Student and Alumni Outcomes
Melanie Vrabel '03 co-recipient of the EPA’s James W. Craig Pollution Prevention Leadership Award
As part of the DfE Formulator team, Melanie Vrabel received the highly prestigious James W. Craig Pollution Prevention Leadership Award. The DfE Formulator team works with industry to develop safer products, such as cleaning products. You may have seen the DfE logo on products such as the new Clorox GreenWorks line, Scrubbing Bubbles, Shout, etc. Melanie personally works with each of the companies to help them choose ingredients that are safer for human health and the environment.
The James W. Craig Pollution Prevention Leadership Award may be granted to any EPA employee who has brought about fundamental and sustained improvement in the Agency's core programs and processes through the identification and integration of practical pollution prevention solutions to environmental problems. A plaque was presented to each of team member by EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock, at the National EPA Awards ceremony on May 20, 2008.
Juniata's Chem Club received honorable mention from the American Chemical Society in its annual judging of student affiliate chapters. In addition, the Chem Club received one of only 13 Community Interaction grants from the ACS for their innovative Chem Camp.
Meara Kauffman '07 and Joni Longenecker '07 were two of only seven students chosen from over 400 applicants for the University of Hawaii REU site in the summer of 2006. Meara won a Goldwater Scholarship for her senior year and Joni made honorable mention in the same competition. Meara also won a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the 2007-8 year at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, working with Professor Erick Carreira. She will attend the University of Pennsylvania when she returns in 2008. Joni will be attending Cornell grad school.
Leslie Vogt '05 was one of only 8 students, and the only undergraduate, at a GC Conference in Italy in June, 2004. As a result of her performance, she was invited to speak at another conference in Atlanta. Her research on two-dimensional GC was sponsored by Professor Paul Schettler and Frank Dorman '87 of Restek, and funded by LECO Corporation. Leslie also won a Goldwater Scholarship for her senior year at Juniata and spent the 2005-6 year in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship. She is now at Harvard University for graduate school.
Liz Denning '04 and Leslie Vogt '05 were recognized by HyperCube, Inc. as outstanding undergraduates in the field of Computational Chemistry and were awarded personal licenses for HyperChem 7.5, software valued at $995.
Angie Sauers '02has been appointed an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Susquehanna University. During her teaching postdoc at the University of Georgia she invented a technique for using in-class clickers to emulate free-answer exam questions. Already this is being used by a number of people around the country.
Mike Acker '01, Casey Hemmis '03, and Liz Denning '04, are among nine Juniata alumni currently attending graduate school or working in labs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Chris Spiese '04 and Marsha Loth '06 were among 70 students selected from a national pool to present their research to Congress at the Council on Undergraduate Research's 2004 Posters on the Hill event.
Aaron Amick '03 presented at CUR's 2003 Posters on the Hill event. During his first year in graduate school at Boston College, Aaron was awarded the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award.
Jill Danks '02 joined Professor Reingold at the 10th International Symposium on Novel Aromatics, held in August, 2001 at UC San Diego. Jill was the only undergraduate there other than those from UCSD, and her poster was one of 10 (out of over 100) that won an award.
Dan Haeusser and Trina Grove, both '01, published articles in the Journal of Young Investigators while they were seniors. The articles were based on papers they wrote for an advanced Biochemistry class. The references are Haeusser, D. P. HIV in Southern Africa: A Need for the Development of a Vaccine with Cross-clade Activity. Journal of Young Investigators, Issue Four, 2001; Grove, T. L. The Pathogenesis of Psoriasis: Biochemical Aspects. Journal of Young Investigators, Issue Four, 2001.
Erin McElroy '01, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, was awarded a Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant funded by the NIH which will give her full funding for the next three years.
Amanda Grannas '98 received a CAREER grant from NSF in 2006. This is a five-year grant to support herself, a teaching postdoc, a masters student, a high school teacher, and several undergraduate in her research on the Arctic icecap. Amanda is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Villanova University. Amanda and Sally Wasileski '98 were the inaugural winners of the GE Plastics Analytical Chemistry Award at Purdue University. The award is for excellence in graduate studies and carries a plaque and a $2500 cash prize. Sally is now Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of North Carolina, Asheville.
Todd Emrick '92 was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the Polymer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Todd won a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2003 to support his research on novel materials. UMass is widely considered to be the premier polymer department in the country. He is the winner of Juniata's 2005 Young Alumni Award.
Erin Sheets '91, PhD North Carolina, finished a postdoc at Cornell and started as Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department at Penn State in the fall of '02.
Al Schroff '90, PhD Purdue, was named Young Investigator of the Year at Abbott Laboratories Diagnostics Division.
Robbie Iulliucci '90 has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Washington and Jefferson University.
Danielle (Rupp) Gladfelter '87, a teacher in York, PA, was winner of a Sallie Mae award as one of the best 100 teachers in America.
Chris Palmer '85, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Montana, won Presidential Early Career Development Award in 1999.
John Kuriyan '83 is the recipient of the Richard Lounsbery Award - a medal and a prize of $50,000 awarded annually in recognition of extraordinary scientific achievement in biology and medicine, alternating between young American and French scientists. Kuriyan, investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Chancellor's Professor, department of molecular and cell biology, University of California, Berkeley, was chosen "for his critical role in revealing the structural mechanisms underlying processivity in DNA replication and the regulation of tyrosine kinases and their interacting target proteins." The award was established by Vera Lounsbery in memory of her husband and has been presented by the National Academy of Sciences since 1979.
Walt Prozialeck '74, Professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, was the first recipient of the Irwin M. Korr Award presented by the American Osteopathic Association for excellence in basic biomedical research.
Tom Werner '64, a Professor of Chemistry at Union College in Schenectady, NY, was the winner of the 2002 American Chemical Society Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution.
Ralph O. Mumma '56 was the recipient of one of two 2001 International Awards for Research in Agrochemicals. Mumma has published more than 240 papers and consulted for numerous companies during his career as a professor in the college of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State.
John Yates '56 has received the 2007 Peter Debye Award from the American Chemical Society.
Dave Hercules '54 was honored by an issue of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry dedicated to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday. This is the first time in its history that the journal (formerly Fresenius' Zeitschrift fur Analytische Chemie) has so honored an individual who is not a native German speaker. Dave also received the Sutherland Award, Vanderbilt's highest award for research accomplishment.