Dr. Ross Sowell, assistant professor of computer science at Rhodes College, is the recipient of an $84,657 award funded by the National Science Foundation for a research project contributing to advances in robotics and creating appropriate policies governing collaborative robots’ deployment in various social situations and public spaces. Three Rhodes students also will contribute to the research project.

Dr. Catie Welsh, associate professor of computer science at Rhodes College, is joining a distinguished roster of Fulbright U.S. Scholars this semester. She will be a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program—a prestigious educational exchange program—selects American scholars, artists, faculty, and professionals for their substantial experience and leadership to lecture and/or conduct research abroad for up to a year.

The researchers have been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation grant of $267,970 to study brain activity involved in body movement using 3D motion capture technology. “This equipment is going to put Rhodes College on the map as a serious contributor in the movement science research space,” says Dr. Dan Blustein, principal investigator and assistant professor of psychology. “We are really excited about the diversity of projects we have planned and about getting students from all over the college involved.”

Rhodes will have a new supercomputing center, thanks to a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $389,662. Dr. Brian Larkins, associate professor of computer science, is principal investigator, and José Rodriguez, chief information officer, is co-principal investigator for the project, which is titled “CC* Compute: A High-Performance Computing Cluster To Accelerate Research, Education, And Training At Rhodes College.”

Facing a remote end to his senior year and a cancelled final baseball season due to COVID-19, John Medich ’20 set his sights on a new goal: in the fall, the Sewickley, PA, native will be competing with ACC powerhouse Georgia Tech as a graduate transfer while pursuing an M.S. in Quantitative and Computational Finance.

Dr. Erin Bodine, associate professor of mathematics; Dr. Sarah Boyle, associate professor of biology; and Dr. Loretta Jackson-Hayes, professor of chemistry and director of scholarly and creative activity mentoring, are members of the inaugural cohort of the Advancing STEM Careers by Empowering Network Development (ASCEND). ASCEND is funded by a nearly million-dollar National Science Foundation grant that runs through September 2024.

A team of five Rhodes seniors recently won the local competition of the Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Institute Research Challenge, and now will match wits and analytical skills against other student teams advancing to the regional competition to be held April 20-21 in New York City. They are Ted Bilden (business), Liza Esther (economics and business), Elliot Gorski (economics and business), John Medich (mathematics and economics), and Andrew Morton (business).

Rhodes’ Postgraduate Scholarship Committee has nominated Carter King ’20 and Caroline Clark ’15 for the 2020-2021 Luce Scholars competition. Rhodes is one of only 75 colleges and universities eligible to make nominations for the nationally competitive fellowship, which is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation in New York.

The National Science Foundation awarded Rhodes College $650,000 to increase the academic and career success of lower-income, academically talented STEM students at Rhodes. The eighteen students selected will receive a scholarship to reduce, or even eliminate, their need for federal student loans, participate in a new course on applications of computational thinking and a science-focused first-year writing seminar together, engage in grant-funded summer research experiences, live together in a designated residence hall, and receive peer mentoring.

Students continue to win national awards after they have graduated from Rhodes. McKenna Davis ’18, a physics and mathematics alumna, won the Goldwater Scholarship in 2017 when she was a junior. Now as an aerospace engineering graduate student at UCLA, she has won the highly competitive fellowship.