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Chicago  Home Scholarships Donors Member's Corner Membership Scholars Person of the Year ARCS Chicago Alumni Annual Benefit ARCS Light Honoree How to Donate to the Scholarship Fund How to Donate to the Endowment Fund Honor & Memorial Donations |
Scholars
Richard Duncan (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering/PhD) ARCS Foundation Annual Benefit Scholar Richard’s investigation of turbulent boundary layers (air, water, etc., near walls and vehicle bodies) in IIT’s unique high-speed low-noise wind tunnel facility will lead to better understanding of these complex physical phenomena and could bring tremendous fuel and material savings. His work has potential applications to aerospace and naval research, as well as weather, biological, automotive and common industrial applications. Richard is also an enthusiastic participant in student leadership, journalism, government and university administration, and he’d like to combine these and his scholarly skills as an educator, focusing on the interface between technology and education in technical fields.
Tristan Sloughter (Computer Science/PhD) It’s not unusual to find Tristan working on multiple projects at the Information Retrieval Laboratory. One is the development of a fast and scalable search engine for XML built on a relational database that has proven useful not only academically but in the industry worldwide. He is also researching graph matching and searching to find relationships between people, companies, organization, networks, etc. Tristan, who hopes to teach at the university level and continue in research, also presents demonstrations and supervises prototype development and testing. Michael Walker (Chemical and Biological Engineering/PhD) Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America Scholar Michael’s work in the area of advanced gasification-based power generation technologies, such as Integrated Gasification-Combined Cycle (IGCC) and Integrated Gasification Fuel Cell (IGFC) processes, is aimed at the development of a computer-based process simulation model to predict the gasification product and optimize integration with downstream units within an advanced gasification-based power plant. His research will serve to advance process design and changes and to determine optimal plant operation that expedites the commercialization of new technologies. He’ll be able to use his recognized teaching abilities, as well, when he participates in the formation of national scientific and environmental policy. Umair Jabbar (Medicine/MD)
Baxter International Scholar Umair’s research has demonstrated that alcohol hand gels have little or no effect on the spores of Clostridium difficile, a bacterial pathogen spread easily through hand contact and an important cause of morbidity and mortality in healthcare settings. His findings were recently submitted in a first-authored paper to Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. In another study, Umair is also investigating the relationship between acid reflux and lung fibrosis in patients with scleroderma, a debilitating connective tissue disorder. Steven Vander Naalt (Medicine/MD)
Cashel Foundation Scholar The overall goal of Steven’s research is the testing of broken adolescent-sized femurs after they have been repaired with the intention of improving current bone repair techniques. Using synthetic bone models, bones are broken near the middle or near the top and different methods are used in placing long metal pins in their repair; subsequent testing demonstrates that bones broken in the middle are more stable following repair and that pushing pins deeper into the bone does not produce a stronger repair. Ganesh Sivarajan (Medicine/MD) Butler Family Foundation Scholar Stem cell transplantation as a treatment for ischemic stroke is the hope held out by the research that Ganesh is performing. He is evaluating adult neuronal stem cell transplants as a potential treatment for the neurological deficits associated with this debilitating disorder by using computer mapping software to help answer whether stem cell treatment allows rodents to regain pre-stroke skills or provides them with the capacity to compensate for their deficits. His results thus far demonstrate that stem cell treatment improves forelimb function and, therefore, may be useful in human patients following stroke. Rebecca Barak (Plant Biology and Conservation/MA) As coordinator of the Climate Change Education Project linking field research with citizen science and curriculum development for Project Budburst, Rebecca can compare and evaluate volunteer-collected data to that of research scientists. Thus, not only does she provide Budburst with valuable data concerning target plants’ life cycle, she is accumulating information from which she can affect the training, data collection, and costs associated with plant phenology. In addition, Becky is interested in Brownfield restoration, combining ecological restoration and conservation with urban renewal and economic growth.
