ESF Students Spend Summer at Brookhaven National Laboratory

09/06/2011

Four students from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) were among 300 students from across the country who crowded into Brookhaven National Laboratory's (BNL) Berkner Hall Aug. 18, for the closing ceremony of the summer educational program.

Courtney Buckley and Daniel Larkin, students in the Division of Environmental Science, and Michael Norman and Beverly Agtuca, students in the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology's biotechnology program, spent 10 weeks at the U.S. Department of Energy site in Upton, N.Y., doing research on a variety of projects with Brookhaven's approximately 3,000 working scientists.

The closing ceremony included remarks by Deputy Laboratory Director Don Gibbs and Energy Site Manager Michael Holland while Dr. Cornelius B. Murphy, Jr., president of ESF, once a BNL summer student himself, gave the keynote address.

The students ranged in age and level of education from high school students first exploring a penchant for science to graduate students about to embark on scientific careers.

During their 10-week stay at BNL, the summer students collaborated with Brookhaven scientists as they prepared and performed experiments. The researchers also mentored students while they conducted their own studies and then assisted them with their analyses. At the end of the summer, those students who carried out research projects wrote papers detailing their findings and created posters to represent their work. Buckley was one of the students selected to also give an oral presentation on her work.

In two days of presentations and poster sessions that preceded the closing ceremony, topics ranged from superconducting magnet design to characterizing bacteria found in local soil.

ESF students wishing to participate in the program next year can check out the web site at http://science.energy.gov/wdts/suli/ or meet with Dr. Lee Newman in EFB to learn more about the program.