Sylvia Bintrim Named Recipient of Peter Craig Breen Memorial Award

Congratulations to Sylvia Bintrim, winner 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.

During her time at Penn State, Bintrim—who also double majored in math and minored in physics— served as a grader and a TA for physical chemistry courses, one of her favorite experiences at Penn State. Bintrim represented Penn State during a summer internship in Japan, a unique learning opportunity that she particularly enjoyed. She also conducted research with Dr. Gerald Knizia in theoretical chemistry and with Dr. Bratoljub Milosavljevic  in experimental physical chemistry. While working with Dr. Knizia, Bintrim worked on a density fitting multi-configurational self-consistent field method and then on theoretical covalent bond order. During her time with Dr. Milosavljevic, she studied excited state proton transfer from a photoacid to nanosized or supercooled water and also investigated how it is necessary that a certain number of water molecules surround the photoacid for proton transfer to occur.

Bintrim was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and she plans to pursue a PhD in chemical physics at Columbia University after graduation.