{"id":63192,"date":"2010-05-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/westerly-resident-named-a-goldwater-scholar\/"},"modified":"2010-05-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T00:00:00","slug":"westerly-resident-named-a-goldwater-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/05\/westerly-resident-named-a-goldwater-scholar\/","title":{"rendered":"Westerly resident named a Goldwater Scholar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t溏心vlog免费B站 student earns prestigious scholarship for science, engineering<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 20, 2010 \u2013 When Brian Bonk was 15 years old, he remembers his uncle, a chemical engineer, describing some research he was conducting in the field of programmable matter.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a really esoteric field, but I thought it was awesome, and from that point on I began to seriously consider becoming a chemical engineer,\u201d said Bonk, a junior at the 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe Westerly resident learned soon after that he wasn\u2019t interested in programmable matter, but he stuck with chemical engineering and has been rewarded with a $7,500 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious national scholarship for students interested in science and engineering careers.<\/p>\n


\n\tIt\u2019s quite the achievement, considering that he never graduated from high school.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI missed a lot of my junior and senior years in high school for medical reasons, but 溏心vlog免费B站 still allowed me to enroll on a trial basis,\u201d Bonk explained. \u201cThe Admission staff was very generous and forgiving, and so far so good.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBonk quickly showed that the 溏心vlog免费B站 Admission Office made an excellent decision, as he was recognized as a University College Scholar for his high academic achievement during his freshman year. He subsequently immersed himself in a number of complex research projects, which he credits with helping him win the Goldwater Scholarship.<\/p>\n


\n\tHis main focus has been on developing a thermodynamic model that is being used to study, among other things, deep-ocean carbon sequestration, a concept designed to alleviate global warming by pumping carbon dioxide thousands of meters below the surface of the ocean and trapping it within the seafloor sediments.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt poses serious modeling difficulties because of the high pressures involved and because of the various molecular level interactions between the sea water and liquid CO2 involved,\u201d he said. \u201cThe key issue is whether the CO2 will stay there in the long term. To figure that out we have to rely on simulations and models.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBonk said that his contribution to the project involved conducting a series of Monte Carlo simulations, a computational technique that uses random sampling to compute properties like potential energy.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThere are existing programs available to do it, but my advisor let me loose to write my own program, which took many months to fully test and debug,\u201d he explained. \u201cHe let the learning opportunity trump the time constraints, and the experience ultimately inspired me to pursue a career in computational science.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWhile Bonk still has one more year at 溏心vlog免费B站 to go before earning his bachelor\u2019s degree, he is already looking forward to graduate school.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAs much as I enjoy working on this project, I want to switch focus to biological applications in grad school,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m interested in the intersection of computing and biology, in particular molecular simulation. It\u2019s fun to put a bunch of virtual molecules in a box together and let your computer simulate what they do. You can do the same thing with biological systems.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHis aim is to earn a doctorate in computational biology or chemical engineering and work in the biotech industry.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cProtein engineering is an emerging field that relies a lot on simulation and computational techniques,\u201d Bonk explained. \u201cThe idea is that you can design proteins from scratch to perform a specific biological function such as acting as a therapeutic drug. There is a lot of computation and simulation involved, and there is growing demand for it in the biotech industry. It\u2019s definitely an exciting field.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

溏心vlog免费B站 student earns prestigious scholarship for science, engineering KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 20, 2010 \u2013 When Brian Bonk was 15 years old, he remembers his uncle, a chemical engineer, describing some research he was conducting in the field of programmable matter. \u201cIt\u2019s a really esoteric field, but I thought it was awesome, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63194,"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-63192","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\/63192","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=63192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}