Hunter College Scholarship Award Winners
Students at Hunter College won prestigious awards and scholarships this past June that will open opportunities for their futures.
National Science Foundation Grant Recipient — Lina Mercedes Gonzalez
Lina Mercedes Gonzalez (Hunter 2009), who is earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of five CUNY students to win awards this year under the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The NSF granted her $90,000 over three years to work on a “swimmer” drug-delivery vehicle. It’s a nanobot, or a tiny robot, that can be injected into the body to perform medical procedures.
Merage Foundation American Dream — Pooja Shah
Pooja Shah, a senior in the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, has been named a 2011 Merage Foundation American Dream Fellow, one of only 10 nationwide. Shah is the fourth Hunter College student to receive a Merage Fellowship, created in 2004 to assist immigrants in achieving the American Dream. Originally from India, Shah is a psychology major with a concentration in behavioral neuroscience and minors in religion and biology. Shah will apply the $20,000 award toward tuition at the medical school of the University of Rochester, where she will study to become a neurologist.
Goldwater Scholars — Joseph Cammarata, Celine Joiris
Joseph Cammarata (pictured left) is one of four CUNY juniors in 2011 to win the premiere federally funded Goldwater scholarship to encourage graduate study in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. He is majoring in biological sciences with a minor in chemistry at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College and intends to pursue a Ph.D. in synthetic biology.
Celine Joiris (pictured right) also attended Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College. Majoring in psychology and concentrating in neuroscience, she received a Harcourt Fellowship for undergraduate science research this spring. She studied at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University and the NYU Smilow Neuroscience Center.
Jonas E. Salk Scholarship — Carolina Salguero, Carmen Taveras
The Salk scholarships are given to outstanding CUNY students planning careers in medicine and the biological sciences.
Carolina Salguero, who earned a double major in biochemistry and economics, focuses on applied structural biology of infectious diseases such as HIV, Dengue fever and Lyme disease that affect third-world countries. Through Minority Research Access Careers, Carolina received an undergraduate fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health and has had summer internships at Harvard and Yale. She attends the Harvard University Graduate School, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.
Carmen Taveras, a biochemistry and biology major at Hunter College, is interested in cancer biology, specifically cell cycle regulation and signal transduction. She hopes to become a cancer biologist with her own research laboratory. She attends the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Jeannette K. Watson Award — Kyle Athayde, Agnieszka Gugala
Ten CUNY freshmen and sophomores won the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship, which provides three years of paid summer internships for professional and personal leadership.
Kyle Athayde will graduate Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in 2013. With broad interests in English, political science and finance, he aspires to work in politics, writing or education.
Agnieszka Gugala is considering a career as a professor, a mathematician or an architect. As a freshman, she is considering majoring in math, psychology, art or political science. #
