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Two recieve Goldwater scholarships
Two students in the George R. Brown School of Engineering are recipients of prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships for the 2007-2008 academic year.
The scholarships awarded to Emily Fortuna, in computer science, and Shuai "Steve" Xu, in bioengineering, will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board, up to $7,500 per year. Theirs are among the 317 scholarships given this year to undergraduate sophomores and juniors in the United States by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, honoring the late U.S. senator from Arizona.
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Emily Fortuna |
Shuai "Steve" Xu |
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Fortuna, a sophomore, spent last summer as an intern at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she built a cognitive model of second-language learning in the form of a web application and database framework.
Fortuna expects to enter graduate school after graduation from Rice in May 2009. Her faculty advisor is John Greiner, lecturer on computer science.
"I want to become a professor of computer science, specializing in natural language and artificial intelligence. I want to combine human psychology with computers. Advances in this area will not only help us develop tools that interact with people, but can also help us learn to understand ourselves," Fortuna said.
Xu, a sophomore, is a Rice/Baylor Medical Scholar. He has guaranteed acceptance into the Baylor College of Medicine after graduating from Rice in May 2009. He plans to study clinical medicine at Baylor and pursue a Ph.D. in bioengineering, with a focus on tissue engineering, at Rice.
"As for a residency," Xu said, "I'm very interested in cardiothoracic surgery. I hope to translate advances in tissue engineering research into improved treatment options for patients, both as a medical scientist and a surgeon."
In the fall, Xu worked on miniaturizing collagen static-tension tissue molds. Miniaturization reduces experimentation costs for tissue-engineered heart valves by lowering reagent usage. Initial results indicated that the new designs were effective replacements. Xu's faculty advisor is Jane Grande-Allen, assistant professor of bioengineering. This summer he will be an Amgen Scholar at Columbia University, studying the biological effect of biomechanical injury to tissue.
The Goldwater scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,110 mathematics, science, and engineering students nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. In its 19 years, the Goldwater Foundation has awarded 5,202 scholarships totaling about $51 million.
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