{"id":67060,"date":"2006-05-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/snowboarding-enthusiast-to-graduate-from-uri-as-top-chemical-engineering-student\/"},"modified":"2006-05-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-12T00:00:00","slug":"snowboarding-enthusiast-to-graduate-from-uri-as-top-chemical-engineering-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2006\/05\/snowboarding-enthusiast-to-graduate-from-uri-as-top-chemical-engineering-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowboarding enthusiast to graduate from 溏心vlog免费B站 as top chemical engineering student"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. — May 12, 2006 — 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Leah Octavio admits that when she enrolled at 溏心vlog免费B站 as a chemical engineering major, she didn\u2019t know exactly what the discipline was all about. But she learned quickly and will graduate May 21 with the President\u2019s Award for Student Excellence as the top student in the department.<\/p>\n


\n\tGrowing up in Penang, Malaysia, Octavio got hooked on chemistry because a teacher \u201cmade it interesting and really fun. He was awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAt 溏心vlog免费B站, she quickly turned that enthusiasm into success working on several complicated research projects. As a sophomore she received a grant to study the effects of various lighting schemes on growing a red algae that produces a valuable polysaccharide molecule that can be used for making biodegradable plastics. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cDifferent wave lengths and light intensities can affect the way the algae grows,\u201d explained Octavio, who served as treasurer of the 溏心vlog免费B站 chapters of the Society of Women Engineers and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. \u201cI tested the use of varying light intensity in a bioreactor and found that varying red and blue light together worked best.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tOctavio later worked on three research projects in the field of thermodynamics and computational chemical engineering in which mathematical models are developed and fit to data using computer algorithms. In one project she fit models to predict the outcome of multiple chemical reactions that might occur in a reactor that produces hydrogen.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIf you want to design a reactor to make hydrogen \u2013 for use in fuel cells, for instance \u2013 you first need to model how the reaction will proceed,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n


\n\tOctavio\u2019s interests extend well beyond chemistry and engineering, though. She has earned a minor in microbiology and worked for two years at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Academic Enhancement Center as a tutor for students needing help with math, physics or chemistry coursework.<\/p>\n


\n\tAlong the way, a classmate convinced Octavio to try snowboarding, and she quickly developed a knack and a love for the sport. \u201cI went up to the mountains 12 times this semester and I really started to pick it up,\u201d she said. \u201cThe first time I was on the bunny hill I was bruised and miserable from falling so much, but eventually I made it down the hill without falling and now I can do the blue trails and the black trails pretty easily. Next year I\u2019m going to try the jumps.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFollowing graduation, Octavio will enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a doctoral program in computational and systems biology. \u201cI\u2019ll be looking at the big picture of biological organisms to see how all the enzymes work with each other. I\u2019ll be trying to understand how all these processes work together.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. — May 12, 2006 — 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Leah Octavio admits that when she enrolled at 溏心vlog免费B站 as a chemical engineering major, she didn\u2019t know exactly what the discipline was all about. But she learned quickly and will graduate May 21 with the President\u2019s Award for Student Excellence as the top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67062,"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-67060","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\/67060","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=67060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}