Undergraduate Achievements and Awards

 URECA Researcher of the Month

This month's featured student is Kevin Knockenhauer, a rising senior in the Honors College majoring in biochemistry, who this past March was nationally honored with a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Kevin is currently participating in the Summer Research Institute of the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP); and last summer was a Fellow in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) summer program. Since May 2007 (freshman year), Kevin has worked in the laboratory of Dr. Sanford Simon (Departments of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Pathology). Together with BME graduate student Katarzyna Sawicka, he is developing a transdermal anthrax vaccine that can deliver protective antigen through human skin. Kevin has presented his research off campus at the World Congress on In Vitro Biology in Tuscon, Arizona (June 2008) ; the Annual IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society conference in Vancouver (August 2008); the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Fall Meeting (October 2008) in St. Louis, Missouri; and the Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference (April 2009) in Boston, Massachusetts. In less than a week, he will return to the In Vitro Biology meeting which this year is being held in Charleston, South Carolina, to give a poster presentation; and also serves on two committees for the Society for In Vitro Biology. On-campus, he presented on campus at the annual URECA research poster Celebration, and was one of three featured student speakers at a recent symposium organized by the Stony Brook Young Investigators (YIR) & the Undergraduate Biochemistry Society. Kevin will be secretary of the Undergraduate Biochemistry Society (2009-2010) and will help edit YIR's online journal next year. Kevin has also served as a Teaching Assistant for General Chemistry I and II; and plans to be a Teaching Assistant for Biochemistry I and II in the coming academic year. Kevin will be applying to PhD programs in the field of biochemistry/molecular virology next year. He is from Long Island and attended Brentwood High School.

For the full interview/feature, please go to:  http://www.stonybrook.edu/ureca/researcher-month.shtml  

Raymond Camilleri, an undergraduate in Dr. Ute Moll's lab, won first prize at the symposium.

Kevin Knockenhauer, an undergraduate student in Dr. Sanford Simon's lab, was one of three students chosen to speak at the symposium.

    Amanda Stewart (Simon lab)

    For more information: http://www.stonybrook.edu/cesame/students/HHMIFellowships

AGEP (Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate)

    Kevin Knockenhauer (Simon lab)

    For more information: http://www.nsfagep.org/

Congratulations to all for their outstanding achievements.