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Alison Chiaramonte ’08 (Sherman, Conn.) spent her summer on the Hill, but not the one you’re probably thinking of. The public policy major was nowhere near Hamilton this summer; instead, she was on Capitol Hill as an intern in the offices of Congressman Sherwood Boehlert and Congressman John Larson.

The new Science Center has brought many joys to students and professors alike. But while the center’s impressive architecture certainly warrants appreciation, the resident collection of new “science toys” has stolen the attention of the inhabitants. Heather Michael ’07 and Nikola Banishki ’07, for instance, perk up when they talk about the new DNA-sequencing machine.

While many of his classmates remain on campus to do their research, Daniel Campbell ’08 (Pittsford, N.Y.) is working off-campus this summer, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Campbell is working on several projects, but his main one deals with improving the accuracy of the results of a previous neutron experiment. He is trying to simulate the effects of redesigning two pieces of his apparatus in the hopes of reducing neutron collision.

Timothy Fox ’08 (Montclair, N.J.) is spending his summer in the lab with the good company of Neoproterozoic sedimentary rocks. He is working with Professor of Geology Eugene Domack studying glacial rocks from Namibia and East Greenland in the hopes of better understanding the implications of global ice covering episodes (glaciations) that have occurred in the past, and the associated effects on long-term climatic stability.

Robert Brande ’08 (Glen Rock, N.J.) got a surprise visit from his aunt and uncle last year when they brought him some objects they had dug up on their Missouri farm. Brande, an archaeology major, did what he was trained to do: he examined and asked questions. “I thought, what if I could turn this into a project?” Later, Brande applied for and received an Emerson Grant to investigate this farm in the hopes of determining “how different people have used the land in different ways over time.”

When orientation starts, there will be 10 members of the Class of 2010 who will already know the campus well. Hamilton is in a partnership with the National Science Foundation's STEP (Science Talent Expansion Program) and the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Foundation, both of which allow the science department to fund summer research for students before they even matriculate.

Dane Johnson ’07 (Red Bank, N.J.) is on campus this summer for research into macroeconomics. The mathematics and economics double major is writing a computer program which will help Johnson study the effects of technological progress on business cycles. Advised by Professor of Economics Chris Georges, Johnson is working on a project titled “The Creation of a Computer Program which Simulates the Effect of Technological Progress on Fluctuations in the Business Cycle.”

They say that students who study abroad tend to become very attached to their host countries. Drew Thomases ’07 (Roslindale, Mass.) would probably agree. Thomases was in India last fall and now returns to a kind of India by studying the Diaspora community in Queens, N.Y. Thomases will be advised by Jay Williams, the Walcott Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies as he uses his Emerson Grant to study the changing nature of the religious tradition within the Indian Diaspora.

Zunfeng “Jeff” Chen ’08 (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Jonathan Stults ’07 (Woodstock, N.Y.) are at Hamilton for summer research into mathematics. They have abandoned the topic they originally chose (“difference equations, differential equations, and Simpson’s paradox”) and moved to the study of n by n (square) matrices. “We’re counting all n by n matrices in Z mod p with all or no eigenvalues in Z mod p.”

David Hamilton ’09 (Middleton, Mass.) is spending his summer in the lab working with chemicals. The rising sophomore has returned for the second year of his STEP/Dreyfus grant and is working under Ian Rosenstein, associate professor of chemistry. Hamilton’s project is to synthesize free radical precursors to study the transition states of the cyclopropylcarbinyl radical ring opening reaction.