Student Profiles

Allison Rafuse

Química no es un problema for Allison Rafuse, a UMass senior who spent two months working in a Chemistry lab in Puerto Rico this summer. A Chemistry major double-majoring in Spanish, Allison was selected to travel to the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, as part of a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Allison credits her father with finding the specific opportunity. "Last summer I wanted to experience living in a Hispanic culture, but I also wanted to work in a chemistry lab. I had applied to the REU Program. My father went on-line and showed me this REU opportunity in Puerto Rico. It was a perfect fit for my interests."

The program paid for Allison's plane fare to San Juan, and for her housing with a diverse group of scientists on campus. She kept a regular work schedule in an analytical chemistry lab, communicating with her lab-mates in Spanish. Allison's project was to probe how modifying the surface characteristics of platinum electrodes changed their response. At the end of her stay she got to explain her results at a poster session in Spanish.

Back on campus in Amherst, Allison is now working on an honor's thesis in Chemistry supervised by Dr. Paul Lahti. After graduation, she hopes to attend graduate school, possibly in a Spanish-speaking country. According to Dr. Lahti, Chair of the Chemistry Department, "Allison's experience embodies the goal of the many activities on campus that help increase multiculturalism in our disciplines. She is a great person."

Kobina Dufu

As a Carnegie-1 research university, UMass can offer students hands-on laboratory opportunities not available at many smaller institutions. Kobina Dufu, an Honors student majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has taken full advantage of these resources to explore his special research interests.

Starting as a freshman, Kobina had a job as a Laboratory Assistant in the Chenoweth Laboratory. Routine lab work quickly gave him confidence with the basic lab skills of centrifugation, pH determination, preparation of solutions, and autoclaving. He developed his communication skills by serving as a Community Leader in his residence hall and tutored students in math, chemistry and biology courses through Learning Support Services at UMass. His outstanding academic performance in his coursework, together with his service and lab work attracted the attention of the Golden Key honorary.

Kobina's early activities soon opened the door for a more extensive research experience. In 1999, Kobina was one of 50 sophomore honors students in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry who received an invitation to apply for the Beckman Scholars Program. UMass is one of 16 institutions nationwide that has been funded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to help stimulate, encourage, and support research activities by exceptionally talented undergraduate students. Those selected each receive $18,200 to do full-time research for two summers and two academic years. Other benefits of the program include professorial mentoring of the student as they pursue their research; workshops and seminars dealing with lab technique and the tools needed for doing journal articles, grant proposals, and presentations; and a final symposium with other Beckman Scholars from across the country. After an intensive application process, Kobina was chosen as one of six Beckman Scholars.

Currently Kobina is working on his own honors thesis research project in Tom Mason's lab, studying the structure/function relationship of a ribosomal protein. The object of his research is to identify functional elements in a protein from yeast mitochondrial ribosomes, Var1p, and determine their role in the ribosome through in vitro mutagenesis of the gene.

Kobina hopes that the biochemical techniques and methods he is learning while pursuing this honor's project will position him well for a career in medical research, in particular, the study of the herbal cures of his native Ghana.

Jacob Abernethy

At the age of 18, Jacob Abernethy is a junior majoring in Mathematics at UMass. He recently scored a 29 on the Putnam Exam, the most prestigious college level math competition, which places him 147^th in the country among math undergraduates. He has a 4.0 GPA and is on his way to Hungary, to take part in Budapest Semesters in Mathematics.

"The idea of going to Budapest started about a year ago. What really fascinated me was basically just going to another country, and specifically I had heard that Budapest was a wonderful city. In addition, Hungary itself is well known for its impressive math environment, so I guess it seemed to be a great idea to spend a semester here," Jake later wrote from Budapest.

Describing himself as a "very involved mathematics student," Jake has been a Calculus TA for the Math Department for several semesters. He volunteers as the primary math teacher of two accelerated 6^th graders at Crocker Farm Elementary School, and visits with them three times per week.

His path to UMass has been unconventional. "I wasn't doing so well in high school so I finally left after first semester 10^th grade." That summer Jake took Calculus I at UMass and earned an A, discovering along the way, that he liked doing college work. Jake began taking night classes at the Harvard Extension School, near his father's home in Acton, MA. After a year, he transferred to UMass to be in a social environment with people his own age. Since then, he has studied a wide range of advanced math, including Real Analysis, Abstract Algebra, Number Theory, and graduate-level Topology.

Jake's primary source of income through the school year comes from his professional career as a juggler. He began juggling when he was 14, and by the summer of 1998 placed in the top 10 at the International Jugglers' Association competition in Las Vegas. During school, he frequently heads into Boston on the weekends for gigs or performing spots. Jake is a regular street performer at Faneuil Hall and Harvard Square in Boston/Cambridge. His show consists of unicycling, juggling, and juggling on top of an unsupported ladder.

In 1999, Jake organized the Juggling Club at UMass, which now has a membership of about 30 students. Don St. Mary, head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, said he was surprised, but not surprised, to learn about Jacob Abernethy's unusual extracurricular interests, adding, "He is a truly exceptional student."

Paul Silva

When he was in sixth grade, Paul Silva knew he wanted to be a physicist. He didn't know that when he graduated from UMass in Y2K with a degree in applied physics he would also be running his own company. In 1998, with the help of his business partner, Jeremie Spitzer (2000, BDIC), Paul launched ZFORM LLC, a company specializing in interactive digital entertainment for the blind and visually impaired.

His interest in developing computer software for the visually impaired emerged when he found himself trying to explain a computer-science professor's lessons to a blind friend. The challenges he faced sensitized him to how much sighted people rely on visual cues to pick their way through unfamiliar territory and he asked himself, "Why neglect the other senses?"

Paul decided to use game development as a test-bed for that idea. Shunning the graphics-intensive interface of the modern computer game, ZFORM will provide interactive computer entertainment that renders the physical environment in audible cues. Already his approach has garnered impressive support from computer-game companies and non-profit organizations for the blind. Billing himself an "Organic Game Developer," Paul favors cooperation over competition, and has already formed a VIP game alliance with two other companies active in this area.

In September of 1999, Paul and other students joined with Jaymie Chernoff, Director of the Office of Economic Development, to found the UMass Five College Entrepreneurship Club. The idea is simple: students participate in a program during the spring semester in which they form business teams, write a business plan, and compete (for $10,000 in prizes) in an end-of-semester business plan competition.

Paul credits his mother with getting him hooked on creating games. When he was six years old and wanting a game to play, she gave him a pencil and paper and told him to make his own. He's been doing so ever since. Leading the Society of Physics Students at UMass from obscurity to winning the Outstanding Chapter of the Year award in both 1998 and 1999 taught him the power of directed cooperation. Paul worked in research labs at UMass since his freshman year, and presented the results of his own research on granular dynamics at the centennial meeting of the American Physical Society in Atlanta.

So how else does a physics major prepare one to succeed in business? Paul explains that the training in organized thinking and problem solving that comes with a physics degree has given him the skills he needs to think carefully about complicated problems. Besides, he points out, what he's learned about Newtonian mechanics and kinematics would give him an edge as a physics model designer for a major video-game designer even as he continues to "organically grow" ZFORM LLC.