Clare Boothe Luce Scholar Award

The Clare Boothe Luce Scholar Awards supports undergraduate summer research projects undertaken by female U. S. citizens and permanent residents.

The Clare Boothe Luce Award was established by Clare Boothe Luce, a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut, “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in the fields of science, mathematics, and engineering. More information can be found on the Luce Foundation website.

Recipients of the Clare Boothe Luce Scholar Awards are selected from the funded UROP applicant pool. For information on completing a UROP application, please click here.

2024 Awardees

Sarah Alizadeh-Shabdiz, a Mechanical Engineering major, is conducing research with Professor Andrew Sabelhouse (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “Evaluating Formal Safety in Soft Robotic Touch.”

Naomi Gonzalez, a Computer Engineering major, is conducting research with Professor Frank Golf (CAS Physics) on a project titled “Testing the Module Thermal Behavior in a Realistic Environment.”

Charlotte Holland, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor Linda Doerrer (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Synthesis of Thiocarboxylate Ligands and Their Incorporation into Heterobimetallic Lantern Complexes.”

Amy Kraft, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor Scott Schaus (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “The Synthesis of Fluorinated Cytidine Triphosphate Derivatives.”

Melissa Martinez, a Computer Science major, is conducting research with Professor Vasiliki Kalavri (Computer Science) on a project titled “Efficient Graph Neural Network Sampling with Modern Storage Technology: mmap.”

Margaret Ann Mickelberg, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor John Porco (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Chemical Synthesis of Limonene Dimers as Antifungal Agents.”

Varsha Singh, a Computer Engineering major, is conducting research with Professor Sahar Sharifzadeh (ENG Electrical and Computer Engineering) on a project titled “Charge Carrier Properties as a Function of Heme Disorder in Protein Nanowires.”

2023 Awardees

Isabelle Boegholm, a Physics major, is conducting research with professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ENG Electrical & Computer Engineering) on a project titled “Tailoring fiber-optic vortices for energy efficient communication and computation.”

Kelsey Mangis, an Astrophysics major, is conducting research with professor Teresa Brainerd (CAS Astronomy) on a project titled “Measurement of “Lopsided” Distributions in Galaxy Clusters and the Significance Within the Cold Dark Matter Universe Argument.”

Camille Mauceri, a Physics major, is conducting research with professor Zeynep Demiragli (CAS Physics) on a project titled “Study of the impact of 4-dimensional Tracking Studies in ATLAS beyond the LHC Run 4: Pile-Up Jet Tagger.”

Suhani Mitra, a Computer Engineering major, is conducting research with professor Ajay Joshi (ENG Electrical & Computer Engineering) on a project titled “Digital Logic Design for Conversion Between Residue Number System (RNS) and Binary Number System (BNS).”

Joscie Palen, a Biomedical Engineering major, is conducting research with professor Chuanhua Duan (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “The Effect of Nanoparticle Rotation on Translocation Current across a Nanoparticle-blocked Nanopore.”

Hanna Schlegel, a Mechanical Engineering major, is conducting research with professor Tommaso Ranzani (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “Highly Sensitive and Robust Microspine Structured Soft Capacitive Sensors with Adaptive Calibration Algorithms.”

2022 Awardees

Jade Chismar, a Physics major, is conducting research with Professor Indara Suarez (CAS Physics) on a project titled “Search for Higgs Boson pair production in association with a top quark-antiquark pair.”

Nicole Flors, an Astrophysics major, is conducting research with Professor Catherine Espaillat (CAS Astronomy) on a project titled “Measuring the Accretion Rate of Young Stars.”

Jessica Murray, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor Pinghua Liu (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Mutagenesis of EanB as a catalyst for deuterium exchange and possible selenoneine synthase enzyme.”

Michelle Roos, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor John Porco (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Synthesis, Characterization, and Biological Applications of CMLD012114 as an APE1 Inhibitor.”

Caroline Sabanos, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor Linda Doerrer (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Synthesis of {V(O)-pinF} complexes and their reactivity. ”

Eleanor Sloane, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor John Snyder (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Chemoselective Air Oxidations of Alcohols Using a Vanadium(V) Catalyst.”

2021 Awardees

Hayden Bronson, a Physics major, is conducting research with Professor Indara Suarez (CAS Physics) on a project titled “Measurement of top-W Scattering in CMS.”

Sophie Caplan, a Mechanical Engineering major, is conducting research with J. William Boley (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “Print Path Routine for Multimaterial 4D Printing Applications.”

Kiran Gomatam, a Mechanical Engineering major, is conducting research with Professor Tommaso Ranzani (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “Testing Prototype of Soft Robot for Heart Surgery using Modeling and Physical Tests.”

Taylor Janke, a Mechanical Engineering major, is conducting research with Professor Shiela Russo (ENG Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled “Developing an Origami Soft Robotic Needle Deployment Mechanism for Endoscopic Procedures.”

Iris Simone, a Chemistry major, is conducting research with Professor John Snyder (CAS Chemistry) on a project titled “Functionalization of Betulin to Terpene-Separated Amino Acids.”

Bhargavi Thakar, an Astrophysics major, is conducting research with Philip Muirhead (CAS Astrophysics) on a project titled “Perkins Automation Project.”