Scholarship Program
Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir
Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir is an Icelandic archaeologist who is currently working on her Ph.D. in Zooarchaeology (the study of animal bones from archaeological sites) from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. Archaeology was first taught at the University of Iceland in the fall of 2002 and Albina was among the first students to graduate in the spring of 2005 with a BA in Archaeology. During the last year of her studies at the University she was the president of Kuml, the society of archaeology students.
Albína began working at the Skriðuklaustur medieval monastery excavation site in East-Iceland in 2003 and has, in recent years, worked at various other sites around Iceland.
Albína used the Leifur Eiríksson Scholarship to fund the analysis of the archaeofauna from the medieval monastery of Skriðuklaustur in East Iceland and the Kirkjubæjarklaustur medieval nunnery in the South. Analysis of animal bones from the Vatnsfjörður excavation site in West Iceland was also funded as was travel to the site for field work in the summer of 2007.
Alex Coverdill
Alex Coverdill is currently finishing his fifth year as a graduate student at the University of Washington, working on a doctoral degree in Zoology. He received his bachelor’s of science undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Portland in Oregon where he first began working as a field biologist studying birds. His research interests include migration physiology, the hormonal stress response and circadian/endogenous rhythms of arctic breeding songbirds. While Alex thoroughly enjoys research, his true passion is teaching. As a graduate teaching assistant he has taught courses in animal as well as human physiology, vertebrate biology, introductory biology and comparative vertebrate anatomy. Upon completion of his Ph.D. next year, it is his desire to continue in the academic field as a professor of biology.
Alex used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to study the migratory and resident populations of snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) in Iceland. While most snow buntings around the world migrate to and from breeding grounds in the north each year, most Icelandic birds are resident in the country year-round. Because of Alex’s interests in migration physiology, he collected blood samples from individual birds to compare corticosterone hormone profiles between migrants and residents from winter through the breeding life history stages. His hypothesis is that birds migrating significant distances will have higher levels of corticosterone when compared to residents, as this hormone plays an important role in the regulation and metabolization of fat and other energy stores vital to long distance flight.
Asdis Helgadottir
Asdis Helgadottir received her Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik in 2005. She then went to the United States and completed a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) during the summer of 2007. Her thesis was titled “Cracking in Thin Films With Stress Gradients Grown on Substrates”.
Asdis continued her PhD studies at UCSB and is now working on a project named “Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Stratified Two Phase Flow in a Channel”. The goal is to model the nature of two phase flow numerically, in particular later to estimate pressure drop in two phase flow in pipes. Existing pressure drop models for pipes are all empirical and are only valid for conditions outside the range of conditions in pipes in geothermal power plants. The outcome of the PhD project could, therefore, be of great importance in pressure drop calculations of two phase flow in pipes in geothermal power plants, which could increase the safety and efficiency of geothermal power plants.
Elizabeth M. Swedo
Originally hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, Elizabeth M. Swedo received her Bachelor´s degree in History and English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, in 2003. She began her graduate studies in medieval history at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, earning her Master´s degree in 2006. The similarities between Old Norse and Modern Icelandic led Elizabeth to study both languages and to concentrate on medieval Iceland. She continued her PhD studies at UMN and is now working on a dissertation that explores the late medieval religious culture of Iceland. Specifically, her project seeks to highlight the roles of the laity as participants in a religious culture, which, although not designed for or maintained by them, was fundamentally shaped by their continued involvement throughout the centuries.
The Leifur Eiríksson Scholarship allowed Elizabeth to concentrate on several unpublished manuscripts containing fragments of late vernacular sermons at the Árni Magnússon Institute (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar). Although some details of their composition and delivery are beyond recovery, the Icelandic sermons illuminate expressions of clerical spirituality and religious ideals. They also afford an understanding of the contemporary expectations for the intended audiences.
Upon completion of her Ph.D. next year, Elizabeth intends pursue a career as a history professor. In her five years of graduate school, she has served as an educator in a number of roles: as a teaching assistant, an instructor, a writing tutor, and an assistant editor for an academic journal. She is especially eager to share her knowledge of Iceland with her students when she instructs a course on the Viking world in spring 2009.
Halla Björg Ólafsdóttir
Halla Björg Ólafsdóttir graduated from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavik in 1994 and began studies at the department of Physical Therapy of the University of Iceland in 1995. After approximately two years of studies she took a year leave and worked as a flight attendant for the Icelandic airline, Air Atlanta. She resumed her studies and graduated with a B.Sc degree in 2000. Halla worked as a physical therapist in the pulmonary department of Landspitali, University hospital of Iceland from 2000-2002 where she participated in developing a system of "physical therapy at home" for chronic pulmonary patients. In January 2002 she accepted a position as a sleep research technician at the center for sleep research at the pulmonary department of Landspitali where she worked until the end of the summer that year.
After receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, Halla began graduate studies in Motor Control in the department of Kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University. In 2004, she defended a master’s thesis in Motor Control titled: "Is the thumb a fifth finger? Studies of digit interaction during force production tasks." After receiving her master’s degree, she continued work on a doctoral degree which she is scheduled to defend in the fall of 2007.
During this past year she has used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to focus on age related differences in hand coordination with specific attention on rotational action, feed-forward adjustments of digit interaction, and the effects of strength training on digit interaction. The goal of this work is to enhance knowledge on the changes that occur with age in coordination of the hand and the processes that drive these changes.
Kendra Willson
Kendra Willson was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and raised in Ames, Iowa. After completing an A.B. in Germanic languages and literatures at Harvard in 1993, she spent two years studying Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. After working for a year as a cataloguing assistant for the Fiske Icelandic Collection at the Cornell University Library, Kendra began graduate study in the Scandinavian Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. Between completing the M.A. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures in 1999 and the Ph.D. in 2007, Kendra studied Finnish at the University of Helsinki 2000-2002, taught Icelandic at the University of Manitoba 2003-2004, and spent the academic years 2004-2005 and 2006-2007 continuing her research at the University of Iceland. Kendra filed her Berkeley dissertation, "Icelandic nicknames", in June 2007.
Kendra has used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to examine how Icelandic nickname formation has changed over recorded history and relate those changes to changes in the linguistic system.
Ramona Harrison
Originally from Vorarlberg, Austria, Ramona Harrison came to the United States at the age of 19 as an Au-pair. After a year, she decided to enroll at Nassau Community College in New York. After completion of her Associate’s degree she enrolled in the Anthropology Department at Hunter College (CUNY) in Manhattan and completed a B.A. in 2001. Following a year of work at the Museum of Natural History, she made the decision to continue college and pursue a M.A. in Anthropology at Hunter.
During the course of her studies, Ramona met Prof. Tom McGovern, a Zooarchaeologist involved in North Atlantic medieval research. Intrigued by his work she decided to apply to do research with him. After a couple of years of training in the NABO and NORSEC labs at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, and upon completion of her M.A. in 2005, she enrolled in the Ph.D. Program at the CUNY Graduation Centre. She was involved in excavation seasons in Iceland and class work in New York, and was also able to work on her faunal collections. She hopes to complete her Ph.D. by the end of 2009.
Ramona used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to investigate the trade relations and subsistence strategies at the medieval trading site of Gásir (NE Iceland). Currently she is working as an excavation supervisor in Vatnsfjördur, Iceland, where the Archaeological Field School is being held.
Sigurður Örn Aðalgeirsson
Sigurður Örn Aðalgeirsson’s interest in robotics started at a an early age and his appreciation for complicated autonomous systems grew strong as he began his undergraduate studies as an Electronic and Computer Engineering major. As an undergraduate student he took an active part in his school\'s engineering competitions. The goal in these competitions was to build an autonomous machine that could achieve some goal, a typical goal being traversing through rough terrain and picking up items along the way and depositing them at an end location. It was through these experiences that he became convinced that he wanted to pursue a career in robotics.
At the University of Iceland, Sigurður studied multiple topics ranging from mathematics, physics and electronics to computer science, machine learning and control theory. He had the opportunity of conducting research in control theory with a professor which provided him with a glimpse into the life of a graduate student. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Sigurður’s current research interests lie at the intersection of autonomous robotics and behavioral science. HRI (Human Robot Interaction) is a field that aims to make robots more useful to people in some sense by providing people with an effective interface to control them. This research, at MIT, focuses on pushing towards the making of a sociable robot. People are experts at communicating with other people. This skill is one of the earliest ones to develop for an infant and it continues to be honed throughout an entire life. Sigurður’ research involves leveraging this ability in people by developing robots that use the same social cues as humans do to convey intentions and meaning as well as read people\'s cues whether they be verbal or non-verbal. It is hoped that this will make any layperson an expert in controlling a complicated robot without any specific training as they are able to apply their social models of fellow humans to the robots and interact with them as such.
Þrándur Helgason
Þrándur Helgason is currently in his second year as a PhD student in Food Science at the University of Massachusetts. The goal of his research is to engineer vesicles that can deliver bioactive ingredients (such as ω-fatty acids and lycopene) into food matrixes and shield them from oxidation and increase bioavailability. During the past 12 months 2 research articles and one review have been published. Also the research was presented orally in May of 2008 at AOCS (American Oil Chemists’ Society) along with one poster. Two posters where presented in June of 2008 at IFT (Institute of Food Technology), one of which received first prize in a poster competition in the Food Chemistry division of IFT. Also 2 posters where presented on The Delivery of Functionality in complex food systems: Physically-inspired approaches from nanoscale to microscale during a conference in the fall of 2007.
Thrandur used the Leifur Eiriksson scholarship to fund the study of solid lipid nanoparticles and how they can be used to deliver bioactive compounds. In the course of the funding period he described in detail instability mechanisms which are driven by a transformation in crystal form of solid lipids. Knowledge about this mechanism has helped in designing a system that has better stability and protects the bioactive compounds better.