Students Earn Prestigious Research Opportunities

August 15, 2010

BROOKLYN, NY AUGUST 16, 2010 St. Josephs College is pleased to announce that two students, who belong to the Colleges MOSAIC Program, a scholarship program for St. Joseph's College students majoring in biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science or computer information systems, will continue their education at prestigious universities.

Recent graduate, Robert De Marco 10, will pursue a masters degree at Carnegie Mellon University and Khaing Win, a senior in biology, was accepted into the summer research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)

Both students were selected to participate in the Student Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 2009. Their acceptance into the internship was based on their membership in the MOSAIC Program, along with their strong abilities in scientific and technological research.

"These two outstanding students exemplify the goals of the [MOSAIC] Program, which aims to recruit, support and prepare students for careers in mathematics, science and computing, all of which are considered areas of national need, said S. Jane Fritz, director of the MOSAIC Program at SJC.

While at BNL, Mr. De Marco designed and implemented programs for the supercomputer, Blue Gene. A computer information systems major, Mr. DeMarco graduated summa cum laude in June 2010 with a GPA of 4.0. During his senior year, he served as the president of the SJC Chapter of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon International Honor Society in Computing. He plans to focus on database systems in graduate school.

Khaing T. Win researched synthetic organic chemistry and radiochemistry at BNL. Originally from Myanmar, Ms. Win participated in the Colleges A.C.E.S. Program for immigrant students, whose first language is not English. She is majoring in biology with a double minor in chemistry and psychology, and she has a GPA of 3.9. As a member of several honor societies, she is involved in activities on campus and in the community. With a strong interest in neuroscience, Ms. Win plans on pursuing scientific research, possibly as a research physician.

An S-STEM grant (DUE #0630650) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the MOSAIC Program at SJC, which provides financial and academic support to eligible biology, chemistry, computer science, computer information systems and mathematics majors during their undergraduate studies, as well as assistance with job placement after graduation. Students explore the interdisciplinary relationships among individual MOSAIC major fields to instill the sense that they are part of a larger technological mosaic.