Eleven McCormick Students Win Summer Undergraduate Research Grants

Eleven students from the McCormick School of Engineering have been awarded Summer Undergraduate Research Grants (URG) for this summer.

The $3,000 grants, which are awarded by Northwestern’s Office of the Provost and the Undergraduate Research Grants Committee, cover living and research expenses for eight-week independent research projects.

The winners are:

• Maxwell Abecassis (mechanical engineering), “Modeling the Fluid Mechanics of Hepatic Perfusion towards the Development of a Novel Cellularized Artificial Liver” (Faculty adviser: Jason Wertheim, surgery)

• Kevin Broh-Kahn (computer science), “Performance and Data Analysis of Parallel Monte Carlo Algorithm for Simulating Dense Stellar Systems” (Faculty adviser: Vicky Kalogera, physics & astronomy)

• Xinya Chuong (chemical engineering; biological sciences), “Transmission of Health and Illness Beliefs and Practices in Chinese Malaysian Culture” (Faculty adviser: Karl Rosengren, psychology)

• Alexander Jennes (electrical engineering), “Chemical Characterization of Iron-Doped Diamond-like Carbon Coatings” (Faculty adviser: Michael Graham, material science and engineering)

• Eric Jiang (chemical engineering; integrated science) “An In Vitro Model of Cancer Cell Migration for Identification of Metastatic Factors” (Faculty adviser: Lonnie Shea, chemical and biological engineering)

• Louis Knapp (chemical engineering), “Investigating Tumor Immune Response Dynamics Using Agent Based Simulations” (Faculty adviser: Joshua Leonard, chemical and biological engineering)

• Brianne Knickel (chemical engineering), “Heterogeneity of Macrophage Polarization in Response to Tumor Microenvironment” (Faculty adviser: Joshua Leonard, chemical and biological engineering)

• Christy Lewis* (environmental engineering), “Photo-oxidation Reactions by Functionalized TiO2 Catalysts with Visible Response” (Faculty adviser: Kimberly Gray, civil and environmental engineering) *funded by ISEN

• Tirth Patel (biomedical engineering), “An RNAi Based Approach to Identify Genes Inhibited During Planarian Regeneration” (Faculty adviser: Christian Petersen, molecular biosciences)

• Michael Sherer (biomedical engineering), “Protein Transport across the Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Cell Wall” (Faculty adviser: Keith Tyo, chemical and biological engineering)

• Rohit Subramanian (biomedical engineering), “Design and Development of Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Contrast Agents” (Faculty adviser: Thomas Meade, chemistry)

Under faculty supervision, the grant winners will immerse themselves in projects on campus or around the world. (Projects that require international travel are available for additional funding.) The grants are available for students in all courses of study.

View the complete list of Northwestern’s 2012 Summer URG winners.