20 Students Named 2015 Davidson Fellows and Receive $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 Scholarships
Reno, Nev. – During the past 15 years the Davidson Institute for Talent Development has awarded $6.2 million in Davidson Fellows scholarships recognizing more than 260 of our nation’s best and brightest young students. These figures include this year’s 20 Davidson Fellows recipients, ages 18 and under, who will each be awarded a $50,000, $25,000 or $10,000 scholarship.
Davidson Fellows exemplify the extraordinary work that can be accomplished by gifted young U.S. students who are given opportunities to excel. Such opportunities are outlined in the recently published research report, A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America’s Brightest Students, and include access to mentors, labs and accelerated educational options.
Named one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships by U.S. News & World Report, the Davidson Fellows award seeks to recognize young people who have developed significant projects that have the potential to benefit society in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, music and philosophy.
Davidson Fellows not only represent some of the brightest young minds in the country, but they also represent kindness, compassion and a strong desire to improve the world around them. Many of the Fellows’ projects are inspired by personal experiences that drive them to find a solution to a problem. Whether it was watching a family member suffer from cancer, witnessing children drink waste water out of desperation, or wanting to change people’s attitudes from cynicism to sincerity and their actions from judgment to kindness, each Fellow is driven to use their passion and intelligence to make the world a better place.
“We are thrilled to recognize the 2015 Davidson Fellows not only for their incredible projects, but also for the journey they forged to reach this point,” said Bob Davidson, co-founder of the Davidson Institute. “Every year I am amazed by the breadth and depth of the Fellows’ accomplishments. With nurturing, gifted students like these will be among those who will solve the world’s most vexing problems.”
Positive contributions to society made by the 2015 Davidson Fellows include:
- Fostering a closer examination of race, culture and ethnicity through storytelling;
- Development of a low-cost method of converting waste water to potable water;
- Fabrication of the next generation of a super capacitor that can be used in hybrid electrical vehicles, electric trains, airplanes, smart phones and computers;
- Brain image analysis to better understand brain anatomy, disease progression, monitor treatment regimens and discover genetic influences on brain structure.
- Creation of a cancer therapy that specifically targets only the cancer cells, potentially eliminating the side effects of traditional cancer treatments and increasing drug potency.
The 2015 Davidson Fellows Award Ceremony will be held Tuesday, September 29 in Washington, D.C. with all scholarship recipients attending. While in Washington, D.C., each Fellow will meet with their representatives in Congress to speak of the importance of educational opportunities for high-achieving young people.
The following students are this year’s Davidson Fellows:
2015 Davidson Fellow Laureates
$50,000 Scholarships
- Mr. Noah Golowich, 17, Lexington, Mass.; Resolving a Conjecture on Degree of Regularity, With Some Novel Structural Results
- Mr. Dhaivat Pandya, 17, Appleton, Wis.; Algorithms for Minimum Cost Linear Network Coding Design for Networks with General Connections
- Miss Swetha Shutthanandan, 17, Richland, Wash.; Next Generation Supercapacitor for Ultra-Fast Energy Storage and Harvesting
2015 Davidson Fellows
$25,000 Scholarships
- Mr. Michael Jon Bennett, 16, New York; Connective Color: Innovating as Composer, Organist, Pianist
- Miss Joy Jin, 17, Palo Alto, Calif.; Identification and Characterization of a Cancer Stem Cell Subpopulation in Lung Cancer
- Miss Saumya Keremane, 18, Riverside, Calif.; A Rapid Field Detection of Liberibacter Bacteria Associated with Potato Zebra Chip Disease Using Lateral Flow Technology
- Miss Deepika Kurup, 17, Nashua, N.H.; Novel Photocatalytic Composites for Degrading Organics and Inactivating Bacteria in Water
- Miss Oriana Tang, 18, Livingston, N.J.; Wringing Tears from the Stars: A Linguistic Revitalization of Human Empathy
- Mr. Peter Tian, 18, Hilliard, Ohio; Extremal Functions of Forbidden Multidimensional Matrices
- Miss Sreya Vemuri, 16, Carmel, Ind.; Effect of Time-Dependent Gain and Loss in a PT-Symmetric Lattice
- Mr. Moshe Willner, 18, Los Angeles; Reconfigurable Orbital-Angular-Momentum and Polarization Manipulation of 100-Gbit/s PQSK Data Channels
- Mr. Phillip Yu, 17, Plano, Texas; Using HDAC Inhibitor CI-994 to Enhance Progranulin Expression for Dementia Therapy
$10,000 Scholarships
- Mr. Joe Broom, 18, McLean, Va.; Music as Voice: Presenting the Mosaic of Life
- Mr. Augustine Chemparathy, 18, San Ramon, Calif.; Engineering the Electron Sink Behavior of Triacylglycerol to Increase Algal Biodiesel Yield
- Miss Grace Hong, 17, Reno, Nev.; The Spaces: Exploring Multi-Ethnic Identities of the Past, Present, and Future
- Miss Samantha Koire, 18, Sacramento, Calif.; A New Mechanism for Protonic Communication: pH Signaling Via 2D Sound Waves
- Mr. Vineet Kosaraju, 16, Saratoga, Calif.; Towards Rational RNA Therapeutics: 3D RNA Engineering in a Massive Open Laboratory
- Mr. Jazz Munitz, 17, Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.; Microfluidics-Facilitated Synthesis and Characterization of Apoptosis-Inducing Low-Cost Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapeutics
- Miss Emma Resmini, 15, Fairfax Station, Va.; The Exquisite Breath and Breadth of the Flute
- Miss Jenny Wang, 17, Cary, N.C.; Fully Automated Computational Brain Image Segmentation for Cross-Modality Analysis of Neurodegenerative Diseases
About the Davidson Institute
Founded by Bob and Jan Davidson in 1999, the Davidson Institute for Talent Development recognizes, nurtures and supports profoundly intelligent young people, and provides opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference. The Institute offers support through a number of programs and services, including the Davidson Fellows Scholarship and The Davidson Academy of Nevada. For more information about the Davidson Institute, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.
