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Three engineering students receive Tau Beta Pi fellowships

July 12, 2018 - By Kim Delker

Three School of Engineering students have been awarded fellowships by engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi and were featured in the organization’s summer 2018 issue of The Bent.

Ava
Ava K. Mauser

Ava K. Mauser from chemical and biological engineering, Carly J. Romnes from nuclear engineering and Chris Torres from chemical and biological engineering received fellowships. Only 31 engineering students were awarded fellowships from around the country this year.

Mauser graduated from with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering with a concentration in bioengineering and a minor in mathematics. She is a 2017-18 Tau Beta Pi Scholar and has served as the New Mexico Beta vice president and president. She works as a teacher’s assistant in the orthopedic biomechanics and biomaterials laboratory, where she has implemented decelluarized bovine bone into bio-inks for 3D printing scaffolds of the bone-ligament interface. She is working at Los Alamos National Laboratory this summer before enrolling in the biomedical engineering Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan.

Carly
Carly J. Romnes

Romnes graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering and minors in mathematics and psychology. She was the New Mexico Beta chapter external vice president of Tau Beta Pi. She is an intern in the extreme materials lab, where she studies in effects of radiation on various types of materials. She is also a NASA MUREP scholar and completed two internships at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and is completing a third this summer. She will be enrolling in the nuclear engineering Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chris
Chris Torres

Torres received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a minor in mathematics. For four years, he researched uranium mobility in the Southwest from abandoned mine wastes to local waters. He was an intern at the University of Pittsburgh and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He has worked to advance underrepresented students in STEM and has served as a peer learning facilitator for chemical engineering students. He will attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he will pursue a Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering.

In addition, two UNM students received scholarships from Tau Beta Pi, Colleen Chlastawa and Chris Brock. Both are chemical engineering students graduating in May 2019. Chlastawa is the president of the New Mexico Beta chapter for the 2018-19 school year.