Sixeen University of Rochester students, the largest contingent from North America, will work at German research institutes this summer after being offered DAAD RISE scholarships.
Rochester also had the highest number of applicants in North America, with 49. The 16 participants is six more than the previous University high set in 2016.
The highly competitive program was established in 2005 and is sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service, Germany’s publicly funded but independent organization of higher education institutions, known by its German initials as DAAD. RISE stands for Research Internships in Science and Engineering.
RISE scholars are matched with a host university or institute according to their area of interest and are mentored by German doctoral students for ten weeks to three months. DAAD RISE scholars are paid a monthly stipend, and receive a travel allowance, and a trip to the RISE Scholars weekend symposium in Heidelburg in July. Knowledge of German is not required, since work is conducted in English.
This year, 1,694 North American, British, and Irish undergraduates applied for 548 available research internships through the DAAD RISE program.
Here’s a list of Rochester students selected:
Diwas Gautam ’20, a mechanical engineering major from Ilam, Nepal, will work at the Hochschule Hannover, researching the scalability of mobile micro-CHP units for their application in electric vehicles.
Collin Gwilt ’20, a biomedical engineering major from Liverpool, New York, will be at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, assisting personnel taking clinical samples of HIV-infected patients, and analyzing the correlation between the expression of integrin proteins and the size of the viral reservoir.
Muhammad Hadi ’19, a mechanical engineering major from Muscat, Oman, will be at Hamburg University of Technology working on developing and implementing non-linear controls for flexible lightweight robots.
Carley Haft ’19, a San Diego native who double major in biology and health, behavior, and society, will be working in a cognitive neuroscience lab at Humboldt University of Berlin, helping to create an automated system for animal care in order to minimize human error.
Shemmar Jackson ’20, a mechanical engineering major from St. Catherine, Jamaica, will be at the Technical University of Dortmund, working on a research project titled “Manufacturing of Load-optimized Automotive Components by Incremental Sheet-Bulk Metal Forming.”
Megan Kice ’20, a microbiology major from Memphis, Missouri, will be studying the effect of preceding drought on the stress response of bacteria at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research.
Yunke “Claudia” Ren ’20, a biomedical engineering major from Hefei, China, will be working on a research project called “Biomimetic Adhesive from Lignin” at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. It will focus on imitating the adhesive properties of mussels to develop a new, non-toxic adhesive, based on a lignin backbone.
Adina Ripin ’20, a physics major from Old Saybrook, Connecticut, will perform research in a physics lab at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, where she will study individual atoms submerged in Bose-Einstein condensate.
Erin Sumfleth ’20, an optical engineering major from Callicoon, New York, will be working with polymers and solar cells at the Karlsruhe Institute of Microstructure Technology.
Lauren Testa ’19, a molecular genetics major from Glen Rock, New Jersey, will be at the University of Tübingen, performing genetics research on the cardiovascular genetic disorder familial dilated cardiomyopathy. Her project will involve generating a knock-in cell line and using it for drug testing.
Aimé Laurent Twizerimana ’20, a chemical engineering major from Nyabihu, Rwanda, will work at the Jülich Research Center on a project that involves developing innovative reactors for fuel synthesis from hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
Javon Walker ’19, a Brooklyn resident from Jamaica majoring in electrical and computer engineering, will be at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, working on a research project titled “Novel antennas for mobile communication.”
Isaac Wong ’19, a Phoenix, Arizona, native majoring in computational biology, will be at Free University in Berlin, working on cellular receptor signaling and cytoskeleton studied by live cell and super resolution microscopy.
Sifan Ye ’20, a computer science major from Shanghai, China, will be participating in research at Saarland University in Saarbrucken that details the privacy impact of self-tracking devices.
Victor Zhang ’19, a biomedical engineering major from Lexington, Massachusetts, will be joining a lab at Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, working on organ-on-a-chip technologies. His project will involve further research and development of the system, and optimizing its use in future applications.
Dingzhe Zheng ’19, an optical engineering major from Wenzhou, China, will head to Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences in Giessen, where he will reseach a new concept to achieve a quantitative detection of fluorescence markers.
