2011-2012 Graduate Student Achievements

• Maryna Raskin, a GSAS child development doctoral candidate, was awarded the APA's Lizette Peterson-Homer Injury Prevention Grant. The one-year, $5,000 grant will support Raskin's research on child abuse and neglect. Read more by clicking here.
   
• Biology doctoral student Christine Lattin received a 2011 EPA Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowship. The three-year award, bestowed annually by the Environmental Protection Agency, consists of a yearly $25,000 stipend and $5,000 for research travel, meeting and conference expenses, and other research-related costs. The EPA funding will allow Lattin to study how shorebirds in the Gulf of Mexico are being affected by last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, when an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico. Read more by clicking here.
   
• The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and the School of Engineering awarded research grants-in-aid to fifteen graduate students during the spring semester. Read more by clicking here.
   
• It's been an interesting year for GSAS urban and environmental policy and planning student Julia Ledewitz. In August, she was one of only twenty graduate students nationwide to receive a 2011 Switzer Foundation Fellowship, and in September she was named to the U.S. World Triathlon Team for her age group. Ledewitz earned a spot after finishing in the top twenty at the August 2011 U.S.A. Triathlon National Championships. Read more by clicking here.
   
• Jill Plevinsky, a GSAS child development student, was one of five individuals in the country chosen to participate in the Mayo Clinic's Social Media Summit through its Patient, Caregiver Scholarship program. Plevinsky, who has Crohn's disease, was picked on the strength of a personal essay, her advocacy work on behalf of more than 1.4 million Americans who have Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and her interest in the role social media and online communities can play in engaging patient communities. Read more by clicking here.
   
• Biology doctoral student Adam Thomas presented a poster at the July 2011 Genetic Recombination and Genome Rearrangements Conference held in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Thomas's poster was titled "Repair of Camptothecin-induced DNA Damage in Drosophila melanogaster"; the poster explained Thomas's research on how cells repair DNA damage caused by a drug called camptothecin. Read more by clicking here.
   
• In September 2011, graduate alumni Kristen Keilty, G01, Scott Trudeau, A85, G98, and occupational therapy graduate students came together with a single goal in mind: to help make driving safer for older adults. Through a partnership involving the GSAS Department of Occupational Therapy and the Emerson Hospital of Concord, Massachusetts, Keilty brought the CarFit program to Tufts' Medford campus. Read more by clicking here.
   
• Each year, the Center for Humanities at Tufts (CHAT) chooses two graduate students to serve as fellows. The fellows for 2011 are Catherine Vrtis (drama) and Erin Kappeler (English). As fellows, each received an $18,000 stipend and office space in the CHAT house; Vrtis and Kappeler will also have the opportunity to present their work during an upcoming CHAT seminar. Read more by clicking here.
   
• April Jewell, a GSAS chemistry doctoral student, received the Young Scientist Prize at the 10th International Conference on the Structure of Surfaces (ICSOS-10) in August 2011. Jewell received the prize—which is awarded to a current or recent Ph.D. student in surface, interface, and nanostructure research—for her work developing a "novel approach for controlling surface-based molecular self-assembly, rotation, and chirality. Read more by clicking here.