Flinn Scholars

Brad Ford ('92) plays all four parts of "Bantu," a guitar quartet by Andrew York.

Flinn Scholars

Last weekend (February 11-15), Nashville was the center of the universe.  David Hernandez ('04) should know, since he’s already explained to us all how to create a galaxy. This time, however, he explained the more refined techniques of that process to over a thousand assembled physicists at the 2009 Joint NSBP/NSHP Annual Conference.

His audiences were sufficiently impressed to award David the prize for ‘best poster’ at the conference, even though it was, in David’s terms, a ‘last-minute’ submission to the proceedings.  Well done, David! 

Flinn Scholars

When Emily Ricq ('05) went to France last year, it wasn't just for the Mona Lisa and french fries.

She was in Paris at the Université Pierre et Maire Curie, where she was researching the properties of special lipopeptides--organic compounds--that can penetrate cells.

For her research, Emily has now won the 2009 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science for Life Undergraduate Creativity Award. Among 150 entrants for the award, she was one of five winners of HHMI awards for science.

"Emily is a great student to have around and is challenging in the best sense of the word," said Lynne A. Oland, a research scientist in the UA's Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neurobiology, where Emily continues to conduct her research. "She is persistent, focused and loves what she is doing."

You can read more about Emily's work here.

Flinn Scholars

Are you one of those people who spends a lot of time thinking about how to build a perpetual-motion machine? Chances are, you might belong on bulbstorm, the latest brainstorm of Bart Steiner ('87).

Flinn Scholars

It was about 15 years ago, and we hadn't figured out yet exactly what we could make of the Flinn Scholarship's travel component. Then--if these distant memories are accurate--we saw Ruth Allard's ('90) slideshow from her trip to Costa Rica, where she'd done some conservation work for a summer.

Flinn Scholars

Dan Tuttle ('02) just got some good news--he's been accepted to Stanford's business school, his top choice. We're guessing he was one of their top choices, too.

Flinn Scholars

If you're a top-level materials chemist with experience building molecules atom by atom, Ambature wants you.

Flinn Scholars

Here's the address Brian Indrelunas ('04) delivered as the outstanding undergraduate student at fall convocation for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU.

Flinn Scholars

Last month, Bob Hanshaw ('06) received the Creative Achievement Award at the Honors Convocation in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona. His nominator for the award, which was given to one undergraduate and one graduate student, was Elizabeth Schauer, associate director of choral activities and an associate professor of music in the School of Music. Dr. Schauer agreed to share with me some of what she said about Bob:

The highlight of Bob’s creative life to date (and he’s only a junior!) was the performance of one of his compositions by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra (TSO).  As a senior, he submitted a work for their high school “Young Composers’ Project” in 2006, at which time the ensemble read the work (this was part of the award for the work being accepted).  TSO asked Bob to revise the work for a larger orchestra, and performed it on their “Celebrate the Future” concert.   It is a single-movement work, formally based on a haiku that was written by a friend of Bob’s. [...]

Bob also is active in the community as a musician.  He has performed as a jazz musician at the Westward Look Resort, served as paid baritone section leader and summer choir leader for the Chancel Choir at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.  Finally, Bob also founded and leads an independent rock band called Boreas.  With this group he performs frequently in Tucson, and has recorded an album that was just released in September.  Not only does he provide musical leadership, but also his artistic efforts in the digital layouts for the album artwork.

As with so many of our Scholars, those ellipses leave out many accomplishments and activities. But Dr. Schauer's words surely provide a glimpse of Bob's exceptional artistic talent.

(In the video above, from April, Bob is performing on vocals for The Hermit Tree, a band that also includes Scholar Matt Rolland ('05) on mandolin and Scholar alum Daniel Sullivan ('04) on drums.)

Flinn Scholars

Connor Mendenhall ('06) is spending the fall semester in Ankara, Turkey. He's been recording some of his experiences on his blog. Here's his entry from October 12.