Every year, the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) Alumni Network offers summer awards to help undergraduates defray costs related to conducting research, attending conferences or interning.  Two physics majors, Patrick Chen and Sarah Waldych, were among this year's receipients. Patrick Chen/Sarah Waldych

Read below how this year’s award recipients plan to further their professional and career development with funding from the CMNS Alumni Network Endowed Undergraduate Awards program.

Sarah Waldych

Since her freshman year, junior physics and astronomy double major Sarah Waldych has been actively involved in particle physics research at UMD. As part of this research, Waldych contributed to the construction upgrades of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a particle detector at the European Council for Nuclear Research. She has traveled internationally and domestically for her studies—including traveling to Hamburg, Germany, to study detector physics and recently delivering a feasibility study at the Future Circular Collider workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This summer, Waldych will apply this knowledge at the University of Virginia by helping construct particle detectors that will be utilized in the new high luminosity upgrade within the CMS in Europe. 

“The financial support provided by this award will be instrumental in covering my travel and living expenses during my time at the University of Virginia, allowing me to continue my involvement in these significant research efforts,” Waldych said.

Patrick Chen

Junior physics and mathematics double major Patrick Chen will use his award funding to travel to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and gain hands-on experience with neutron scattering experiments. Chen modeled the magnetic behavior of crystals while interning with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last summer. He looks forward to working with Oak Ridge instrument scientists to perform neutron scattering and reconcile the results with the model he developed last summer. 

“My ability to travel with my mentor, [NIST Instrument Scientist] Jonathan Gaudet, to this experiment this summer depended on me receiving this award,” Chen said. “So when I saw that I was selected for the award, I was extremely excited.”

This experience will be especially useful because Chen hopes to pursue graduate studies in condensed matter physics, where neutron scattering is an important method of studying and characterizing materials. 

Yoshi Chettri

Passionate about contributing to the field of medicine, junior biological sciences major Yoshi Chettri aims to pursue a Ph.D. in medical sciences after graduating. Chettri’s summer research in UMD’s Fischell Department of Bioengineering will focus on designing a vessel-on-a-chip model for vascular endothelium cells to evaluate the effects of everolimus, an mTOR inhibitor, on cell morphology, motility, cell-cell junctions and more. 

This research is pivotal in our lab’s efforts to understand the effect of mTOR-inhibiting drugs on the vascular endothelium. After completing this project, Chettri hopes to share his findings at a conference.

“This financial support is not just a monetary contribution, but a significant encouragement that will enable me to further my academic and professional endeavors this summer,” Chettri said. “The opportunity to oversee an entire project will be a unique and invaluable experience. I view this project as a pivotal step in fulfilling my ambition to contribute significantly to the world of medicine.”

Hari Kailad

Sophomore computer science major Hari Kailad works in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) on research problems related to cryptography. He is working with Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Dana Dachman-Soled and Intel on estimating the security hardness of cryptosystems using extra side channel information. 

“This funding will allow me to spend the summer working with MC2 on this project and provide an opportunity to focus on my research to work towards a Ph.D.,” Kailad said. “I am really looking forward to learning more about lattice-based security, ideal lattices and side channels. Post-quantum cryptography is relatively new, and determining the hardness of lattice-based problems is quite important.”

Outside of his research with MC2, Kailad is a member of the Cybersecurity Club and teaches a class on binary exploitation, where students learn how to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. 

HaeSung Lee

Born and raised in South Korea, junior biological sciences major HaeSung Lee has a profound interest in understanding neurological gene expression and its correlation with behavior changes. As an undergraduate researcher in Biology Assistant Professor Scott Juntti’s lab, Lee studies the olfactory senses of cichlid fish and the physiological mechanisms underlying sex-specific responses to pheromones. Lee also serves as a peer research mentor for the First-year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) Molecular Diagnostics stream, where she guides student research groups and designs methods for detecting breast cancer biomarkers.

This award will allow Lee to live in Boston this summer for her internship at the Beth Israel Sadhguru Center for Conscious Planet, where she will research postoperative delirium in cardiac patients.

“I am thrilled to join the clinical research team this summer to investigate the effects of medications on neurocognitive function and chronic pain following surgery,” Lee said. “I am also delighted to connect with individuals in this field and expand my knowledge through communication.”

Ying-Rong (Megan) Liu

Junior neuroscience and animal science double major Ying-Rong (Megan) Liu, an international student from Taiwan, works in Animal and Avian Sciences Assistant Professor Andrew Broadbent’s molecular virology research lab. Liu’s research on avian reovirus and infectious bursal disease virus has potential implications for cancer treatment. 

Liu plans to use this award for registration and travel expenses to present her research this June at the American Society for Virology annual meeting—the first conference Liu has attended.

“Presenting at this conference will be a major step forward for both my career and personal endeavors,” Liu said. “The experience will help me develop essential skills in presenting data and scientific communication, which will help me in reaching my career goals as I am planning to apply for a master’s or Ph.D. program in virology or immunology and aiming to become a research scientist in the future.”

Adam Melrod

Math has always been “beautiful” to junior mathematics major Adam Melrod, who plans to use his award funding to attend a course on motivic homotopy theory at the Park City Mathematics Institute.

Melrod conducts research at the intersection of model theory and algebraic geometry. In his free time, he collaborates with other UMD students interested in logic to update the online model theory Wiki—a passion project to organize model theory knowledge in one “easily referenceable and searchable place.”

“This award will provide me with the opportunity to explore many new avenues within my field and engage in research that would have otherwise been financially infeasible,” Melrod said. 

