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For immediate release: Feb. 28, 2001

Local interest: Tupelo, Miss.; Chicago, Ill.

Princeton awards highest awards to top undergraduate, graduate students

Princeton, N.J. -- Senior Adam Friedman received Princeton University's Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, and graduate students Kristine Haugen and Yueh-Lin "Lynn" Loo were named co-winners of the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship at Alumni Day ceremonies Saturday, Feb. 24. These are the highest honors Princeton awards to students.

The Pyne Honor Prize, established in honor of Moses Taylor Pyne of the class of 1877, is the highest general distinction conferred on an undergraduate. The Jacobus Fellowship, which supports the final year of graduate study, is awarded to two students -- one in the humanities or social sciences, the other in engineering or science -- whose work has displayed the highest scholarly excellence.

Pyne Prize

Friedman, a straight-A student in the molecular biology department, is working on his thesis with Nobel-laureate Eric Wieschaus. It will examine the role of the regulation of a molecular pathway known to be mutated in a variety of human cancers. He also has interned in the developmental neurobiology laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for three summers, where his research on the development of the mammalian eye was praised as an "absolutely amazing tour de force" by the hospital's acting chief of the genetics division.

Friedman has displayed his talents in other venues as well. He played leading roles in several campus productions, including "Noises Off" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." As president and general manager of Theatre Intime, Friedman helped lead a major fund-raising and renovation project. He also is a founding member of the Performing Arts Council, has served as a resident adviser in Forbes College, and has led volunteer projects for the Mercer County Head Start Child Development Program through the Student Volunteers Council. Next year, Friedman will begin a joint M.D./Ph.D. program.

At the awards ceremony, Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro thanked Friedman for his "remarkable legacy to Princeton in the sciences and in the arts." Friedman, from Tupelo, Miss., is the son of Charles and Ruth Friedman.

Jacobus Fellowships

Haugen, from Downers Grove, Ill., is working on her doctorate in the English department. She received her bachelor's degree in classical studies from the University of Chicago, where she was named the most outstanding senior in the classics department and the humanities division. At Princeton, her work also crosses the disciplines, and Haugen is known for her scholarship throughout the English, history and classics departments.

Haugen has received the Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship for Research Abroad in the Humanities, which she used for classical studies at the Warburg Institute in London and to research material for her dissertation. Her dissertation will focus on Richard Bentley, a controversial 17th-century scholar who is most renowned for his translation of Milton and work as an editor.

She has published many articles, including one on "Ossian and the Invention of Textual History," which won a prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas in 1998. "Intellectually poised and exceptionally surefooted, Kristine is already gaining a reputation as an outstanding scholar and teacher," Shapiro said.

Loo, a doctoral student in chemical engineering, was the first student to receive B.S.E. degrees in both chemical engineering and materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. At Princeton, her graduate work has focused on key aspects of structure formation in complex polymers.

Loo co-authored a manuscript that will be published in Physical Review Letters this spring and presented at national meetings of the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society and American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

For her work, Loo received the Frank J. Padden Award, given to the most outstanding graduate student by the Division of Polymer Physics of the American Physical Society.

Born in Malaysia, Loo moved with her family to Taiwan and came to the U.S. for her undergraduate work. "Lynn has impressed her teachers and colleagues with her inquisitive mind, her love for research, and her drive and dedication," Shapiro said Saturday.

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