Tom Weiner Scholarship for Incoming Students. This scholarship recognizes high school leadership, ranking, superior academic accomplishments, and research prior to the start at TAMS.

This year’s winner is Belinda Dong.

In high school, Belinda Dong was Co-President of “Girls in STEM” and helped to organize, in collaboration with the Fort Worth chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, a panel that included industry professionals across multiple engineering disciplines. She also held a management position in the nonprofit TutorScope, which provides free, virtual, one-on-one tutoring sessions globally. Belinda further devised a mechanism to prevent vehicular heatstroke among infants and children. She has clearly made the most of her first two years of high school, and we are now pleased to have her in our TAMS community.

The Scott and Myra Stoll Scholarship for a second-year TAMS student who has excelled in all of the opportunities available through TAMS.

This year’s winner is Sree Krithi Meduri

Sree, who has conducted research with Dr. Nicoladie Tam, is among the most outstanding and generous members the TAMS community. She is the co-founder of Friends Forever, a committee that connects disabled children to TAMS students via one-on-one interactions; and she is similarly active in in Driving Tomorrow, which aims to assuage the burdens of impoverished communities. She has, as well, volunteered to assist cancer patients, helping them to write letters. Sree has also served as a co-teacher of English in India. One might well say that Sree’s life in TAMS has been a marathon of academic and beneficent distinction, since she takes advantage of all that TAMS has to offer and assists others, globally, in reaching their full potential.

Tom Weiner Student Life Award recognizes leadership and contributions to TAMS Student Life.

This year’s winner is Zabrina Sidhu

During the COVID crisis, Zabrina, via the TAMS Mental Awareness Society Newsletter, engaged in dialogue with students seeking support. She enhanced such leadership engagement when becoming Director of “Active Minds.” She went even further by founding the FUN 101 committee (under Project Smile) to alleviate the stress and anxiety of her peers. Add to that Zabrina’s status as Director the TAMS Global Outreach Organization and her service as Logistics Head for “Project Sunshine.” Zabrina has clearly excelled in leadership and is a role model for members of the TAMS community.

The Wendy Boyd Brown Scholarship .

This scholarship honors TAMS Academic Counselor Wendy Boyd Brown, who constantly sought to bring out the best in TAMS students and to encourage them to develop as complete human beings. Adjudication takes into account FAFSA information, a student’s research, academic excellence, and ability to meet challenges ambitiously and ethically.

This year’s winner is Allen Chau.

Allen describes how—when faced with personal problems about the future during the past year-and-a-half of COVID—he would maintain focus and work constructively on those things over which he did have control. He thus demonstrated that achievement can be both incremental and tapered to available opportunities.

Allen has certainly taken control of his research in the area of pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases, an interest that dates to family malady and the inspiration to do something about it. To that end, Allen has conducted research in neurodegenerative-disease lab of Dr. Jannon Fuchs, where he has learned the ropes of staining and the use of confocal microscopes. His original contribution came in the suggestion that the lab use the Bio-analyzer plugin on the ImageJ software—the goal being that of obtaining cell-counting data faster and more accurately. Such work is as inspiring as it contributive, with three co-authored manuscripts in preparation.

The Class of 1996 Scholarship (recognizing the accomplishments of students from small towns)

This year’s winner is Iris Jones.

Iris is from Coldspring, Texas, which has a high school of 439 students. As indicated in Iris’s application essay, the community had limited access to broadband, negatively impacting the economy, healthcare, and public education For all that, Iris became an overachiever by locating online curricula that pushed her well beyond local expectation, allowing her to take and master advanced courses beyond her years. Little wonder that she eventually chose to apply to TAMS, making the most of the rigorous curriculum here as a student who prides herself on daily challenge within a community of ambitious young scholars wishing to maximize their educations. She has also conducted research with Dr. Eric Gruver.

The James R. Miller / Texas Instrument Scholarship — is still a further award for incoming TAMS students from rural areas and small towns.

