Utah Governor Jon Huntsmen honored top undergraduate researchers at each of the state’s universities. USU’s four Governor’s Scholars have been supported in their aspirations by privately funded scholarships from the university and the colleges of their majors.
           
The Green Dream of Sustainable Energy

Ask sophomore physics major and presidential scholarship recipient Jennifer Albretsen about electromagnetic radiation or Einstein’s theory of relativity, and she provides a summary as lucid and succinct as a popular professor’s. The phenomena studied by physicists for generations have fascinated her since middle school in a Madison, Wisconsin, suburb.        

This past semester, Albretsen helped Professor J.R. Dennison test three different ceramic insulators for NASA’s solar probe. Dennison and other NASA collaborators are researching ways to protect the historic mission from devastating electrostatic charges as it approaches the sun’s corolla.

Albretsen’s previous work for Professor Jan Sojka, who is studying the impact of sun activity, the weather and variations in seasons on radio waves and satellite transmissions as they pass through the ionosphere, earned her a slot at an undergraduate nanotechnology workshop at Dartmouth University. The students experimented with copper, shrinking its grains in order to make it stronger and more durable. Albretsen was one of the rare freshmen invited.

Another nanotechnology project has linked Albretsen with fuel cell researcher Professor Leijun Li in mechanical and aerospace engineering. The green dream of sustainable energy scientists worldwide is to convert hydrogen into the next global fuel source, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and the threat of catastrophic climate change. Li is trying to reduce the grain size of a promising material for storing hydrogen. The smaller the grain, the more miles covered with one tank of gas. “Whoever solves the hydrogen storage problem will win the Nobel Prize,” says Albretsen. “Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. If we could find an efficient way of isolating and storing it, it would be a very clean fuel source.”

This spring Albretsen added Goldwater and Willard L. Eccles scholarships to the list of rewards for her rigorous academic pursuits. Unlike most students her age, she already knows what she will be doing after leaving USU. Her undergraduate research experience has set her sights on a doctoral degree in physics and then a career in teaching and research. “It’s one thing to study electricity from a text, learn an equation and spit out a number in a homework assignment, and quite another to work with an electron gun, charge a material and see the effects of electricity firsthand.” —Jane Koerner ’07Att

South of the Border

In high school in Corvallis, Oregon, Danielle Babbel competed in cross country and ran the trails of the densely forested foothills overlooking the Willamette River Valley. But as the population multiplied, the solitude and serenity of a long distance runner’s life were disrupted by an onslaught of new subdivisions with scenic hillside views.

As a mere freshman at USU, she got to translate personal experience into action. Robert Lilieholm in the College of Natural Resources’ Department of Environment and Society was conducting a bioregional planning study of Nairobi National Park in Kenya. The park is half an hour from the rapidly expanding capital city, and the demand for housing, roads and food was taking its toll on wildlife habitat, migration routes and ecotourism jobs. Babbel reviewed the literature, i.e., successfully implemented bioregional plans for deteriorating parks in California and Oregon. “I was naïve. When I started, I didn’t know what reviewing the literature means,” she says.

After Lilieholm’s departure to the University of Maine, Babbel found a like-minded mentor in Lilieholm’s departmental colleague, Claudia Radel. A level-headed and insightful veteran of gender role studies in Africa and Latin America, Radel put her to work on a project in southern Mexico. It was the perfect match. A year in Costa Rica as a high school exchange student had immersed Babbel in Spanish culture and language.

This summer Babbel will travel to the Yucatan with one of Radel’s graduate students to interview subsistence farmers near the Calakaml Biosphere Reserve, the largest remaining tropical forest in Central America. Will the deforestation of intense corn and chili pepper cultivation continue in the wake of massive migration to the United States for seasonal jobs? Are the women who are left behind able to break out of their traditional gender roles and make the farming and financial decisions? What happens to their new-found status and their communities when their husbands return?

