Calvin Student Wins Goldwater

April 25, 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY

A Calvin College junior has won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, an honor
he credits to the research experience he's accrued as an undergraduate.

Mark Vander Wal, a 20-year-old chemistry major, won $7,500 from the Barry M.
Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program toward his tuition,
books and living expenses for the upcoming academic year.

The program recognized 323 Goldwater Scholars for the 2006-2007 academic year
out of 1,081 nominated mathematics, science, and engineering students from
across the U.S.

Kumar Sinniah, a Calvin professor of chemistry who for three years has
collaborated with Vander Wal on various research projects, says the honor is a
significant one.

The Goldwater Scholarship, named for former senator Barry M. Goldwater, was
established by Congress in 1986 to bolster the ranks of highly qualified U.S.
scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college
students who plan to pursue careers in these fields.

Last year, Vander Wal and Sinniah teamed up on a project that measured pulling
forces in DNA hybridization-demonstrating that the measure of force used to
pull two strands of DNA apart varies based on how much force was used to put
them together.

Vander Wal gives the lion's share of the credit for his student research
career to his mentor.

"Without Professor Sinniah, my life at Calvin would not have gone as well as
it has. I had chemistry with him the first semester, and he took me under his
wing and brought me into his research group, and ever since then I've
researched with him," Vander Wal says. "It has been such a rewarding
experience. Without that research experience and the publication we had,
there's no way that this scholarship would have been possible."

For the full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/goldwater.htm

-end-
Received on Mon Apr 24 22:45:11 2006