SENEDIA Awards STEM Scholarships for 2011

The selection process for SENEDIA Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Scholarships for 2011 is complete and SENEDIA is proud to announce the following selections.

$500 SENEDIA STEM Scholarships

Kevin T. Beck

Kevin resides in Portsmouth RI and is pursuing and Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Rhode Island.  Kevin has a love of science, no matter the subject. He likes English and writing because it helps the world as he sees it, but finds Physics and Math appealing because they describe the world as it is.  He made the choice of Electrical Engineering because in combines physics and math along with his love of computers and electronics.

Hami Dinh

Hami resides in Worcester MA and is a student of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.   She got her start after joining a robotics team she started to understand how her passion for mathematics could help the robotics team.    Robotics has become her motivation to understand what some of her robots did not work and she started to use her innovative mind to solve the problems.  She wants to continue to integrate mechanics, science and technology to build things that create efficient and convenient solutions to everyday problems.  

Bret Dion

Bret is a resident of Tiverton, RI and is working on his degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in mathematics at the University of Rhode Island.  He has a love of numbers and loves solving problems and is amazed at how fast technology changes.  He enjoys signal processing and renewable energy and hopes to turn his studies into a career in one of those fields.  He understand that design challenges with implementing renewable energy and the application to our current power grid. He has even built his own computers.

Lisa A Dion

Lisa, Bret’s sister and a resident of Tiverton RI, has her sights on Mathematics, Computer Science and Business Studies and attends Providence College.  She has built on her enjoyment of math in elementary school that was further supported by study of linear algebra and foundations of mathematics. She fell in love with computer after taking her first computer class and finding writing vectors and strings both challenging and satisfying.

Ashley N. LaPlante

Ashley resides in Wallingford CT and is a student at University of Connecticut, Storrs majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Math.   When she was growing up her answer to what she wanted to be was, “mechanic”.  She favored tinker toys over Barbie dolls.  Encouraged by her father, and enjoying fixing cars, she wanted to put her technical skill to the test with an engineering curriculum.  Her interest in technology sent he to a love of flight and she is a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol and has a passion for model remote-controlled airplanes which she would like to a profession on aircraft of a larger scale.

$500 Special Recognition Scholarship

Rachel E. Devine

Although Rachel was not eligible for a scholarship under the specific rules of the 2011 scholarship program that specifies that a candidate be attending a school in the tri-state area, SENEDIA viewed he application as exceptional and decided to award her a special scholarship. Rachel resides in East Greenwich RI and attends the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her major is Mechanical Engineering.  Encouraged by her Mom and Dad, she has always had an interest in mathematics and the sciences.  Her passion for mechanical engineering is rooted in one of her goals to help the less fortunate.  In her college studies of Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics and Decision and Design, she designed a method to provide a third world country with water to a village 100 meters from a river.   This started her is learning about hands pumps but also got her thinking about alternative sources of power such as wind turbines and solar power.