Disha Sanwal

Junior chemistry and mathematics dual-degree student Disha Sanwal joined Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Pratyush Tiwary’s lab during her first year of college. There, while developing computational methods to explore hard-to-model biophysical systems, she discovered her appreciation for math and decided to pick up her second degree in mathematics. 

This summer, Sanwal will put her knowledge to work at Schrödinger in New York City as a computational research intern. She also plans to attend the 2024 MolSSI MAPOL Computational Chemistry workshop at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in June. 

Alexander Wolfson

Alexander Wolfson is on the path to medical school as a sophomore chemistry major. This summer, he will study an ocular surface disease with University of Maryland Medical System Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology Sarah Sunshine. 

“I am most looking forward to spending time at the clinic as well as the lab, combining research with clinical care and learning from a great physician,” Wolfson said. “I was so happy when I found out that I was a recipient of this award because it will be a major help to me as I do research in Baltimore, away from home.”

On campus, Wolfson is an undergraduate research assistant in Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Lawrence Sita’s lab and serves as a recruitment ambassador for CMNS. 

Are you interested in supporting undergraduate students in their professional development and research activities? Consider donating to the CMNS Alumni Network Current-Use Undergraduate Award Fund.

Original story: https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/alumni-network-endowed-undergraduate-awards-2024

For Ana Maria Rey (Ph.D. ’04, physics), the path to a highly successful career as a theoretical physicist and researcher began more than three decades ago in her home country of Colombia, with an inspiring high school physics teacher, the brilliance of Isaac Newton and her own boundless curiosity.

Ana Maria Rey. Courtesy of same. Ana Maria Rey. Photo courtesy of same. Click image to download hi-res version.

I had a physics teacher in high school, and he was amazing, he taught me about Newton’s laws of motion,” Rey recalled. “I was so excited that I could write an equation and predict the behavior of objects that I kept asking him to give me books so I could keep working and solve more problems because it was all so interesting to me.”

A few years later, after Rey earned her bachelor’s degree in physics in Colombia and began her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Maryland, her future as a scientist began to come into sharper focus. Thanks to a game-changing connection with Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Nobel laureate William Phillips, Rey charted a course toward breakthrough research in atomic and molecular physics and laid the groundwork for a fruitful collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), one that is still going strong today.

“For me, NIST and the University of Maryland are just blended. I can’t separate them because they’re so connected,” Rey explained. “UMD gave me a strong foundation, all my research experience, the collaboration experience, everything I learned about how I should talk to experimentalists was thanks to the University of Maryland/NIST partnership. My research was going on at NIST but this only could happen because I was at UMD, so I think when I decided to go to the University of Maryland it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.”

Currently an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Rey has been a NIST Fellow since 2017 and a Fellow of JILA, the joint physics institute of CU Boulder and NIST, since 2012. She has earned a host of prestigious awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and the 2014 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In 2019, Rey became the first Hispanic woman to win the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists, and in 2023 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors for a scientist.   

A big, big honor

In May 2024, nearly 20 years after earning her Ph.D., Rey will return to Maryland—a place that is still very close to her heart—to deliver the keynote speech at the Graduate Commencement Ceremony for UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. She’s honored and humbled by the invitation.

“It’s a big, big honor. For me it was really special to feel that a university that has been so important in my career, to determining who I am, has asked me to give a speech like this,” Rey said. “I feel like inspiring students is one of my biggest roles and that’s why I find so touching the possibility to give the commencement speech because maybe this is a way I can tell them how I feel and try to encourage them to make the most of their future.”

A Nobel Prize-winning inspiration

When Rey began her graduate work at UMD she planned to pursue research in plasma physics—that is, until she attended an inspiring lecture by Phillips about his pioneering work with atoms and lasers.

“I heard Bill’s talk about how he was cooling atoms with light, and I found it fascinating. He was fantastic.  I approached my plasma physics advisor Adil Hasam afterward and I told him, ‘I feel that this is the direction that I want to pursue’ and he was totally supportive,” Rey recalled. “He encouraged me to reach out to Charles Clark, who at that time was the chief of the electron optical physics division at NIST and that is what I did.  Charles was very welcoming and told me that I could start working on ultra-cold atoms trapped in periodic potentials using lasers. That is how my Ph.D. adventure started.”

From then on, Rey’s research efforts really took off. At UMD and NIST and later at JILA, her work has focused on atomic, molecular and optical physics as well as condensed matter physics and quantum information science, setting the stage for one of her proudest achievements—her contribution to the most accurate atomic clock ever created.

“My goal is to try to understand the deepest secrets of the universe and try to use them for something useful,” Rey explained. “Understanding the collisions with these atoms has allowed us to create a clock that is really one of the best timekeepers that we have ever been able to construct, and we can now predict that they offer many other, unique possibilities.”

“You need to be excited”

A leading researcher in the Quantum Systems Accelerator, Rey has published more than 200 papers. And, after more than two decades of research, she’s still as motivated and excited about her work as she was the day it all began.

“As a scientist, you have to work a lot to make progress, so you absolutely need to be excited,” Rey explained. “I love it. Every day I’m surrounded by so many exciting experiments and so many things that I need to learn and understand. And every time that I learn something new, it really makes my day.”

Rey hopes she can share that excitement when she speaks to students and their families at the CMNS Graduate Commencement Ceremony in May. Her goal is to inspire the next generation of scientists to create success stories of their own.

“I would like to serve as a role model the way others have done for me,” Rey said. “If I am able to inspire new generations to become physicists, to advance science and do better, that’s one of my great ambitions, and it would be a great honor to feel that I’m doing that. So, my message to them is you have now in your hands the possibility to make a change in the world, so use all the knowledge that you’ve acquired to make that happen.“