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A Hamilton student trudges through the dark recesses of the night, video camera and tripod in hand. He and his friends are in the early stages of the sixth annual 24-Hour Film Festival, hosted by Hamilton’s Film Production Guild. They race across campus, routinely checking the time so as not to fall behind schedule. Each team of actors, producers, and directors has from midnight on Friday until midnight on Saturday to make a quality, entertaining five-minute film – which means they have little time to spare.

This summer, Bristol Scholarship winner Sarah Cryer ’10 gained medical experience with practicing gynecologic oncologist and pelvic surgeon Dr. Elizabeth Poynor. Following her completion of surgical training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Dr. Poynor decided to work exclusively in practices dedicated to the advancement of women’s health issues. Cryer’s collaboration with Dr. Poynor before the start of the academic year fused research-based knowledge with practical, career-related experience.

“Your body knows something that your mind has forgotten,” says Autumnrose Haroutunian ’10. As one of three 2009-2010 Senior Fellows, Haroutunian is familiarizing herself with a concept known as phenomenology, a philosophical approach to issues of space and embodiment. More specifically, it professes a necessary break from the Cartesian dualism that separates mind and body. By forming a system with the objects of its perception, the body builds a foundation for an inter-subjective experience. Thus the concepts reflected on by the mind are second-order expressions of the world as we live it.

Professors, alumni, students and family members gathered in the Kirner-Johnson Mezzanine on Friday for the 2009 Levitt Summer Research Fellows Poster Session, an annual event that highlights some of the self-directed research that a select group of students takes on each summer. Posters documenting several months’ worth of studies in policy-related topics were on display in order to cultivate discussion among students, faculty and visiting alumni. This year, 16 juniors and seniors participated in the program, which is funded by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. Arthur Levitt Jr. P '81, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, attended the poster session before his lecture.

Rebecca Behrens ’11 had an internship this summer that could lead to improved lives for people whose bodies are virtually immobile. She spent her summer at UCLA’s Reed Neurological Institute, which works to advance knowledge of spinal cord regeneration. Spinal injuries are serious, and many of the patients staying at the Institute are paralyzed because of a single horrific accident. “Talking with patients who would do anything just to be able to walk again makes me feel like I'm doing something really significant,” Behrens said.

Newly hired Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe became acquainted with Hamilton College before he even arrived. This summer, he and Hamilton student Sam Cho ’10 participated in biophysical chemistry research at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where Van Wynsberghe was an NIH Kirschstein post-doctoral fellow. He says the experience was “good for both parties” in that while Cho familiarized himself with the sort of research that could consume his career after Hamilton, Van Wynsberghe became acclimated to the Hamilton community through Cho. 

Following pregnancy, women sometimes have a high concentration of what is known as alpha-fetoprotein, a protein found in blood plasma and produced in the yolk sac and liver during the fetal stage of development. Previous studies have shown that the alpha-fetoprotein has pronounced affects against breast cancer, and therefore women who have had multiple births might be less at risk. This summer Nathaniel Taylor ’11 looked at two sub-derivatives (small pieces) of alpha-fetoprotein, Peptides TPVNP and STPNVP to see if the properties they possess could be extracted for pharmaceutical purposes. He worked on the research with Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Robin Kinnel.

China has long been criticized as a haven for piracy. The degree to which it exists there is so alarming that it would shiver ye timbers and condemn you straight to the depths of Davy Jones’ locker. At least, it would in the United States. But the kind of piracy that goes on in China is not usually discouraged, and is treated as a normal part of life. More than 90 percent of the Chinese population takes part in the search for the treasures of digital media culture, not gold. While citizens get much of their business software and electronic entertainment for free, their laid-back attitude has made piracy the number one issue for digital media companies that wish to make a profit. This summer Jiong Chen ’10 worked on a research project on the subject with Professor of Economics Elizabeth Jensen.

The electroweak force describes the confluence of two fundamental forces in nature (out of four): the electromagnetic force, and the weak force. “Electroweak” is a funny sounding name to begin with, and “weak force” does not sound very scientific – but both are, in fact, complicated concepts in particle physics. The weak force alone governs beta decay and its associated radioactivity. But when combined with the electromagnetic force, it controls neutron beta decay. The aCORN project is an effort to more accurately measure the electron antineutrino correlation termed “little a,” one of the parameters for neutron beta decay. This summer, William Bauder ’10 worked on the aCORN project at Indiana University, which collaborates with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Professor of Physics Gordon Jones guided him through the research.

One plus one is undoubtedly two. One times one is indubitably one. But what happens when you put a whole string of these simple calculations together? That is what Tawanda Mashavave ’10 researched this summer. His project was designated as computer science research, but it was geared more toward number theory. With Professor of Computer Science Richard Decker, Mashavave analyzed integer complexity: the integer complexity of a positive integer n, denoted by c(n), is the least amount of 1s used to represent n using only additions, multiplications, and parentheses.