{"id":63135,"date":"2010-05-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/academic-athletic-accolades-pile-up-for-uri-student-preparing-to-graduate-may-23\/"},"modified":"2010-05-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T00:00:00","slug":"academic-athletic-accolades-pile-up-for-uri-student-preparing-to-graduate-may-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/05\/academic-athletic-accolades-pile-up-for-uri-student-preparing-to-graduate-may-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic, athletic accolades pile up for 溏心vlog免费B站 student preparing to graduate May 23"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNorth Easton, Mass. resident headed to Kentucky for Ph.D.<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 10, 2010 \u2013 As Matt Burak prepares to graduate from the 溏心vlog免费B站 on May 23, he\u2019ll be packing up a number of honors and awards. Most recently, he was presented the Rainville Leadership Award, the top award for student leaders on campus.<\/p>\n


\n\tA resident of North Easton, Mass., Burak enrolled at 溏心vlog免费B站 because of its unique program that merges chemical engineering with biology.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in chemistry and biology, partly because my grandparents came down with Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer\u2019s disease and I wanted to help find a cure,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd my grandfather and father are both engineers, so I wanted to keep that tradition alive, too.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBut it wasn\u2019t just academics that lured him to 溏心vlog免费B站. He was also recruited to compete on the swim team. Although the University dropped varsity swimming mid-way through Burak\u2019s career, he worked to ensure that the team remained active as a club sport. It was for those efforts that he was rewarded with the Rainville Leadership Award.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt was a big transition for the guys to move from a Division I team to a club team, and I helped make that transition possible,\u201d he explained. \u201cSwimming was such a big part of our lives, and we didn\u2019t want to see it go. We worked together to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHis efforts were rewarded in the pool, too. Burak led the 溏心vlog免费B站 swim team to set five national records for club teams \u2013 the 200 and 400 meter freestyle relays, the 200 meter medley relay, the 100 meter individual freestyle and the 50 meter individual freestyle. During his sophomore year he was also recognized as the smartest male athlete at 溏心vlog免费B站 for having earned the highest grade point average among all male athletes on campus.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cSwimming helped me prioritize my time,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout it, I\u2019d probably have gone crazy. It\u2019s important that I had both swimming and studying in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBut those weren\u2019t Burak\u2019s only commitments. He also worked on a microbial fuel cell research project that was designed to use microorganisms to break down pharmaceutical waste products.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIn the last couple of decades, there has been an increasing amount of pharmaceuticals turning up in ponds and reservoirs \u2013 especially heart disease drugs \u2013 and we don\u2019t want them getting into our drinking water,\u201d Burak said. \u201cWe proposed using a fuel cell in a reservoir that will help remove these harmful drugs from the water supply. It may also be useful in the manufacturing process to clean out byproducts.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tLast summer Burak worked for Millenium Pharmaceuticals to optimize the process of making cancer drugs and reduce the manufacturing time. \u201cI heard all sorts of great stories about how people are surviving cancer using their drugs, and it really touched me and spurred me on to want to go into the pharmaceutical field.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBurak\u2019s next step is to enroll in a doctoral program at the University of Kentucky where he will study drug delivery systems for cancer therapy, with the eventual goal of conducting his own research on new cancer drugs and possibly teaching at the college level.<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Communications & Marketing photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Easton, Mass. resident headed to Kentucky for Ph.D. KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 10, 2010 \u2013 As Matt Burak prepares to graduate from the 溏心vlog免费B站 on May 23, he\u2019ll be packing up a number of honors and awards. Most recently, he was presented the Rainville Leadership Award, the top award for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63137,"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-63135","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\/63135","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=63135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}