Three Eberly graduate students honored with research and excellence awards
Three graduate students in the Penn State Eberly College of Science have been selected by the J. Jeffery and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School to receive awards for their research and excellence. Ish Gupta has been selected along with twelve other graduate students to receive the Alumni Association Dissertation Award; Garrett Wendel has been selected along with one other graduate student to receive the Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship; and Nate Carey has been selected along with three other graduate students to receive the Professional Master’s Excellence Award. These awards are among some of the most prestigious awards given to graduate students at Penn State.
The Alumni Association Dissertation Award was made possible through a gift from the Penn State Alumni Association and provides funding and recognition to outstanding full-time doctor of philosophy students whose dissertations will have the greatest impact. These students have also demonstrated outstanding academic and personal potential in the areas of extracurricular and professional activities. The award, comprised of a certificate and a medal, is considered to be among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students and recognizes outstanding professional accomplishment and achievement in scholarly research in any of the disciplinary areas.
The Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship for Penn State Alumni in the Fox Graduate School supports students who have been admitted to the Fox Graduate School at Penn State as candidates for a graduate degree who received their undergraduate degree from the University.
The Professional Master’s Excellence Award recognizes individual student excellence in a professional master’s degree program. These students demonstrate outstanding breadth of experience, performance, and professional projects or work.
Ish Gupta
Ish Gupta is a physics graduate student in the lab of Bangalore Sathyaprakash, Elsbach professor of physics and professor of astronomy and astrophysics. In his research, Gupta uses gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space and time — to test Einstein’s theory of gravity and measure the expansion of the universe. Gupta’s research demonstrates the power of next-generation gravitational-wave observatories to uncover the hidden population of black holes and neutron star mergers. In addition to his scientific work, Gupta has also mentored two undergraduate interns on machine learning applications in data analysis in his group.
He has also contributed to scientific collaborations, most notably, to a white paper on Cosmic Explorer, a proposed new gravitational-wave observatory in the U.S. This paper was assessed, with others, by a National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon committee, which recommended that NSF should build Cosmic Explorer as its next mega project.
“Gupta is a highly motivated, hardworking, and skilled individual and a good team player and has already collaborated with a number of experts in the field,” said Sathyaprakash in a nomination letter. “He is an outstanding graduate student with unusual intellectual breadth, academic ability, mentoring aptitude, and excellent skills in organization, computing, and communication.”
Garrett Wendel
Garrett Wendel is a physics graduate student in the lab of Douglas Cowen, professor of physics. After graduating in 2019 with bachelor’s degrees in physics and nuclear engineering, Wendel began his doctorate in physics in 2020. Wendel’s research focuses on advancing neutrino detector technologies. Neutrinos are elementary particles that have no electric charge and rarely interact with matter, which makes them incredibly difficult to detect. As a member of the CLOUD and Eos collaborations, Wendel works with an international group of scientists to optimize detector design, simulation, and event reconstruction, aiming to improve the accuracy of ton-scale neutrino detectors. Beyond his research, Wendel has also served as a leader and mentor, serving as a founding member and institutional board representative of a student-run governing body within the collaboration.
“With an exceptional academic record in several very challenging subject areas, and notable experience operating the Breazeale nuclear reactor here on campus, Garrett was also the first author of a Physical Review Letters article,” said Douglas Cowen in a nomination letter. “This is the most prestigious physics journal in the U.S. and one of the most prestigious physics journals worldwide. Garrett has exemplary levels of enthusiasm, creativity, mathematical insight and computational dexterity, coupled with a completely unselfish and outgoing attitude.”
Nate Carey
Nate Carey is a master of biotechnology student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Schreyer Honors College. Carey has earned multiple scholarships for his research excellence and potential, including the Astronaut Scholarship, the Goldwater Scholarship, the NASA PA Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Scholarship, and most recently, the Marshall Scholarship. In his studies, Carey has completed independent research projects at Penn State’s Satorius Cell Culture Facility, the Max Planck Society, and the L’Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).
At the Satorius Cell Culture Facility, Carey learned fundamental cell culture techniques which he then applied to his work in Germany and Switzerland. At the Max Planck Institute, Carey contributed to the development of an extrusion system for bioprinting of engineered myocardium threads, which are engineered materials that provide structural stability to damaged tissue. By the end of his training experience, he had achieved the first successful bioprinter extrusion in six months for the host lab. While at EPFL, Carey expanded on his interest in materials science to improve an aptamer-based biosensor, which uses engineered DNA strands that change shape upon contact with specific biomolecules, enabling the sensing of neurotransmitters in brain tissue samples.
“Of the estimated 350 applications to our program received in the last three years, Nate was the top-ranked student when evaluated on academics, scholarly potential, community engagement, and recommendation strength,” said Natasha N. Tirko, director of the Master of Biotechnology program and associate teaching professor. “Nate maintains unmatched work ethic, intelligence, and professionalism while paving the way for those that follow him.”