Junior Chemistry major Andrew F. DeBlase (Hopewell Junction, NY) has been awarded a 2008-2009 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation's most prestigious undergraduate award in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. This $7,500 annual scholarship, which honors the late Senator Barry M. Goldwater, will be applied to the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board for the next academic year.
DeBlase is one of 321 sophomores and juniors chosen on the basis of academic merit from among a pool of 1,035 students nominated by faculty at their home institutions. DeBlase, who received Honorable Mention in the 2007-08 Goldwater competition, is the second Marist student in the past three years to have been selected for the award. Senior Katherine D. Amodeo, a Biomedical Sciences major from Marlboro, NY, was recognized as a 2006-07 Goldwater Scholar. Other institutions honored with 2008-09 Goldwater Scholarship recipients include Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Cornell, MIT, Duke, and Notre Dame. This year, almost 80% of Goldwater Scholarships went to students at large research universities, with DeBlase's award being the only one to a student at a mid-Hudson Valley college or university, and the only one to institutions in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
At Marist, DeBlase is a Hudson Valley Scholar and a member of the Deans Circle, the American Chemical Society-Student Affiliate, and Marist Ambassadors, among other student organizations. During Summer 2006, he conducted research under the mentorship of Associate Professor of Chemistry John Galbraith on a project funded by the Research Corporation. He presented the results of this research, which continued through the 2006-07 academic year, at a conference at Hamilton College and at CURSCA. Along with Galbraith and Marist alumnus Megan Licata (Chemistry, '02), DeBlase co-authored a paper recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He also conducted computational research on chemical bonding at Columbia University in Summer 2007, work which was funded by the National Science Foundation and which also was presented at several conferences. He currently is working with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jocelyn Nadeau on a project funded by the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund to investigate the through-space mechanism of conductivity in thiophene oligomers via a C-shaped conductive polymer.
DeBlase plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, and eventually would like to investigate the fundamentals of chemical bonding and reaction mechanisms, with the hope of developing alternative energy sources to lower our dependence on fossil fuels. "Andrew DeBlase has combined his intellect and curiosity with hard work and strong motivation for a career as a research scientist to accomplish so much in such a short time - less than three full years - at Marist," said Michael G. Tannenbaum, Dean of the School of Science at Marist. "We feel that he and our other Goldwater Scholar, Katie Amodeo, are great examples of students we have the privilege to work with in the School of Science. The faculty and I are grateful for our past experiences with Andrew and Katie, and we look forward to other Marist students following in their footsteps."
