Six Owls earn prestigious Fulbright Scholarships

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

Six Owls received Fulbright Scholarships to study and work abroad in the coming year. Three students who picked up their bachelor’s degrees last week, one who received her Master of Architecture degree, a graduate student in chemistry and a Rice alum will travel to all corners of the globe to conduct research, teach and “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”

The Fulbright Scholarship program is sponsored by the U.S. State Department and allows seniors, recent graduates and graduate students to study, teach and conduct research in a foreign country. Scholars are chosen for their academic merit and ambassadorial potential. This year’s Rice recipients are:

	LAUREN BABA

Lauren Baba ’11, Brown College, will conduct her own research at the Centre for Aboriginal Health Research at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The center focuses on community health, health promotion and public health policy topics that specifically affect the First Nations population in Canada.

“My project is going to focus on comparing the Canadian and American health policies for their respective aboriginal populations, the First Nations and the American Indians,” she said. “The study of health disparities between aboriginal populations and the general population of each country will also be a large component of my research. Finally, I will also take this opportunity to learn about the aboriginal culture of the tribes that are local to Victoria, B.C., the Straits of Salish and Coast Salish people.”

MINA FITZPATRICK

Mina Fitzpatrick ’11, Baker College, will travel to South Korea on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship scholarship.

“The way the program works is you have six weeks of orientation/training and then they place you in a school somewhere in South Korea. The program is great because you get experience working in schools and assisting teachers but it also allows you some flexibility to work on your own projects, get internships or help out in other places around the school. I am very excited to be staying with a host family, improving my Korean, getting to eat delicious Korean food and learning as much as I can about Korean culture.”

	CHRIS JONES

Chris Jones, a graduate student in chemistry, will be working on a real-world problem related to his iron oxide nanoparticle research, namely the arsenic contamination of Hungarian drinking water.

“Arsenic contamination of drinking water can eventually result in an array of serious chronic illnesses, and Hungary has one of the worst situations in Europe,” Jones said. “The European Union has stipulated that as a member state, Hungary must conform to certain water standards, including an arsenic level of less than 10 parts per billion. As such my main goal will be to increase awareness of nanotechnology’s usefulness in combating this arsenic problem (our lab has had some experience working on a similar problem in Mexico). This will include a chemistry aspect as well as a people aspect — my time will be divided between demonstrating the technology, adapting it to Hungarian needs and then working with people to transfer its capabilities to Hungarian organizations in the best way possible.”

Jones’ collaborators in Hungary are at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Corvinus University.

AMY LANTEIGNE

Amy Lanteigne ’11, Hanszen College, also will be going to Korea on an English Teaching Assistantship. She will begin in Goesan, where she will take a six-week training program. At the end of her training, she will be assigned to an elementary, middle or high school in a city or town outside of Seoul, where she will spend the remainder of her grant period teaching English.

“The Fulbright program places heavy emphasis on ambassadorial work,” she said, “so I will also be encouraged to engage with my host community by learning the Korean language and exploring the culture.”

	DOUGLAS MATA

Alumnus Douglas Mata ’07 will head to Madrid in the fall to do research on the molecular pathology of breast cancer, the leading cause of cancer death among women in Spain and Europe, where an estimated 10 percent of women will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes, he said.

“I will undertake a project evaluating the mechanisms of resistance to breast cancer therapy,” Mata said. “A critical problem faced by women with cancer is a decline in the efficacy of chemotherapeutic medications that develops with their prolonged use during treatment, analogous to the manner in which bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.”

Mata will conduct research at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and M.D. Anderson International. In addition, he hopes to be involved in the clinical trials under way at the hospital in Madrid.

JESSICA TANKARD

Jessica Tankard, who received her Master of Architecture degree from Rice May 14, will be a guest researcher for nine months at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.

“The Fulbright grant will give me the ability to do self-structured research from the standpoint of a designer into how energy generation and energy efficiency affect the built environment, and how they can be brought into design,” she said. “Specifically, I’m focusing on how places that don’t always get a lot of sunlight, such as the Netherlands, can incorporate energy microgeneration into the built environment and what design opportunities this opens up.”

Tankard’s research will culminate in a book and exhibition after she returns to the United States.