A top student in high school, Babbel could have made the grade at any number of highly selective private colleges in the Pacific Northwest, but she picked USU instead in part because of her Presidential and S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney scholarships. She has no regrets. “There are lots of educational opportunities at USU; you just have to look for them.”

Though still an underclassman, she already knows what she wants to do after completing her degree in geography and anthropology with a minor in Spanish. She is bound for graduate school so she can pursue a career in sustainable international development. She emphasizes the word “sustainable.” “We harm ourselves when we destroy the Earth’s resources. What good is a well-paying job when the air you breathe and the water you drink is harmful to your health?”

Because of her research experience, she realizes there are no easy solutions. “The issues are complex. You have to find a middle ground and compromise.”  —Jane Koerner ’07Att

Weight Watchers for Vulnerable Co-Eds

Carrying 30 pounds of extra baggage on a petite frame is no fun at any age especially when you’re a self-conscious adolescent. No more second helpings or couch potato weekends for Katie Brown.

Six years later, the Ogden, Utah, native is a trim, athletic, nutrition-conscious USU dietetics major. The presidential scholar has also contributed to two studies overseen by USU nutrition and food science faculty.

The first study, directed by Professor Heidi Wengreen, tracked the diets and weight changes of more than 150 USU freshmen. With mom out of the picture, and fast food temptations everywhere, would they succumb to the national norm of a 15-pound gain? “Fortunately, no,” Brown says. Less than 40 percent of study participants indulged in too much pizza and too little exercise, and those who added pounds did so by a relatively modest average of nine

The next research project, for the Red Cross in Utah, was Brown’s idea. She wanted to find out if there were any gender differences in delayed blood donations. There were, and she passed that information on to her grateful contacts with the local Red Cross.

Had it not been for regular consultations with Wengreen, the data collecting and statistical analyses might have intimidated Brown. “Professor Wengreen makes research sound so normal, so feasible. She suggests things that would never have occurred to me.”

As for the weight-maintenance performance of the freshman class of 2006, Brown has a theory about that which she will get to test with the class of 2007. This August, before classes start, Brown and her fellow majors will do a presentation for freshmen enrolled in a week-long, pre-orientation course. Brown is hoping their fat-content comparisons will convince them to bypass the all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet in Taggart Student Center and head straight to the salad bar. —Jane Koerner ’07Att

Near-Sighted Tarzan

If you can’t see the jungle for the vines, take a lesson from Tarzan—just start swinging.

If you know the general direction you’re heading, grabbing the nearest vine might get you in touch with Jane, Boy and Cheetah more quickly than stopping to ask for directions.

That’s the gist of an algorithm Presidential and Willard L. Eccles scholarship recipient Arthur Mahoney is developing with faculty mentor Dan Watson. The two computer scientists are seeking to improve communications among robots and processors in large networks.

Their “near-sighted Tarzan algorithm”-driven communication system enables 100s of robots with diverse responsibilities to behave in a manner that serves the best interest of the team.

Mahoney, a graduate of Logan High School, says that traditional unmanned autonomous vehicles used by industry and the military are equipped with line-of-sight radio communications, which are frequently interrupted by physical obstacles. Often the robots don’t know of one another’s existence.

A possible solution: randomly sample points in the domain (different vines in the jungle) and add new vines until all the other robots are found.
Mahoney presented his and Watson’s findings this past summer at an international conference in Las Vegas.

Working on your own research project is more meaningful than learning facts in the classroom, says Mahoney. “With my research I’ve been forced to solve or work around problems I would never have dealt with in class, and that’s real computer science.”

Even if he hadn’t won the highly competitive Goldwater and Willard L. Eccles scholarships this spring, he would have figured out a way to continue with his research. “Programming for a professor’s homework assignments during the wee hours of the morning is tedious, stressful and bothersome, but programming for research during the wee hours is fun.” —Mary Ann Muffoletto ’94MA