Joe Magee, Class of ’08

Joe Magee has a pragmatic point-of-view. “As a Chemistry major, you can only learn so much in the classroom,” he said. In fact, “Research is an integral part of any science. It is one thing to learn about how a reaction works, it's another to be able to perform the reaction by yourself.”

The pragmatism continues in his research topic of choice. “I choose to accept that a daunting energy crises is developing, and instead of trying to hide from it, I want to do my part in finding an answer.”

His research, performed in the laboratory of K.V. Lakshmi, assistant professor of chemistry, focuses on the light-driven catalytic metal ion complex centrally located in the photosynthetic protein, photosystem II. So far, there has been no conclusive consensus as to the exact structure of this complex. Determining the structure will lead to breakthroughs in many areas of alternate energy, according to Magee.

Getting into research was easy for Magee. “The Chemistry Department here is a close-knit group of faculty and students who look out for one another. The faculty also provides ample opportunity to find research in an area that you find interesting,” he said.

Magee stresses that people surround undergraduate researchers to help them understand the project as much as possible. “As an undergraduate you aren't expected to log countless hours in the lab and give up your personal freedom for projects,” he said. “You are given an opportunity to work on a project that is interesting.”

Aside from solving the world’s problems, Magee enjoys the experience undergraduate research gives him. He said, “The more time I spend in the lab, the more comfortable I become with equipment and instruments that are featured in every real life laboratory in the world. I am gaining the preparation necessary to enter the world as fully functioning scientist.”

	Matthew Pevarnik, Class of ’08

Matthew Pevarnik helped set up one of the largest science experiments of our time. The summer before his senior year at Rensselaer, the physics major interned in Switzerland at the Large Hadron Collider with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (otherwise known as CERN), where scientists hope to create a series of mini Big Bangs.

How do you follow that up?

“After working at CERN during the summer, I came off a physics ‘high’ so to speak and really wanted to continue with some sort of particle physics research,” he explained. After talking to several professors, Pervarnik was referred me to Assistant Professor of Physics, Joel Giedt. “After talking with Dr. Giedt for a little while, we eventually drew up a project and it took off from there.”

Pevarnik considers it a bonus that this research counts towards the Undergraduate Research Participation course.

Since beginning research with Giedt this fall, Pevarnik made rapid progress understanding the extraction of neutrino masses and mixings from the very interesting ideas of warped extra dimensions. He developed a Maple program that studies regions of the parameter space of these models, and is currently extracting distributions of the smallest of the mixing angles, from randomized scans.

But research just isn’t what you do in the laboratory. To get course credit, he had to write a research paper. “I had no idea what writing a research paper was like, and it was extremely beneficial just to go through the motions with Dr. Giedt guiding me,” he said.

He was also required to present his findings at the end of the semester. “Just having to think about presenting your research to someone else really helps you understand your project more,” he said.