Two Bedford High School graduates, one from the Class of 2013 and one from the Class of 2015, have recently received distinguished awards.
Alexander (Olek) Pisera, BHS Class of 2013, has been awarded a $90,000 fellowship by the Paul and Daisy Soros “Fellowships for New Americans” program to complete his Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine. The Fellowship honors the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States and is awarded to 30 students each year. Olek Pisera is the son of Polish immigrants.
He graduated with honors in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked in molecular biology. At UC Irvine, Olek is working in Professor Chang Liu’s laboratory where his research is in building synthetic biological systems and in directed evolution. He is developing a system that could allow for the discovery of antibodies against classes of mammalian cell surface proteins that have been inaccessible with current technologies.
Madeline Claire Allen, BHS Class 0f 2015, has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award. Maddy is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University in Civil Engineering. Her proposal was titled Participatory Agent-Based Model: The Impact of Individual Decision-Making Processes on Community Level Flood Resilience, although she mentioned that there is an incredible amount of flexibility in the grant. The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.
As we wrote earlier, Maddy recently participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, UK. Madeline Allen, From BHS to Glasgow Climate Summit – The Bedford Citizen December 29, 2021
If you know of other notable BHS grads, please tell us about them by emailing [email protected]
Loading ...
