STUDENT AWARDS Goldwater Scholars
Kenny Groszman and Eric Sung were among three Rice students and 260 undergraduates from across the country to be named Goldwater Scholars for the 2015-16 academic year. They will receive up to $7,500 toward tuition, fees, books and room and board. The scholarship encourages outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. Kenny Groszman
Groszman is a Hanszen College junior majoring in bioengineering and minoring in computational and applied mathematics. He plans to obtain a Ph.D. in bioengineering and specialize in synthetic biology, with the ultimate goal of conducting synthetic biology research and teaching at a university. He was part of a student engineering team that designed a rack to transport three bikes at once via a city bus in Houston—a project that won the Texas Department of Transportation’s College Challenge. He is currently external vice president, former secretary and Beer Bike coordinator for Hanszen College and a former peer academic adviser.
Eric Sung
Sung, a Lovett College senior, is majoring in computational and applied mathematics and mathematics, and minoring in neuroscience. He wants to earn a Ph.D. in neuroscience and conduct research in neuroscience focusing on learning and memory from a computationally motivated perspective. He hopes to apply this research toward understanding the neural causes of neuropsychiatric disorders and how they manifest in patients. Sung currently works in a lab at Baylor College of Medicine, where he’s studying a neuron found in locusts that helps mediate escape behavior. The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency that honors the late Barry M. Goldwater, who represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate.
NSF GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program has funded almost 50,000 graduate research fellowships out of more than 500,000 applications since it was founded in 1952. The purpose of the program is to “ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforce its diversity.” The program supports outstanding students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees with a $32,000 annual stipend for three years plus $12,000 annual tuition reimbursement to the student’s institution. The Rice Engineering 2015 list of winners includes four seniors, six graduate students and three alumni. They are: Laura Blumenschein ’15, Mechanical Engineering Annicka Evans, Bioengineering graduate student Agustin Flores, Statistics graduate student Spencer Kent ’15, Electrical and Computer Engineering Christopher Metzler, Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student Kamal Shah ’15, Bioengineering Ravi Sheth ’15, Bioengineering Rebecca Smith, Computer Science graduate student Eduardo Villarreal, Materials Science and NanoEngineering graduate student Ryan Warnick, Statistics graduate student
Engineering alumni who won the award: Joscelyn Mejias ’13, Georgia Institute of Technology Julie Walker ’14, Stanford University Alicia Allen ’09, University of Texas at Austin
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