GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE
 Three Clark School students were honored with 2009 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Fellowships at a U.S. Supreme Court reception. Natalie Salaets, a senior electrical engineering student working with Associate Professor Pamela Abshire (electrical and computer engineering [ECE]/Institute for Systems Research [ISR]), won for helping to create an improved, interactive rehabilitation training system for post-stroke patients. Brendan Casey (bioengineering [BioE]), advised by Professor Peter Kofinas (BioE), won for helping to develop a synthetic blood-clotting polymer hydrogel that can be used to control surgical or traumatic bleeding without the need for stitches or sutures. (Nathan Siwak, a graduate student advised by ISR Director and Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR), was recognized in the spring 2009 edition of Significant Accomplishments.)
 A student team based at the Clark School has broken last year's record for amateur radio high altitude ballooning. The team's super-size helium-filled weather balloon rose up to 128,379 feet before bursting. The team included Dru Ellsberry (graduate research assistant in the Clark School's Space Systems Lab), Connie Ciarleglio (aerospace engineering [AE] junior), Ben Phillips (visiting summer intern from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore), and Matt Griffith and Dave Thoerig (visiting summer interns from Hagerstown Community College). They were sponsored by the Maryland Space Grant Consortium. The team's faculty advisor was Visiting Assistant Professor Mary Bowden (AE).
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GRADUATE
 ECE Ph.D. student Suzanne McDonald was selected to receive a 2009 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award. This 12-month fellowship includes a stipend of $30,000.
 Jennifer Wolk (materials science and engineering [MSE]), advised by Professor Lourdes Salamanca-Riba (MSE), won the 2009 Naval Sea Systems Command's Women Moving Forward Award for her work in friction stir welding, an alternative to traditional gas-metal arc welding.
 Graduate student and Fischell Fellow Matthew Dowling (BioE) was named one of the Maryland Daily Record's 2009 Innovators of the Year. Dowling, advised by associate professor Srinivasa Raghavan (chemical and biomolecular engineering [ChBE]), was honored for the blood-clotting "nano-Velcro" technology produced by his startup company, Remedium Technologies, Inc.
Graduate student Bobby Bruce (MSE), advised by Professor Gottlieb Oehrlein (MSE), won the 2009 American Vacuum Society (AVS) Student Merit Award for a talk he delivered at the AVS 56th International Symposium and Exhibition. Bruce's winning presentation, titled “On the Absence of Post-Plasma Etch Surface and Line Edge Roughness in Vinylpyridine Resists," described his research on the origin of plasma-induced surface roughness in polymer films used in the manufacturing of integrated circuits, and how both polymer structure and plasma processing parameters affect the overall quality of the finished product.
Sophoria Westmoreland (mechanical engineering [ME]) has recently been announced as the National Society of Black Engineers 2010 Graduate Student of the Year. She received the award for her research on engineering designers’ activities during the stages of design, in order to provide a framework for curriculum improvements in engineering education. She is also researching the cognitive activities of engineering design students in the Capstone Courses.
ME graduate student Rishi Raj was awarded second position out of 26 posters presented in the First Annual Society-Wide Student Poster Competition at the 2009 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.
ME graduate student Vidyu Challa, advised by Professors Michael Pecht and Michael Osterman, was awarded the Phi Delta Gamma fellowship for 2008-2009. The $1,000 award is offered to a graduate student who "best exemplifies interdisciplinary scholarship achievement." Challa also was awarded an Ann Wylie Dissertation Fellowship for 2009-2010 and a Graduate Summer Research Fellowship for 2009.
ECE graduate student Soujanya Kedilaya has been selected as a 2009 Texas Instruments Scholar. Kedilaya is an advisee of Professor Shuvra Bhattacharyya (ECE/University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies).
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UNDERGRADUATE
 Awais Raza (AE) was named the recipient of the Boeing Engineering Scholarship by the Golden Key International Honor Society.
 Heather Bradshaw (AE) earned first place at the 39th International Conference on Environmental Systems for her poster on the measurement of motion properties for a space suit's morphing upper torso. Significant contributions to and support for this project came from Professor J. Sean Humbert, his graduate students and Vicon Motion Systems.
 Sophomore Zachary Russ (BioE) was invited to pen a guest column for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN). GEN's opinion editor asked Russ to submit a story after the Journal of Biological Engineering published an essay by Russ. Russ's article for GEN, "Preserving the Integrity of Statistics," discusses the challenge of working with and proper use of statistics in bio-oriented research.
Sophomore Mary Yanik (ChBE) spent her summer on a project that combined technology, education and social change with a trip to the other side of the world: she was part of a One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project team in Ambatoharanana, Madagascar. OLPC is dedicated to providing the world's poorest children with tough, low-cost laptops that are capable of connecting to the Internet and are pre-loaded with software and features designed to promote creativity and collaborative learning.
Clark School students were awarded 23 of 150 national Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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