January 29, 2019

Congratulations to Drexel's nominees for the 2019 Goldwater Scholarship – Kristine Loh, James Minock, Mark Petrovic, and Johannes Wagner.

These students were selected to represent Drexel University in the national Goldwater Scholarship competition. We wish them the best of luck!

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Kristine Loh (BS/MS Chemical Engineering/Materials Science and Engineering '20, Honors) is a junior chemical engineering student also pursuing a master's in materials science and engineering. She began her undergraduate research experience in Drexel's STAR program studying antimony sulfoiodide as a solar cell absorber material in the Nanomaterials for Energy Applications and Technology (NEAT) Lab under Dr. Jason Baxter. This experience confirmed her passion for chemical engineering, and she continued working in Dr. Baxter's lab studying nanomaterials for photovoltaic applications. Currently, she serves as the liaison between the NEAT Lab and the Drexel Nanomaterials Institute under Dr. Yury Gogotsi, investigating optoelectronic behavior of MXenes. After graduation, Kristine plans to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering and become a research professor. Outside of research, she is actively involved in Drexel's Society of Women Engineers and enjoys volunteering at K-12 outreach events in her spare time.

James Minock (BS Physics ‘20, Honors) is a fourth year physics student minoring in computer science. James began research in the STAR Scholars Program with Professor Michelle Dolinski for the Precision Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment (PROSPECT) Collaboration. He worked on optimizing detector design. For his first and second coops, James continued work with PROSPECT. His research work includes: development of computational analysis methods, data analysis of background signals, and assembly of detector components at Yale University. For his third coop, James will be an application developer for University of Pennsylvania's Center for Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics working with their Cancer Imaging Phenomics Toolkit. James plans to pursue a PhD in physics, focusing with research in experimental neutrino physics.

Mark Petrovic (BS/MS Materials Science and Engineering '21, Honors) is a pre-junior materials science & engineering student interested in tissue engineering and medical devices. Mark first got involved in biomedical research in the Winter of his freshman year in Dr. Michele Marcolongo's lab. Since then, he has continued working on new materials for bone scaffolding, both as a full-time researcher during the STAR program and part-time during the academic year. During his first co-op, he studied monoclonal antibody aggregation and liposome stability in the Materials Science Group at Bristol-Myers Squibb. For his second co-op, he plans to continue his research in Dr. Marcolongo's lab, as well as assisting with tissue sampling for orthopaedic surgery research at the University of Pennsylvania. Mark plans to pursue and MD/PhD with a focus in materials science or bioengineering with the goal of improving outcomes of patients requiring organ transplant or musculoskeletal reconstruction.

Johannes Wagner (BS Physics ’20, Honors) is a junior physics student minoring in mathematics and computer science. Johannes started his research career with PROSPECT, a reactor antineutrino experiment, under Dr. Russell Neilson. He spent his first co-op designing a simulation for light pulse data sets and working on PMT timing analysis for calibration of the PROSPECT detector. For his second co-op he worked on data analysis and hardware for Dr. Neilson’s other project PICO, a dark matter direct detection experiment. This year he will be going to Michigan State University to work with their IceCUBE group under Prof. Claudio Kopper, performing astrophysical source analysis using “big data” filtration techniques and machine learning. Johannes plans to pursue a PhD in physics, focusing on computational particle physics.

• Michelle Dolinski, Associate Professor, Physics
• Dave Goldberg, Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Studies and Professor, Physics
  
• Ekaterina Pomerantseva, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
• Maureen Tang, Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering 

The Goldwater Scholarship was established by Congress in 1986, with the goal of recognizing the nation's top undergraduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields. The purpose of the Foundation is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields.

For more information about the Goldwater Scholarship, please email the Center for Scholar Development.