Ashley P. Saunders Named Recipient of Peter Breen Award
The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce that graduating senior Ashley P. Saunders has been named the recipient of the Peter Craig Breen Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Chemistry Research.
This award was created in memory of Peter Breen to recognize a Penn State undergraduate chemistry major who has achieved excellence in academics and research. Breen was an undergraduate chemistry major and a Schreyer Honors College student. He exemplified excellence in academics and research. Breen passed away in 2014; the Breen family generously established this award in his memory.
“I was very excited and honored to receive this award,” Saunders notes, “I definitely credit the Millennium Scholars Program and Dr. Lauren Zarzar for working with me early in my college career to pursue research.”
During her time at Penn State, Saunders was named a Millennium Scholars Program Scholar, a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, and an endowed American Chemical Society Scholar. She was also named a recipient of the Academic Scholarship Award by the Multicultural Resource Center at Penn State.
Saunders also conducted research with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Lauren Zarzar. Her work focused on properties of oil-oil emulsions. During her time in the group, she contributed to two scientific publications and was the sixth author for a publication in Nature, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
After graduation Saunders plans to pursue a PhD in chemistry at Stanford University.