Eight undergraduates honored with Deans' Award for Academic Achievement
Eight Stanford students were honored with the 1998 Deans' Award for Academic Achievement at a reception held Tuesday, April 7, in the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building.
The award, now in its 11th year, is given to extraordinary undergraduates for intellectual accomplishments. Nominations are submitted by faculty and staff members, and winners are chosen by a committee established by the deans of the three schools that offer undergraduate degrees Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences.
The award was created in 1988 by Thomas Wasow, professor of linguistics, during his service as dean of undergraduate studies.
Each award winner received a copy of the citation read at the
ceremony, a certificate and a specially selected book with a personalized bookplate.
The eight 1998 Deans' Award winners follow:
- Jhumki Basu, of Saratoga, a
senior majoring in human biology, has devoted much of her academic
and service activities to the welfare of children. She was one of
the main organizers of the 1996 You Can Make a Difference
Conference, which focused on children's issues, and during her
overseas study in Moscow she conducted a study of the growing
number of children who live and work on the streets of Moscow.
UNICEF later invited Basu to develop a proposal for a program to
address health needs of street children in Moscow.
- Mark Bell, of Atlanta, a
senior majoring in history, has specialized in astronomy and
religious studies research. Bell has been a visiting astronomer at
the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Massachusetts, where he addressed
galactic formation theories, and with funding from a National
Science Foundation grant he carried out spectroscopy and photometry
analyses on data from telescopes in Hawaii and Europe. Bell's
reassessment of Samuel Hill's theory on Protestant Christianity in
Bartow County, Georgia, is expected to be published in the Journal
of Southern Religion in June.
- Sunil Gandhi of Stanford, a
senior with an individually designed major in integrative
neuroscience, has made a significant breakthrough in studying the
effects of attention on visual brain centers. In his senior honors
thesis, Gandhi used functional magnetic resonance imaging to
measure brain activity in human subjects while they shifted their
attention, without moving their eyes, to different locations in a
visual stimulus.
- Heidi Hau, of Los Altos, a
senior majoring in English and minoring in music, has been active
in national and international piano competitions. Hau's performance
highlights include earning first prize at the French Piano
Institute in July 1996, where, as the youngest participant, she
gave a solo recital. Invited to the 1997 Holland Music Sessions,
she studied with internationally renowned piano professors and
performed throughout Holland.
- Allison Himmel, of Darien,
Conn., a senior majoring in biological sciences, was awarded a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship last summer to study
synaptic actions of anesthetics and received national recognition
for these studies, which culminated in preparation of a paper as
first author. She also submitted an abstract to the Society for
Neuroscience and presented her findings at its annual meeting last
fall. Himmel is currently preparing abstracts for both the Society
for Neuroscience and the American Society of Anesthesiologists
meetings this fall. She will be a co-author on at least two
additional manuscripts.
- Alexander Maloney of
Baltimore, a senior double majoring in mathematics and physics, was
recognized for his work in astrophysics. His research has focused
on energy production in quasars, the brightest extragalactic
sources in the universe, which is one of the outstanding problems
in astrophysics and cosmology. Maloney has prepared a sophisticated
statistical analysis of combined data on quasars from several
surveys with different source selection criteria.
- John Maurer of St. Louis,
Mo., a junior majoring in music and biological sciences, completed
a project that combined basic signal processing research and
musical expression. In a one-quarter period, he taught himself the
basics of underwater acoustics, recording and measuring the impulse
response of DeGuerre pool, simulating its transmission and
reverberant properties, composing a demonstration piece of music
and floating a successful proposal for this year's research. He has
continued his research at Hopkins Marine Station, realizing an
Undergraduate Research Opportunities grant in computer modeling of
underwater acoustics. As a composer, he debuted a piece at the
annual New Music Marathon in San Francisco; concert works are
chosen by a jury of professionals.
- Robert Neel of Hanover Park,
Ill., a junior majoring in mathematics, was recognized for his role
in research with Robert Finn, professor emeritus of mathematics.
For the past year, the pair has been working jointly on a
mathematical question that arises in capillarity theory and which
derives from problems of fluid management in microgravity. Neel and
Finn are now preparing a joint paper, "Singular solutions of the
capillarity equation," which they will submit to a major research
journal for formal publication. SR