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Biological Sciences
 Becky Frederick worked in the laboratory of Dr. Elizabeth Jones for most of her undergraduate career. Her undergraduate research culminated in an honors thesis entitled: “Regulation of Arginine Storage in the Vacuole of Saccharomyces cerevisiae”. Becky had the opportunity to present her results to regional and national audiences. She was selected as a 2000 Beckman Research Scholar and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Honorable Mention. She plans to complete her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of Utah.
Chemistry
 Doug Mitchell, senior chemistry major, is working to help create more environmentally friendly technologies. He is part of the research efforts in the Collins group in the emerging field of Green Chemistry to replace highly polluting chlorine bleaches that are widely used in the laundry and paper industry. Doug's research focuses on the synthesis of better and greener catalysts. Doug is currently co-authoring two papers describing results of his research efforts, which span almost three years, that will be submitted for publication to two of the leading scientific journals, Science and Nature.
Mathematical Sciences
Since the Fall of 1998, Dr. Reha Tütüncü of the Department of Mathematical Sciences has been offering a new and unique course titled "Projects in Applied Mathematics". This unconventional course has no lectures, exams, or homework! Teams of 3-5 students work on projects sponsored by local government, industry, and non-profit organizations.
Erica, Julie, Sachi and Catherine worked on a project for Federated Investors, which is a mutual fund management company located in Pittsburgh. The project focused on retention rates for different asset and broker categories using advanced data analysis techniques and software. The purpose of the project was to investigate the root of unnecessary sales costs by determining which of Federated's markets, funds, classes, firms and dealers have the best and worst retention rates. This will allow Federated to focus its sales efforts towards assets that provide long-term profitability.
Physics
 Aria Meyhoefer, a physics senior and member of professor Jeff Peterson's research group, went to the South Pole to work on Viper, one of the microwave telescopes searching the sky that was built on Carnegie Mellon campus by undergraduates, among others. Carnegie Mellon astrophysicists are looking into the sky to see variations in the cosmic microwave background – the remnants of the big bang. The South Pole is a great place to do astrophysics because it has a very dry atmosphere and microwaves that interact very well with water molecules (which is why they are so useful for cooking), do not get much absorbed into the atmosphere. From time to time other undergraduate researchers from Carnegie Mellon visit the South Pole to join the team's work.
Interdisciplinary
 Jeff Walch, a senior completing a Bachelor of Science and Art degree in Biological Sciences and Architecture, has developed and implemented an interdisciplinary project that spans architecture, design, psychology, business and science. As head of a team of students from several of these disciplines, Jeff has been leading the experiment, “The Effect of Hospital Room Color on the Recovery of Ischemic Stroke Patients”. Their work attempts to determine whether an analogous red hue hospital room or neutral white color scheme is optimal for recovery and health outcomes in a stroke patient population.
The group has been successful in securing grant funding and their work has been presented to national audiences and won first place honors at the 2001 American Institute of Architecture Students National Research Honor Awards. Jeff has recently been named to the honorable mention category of the USA Today All-USA College Team. |
