By Gail Lacouture
Times Staff
7/8/10
At first, Kassi Stein wanted to be a doctor. Unfortunately, she discovered that she was squeamish.
“It absolutely broke my heart,” the 19-year-old Stein said. “I thought, there has to be something that can be done to help [these children]. That’s when I decided I wanted to go into scientific research.”
Fast-forward four years and Stein is well on her way.
The lifelong resident and Milton High class of 2009 valedictorian took that drive and will to “do something” all the way to Northeastern University.
As a way to marry her love of science and math, Stein decided to pursue chemical engineering.
“It was the best combination of the two,” she said. “[Chemical engineering] stood out because it’s one of the most diverse fields in terms of jobs. You can springboard into a lot of different things.”
Though she applied to Harvard, MIT, Wellesley College, Brown University and Columbia University, Stein just completed her freshman year at Northeastern. The chemical engineering major, who was accepted to each school except MIT, is participating in a program where she is learning, first-hand, researching methods that will help her take that leap.
Stein chose Northeastern for a number of reasons. But mostly, she said, for its cooperative-education program, because it would give her an opportunity to get her feet wet in Boston and in her field.
The co-op program provides students the chance to actually work in their industry along with attending classes.
Along with Northeastern professor Carey Rappaport, Stein has just completed a full year – her work continues this summer – on a research assignment (separate from a co-op) that investigates the destruction of maple trees by Asian longhorn beetles. The goal of the project is to develop a radar device to image the inside of a trunk to find beetle infestation holes. Although a prototype could be done by the end of the year, Stein said, the project is “open-ended.”
Stein said she approached Rappaport last summer interested in working on a project that dealt with biological applications. He came back with one to help save maple trees.
“It was great working with Kassi this past year,” said Rappaport. “Although she hasn’t had any of the advanced training of my grad students, she is smart, hard working and dedicated, and has a unique ability to figure out what needs to be done to make progress on hard research problems.”
Stein and Rappaport have already published a paper on the project and presented their findings at a recent industry conference.
“I hope [the research] can decrease the impact beetles have on trees in the area,” Stein said. “Twenty-seven thousand trees have had to be cut down.”
Stein said current technology can only check for exit holes and by then it’s too late to save the tree. She hopes her research will help end the spread of the problem before it becomes bigger.
“Based on general guidelines and suggestions I gave her, Kassi was able to quickly interpret her computer-generated results, optimize the design, and produce a working radar design concept that simply and cheaply detects the presence of deadly, hard-to-find tree-burrowing pests,” said Rappaport.
In addition to helping the environment, Stein said the experience working on an assignment such as this is “valuable” because she is acquiring skills she can use later. She is leaning toward genetic or pharmaceutical research in the future.
At the moment, she said, her work primarily focuses on a specific programming and simulation software that is used in many types of engineering applications. Stein is also learning various researching methods, ways to sort data, and how to present information.
“I had no idea how to use [the software program] before,” she said. “But I had to jump in and learn it, and now I know it. It’s a skill I can take with me.” |