Genevieve Brown (Engineering Science and Applied Mathematics/PhD) Genevieve is studying systems of equations whose outcome depends not only upon the current state of the system, but the past state as well. In these delay differential equations, some central questions concern how to add feedback terms so that oscillations or instabilities can be stabilized most efficiently. She presented some of her original results at the 2008 SIAM Annual Meeting in San Diego, and at the 2009 SIAM Dynamical Systems conference in Snowbird, Utah. Genevieve also spent several weeks this summer working at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, as part of the NSF-EAPSI program for graduate students. Louise Giam (Materials Science and Engineering/PhD) Louise has chosen to work in the area of nanolithography, which is a field relevant to the miniaturization of electronic devices and the study of biological phenomena like cancer metastasis. Specifically, she uses a technique called dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) where nanometer-sized “pens” are coated with an ink and used to fabricate nanopatterns of materials ranging from small organic molecules to proteins to inorganic structures on a variety of surfaces, analogous to using quill pens on paper. She has recently focused on the transport properties of ink materials in addition to improving nanolithography-related capabilities like printing multiple inks or patterning on multiple length scales. Patrick Hayes (Chemistry/PhD) Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America Scholar The future is reassured when scholars such as Patrick are addressing one of the most urgent environmental issues of our day, water quality. He is using cutting-edge laser techniques to understand why some pollutants move rapidly through soils into surrounding waters, while others are relatively immobile. Patrick’s studies of pollutant mobility have focused on pharmaceuticals, toxic metals, radioactive waste and agricultural residues. In particular, his work is clarifying how antibiotics, which have been detected in drinking water, enter into water supplies. Other studies of the physics and chemistry of mineral surfaces enhance his research. Marshall Lindsey (Chemical and Biological Engineering/PhD) Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies include shifting journey-to-work (JTW) trips from privately owned vehicles to rail transit. By studying the mode-share profile of JTW trips in Chicago, Marshall is evaluating current transit usage and potential for more travelers to use transit, focusing on proximity to rail transit stations. Among his precepts is that increased understanding of residents’ choice to use transit systems has the potential of revealing further emission reduction opportunities and guiding policy to increase ridership. Marshall will use his expertise to incorporate environmental sustainability into market creation and growth in the industrial/business sectors. Rebecca Copeland Marvin (Chemistry/PhD) Rebecca is researching the properties of metal ions in diseases such as malaria and diabetes. These diseases affect millions of people each year and continue to be a growing problem. The malarial parasite, for example, is developing a resistance to multiple antimalarial drugs making treatment difficult. Diabetes is also on the rise and is now among the most common chronic diseases of childhood. Rebecca and her lab aim to understand some of the chemistry involved in these diseases with the hopes of developing novel treatment strategies by targeting metal homeostasis. Daniel J. Trombly (Biological Sciences/PhD) Dan’s current research involves using an ovary culture system to determine how ovarian follicles form in mammals, with a goal of better understanding and treating female infertility. His work suggests that a cellular communication pathway, known as Notch, may be important for ovarian follicle formation. Dan is using nanoparticle technology to further study Notch signaling in the ovary. He has published some of his work in the journal Endocrinology, and recently presented a poster at the 30th Annual Minisymposium on Reproductive Biology. The University of Chicago Emily Bethea (Medicine/MD) Emily is using research skills honed as a University of Wisconsin undergrad to develop methods and techniques that will improve preventative care in medicine. She currently focuses on colon cancer, which unfortunately for many is not identified until it has progressed to a late stage. Her research aims to validate virtual colonoscopy, which can provide a tremendous aid in the early detection of malignant lesions. The value of her work has been recognized and awarded top prize, the Joseph B. Kirsner Research Award for Excellence, at Pritzker’s 2008 Summer Research Program Symposium. She is also first author on "Comparison of Polyp Size and Volume in CT Colonography: Implications for Follow Up CTC", scheduled for publication in the American Journal of Roentgenology (Radiology) in December 2009.
Jennifer E. Dwyer (Computational Neuroscience MD/PhD) ARCS Foundation Annual Benefit Scholar As Jennifer works on her medical degree and Ph.D., she is focusing on a future clinical neuroscience-related practice combining clinical, research, and teaching components. With her emphasis on epilepsy and developmental nervous system disorders, Jennifer is engaged in a research project that uses a combination of electrophysiology and computer modeling to determine how changes in individual cell preferences for specific input frequencies may contribute to the pathophysiology of epilepsy. She hopes to significantly enhance the understanding of epilepsy and contribute to the development of improved therapies for patients. Ross Girshick (Computer Science/PhD) Among artificial intelligence's disciplines, Ross's area of interest is computer vision. He is developing efficient algorithms for computers to automatically identify and locate objects in digital images. Such object recognition could assist doctors in detecting tumors, enable robots to interact within their environments, or identify suspicious objects or behaviors in security cameras. Ross is also interested in the human visual system and looks forward to an interdisciplinary understanding of the fundamentals of vision. In the past year, Ross published articles in the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition and the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. He was also awarded the prize for the best student presentation at the International Computer Vision Summer School in Zachary Gurard-Levin (Chemistry/PhD)
Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America Scholar
Zack is making valuable findings on histone deacetylases—enzymes that regulate cellular processes through modifying histone proteins responsible for maintaining the structure and integrity of DNA and the disruption of which can lead to various diseases and cancer. Having identified one particular enzyme, HDAC8, and the way it interacts with its peptide substrates, Zack is investigating the role of individual enzymes based on their activity throughout the cell cycle. Finally, following the successful high throughput screen of 12,000 molecules which showed one molecule that inhibits HDAC8 activity, he is now studying this molecule in greater detail to determine its potential as a novel cancer therapeutic.
Matthew Wood Horton (Ecology and Evolution/PhD) Matt is mapping genes underlying variations in the chemical ecology of Arabidopsis thaliana (the “model” species for plant geneticists) by quantifying the abundance of chemical compounds that it releases into the soil and whether these compounds influence the composition of the bacterial community in and among the plant roots. In order to further his work and that of others, Matt has designed and implemented an interactive database for use by the Arabidopsis community in general, worked with Argonne to create a computational pipeline for the analysis of metagenomic data generated by pyrosequencing machines, and set about refining methods for high-throughput chemical profiling of roots and other material.
Shahnaz A. Kazi (Medicine/MD) Baxter International Scholar Shahnaz is becoming an outstanding clinician, building upon her magna cum laude degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology from the David Kennedy (Ecology and Evolution/PhD)
David has combined his background in mathematics and biology to model pathogen evolution. Furthermore, he is genotyping virus strains in order to compare the virulence of different pathogens and identify the genes responsible for these differences. As a result, his research will be able to predict the evolution of these virulence genes, presently in a test population (insects) by informing and modifying existing control measures. The techniques developed here will then be applicable to studying the evolution of virulence in any infectious disease system, including human diseases. It is David’s intention that, ultimately, this information could prevent the emergence of new harmful diseases, as well as mitigate the harm caused by existing diseases.
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