Harvey Mudd Recipients of 2024 NSF Graduate 研究 Fellowships

三个太阳2平台的高年级学生，詹姆斯克林顿, Ryan O’Hara and William Yik—and four recent graduates have been awarded fellowships through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate 研究 Fellowship Program (GRFP). Three seniors and 10 recent graduates earned honorable mention.

The GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, 技术, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. 机构. Program participants are seen as future experts who will contribute significantly to research, STEM领域的教育和创新.

詹姆斯·克林顿24岁 (engineering) has worked closely with physics professor Mark Ilton to study spring-driven mechanisms for robotics and has analyzed the impacts of different design parameters on the performance of spring-driven jumping robots. 克林顿正在开发一种机制, 灵感来自弹弓蜘蛛, 为了理解控制, 春天的属性, 缩放会影响系统性能. 他还和安东尼·克拉克合作过, 波莫纳学院的计算机科学教授, to develop a locomotion mechanism that transforms between wheels that operate on flat surfaces and larger, 轮辐车轮适用于崎岖地形和攀登. 去年夏天, Clinton participated in the 研究 Experiences for Undergraduates program at the Carnegie Mellon University 机器人 Institute, 和泽内普·特梅尔一起工作. 克林顿研究了一个可重构的机器人群, developing arm mechanisms for enhancing locomotion capabilities of the robots, 使他们能够爬上爬下障碍物.

Clinton is president of Harvey Mudd’s chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. 他还帮助组织Mudd倡导者的活动, 同侪支持组织, 同时也是MuddSub的联合总裁, a group developing a fully autonomous underwater robot for the annual RoboSub competition. He is a machine shop proctor and makerspace repair steward. Clinton plans to pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara and work on robotic mechanism design. 他对从事学术界很感兴趣.

莱恩·奥哈拉，24岁 (environmental robotics and computer science/mathematics) founded the first-ever, 哈维·马德诊所项目, 由 776年奖学金 他在2023年收到的. His 诊所 team succeeded in its goal of building a robot capable of identifying and removing purple sea urchins from marine ecosystems in order to support kelp conservation efforts. O’Hara is finishing up a research internship with NASA’s Ames 研究 Center, where he developed an algorithm capable of analyzing and predicting the contrails formed by commercial flights; the end goal is to use this work to develop flight plans that minimize contrail formation and dramatically decrease the aviation industry’s role in climate change).

气候行动主义和政策的领导者, O’Hara has written several of the United Nation’s and IPCC’s key climate documents and recently attended the UN’s world climate summit, COP28, in Dubai to advocate for a global transition away from fossil fuels—”which, 兴奋地, we were able to get every country to agree to for the first time in history,他说.

源自哈维·马德, O’Hara will begin a full-time job at UC San Diego working with other researchers to develop nanotherapies and nanoparticles to more effectively deliver disease therapies. He’s interested in the overlap between disease formation and environmental damage and finding ways to treat those who develop life-threatening illnesses due to exposure to pollutants. 从长远来看, O’Hara hopes to pursue an MD-PhD and continue to work on developing therapies to treat those hurt by environmental damage and pollution and influence policy formation that mitigates the health hazards associated with environmental damage and climate change.

威廉·伊克24岁 (computer science and mathematics) has done research at three 机构 while at Harvey Mudd. 从他的第一个夏天(2021年)到2023年春天, he worked in the AMISTAD Lab with Harvey Mudd computer science professor George Montañez studying novel two-distribution hypothesis testing methods for identifying bias in machine learning training data. Yik还与AMISTAD的一位同事一起工作, 辛西娅·洪，23岁, on finding finite-sample bounds for those two-distribution hypothesis tests. 从2022年夏天到现在, he’s done research on climate model emulation with neural networks and climate forecast equity at the University of Southern California with Sam Silva, 地球科学教授, 土木与环境工程, 以及人口和公共卫生科学. 从2023年夏天开始, Yik has worked with professor Maike Sonnewald (加州大学戴维斯分校) at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory on ensemble deep learning methods for subsurface ocean inference. 他的2023年暑期实习是由一个 欧内斯特·F. 霍林斯本科奖学金,

在Harvey Mudd, Yik是一名优秀的学术数学导师, 也是克莱蒙特食脑者的一员, 5C男子俱乐部极限飞盘队. 毕业后, Yik plans to pursue a PhD in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington where he will study data-driven methods for Earth system modeling. 他对研究气候可预测性的职业很感兴趣.