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Visitors to the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library on a recent day most likely thought they’d wandered into location filming for a “CSI” or “NCIS” television episode. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded a library study area, and a team of what appeared to be crime scene experts scoured the site for evidence.

However, the dramatic scene had an academic purpose. First-year students enrolled in a “Forensic Chemistry” course taught by chemistry and biochemistry professor Marya Lieberman worked the Hesburgh Library crime scene as the capstone experience for the class.

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Scientia, the Undergraduate Journal of Scientific Research, hosts a monthly seminar series entitled, Talk Science. Held in the Jordan Hall of Science Reading Room in a fun and informal setting, Talk Science is a time and place for building camaraderie among science undergraduate students and faculty. Junior chemistry major Ansel Nalin and Prof. Stuart Jones both gave presentations on their research to 35 students at the most recent Talk Science seminar on Thursday, February 7.

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The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States has selected MurphyKate Montee as a Churchill Scholar for the academic year 2013-2014. She will use the scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom for her Master of Advanced Studies (Part III) in Theoretical Mathematics with a focus on geometry and topology. 

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The University of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health and the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) have announced a new opportunity for IUSM medical students to receive global health training through a joint Medical Doctor/Master of Science in Global Health (M.D./M.S.) integrated dual degree program that will begin in August.

“We are excited about this joint effort that will prepare students to make a big impact on the health of some of the world’s most underserved populations,” says Gregory Crawford, dean of the College of Science at Notre Dame.

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Scientia, the undergraduate journal of scientific research, held a seminar entitled “Talk Science” on Thursday, Nov. 8 in the Jordan Hall of Science. Approximately 60 students attended the seminar to hear research presentations from a faculty member and a fellow undergraduate researcher.

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MurphyKate Montee, a senior honors mathematics and music double major at the University of Notre Dame, has received the 2013 Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize, an honor awarded to only one undergraduate woman in the U.S. each year.

Montee is a member of the Seminar for Undergraduate Mathematical Research (SUMR), a program designed for the most talented mathematics students at Notre Dame. Montee is completing a senior honors thesis, titled “On the Construction of the Chern Classes of Complex Vector Bundles.” Montee has already authored or co-authored three research articles, two of which have been submitted for publication and have appeared on the Mathematics ArXiv.

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Elisabeth Bianco, a senior chemistry major at Ohio State University, received the $3,000 first place award at the second annual Notre Dame Competition in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, and Campus Tour (NDConnect).

Bianco won for her exploration of the properties of a one-atom-thick layer of the semiconductor germanium, which she synthesized for the first time and then characterized.

“Only a couple of years ago, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the researchers who developed graphene, a two-dimensional material made of carbon atoms,” says Ken Kuno, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Notre Dame.

“Elisabeth’s work moves beyond graphene by looking at a two-dimensional layer of germanium, which has many interesting properties, including advantages in the development of new transistors for computers.”

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Kevin McDermott, a senior physics major at the University of Notre Dame, recently returned from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he spent nine weeks as a summer researcher. CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), most powerful particle accelerator in the world. McDermott was one of 10 students selected from the United States to work at CERN for the summer.

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On July 9,  the Department of Physics and Notre Dame’s Physics Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program hosted the annual Physics Olympics in the Jordan Hall of Science. REU students from Michigan State, Purdue and Notre Dame participated in the events.

This year’s Physics Olympics included three group events designed to draw upon the students’ knowledge of basic physics principles.  Each event was timed and utilized everyday household items that needed to be used to complete a task.

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Greg Crawford, dean of the College of Science, hosted the annual Dean’s Award Luncheon on Friday, May 18, 2012 in the Jordan Hall of Science Galleria. Over 180 students, family members, faculty, and staff were in attendance to celebrate the achievements of the college’s top graduating seniors.

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The College of Science Joint Annual Meeting (COS-JAM) attracted over 400 hundred student attendees to the Jordan Hall of Science on Friday, May 4.  Undergraduate students presented their original research in the areas of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Biological Sciences.  Twenty five students gave oral presentations and 102 students showcased their research through poster presentations. In addition, five guest presenters from the Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair for elementary and high school students exhibited their research in the Galleria. The attendance at this year’s event was the largest in the six year history of COS-JAM.

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Researchers in the laboratory of Professor Morten Ring Eskildsen have recently published the first findings on metastability in the superconductor magnesium diboride (MgB₂). The paper, “Observation of Well-Ordered Metastable Vortex Lattice Phases in Superconducting MgB₂ Using Small-Angle Neutron Scattering,” appeared in the April 20 issue of Physical Review Letters. Two of its authors, Tommy O'Brien '10 and Kim Schlesinger '11, were undergraduate researchers who had received support from the Glynn Family Honors Program and the summer REU program at Notre Dame.

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University of Notre Dame junior Patrick O’Hayer has been named a 2012 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar.  He was selected from thousands of applicants to receive the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for the 2012-2013 academic year.

O’Hayer is a member of the Glynn Family Honors Program and is majoring in biology, with a minor in philosophy.  He plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. dual degree program and wants to conduct translational medical research, likely in the field of molecular genetics.

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