Graduate E-News

February 2011
 

Graduate Student Highlights

• Aaron Brown, a GSAS mathematics doctoral student, has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. The two-year, $130,000 fellowship will support Brown's continuing research on the classification of basic sets in 3-manifolds and his investigation of the structure of the group of measure preserving diffeomorphisms. "This is a prestigious award for Aaron and for our graduate program," said Boris Hasselblatt, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics. "It is a bit of a job to get figures, but the last one I heard was that there are twenty to thirty of these fellowships awarded each year to the very top students in the country. This award shows that our best graduate students are equal to the very best students elsewhere."
   
• Electrical engineering doctoral student Corey Shemelya was named an "optics superhero" by Edmund Optics (EO) in January 2011. Selected from more than 250 applicants, Shemelya secured third place and a $5,000 grant to support his research. Shemelya, a member of Assistant Professor Tom Vandervelde's lab, is working on developing optical tools for evaluating materials used in photovoltaic and thermophotovoltaic power generation. The tools will support his research into material selection and processing for the fabrication of these two different device structures. While concentrating photovoltaic cells should achieve conversion efficiencies of over 50 percent, which is a significant improvement, the thermophotovoltaic cells could be used to improve the energy efficiency of any device by harvesting waste heat. Read more by clicking here.
   
• Timothy Lawton, a GSAS chemistry doctoral student and member of the Sykes Research Group at Tufts, will be one of only twelve graduate students in the country to participate in the 13^th annual JFC-Fruhjahrssymposium in Erlangen, Germany. The symposium, which takes place this month, brings together young chemists from the northeastern United States and across Europe. Lawton's current research is aimed at probing the interaction of molecules with metal surfaces, and while in Germany he will be presenting a project titled, "Atomic-Scale Studies on Curved Copper Single Crystals." Lawton was chosen to participate in the symposium by the Northeastern Section Younger Chemists Committee (NSYCC) and the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (NESACS).
   
• GSAS urban and environmental policy and planning graduate student Ryan Fattman was sworn in as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in January 2011. Fattman, a Republican, represents the 18^th Worcester District, which includes the Massachusetts communities of Bellingham, Millville, Blackstone, and parts of Sutton and Uxbridge. Fattman is also a former Sutton town selectman, and in 2008 was one of only twelve graduate students in Massachusetts chosen as a public policy fellow by the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government's Rappaport Institute. Read more by clicking here.
   
• A team consisting of GSAS urban and environmental policy and planning graduate students Kris Carter, Eric Giambrone, Eunice Kim, Michelle Moon, and Jong Wai Tommee received the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Planning Association's (APA) 2010 Outstanding Student Planning Award for Best Community-Wide Project. The team, which accepted the award during a luncheon in December 2010, worked with government departments and community groups in Watertown, Massachusetts to produce a report titled, "Watertown Community Path: Linking Watertown's Past to its Future." The report examined the feasibility of developing a multi-use path connecting East Watertown, Watertown Square, and the Charles River, and last July the Watertown Town Council voted unanimously to adopt, virtually without change, the group's detailed conceptual plan for the Community Path. The graduate students completed the project as part of the field projects class each UEP student takes during their first year in the program.
   
• Meron Langsner, a GSAS drama doctoral student and award-winning playwright, is using YouTube to collaborate with Zillah Glory, a critically-acclaimed actress who alternates her time between California and Minnesota. Together, Glory and Langsner have been workshopping a monologue Langsner has written as well as other works in earlier stages of development. "I knew that Zillah was interested in new work and we had a very strong artistic rapport when we worked together in Boston some time ago," said Langsner. "So, I proposed that we could workshop some monologues I was writing and explore both the actor's process in learning a new work and the writer's process while working with an actor." The distance between the pair—which can be anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 miles depending on where Glory is residing at the time—has proven to be a nonissue with the help of YouTube. By posting videos on the site, Langsner and Glory have been able to both explore their own work and document how technology can be used in the dramatic arts. The videos can be viewed by clicking here.
   

Do you have news to share with your fellow graduate students and the Tufts community? If you do, please email Robert Bochnak at robert.bochnak@tufts.edu. We may include your achievements in a future Graduate E-News or in Alma Matters magazine.