This year’s winner is Elias Brown

With schooling in both Bridgeport and Pilot Point, Elias rose to be the number-one student in his sophomore class of 140 students. Though valuing the intimacy of that community, he longed for the further opportunities available in a TAMS academic setting in which students yearn for that “something-more” component of college education. Beyond the excitement of rigorous academics and life in McConnell Hall, Elias has expressed interest in the Driving Tomorrow club and in other community-service endeavors. He also wishes to conduct impactful research in either biology or computer science. Such are the spirit and determination that make Elias a deserving winner of this year’s James R. Miller Texas Instrument Scholarship.

The Nipul Foundation Award recognizes incoming early-research students who have excelled in the area of neuroscience.

This year’s winner is Nora Xiao.

Nora worked in the UNT Biomedical Engineering Lab of Dr. Mark Albert, and in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Moudy. With attention to fall-risk research, she contributed to a project on Parkinson’s disease. She specifically worked with Artificial Intelligence, employing neural networks to train a machine-learning model and predict, based on walking kinetics, ground-reaction forces. The project therefore united biomedicine and Artificial Intelligence with data drawn from 67 older adults having Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Jannon Fuchs and TAMS Faculty Scholarship—for ongoing TAMS Students who have excelled in any of the life sciences

This year’s winner is Neel Shanmugam.

Under the direction of Dr. Andres Cisneros (Department of Chemistry), Neel has focused on a prevalent mutation in a human enzyme (PARP-1), variants of which may figure in lung cancer and follicular lymphoma. Neel’s task was that of creating better inhibitors via a computational method utilizing classical physics and approximate parametric functions to simulate the time evolution of molecular systems. The goal is that of identifying more effective and personalized inhibitors to combat cancer.

What is notable about the Jannon Fuchs and TAMS Faculty Scholarship is the way its generous donors wished to acknowledge the special mentor-mentee relationship at the core of research-based undergraduate education. The award thus recognizes not only a student researcher, but also a faculty mentor who has excelled in bringing out the best in undergraduate researchers, and in such manner as to evoke the research and mentoring excellence of Dr. Jannon Fuchs.

Congratulations Neel; and kudos, Dr. Cisneros

The Patel Family Foundation Scholarship recognizes contributive and innovative research in the biological sciences during the current summer session.

This year’s winner is Neha Singaravelan.

This summer, in the BioDiscovery Lab of Dr. Elizabeth Skellam, Neha balanced biological and chemical research in an investigation of the fungus Aspergillus heteromorphus to determine if it produces cytochalasans exhibiting biological activities that help advance knowledge of cell structure and function. Neha established her own experimental methods and conducted genome mining of three additional strains of fungi. That contribution to the field of biology is significant because of its potential to contribute to enhance human health via pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.

Congratulations Neha

Julian C. Stanley Award recognizes research acumen and advanced mathematical aptitude.

This year’s winner is Timothy Haynes.

For the past academic year, Timothy has worked in the statistical genetics lab of Dr. Helen Wang (UNT Department of Mathematics). Timothy there channeled his mathematical acumen toward locating genetic variants associated with several diseases. He specifically coded algorithms to construct the lab’s innovative statistical model that will help predict trait association for multiple diseases. At the same time, Timothy excelled in his rigorous Calculus II class.

Timothy is thus an apt recipient of the Julian C. Stanley Award.

The Keerat Baweja Memorial Scholarship

This scholarship memorializes a beloved daughter and sister, Keerat Baweja. Applicants must have conducted research in the areas of engineering or computer science. Adjudication takes into account FAFSA, a student’s research, academic excellence, and helpfulness to others.

This year’s winner is Sarah Ann Teaw.

In her application, Sarah wrote that TAMS has been her Mecca for pursuing science, art, and community service. She, along with other TAMS students, has applied the principles and protocols of computer science in the computational chemistry lab of Dr. Thomas Cundari. Sarah there uses Density Functional Theory and computational modeling programs, such as Gaussian, to study vanadium-nitride alkali-metal catalysts.

Exemplifying TAMS emphasis on holistic development, this computational chemist is nonetheless pursuing and luxuriating in the TAMS Visual Arts track. She is thus an avid leader of the TAMS’ Art and Theater club, and is on the design team of FACES cultural magazine. Likewise impressive is her tutorial outreach to youngsters in the Denton. As for research during the COVID pandemic, Sarah was diligent in advancing her computational research in order to make innovative contributions toward the reduction of methane in the environment, specifically via the conversion of methane into methanol. She is thus a co-author of a manuscript-in-progress.

