‘Star’ UH students
awarded for research
University of Hawaii doctoral candidate Scott Dahm is studying newborn stars as they emerge from parental gas clouds.
"By studying young stars as they emerge from their parental clouds of gas, we are given rare insight into the early history of the sun and formation of the solar system," he said.
The Institute for Astronomy graduate student was among 11 students receiving $5,000 scholarships from the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists-Honolulu Chapter and received an additional $1,000 as Scholar of the Year at the chapter's recent annual dinner. Dahm received ARCS' Helen Jones Farrar Scholarship in Astronomy for his research on star-forming regions or "stellar nurseries" hundreds of light years away.
Other doctoral candidates honored by the ARCS chapter for outstanding research were:
>> Jonathan D. Awaya, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources, ARCS Scholarship in Horticulture.Also, astronomer John Tonry, with the Institute for Astronomy, was recognized as ARCS Scientist of the Year.>> Jennifer L. Campbell-Meier, Department of Communication & Information Sciences, ARCS Columbia Scholarship in Telecommunications and Computer Science.
>> Eric Conklin, Department of Zoology, ARCS Scholarship in Marine Biology.
>> Judith Denery, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources, ARCS Kresser Foundation Scholarship in Engineering.
>> Theodore S. Durland, Department of Oceanography, ARCS Scholarship in Oceanography.
>> Kenneth Hayes, Department of Zoology, ARCS Maybelle Roth Scholarship in Conservation Biology.
>> Beth Irikura, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources, ARCS Bretzlaff Foundation Scholarship in Engineering.
>> Heather McMillen, Department of Anthropology, ARCS Maybelle Roth Scholarship in Conservation Biology.
>> Eric Umemoto, Department of Microbiology, ARCS Scholarship in Microbiology.
>> Kyle A. Mitsunaga, third-year student in the John A. Burns School of Medicine, received the ARCS Scholarship in Medicine.
Tonry was cited as one of the top astronomers worldwide based on his publications and contributions in development of camera detectors on telescopes.
He invented the detector for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, called Pan-STARRS, an array of four small telescopes that will scan the sky for asteroids and comets from Hawaii.
The student scholars are working on such problems as bacterial enzymes that break down toxic compounds in a tropical plant favored by cattle, interaction between herbivorous coral reef fish and marine algae, and medicinal plants used for health care and HIV/AIDS treatment in Tanzania.