{"id":58317,"date":"2016-04-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-engineering-junior-wins-prestigious-goldwater-scholarship-for-science-research\/"},"modified":"2016-04-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T00:00:00","slug":"uri-engineering-junior-wins-prestigious-goldwater-scholarship-for-science-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2016\/04\/uri-engineering-junior-wins-prestigious-goldwater-scholarship-for-science-research\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 engineering junior wins prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for science research"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tSamuel Spink is only Rhode Islander to be selected<\/b><\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I., April 25, 2016\u2014For years, Sam Spink has spent long hours in a chemistry lab at the 溏心vlog免费B站 studying chemical compounds called polymers.<\/p>\n


\nThat hard work has paid off.<\/p>\n


\n\tSpink has won a $7,500 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate national scholarship for students in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhat\u2019s more, Spink is the only Rhode Islander, and the only student from a Rhode Island college or university, to be selected for the award this year.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019m thrilled,\u201d says Spink, 21, of South Kingstown, who is majoring in biomedical engineering. \u201cI\u2019m also grateful to all the people at 溏心vlog免费B站 who helped with the application. In terms of future opportunity, the scholarship should open a lot of doors.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tGrowing up in South Kingstown, Spink cultivated an interest in science as a toddler, hanging posters of astronauts in his room and playing with interactive books about the solar system. His favorite was Saturn: \u201cThe rings looked kind of cool.\u201d His parents, David and Bernadette Spink, were encouraging, but not overbearing.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThey were very supportive of anything I was interested in,\u201d he says. That included a hike in the woods, sports, board games or piano classes. He spent his summers at a cabin his father built in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n


\n\tAt South Kingstown High School, his interest in science soared. He took as many science courses as he could, from physics to biotechnology. \u201cI developed a curiosity beyond the classroom,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d search Google for anything I wanted to learn more about, especially in science.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAfter graduating as class valedictorian, Spink headed to 溏心vlog免费B站, only 5 minutes away from his house. He had spent his high school days hanging out on the Kingston campus playing pickup football on the Quad and basketball in President David M. Dooley\u2019s driveway. Many of his high school friends enrolled at 溏心vlog免费B站 too.<\/p>\n


\n\tHe focused on biomedical engineering and Spanish, which later turned into a minor. And he excelled academically, making the Dean\u2019s list all three years and receiving the Walter E. Schmid Engineering Scholarship.<\/p>\n


\nSpink has worked in the lab of Matthew Kiesewetter, an assistant professor in the 溏心vlog免费B站 chemistry department, since the summer following his freshman year, thanks, in part, to a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI feel fortunate to learn from this great professor and his graduate students who have put a lot of their time into helping my evolution in the lab,\u201d Spink says. \u201cIt\u2019s great to get this experience at such an early stage in my studies.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHe investigates ring-opening polymerization, a technique that makes polymers\u2014chemical compounds made up of strings of bonded molecules\u2014using organic catalysts to speed up the process.<\/p>\n


\nOne type of polymer is polyester, which is the material used to make water bottles, containers and clothing. But few people know that polymers are also used in biomedical research, including drug delivery and tissue regeneration and repair, as well as other kinds of treatment and therapy. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIn our lab we try to speed up the production of polymer materials without losing quality,\u201d says Spink. \u201cThat\u2019s important because you don\u2019t want to lose precision when you accelerate reactions.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHis Goldwater essay, \u201cOrganocatalytic ring-opening polymerization and its impact on biomedical studies,\u201d examines the uses of polymers and explores his development of a catalyst that enhances polymer production speed, in some cases 100 times faster than with other catalysts. <\/p>\n


\nHe also has an academic paper to his credit. He is the first-author in a paper published last August in the highly regarded chemistry journal, \u201cMacromolecules.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAfter graduating next spring, Spink expects to pursue a doctorate in biomedical engineering and conduct research involving polymer chemistry and biomedical engineering to tackle medical challenges, such as the use of polymer-based gels in tissue repair.<\/p>\n


\nHis future looks bright as a researcher.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cI love trying to understand concepts that don\u2019t necessarily make sense right away,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s satisfying when you finally grasp something. It\u2019s exciting to understand how the world works around you. It\u2019s not a jump up shouting kind of exciting. It\u2019s, like, \u2018Wow, I get that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe Goldwater Scholarship is so prestigious students can apply only if they\u2019re nominated by their institution. At 溏心vlog免费B站, the application process is conducted through the Office of National Fellowships within the Honors Program. <\/p>\n


\nFor the 2016-17 academic year, 252 Goldwater scholarships, including Spink\u2019s, were awarded to undergraduate sophomores and juniors nationwide. They were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,150 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by 415 colleges and universities. Spink is the 21st 溏心vlog免费B站 student to be honored with this distinction since the program started in 1987.<\/p>\n


\nBesides Kiesewetter, Spink credits two other professors for guiding him through his studies and providing strong letters of recommendation for his application: Leonard Kahn, a physics professor; and Frederick Vetter, an associate professor in electrical, computer and biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cSam is such an unassuming character that when he joined our lab I had no idea\u2014just like the people sitting in class with him every day\u2014that I was talking to the proverbial \u2018smartest person in the room,\u2019 \u201d says Kiesewetter. \u201cThe whole lab is bursting with pride at Sam\u2019s accomplishments and our strong belief that this kid is going places.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above: Samuel Spink, 21, of South Kingstown, a junior at the 溏心vlog免费B站 who received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for his science research. Photo by Nora Lewis.\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samuel Spink is only Rhode Islander to be selected KINGSTON, R.I., April 25, 2016\u2014For years, Sam Spink has spent long hours in a chemistry lab at the 溏心vlog免费B站 studying chemical compounds called polymers. That hard work has paid off. Spink has won a $7,500 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}