OSU News

Engineering Student Receives $232,000 Fellowship
STILLWATER, Okla. - While at Oklahoma State University, Heather Beem has compiled the résumé of an up-and-coming international researcher, culminating with her recent selection for a $232,000 award from the Department of Defense. But she is not a faculty member. In fact, she hasn’t yet celebrated her 21st birthday.

Beem, who will graduate May 3 with her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, has been named a 2008 recipient of a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. The three-year award includes approximately $46,500 per year to cover her tuition, fees, books and health insurance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a $31,000 annual stipend.

She will enroll at MIT in the fall, after traveling to China this summer to see Olympic venues, Three Gorges Dam and other modern marvels as part of a study abroad short-course for OSU engineering students, and serving a summer research internship at NASA Ames Academy in California.

“Oklahoma State University is extremely proud of Heather,” said OSU President Burns Hargis. “The best representation of the ideals of OSU is our outstanding students, and Heather is a remarkable example. Her accomplishments speak to the diversity of opportunities OSU provides students seeking preparation for professional and scholarly achievement on a global stage.”

Choosing between the University of California-Berkeley, UC-San Diego, Stanford, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT, Beem will enter the mechanical and oceanographic engineering program MIT offers in conjunction with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She will work on underwater robotics as part of her studies in the joint master’s/Ph.D. degree program.

“The program will allow me to take classes at MIT, the premier, engineering academic institution in the world, and get hands-on field experience at Woods Hole,” said Beem, a 2008 OSU Outstanding Senior and honor’s degree recipient. “People in the program work on robotics for all sorts of things. . . sea floor mapping, archeological exploration, biological studies on aquatic plant and animal life.

“They also get to go on research cruises around the world in places like the Arctic and off the coasts of Greece and Italy to test their projects, and that sounded pretty neat,” she said.

Childhood experiences with her father, Marley Beem, now an extension specialist with OSU’s Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, also played a part in her decision.

“My dad is an aquatic biologist, and when I was growing up, he’d take me tromping through the streams of Oklahoma to take measurements and look at fish,” Beem said. “I’ve had an interest in that for a while now, and the ocean is a huge frontier with lots of things to discover.”

Beem, who graduated from Norman North High School in 2003 at age 15, discovered engineering through an Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education summer academy.

“I really enjoyed learning how to tackle interesting problems in my high school physics class,” Beem said. “I also liked building things, and then I participated in one of those free summer academies after my senior year.”

She was encouraged to remain in Oklahoma for her undergraduate study by her parents. Now Stillwater residents, Marley and Mei Ling Beem and their family lived in Norman at the time. Beem was attracted to the OSU College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology Scholars program that provides students special opportunities for professional and leadership development and travel.

“I was accepted into the CEAT Scholars program, which sends student groups to Japan and Washington, D.C., and no other schools in the state really had anything comparable,” she said.

Beem decided to study mechanical engineering after learning about its many career options. She experienced the discipline’s broad application following her CEAT Scholar group’s 2006 trip to Japan, when she flew to Taiwan to visit members of her mother’s family.

During a tour of the National Taipei University of Technology, Beem, who is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and German, met and convinced researchers to hire her for an internship.

“I was originally just going to visit, but they were working on a bioengineering application using the antibacterial properties of silver in wound dressings, and I thought it was really interesting,” Beem said.

“They want to use nano-silver particles and, instead of a bandage you have to replace all the time, make a dressing that releases silver at a controlled rate,” she said. “It’s cleaner and much more effective than a bandage you have to constantly rip out and replace.”

The work led to the first of several technical papers on which Beem has been principal author or co-author.

While earning a minor in German, Beem spent a semester abroad studying engineering at the Technical University of Munich. At the same time, she was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work alongside researchers there on a telepresence computer demonstration.

“Telepresence is like remote control, except over a long distance, that’s used a lot in space applications,” Beem said. “Somebody controlling a joystick can monitor and manipulate a robotic arm doing something very far away.”

Beem also completed internships at Sandia National Laboratories, where she worked with the Energetic Systems group on new explosives for the U.S. military, and with Schlumberger, using sensor technologies to determine formation characteristics.

OSU mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty recognized Beem’s accomplishments and contributions by choosing her for the department’s 2008 “Best All-Around Activities” Award for a graduating senior. Her service included three years with the MAE Robotics Laboratory research group headed by Larry Hoberock, who supervised Beem’s work on projects including an automated device for the U.S. Navy that uses image processing to sort pieces of silverware.

“Of the several thousand students and young engineers it has been my good fortune to supervise, mentor, advise and teach over 40 years, many were very capable, but Heather is one of those very few who are exceptional,” said Hoberock, professor and head of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “Her breadth of interests is extremely unusual for a student, particularly one so young, and demonstrates her dedication and high capacity for work and learning.”

“The NDSEG fellowship is essentially a full ride to the university of her choice,” he said. “The fact that Heather chose MIT and they also chose her, says volumes about the kind of student she is.”

In addition to serving as structures group leader for the OSU team that won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Student Design/Build/Fly Competition in April, Beem was a member of a student group that designed and built a prototype, inflatable wing aircraft for NASA exploration of Mars. She considers the experiences her most memorable as an OSU engineering student.

“Being involved with Dr. (Jamey) Jacob’s Mars plane team, seeing the project all the way from concept to completion, and test launching it from a weather balloon 100,000 feet in the air was really exciting. At that point, I thought, ‘I’m really going to enjoy working with technology like this,’” Beem said. “The Design/Build/Fly was also a great experience, and winning first place made us all feel great.”

Beem also was a four-year member of the OSU Symphony, Chamber, Opera and Musical Orchestras, a member of the university’s Ultimate Frisbee Club and served as president of the German Club and her residence hall floor.

Beam’s honors at OSU include the Women’s Faculty Council Undergraduate Research Award, the Golconda Foundation Foreign Language Award and the OSU Office of Scholar Development and Recognition Enrichment Grant.

Return