BARBARA STULL
GRADUATE STUDENT AWARD
This award is given to a graduate student(s) in honor of longtime SAS employee Barbara Stull in recognition of outstanding research in the area of spectroscopy. Any full-time graduate student doing research in the field of spectroscopy shall be eligible for the award. The recipient shall be selected by the Awards Committee. Nominations may come from any individual. Nomination material should include at least one letter of recommendation along with supporting documentation on research, a current CV, and short bio. Submission deadline March 1.
2023 Award Recipient – Lamyaa M. Almehmadi
Recognizing a well-rounded CV – which included extracurricular activities such as mentoring, volunteering, and teaching – and exemplary demonstration of scientific accomplishments in the field of spectroscopy via research, publications, and presentations.
Lamyaa M. Almehmadi is a Ph.D. candidate in Professor Igor K. Lednev at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She received her B.S. in Chemistry with an emphasis on Chemical Biology and an M.S. degree in Chemistry from the University at Albany, completing her master's thesis in only one year. Lamyaa’s Ph.D. research focuses on using enhanced Raman spectroscopy techniques for drug discovery, mRNA vaccine stability assessment, and forensic purposes. Lamyaa has received several awards, including the 2023 Rising Star in Analytical Chemistry award from the ACS ANYL Division and the prestigious Coblentz student award.
Recognizing a well-rounded CV – which included extracurricular activities such as mentoring, volunteering, and teaching – and exemplary demonstration of scientific accomplishments in the field of spectroscopy via research, publications, and presentations.
Thulya is pursuing a joint PhD degree in analytical chemistry from Monash University, Australia, and the University of Bath, United Kingdom, under the guidance of Prof. Bayden R. Wood (Monash University), Dr. Paul De Bank (University of Bath), Dr. Keith Bambery (Australian Synchrotron), and Prof. Karen J. Edler (Lund University, Sweden). In her PhD, Thulya has been working on a highly multidiscipline project combining microfluidics, spectroscopy and machine learning modelling to develop new diagnostic tests for blood and water borne pathogens particularly focusing on malaria parasites, leishmania parasites and bacteria. During her PhD career, her work has been acknowledged on several occasions.
2022 Award Recipient – Alexis Weber
Recognizing outstanding research efforts targeting the development of the first universal tool for the identification and analysis of body fluid traces for forensic purposes as well as an outstanding research background in forensic science.
Alexis Weber is a 3rd year Ph.D. Candidate in Dr. Igor K. Lednev’s lab in the Department of Chemistry at the University at Albany, SUNY.
2021 Award Recipient – Jeremy Schultz
Recognizing outstanding research efforts around chemically imaging single molecules using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS).
eremy Schultz is a PhD student in Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2014, where he was fortunate to take a course taught by Prof. Richard Van Duyne, who discovered surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. The ability to obtain Raman spectra of a single molecule fascinated him, as this represents the potential to study chemistry and nanostructures at the spatial limit, that of one individual species. As a result, following two years working as an analytical chemist in industry, he began his PhD studies with Asst. Prof. Nan Jiang. His work involves the development and application of a cryogenic ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope coupled with tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS).
Jeremy uses this unique tandem technique to perform simultaneous nanoimaging and nanospectroscopy to study molecules, nanostructures, and low-dimensional materials on surfaces with supreme spatial resolution, the ångström-scale. This work has resulted in five first author and twelve total publications. His work has been recognized by awards in different scientific communities. He received the Wayne B. Nottingham Prize in the 81st Physical Electronics Conference 2021 and also received a Graduate Research Award from the American Vacuum Society (AVS) and the Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division Graduate Student Award at the AVS 66th International Symposium and Exhibition along with others. He received a Best Poster Award at the 26th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy in 2018 in Jeju, Korea. He recently published a review in Applied Spectroscopy that examines the development and growing applications of TERS.
2021 Award Recipient – Ewelina Mistek-Morabito
Ewelina is being recognized for her outstanding research on attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy for identification and characterization of body fluids for forensic analysis.
Ewelina Mistek-Morabito is a Ph.D. student in Chemistry at the University at Albany, State University of New York under Dr. Igor Lednev and a National Institute of Justice Graduate Research fellow.