduate program.”
With a wide range of interests that include philosophy, photography and amateur radio, Koeth is now focusing his attention on the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. This summer, after the Lindau experience, he will become the first Rutgers graduate student to take part in the Fermi Joint Accelerator Ph.D. Program, through which he will conduct his Rutgers doctoral thesis research.
Koeth had worked previously as an accelerator engineer at Fermi. He has served as an electronics technician in Rutgers’ physics department and an assistant health physicist for Rutgers’ Environmental Health and Safety department.
At Fermi this summer, Koeth will work on a high-intensity pulsed electron source, the heart of next-generation particle accelerators that will have applications in many areas of high-energy physics, including specialized laser development.
—Joseph Blumberg
Douglass Project’s undergraduates engage in high-level research
As a senior at North Brunswick High School four years ago, Shivani Chopra was accepted to a Pennsylvania college to study neuroscience. "Then I saw Douglass," she recalls. She came to Douglass the summer before her first year as part of Project SUPER (Science for Undergraduates: A Program for Excellence in Research), which gives Douglass College undergraduates majoring in a science, engineering or math the opportunity to do graduate-level research during the summers and in some cases publish their work.
In any given year, 35 to 45 Project SUPER participants begin the program the summer before their first year of college. In their first full year of study, they are paired with a faculty mentor who will guide their research.
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