Two undergraduate researchers in Chemistry, Jane Hung and Cameron Turtle, have received the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.

Jane Hung  has been working in the laboratory of  Xiaosong Li  studying a fundamental process that could play an important role in the development of more efficient light-emitting diodes  and photovoltaic devices. “The insight I have acquired into the materials of the future is absolutely priceless, and my goal now is to help turn clean technology into global power,” she says.

Cameron Turtle was half of the “Undergraduate Dream Team” in the Keller Biophysics lab  during the summer of 2009.   The  team measured miscibility transition temperatures in synthetic lipid membranes that contained charged lipids. Cameron measured the temperatures at which those membranes became heterogeneous, such that regions enhanced in particular lipids appeared by fluorescence microscopy.  Cameron’s results have been important for two communities: researchers interested in how “rafts” might arise in cell membranes and researchers interested in quantifying intermolecular interaction energies.

Congratulations to Jane and Cameron!