Thomas Whittemore \u201923 and Conor Bready \u201924 have been named Goldwater Scholars, the preeminent honor for undergraduate students studying the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.<\/p>\n
Whittemore, from Easley, South Carolina, is majoring in chemistry. He is a Furman Hollingsworth Scholar<\/a>, a merit-based scholarship awarded to students who have made an impact in their communities. He also received a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates<\/a>\u00a0fellowship in 2021. He is interested in inorganic chemistry and the study of solar energy conversion. He has worked as a member of the housing staff, as a chemistry lab teaching assistant and has been active in club soccer and ultimate frisbee. Paul Wagenknecht \u201986, professor of chemistry, is his mentor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I opened the website and it said congratulations, I was shocked,\u201d Whittemore said. \u201cPart of my brain didn\u2019t process that I could legitimately win an award like that. It feels like I turned a page in a book to a new chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTom is making and investigating molecules that can be used as photocatalysts, materials that can convert sunlight into either electricity or fuel,\u201d Wagenknecht said. \u201cHis ability to excel at both experimental and computational work is extremely powerful, and quite unusual for an undergraduate researcher.\u00a0He is constantly coming up with good ideas of his own design and is one of the most creative and daring undergraduates I have encountered.\u00a0He also has an affable, jovial and outgoing personality that contributes greatly to the culture of my laboratory, our department and the whole Furman community.\u201d<\/p>\n Bready, from Highland, New York, is double majoring in chemistry and applied mathematics. He has already had extensive research experience analyzing atmospheric aerosols and photoreceptor decomposition. He has worked as a member of the housing staff and as a volunteer tutor, and he founded the badminton club sport. George Shields, professor of chemistry, is his mentor. Shields recently won the Goldwater Faculty Mentor Award<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a bit at a loss for words,\u201d Bready said of his win. \u201cI\u2019ve been working hard for all this time. It just feels really good. It feels like I\u2019ve been noticed for it, but I\u2019m just happy and thankful for everyone who helped me along this journey. I\u2019m happy to be part of the Goldwater community.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cConor has been an essential researcher for three different projects in our lab,\u201d Shields said. \u201cHis main project\u00a0has been to investigate how small molecules come together in the atmosphere and build up their size to what we call a pre-nucleation cluster.\u201d The work could be important in understanding how aerosols form into clouds, which has implications for reducing global warming. Conor and his co-workers, mostly students, made a significant discovery about the growth of pre-nucleation clusters in the atmosphere. \u201cConor\u2019s contributions were significant, including organizing a vast amount of data, analyzing of all this data and revising the written paper.\u201d The work was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A with Bready as a co-author.<\/p>\n Six Furman students have been named Goldwater Scholars since 2019, including three in 2021<\/a> and one in 2019<\/a>. Every university in the country can nominate four students, sophomores and juniors, each year, pitting students from small liberal arts and science universities, like Furman, against those from large research universities.<\/p>\n \u201cFurman does a great job of matching faculty expertise with student potential,\u201d said Scott Henderson, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Education and director of national and international scholarships.\u00a0\u201cBut it\u2019s not just a matter of expertise.\u00a0Faculty are committed to ensuring the long-term academic and professional success of students. Conferral of national awards simply reflects that fact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thomas Whittemore \u201923 and Conor Bready \u201924 have been named Goldwater Scholars, the preeminent honor for undergraduate students studying the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics. Whittemore, from Easley, South Carolina, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":9840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,53,30],"tags":[653,654,207,208],"class_list":["post-9839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-chemistry","category-top-stories","tag-goldwater","tag-goldwater-scholar","tag-student-research","tag-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}