Student honors and awards
Brice Vallieres ’09, finished first among 60 high school and college students in a contest promoting ideas for new products. For his creativity in coming up with a proposal for a lightweight portable air filtration device, Vallieres won $5,000 in New York’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition.The two major sponsors of the event were M&T Bank and New York Business Development Corp. Vallieres is majoring in biochemistry.
Neena Chakrabarti ’09, one of 25 scientists who presented their work in the form of a poster at the 4th International Symposium on Bioorganometallic Chemistry—won the top prize in the poster competition. The symposium was held in mid-July at the University of Montana in Missoula, and the poster competition was co-sponsored by the event organizers and Elsevier Publishing. The conference brought together 70 researchers from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. The focus of the conference was the biological properties of molecules that have organic molecules tethered to metal atoms. Chakrabarti, who is majoring in chemistry, was one of only two undergraduates to attend the meeting. While at Trinity, she has distinguished herself academically, twice winning Faculty Honors, as well as the Chemical Rubber Company Award. She attended the conference along with Professor Timothy Curran of the Chemistry Department.
Piper Klemm ’09, the recipient of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Fellowship this summer, won the Best Poster competition at the Pacific Northwest Undergraduate Research Symposium on Organic Chemistry at Oregon State University in Corvallis. For her work, entitled “Imaging the Osteocalcin Binding Location on Type I Tropocollagen,” Klemm was awarded a $100 prize. Klemm has been working for more than a year under the direction of Trinity Chemistry Professor Richard Prigodich. About 95 percent of the mass of human bone tissue is either type I tropocollagen or osteocalcin. The binding location relative to each is currently unknown, which is what Klemm’s project focused on. She is attempting to image the binding using a transmission electron microscope.
Christopher Houlihan ’09, music major and organ student, earned a “Prix de perfectionnement” diploma in June from the Amis de l’Orgue de Versailles et de sa Région at a juried contest in Paris, France. While in Paris, where Houlihan was studying in the Trinity-in-Paris Global Sites program, he worked with Jean-Baptiste Robin at the Versailles Conservatoire and served as the assistant musician at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. His duties included playing for Church receptions, organizing a choir, and performing at a cathedral service attended by President George W. Bush.
Ryan Haney ’10, has been chosen as Trinity’s 2008 Jim Murray Memorial Scholarship recipient. The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation (JMMF) selected seven journalism students from colleges and universities across the country as its 2008 Murray Scholars. Each scholar receives a $7,500 scholarship based on second- and third-year print journalism student eligibility and a written essay. Trinity, which is Murray’s alma mater (Class of 1943), receives a JMMF scholarship annually. The foundation was established to perpetuate Murray’s memory and celebrate his dedication to journalism. His many distinctions include the following: he was one of the founders of Sports Illustrated, won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1990, and won the National Sportswriter of the Year Award 14 times. Murray’s work earned him a spot in the writers’ wing at the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York, in 1988.
