From an amateur photographer to a musical composer, the winners of the 2009 ASME scholarships possess a unique set of talents to complement their profiles as engineering students. As diverse as their interests may be, these high-achievers all share one important thing in common--a desire to put their skills and knowledge to work for the betterment of society.
 Samuel Wight, winner of the Kenneth Andrew Roe Scholarship
Samuel Wight, who likes to be called Sam, will be a senior this fall in a five year program at Washington University in St. Louis. His chief interest is in product development and design, tackling real-life problems to help people and society. His ultimate professional goal is to work with a team of people to identify such problems and invent practical, commercial solutions.
Sam is also fascinated by space exploration. His senior project was based on a NASA problem statement to develop a ratcheting wrench capable of tolerating lunar dust. He is currently on a team that is working with NASA to design and build a test apparatus that will fly on the C9 “vomit comet.”
Sam says that his favorite design experience was working with two friends to design and build life-size “Rock’em Sock’em Robots.” They built the robots for a charity fundraiser and have used it at the St. Louis Science Museum and in local schools to educate and excite young people about engineering. The robots were also displayed on campus during the vice-presidential debates as a political parody and were featured on national television.
In addition to his work as a teaching fellow for three undergraduate courses—a position usually reserved for graduate students—Sam has been deeply involved in engineering school groups and academic operations. Sam is a member of Tau Beta Pi, with a 4.0 GPA that has kept him on the Dean’s List each semester, and has won three scholarships and awards in engineering at Washington University. He has been the president of the school’s ASME chapter for two years where he works to inspire excitement for ASME and forge connections with the local professional section.
 Gina Zak, winner of the Garland Duncan Scholarship
Gina will be a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this fall, with an interest in sustainable energy advancement. She is working on modeling complex liquid loop heat exchange systems—essentially, networks of mass and energy flows—using a graph theoretic approach to the system representation. She has been involved in numerous outreach and development projects, from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to mentoring students at middle school on competition projects, including a Lego Mindstorm robotics project.
Gina has held leadership positions with her ASME student section for several semesters, working with the Special Projects Committee, Publicity, Fundraising Committee, and the Social Committee. During the summer of 2007 Gina worked as a student practicum at the Caterpillar Champaign Simulation Center in the University Research Park, where her work involved design and detailed modeling using Pro/Engineer software. In the spring of 2008, she studied at the Technical University of Denmark, leading to recent involvement in a project to develop a solar-powered refrigerator and study of renewable energy sources.
Gina has been awarded four other scholarships and awards at the University of Illinois/ Urbana-Champaign, where she sits on the Dean’s List. She is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and greatly enjoys participating in the U of I Swing Dance Society. She was also recently awarded an ASME Junior Leadership Award. She has been a member of ASME since 2006.
 Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, winner of an ASME Foundation Gratitude Scholarship
Swetaprovo is a citizen of India, where he studied at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. He has studied at the University of Connecticut and has held the position of Graduate Research Assistant since 2006. In 2008 he received a Graduate Research Fellowship Award at UConn, and this fall he will continue his Ph.D. studies there.
Swetaprovo is primarily interested in fluids engineering, power engineering, and space exploration. He has been working since 2005 in Energy Science and Engineering to develop propulsion technologies to power deep space explorations. He also has a deep passion and admiration for energy research, aspiring to be among the corps of engineers and scientists involved in preserving the environment and ensuring abundant useful energy resources for future generations.
His project at the University of Connecticut is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and funded by a contract from UTC-Pratt & Whitney. It’s titled Blowoff and Stability Limits of Bluff-body Stabilized Flames, focusing on the fundamental aspects of the dynamics of lean turbulent combustion found widely in low NOx gas turbines and afterburners. This research has produced four peer reviewed journal articles. Two more journal articles are in process, and he has written ten technical articles for different international conferences and meetings.
Swetaprovo is an avid amateur photographer, with a particular interest in street photography and images created using low light. He has been a member of GAMES at UConn, and is a student member of Combustion Institute and ASME since 2007.
 Margaret Anderson Fernandez, winner of the Bruce J. Heim Foundation Scholarship
Margaret (Maggie) Anderson Fernandez is a BS/MS student at the Rochester Institute of Technology majoring in Mechanical Engineering with an Aerospace option. She has followed her interest in the aerospace field since the fourth grade, when she visited the Air and Space Museum and subsequently decided to become an astronaut. RIT’s mechanical engineering curriculum requires four engineering-related co-op blocks, all of which she completed at NASA Wallops Flight Facility. She will be returning to NASA Wallops to work full-time after she defends her thesis.
While at NASA she has worked on a release mechanism design project, a SOAREX re-entry vehicle project, the high gain antenna system on the GPM satellite slated to launch in 2013, and a launch abort system contingency design for the new CEV. She has also worked with NASA on her thesis, Modeling the Pressure History of a Hybrid Rocket Oxidizer Tank, which is a mathematical analysis of a hybrid rocket delivery system that will be published upon completion of her study.
Maggie has been involved in RIT’s student section of ASME, holding the offices of functioning secretary, treasurer and vice chair. Her career goal is “to use [her] work as an engineer to make people’s lives better and safer.” She believes that human exploration and expansion into space is one of the biggest steps we can take to better ourselves and better our world.
With all that Maggie has been working on, it is surprising also to note that in the midst of it all she accomplished one of life’s greatest challenges—she very recently planned and carried out her wedding! Formerly Ms. Anderson, Maggie is now Mrs. Anderson Fernandez.
 Samuel Brinton, winner of the ASME Power Division Scholarship
Samuel will be a senior this fall at Kansas State University, preparing to pursue a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. He has been at the top of his class of 600 for the past three years, winning a Gilman Scholar grant to study internationally in China, and McNair Scholar award to aid in graduate school preparation.
Samuel has worked as a research lab assistant in 3 different laboratories at KSU: IDEAS Lab (nuclear reactor), Aircraft Environment Lab (air velocity calculation), and SMART Lab (creating a fluorescence spectrum measurement system). He worked as an intern at The Dow Chemical Company in 2008; he was lead tutor in a program at KSU in 2009.
Samuel has published four papers, all on Nuclear Engineering. The first in 2007, won Best Paper at the International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE) and distinguished him as the youngest published author in ICONE history. This led to his election to the Board of Directors of the International Nuclear Congress during his sophomore year. His life goal is “to change the world with the peaceful application of engineering solutions to humanity’s problems.”
Samuel has won two prior ASME Scholarships: in 2008 The Willis F. Thompson Memorial Scholarship and in 2007 The John and Elsa Gracik Scholarship. He has been a member of ASME since 2006, serving as president of his ASME Student Section. He is also a member of the American Nuclear Society, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Engineering Student Council, Engineering Student Senate Multicultural Engineering Program (representative mentor and American Indian representative), Tau Beta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi.
He has enjoyed travel to over 35 countries, lived in the jungles of South America, the savannahs of Africa, the cities of Europe, and learned Chinese during a semester in China. In addition to this long and impressive list of activities, Samuel is working on a double major in Vocal Music. He has performed lead roles in three operas and is finishing composition of his own musical, entitled “The Figaro of Fission – A Nuclear Musical.”
For the complete list of 2009 ASME Scholarship recipients, please click here: 2009 ASME Scholarship Winners
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