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On 2010 July 28, nine summer interns at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland were awarded John Mather Nobel Scholarships by The Henry Foundation, Inc. The funding for the scholarships originated in a generous contribution from the John and Jane Mather Foundation for Science and the Arts which in turn was funded from the award of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics to Dr. Mather.

The award consists in the designation “John Mather Nobel Scholar,” plus a $3000 scientific travel grant over a two year period.

The 2010 John Mather Nobel Scholars are:

• Charreau Bell, a graduate student in Clemson University’s PhD program in electrical engineering, who is working on a genetic algorithm for a particular NASA application, but is also working to broaden the application of the algorithm for wider uses.
• David Benson, a graduate student at Purdue University in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, he is working with other interns on developing a pendulum model to describe sloshing in a spherical propellant tank.
• Emmanuel Cephas, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, currently working at GSFC investigating model-based systems engineering and simulation-based engineering design tools and methodologies.
• Dayvon Green, a senior at Morgan State University in Baltimore, working to compile a wide array of data files into basic central matrices to be later used for the development of a NASA center-wide online database.
• Richard Knoche, a senior at James Madison University in Harrisburg, Virginia, engaged in a search for hard X-ray emission near the onset of supernovae, using the Swift satellite data. He is also constructing a catalog of X-ray observations of rotation-powered pulsars.
• Leva McIntire, a senior at Seattle Pacific University, working at GSFC designing mounts and wiring up cryogenic equipment, expanding her science experience into engineering areas. Her ambition is to become a professor, and to work closely with NASA.
• Jeremiah Noordhoek, a senior at MIT, working at GSFC toward a mission to detect gravitational waves from exotic objects in the universe such as merging neutron stars. This involves practical work such as with a programmer translating software into a real-time operating system version.
• Evan Sinukoff, a senior at McMaster University in Canada, uses optical engineering software toward developing an optical model of the Wide-field Imaging Interferometry Testbed. Evan is deeply interested in the search for extrasolar planets.
• Christopher Spreen, a graduate student at Purdue University, is working toward use of X-ray photons from distant pulsars to create a GPS-like navigation system for space travel, and has also worked with the Mission Design Lab (engineers who are focused on all aspects of a space mission).