THE FELLOWS - Jefferson Scholars Foundation

the fellowsJustin LindsayNeillHarrison Family FellowDepartment of ChemistryDavidson College (B.S.)Hillsborough, North CarolinaJustin is working as a researchassistant in the laboratory of ProfessorBrooks H. Pate. His research is focusedon the use of microwave spectroscopyto study small molecular clusters and unstable species of astrochemicalinterest, as well as the dynamics of excited molecules. In the past year a highenergyconformational isomer of methyl formate, an abundant interstellarmolecule, has been detected in the interstellar medium as a result oflaboratory measurements in the Pate laboratory. This surprising detectionhas sparked new theoretical and experimental inquiries into the mechanismsby which this molecule, and other related organic species, are synthesized indense star-forming regions, processes that are currently not well understood.Hillary SunshineSchaeferDouglas S. Holladay Sr. andCary N. Moon Jr. FellowDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison(B.S.)University of Virginia (M.A.)Wausau, WisconsinDuring the 2009-10 academic yearHillary completed two community rotations as part of the clinical psychologytraining schedule — one at an alternative school providing individualand group therapy for at-risk adolescents, and a second concentrating onforensic assessments. She also collected the first wave of her dissertationdata, developing and administering an assessment for empathy andemotional skill. She hopes to develop this test as a tool that is both usefulfor a neuroimaging paradigm and also applicable to an inpatient population.Currently, there are few validated tests of emotional functioning suitablefor clinical use, and her work hopes to provide such a tool. In the 2010-11academic year she will return to Western State Hospital for a rotationproviding therapy to long-term psychiatric inpatients, and continue to collectdata and refine the paradigm for the empathy assessment.Adam MichaelWinckElizabeth Arendall Tilney andSchuyler Merritt Tilney FellowDepartment of GermanicLanguages and LiteraturesWake Forest University (B.A.)Yale University (M.A.)University of Virginia (M.A.)Knoxville, TennesseeIn August 2009, Adam completed his qualifying exams on the lateEnlightenment, tragi-comedy, and Nietzsche before moving to Mannheim,Germany, to teach literature seminars for two semesters. He presented apaper on the ethics of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling at a conference inEssex, England, in May 2010. Currently, he is researching his dissertation ona tradition of polemics in German literature from the late Enlightenmentthrough Nietzsche. By the fall of 2010, Adam will be back in Charlottesville.12