Dunstable Native Cameron Hill Earns Summer Research Award

EASTON, MA (04/09/2012)(readMedia)-- Dunstable native Cameron Hill will be one of 50 students from Stonehill College working with faculty members at the College this summer on research projects through the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. The SURE Program provides students with an opportunity to perform significant, publishable research under the guidance of an experienced faculty researcher.

Hill, a junior chemistry and physics major at Stonehill, will work with Deno Del Sesto, visiting assistant professor of Chemistry on the Determination of the Reactivity of the Vibrational Ground State of Methane on Ni(111).

Hydrogen gas can be produced through the steam-reforming reaction, in which natural gas and steam react over a nickel catalyst to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide gas. This process is inefficient and must take place at very high temperatures and pressures. The rate-limiting, or slow, step in this reaction is the cleavage of a C-H bond in the methane. By studying the dynamics of this reaction, it may be possible to develop a more economical and efficient method of producing hydrogen gas, which can then be used in fuel cells as well as in the synthesis of ammonia. Hill will be working with Professor Del Sesto and Professor Arthur Utz from Tufts University to determine the reactivity of the vibrational ground state of methane using a molecular beam apparatus. The results of their experiments may be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and presented at a national meeting.

The scholars and their faculty mentors are the 17th group to work under the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. SURE Scholars will engage in weekly meetings to discuss the progress of their projects and other topics of general interest, and will be paid a stipend for their full-time service. All SURE Scholars will present summaries of their summer's work at an all-campus poster session in the early fall.

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