We are therefore delighted to name Sarah this year’s Keerat Baweja Scholarship recipient.

The Steve and Kathy Weiner Research Scholarship recognizes a second-year TAMS student who has excelled in research in the area of engineering or computer science.

This year’s winner is Anay Gupta.

In the computational-chemistry lab of Dr. Thomas Cundari, Anay has, in explorations of methane, used quantum mechanical calculations to design homogeneous catalysts. He has also directed his knowledge of computer science to assess different transition metals and monovalent ligands, all the while employing density-functional theory and statistical modeling. Anay’s work stands to illustrate the correlation between the Hammet-pKa relationship for thousands of machine-learning-modeled metal and ligand complexes. Little wonder that Anay is co-author of three manuscripts in progress, or published.

The Newman Scholarship for TAMS Early Researchers supports extraordinary work by early-research, first-year TAMS students. We have two winners this year.

In alphabetical order, the first Newman Scholarship winner is Shreya Amalapurapu.

Shreya worked in the computer-science lab of Dr. Serdar Bozdag, exploring repurposable drug candidates to treat the ever-mutating, and therefore drug-resistant, qualities of tuberculosis. To that end, Shreya computationally modeled a neural network that accepted data regarding the molecular/chemical features of compounds and indicated whether the compounds were permeable. She likewise created a deep-learning model that showed 96% efficiency in predicting cell-wall permeability. Shreya went on to identify ten chemical/molecular descriptors that had high effects on the permeability of compounds through a tubercular cell wall. Her data stand to influence drug discovery and drug repurposing. Such is one amazing outcome of an extraordinary early-researcher.

Congratulations Shreya.

Our second Newman Scholarship winner is Emily Troutman.

This past summer, Emily conducted research, in the lab of Dr. Gayatri Mehta, on high-speed computer-arithmetic architectures. Emily specifically focused on algorithms associated with high-performance arithmetic to increase computer processor speed; decrease size; and refine energy. Optimizing algorithms around three measurements—latency, area, and power—Emily improved multiplication and division circuitry, factors that have implications for the speed of countless other operations that otherwise wear and tear the computer’s Arithmetic Logic Unit. Emily’s significant contribution resided in her innovative design of a circuit that can simultaneously do both multiplication and division.

Such innovation and contribution more than merit a Newman Foundation Scholarship for early-researchers.

The Dean’s Scholarship:

This year’s winner is Angelina Xu.

The TAMS Dean’s Scholarship Recognizes a student who, while being an all-around great citizen of TAMS, has been at the forefront of academic and research excellence. Angelina has distinguished herself in the solvation-chemistry lab of Dr. William Acree, Jr. To improve food safety, Angelina utilized the Abraham model to investigate the solute-exchange process between plant cuticles and pollutants; she also investigated the absorption rate in different plant cuticles and compounds.

Angelina has further worked in the UT-Dallas lab of Dr. Hongbing Lu. To date Angelina has five co-authorships in such journals as theEuropean Chemical Bulletin; Journal of Molecular Liquids;Physics & Chemistry of Liquids; and Chemical Data Collections. This is a stunning record of contribution to the scientific community.

Congratulations Angelina.

The TAMS CLASS of 2000 Perseverance Scholarship goes to a TAMS student who, in the face of severe obstacles, has displayed perseverance and resilience.

This year’s winner is Alice Kim.

When fate arbitrarily assaults individuals and families, the question may be less about the unfairness of the universe and more about how individuals will react, relative to the purpose and dignity of individual life. We thus commend Alice for having responded with such devotion to her family’s decisive but taxing measures to deal with illness. Alice assumed many extra burdens customarily postponed until late-adulthood, but all the while excelled in curricular and extracurricular endeavor, including stellar orchestral performance. She has thereby brought joy, light, and hope to her household. We commend Alice and regard her as an exemplar in confronting—creatively and life-affirmingly—critical challenges. Believing that it’s “all about taking advantage of every single moment I live,” Alice richly merits the Class of 2000 Perseverance Award.