When
Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite, was launched in
1957 it started
more than the now legendary "space race" between
the U.S. and U.S.S.R. It prompted four Los Angeles women to bolster science
education and create the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS)
Foundation, which decades later continues to support science students
at universities such as SF State.
The highly
selective ARCS scholarships are awarded at only 45 colleges and universities
in the U.S., and only seven in Northern California.
SFSU has participated in the scholarship program since 1991, receiving
about a half dozen awards annually. This year, seven master's students
in the College of Science and Engineering (COSE) were honored with Northern
California ARCS
Foundation scholarships
of $5,000 each at an awards luncheon held Feb. 6 in San Francisco.
The scholarship recipients -- who were recommended to ARCS by COSE faculty
based on strong academic records and needs -- represent the departments
of mathematics, physics and astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry and
biology. They are:
- David
Ai of Foster City (mathematics), who is conducting research in the
invariant theory subfield of computational commutative algebra
- Karen
Aiken of San Francisco (physics and astronomy), who is hunting for
very distant quasars, the star-like sources of radio wave emissions
that reveal the existence of black holes
- Jennifer
Carah of San Francisco (biology), who is pursuing research in plant
ecology, rarity, conservation and restoration
- Leslie
Lazarotti of San Francisco (biology), who is studying the processes
behind habitat succession and how one environmental community shifts
into another
- Julie
Patricia Nygard of San Francisco (conservation biology), who is examining
the impacts of an invasive species (Argentine ants) on a natural
system (Northern California willow trees)
- Jessica
Posada of San Francisco (cell and molecular biology), whose research
is focused on the molecular genetic basis of plant-pathogen
interactions
- Diana Shem of Albany (chemistry), who is conducting a computational
study of the catalysis of an enzyme involved in the synthesis of DNA.
Since its
founding in 1971, the Northern California ARCS chapter has raised nearly
$10 million for 1,726 scholars attending seven northern
California universities. In addition to San Francisco State University,
the Northern California institutions include Stanford University, University
of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz.
-- Ellen
Griffin
![](../../graphics/dots.gif)
![](../../graphics/dots.gif) |