Laboratory Director's Award
2012 Fitzner-Eberhardt Award Winner(s)
Eric Bell
Scientist, Natural Language Processing Software, National Security Directorate
Eric Bell
Although relatively new to the lab, Eric has already impacted the educational landscape of the Tri-Cities through his work with area schools, primarily Delta High School. Over the past two years, Eric has been a member of the Delta High School/PNNL collaboration team. He has helped organize and lead both a math club which qualified for the Master's competition, and a programming club. As a result of the enthusiastic student response to the programming club, Delta will be offering a computer science class next year. Eric is helping to draft the framework for that course. Eric serves on the Delta High School Career and Technical Educational advisory committee and has had the opportunity to advise teachers in lesson planning and curriculum.
Eric has volunteered with Team Battelle at middle school math competitions and science fairs. Eric tutors math students on his own time. He has helped advise Cedarville University on math requirements for the applied linguistics major and consulted with Gettysburg College, and Tennessee Tech on AI course content. Eric gave a presentation on Text Extraction work to WSU-TC students and successfully mentored two summer interns at PNNL.
Frannie Skomurski
Scientist, Radiological and Nuclear Science and Technology/Radiochemical Science and Engineering, Energy and Environment Division
Frannie has been an enthusiastic champion for STEM education in our community. She has developed presentations for local students, parents, and teachers discussing STEM subjects as well as internship opportunities available at PNNL. She has presented information to elementary, middle and high school students to explain the potential career paths of scientists. As part of her work with the LASER program, she also designed and delivered three content workshops for elementary and middle school teachers, as well as participated in an "Ask a Scientist" blog to answer teachers' questions.
Frannie has worked with the SULI program manager and staff to design summer enrichment sessions for 46 interns including planning the first ever DOE Program Undergraduate poster session. She also assisted in mentoring Community College Initiative and National Security Internship Program students, bringing them on to campus and helping them to focus their research ideas and become capable researchers. Frannie is part of a committee that developed a proposal for the long-term stewardship of PNNL's Institutional Post-Doc Program.
Over the last several years, Frannie has guest lectured at various colleges and universities discussing topics such as nuclear energy, environmental geology, and computational mineralogy. She has also presented talks at several local community groups such as the Lakeside Gem and Mineral Club, American Chemical Society's Women in Science Celebration, PNNL's Science in the Community series, and the CRHEST Museum.
Rick Cameron
Engineer, Environmental Assessment, Energy and Environment Directorate
Rick Cameron
Throughout his career at PNNL, Rick has been an advocate for education, internships, and outreach and it is reflected in his body of work. He is heavily involved with Washington State University Tri-Cities (WSU TC) teaching engineering courses, facilitating seminars featuring PNNL speakers, coordinating senior engineering projects, and serving the Engineering Club as faculty advisor. This club recently was awarded the distinction of being the club with the Most Educational Impact among WSU TC student clubs. At the same awards presentation Rick received the award for Faculty Advisor of the Year for his role in advising the Engineering Club. Recently, Rick led a group of WSU senior engineering students through a project to design, build, and race a fast (yet safe) go-cart from the ground up. Rick helped engage four WSU-TC students with the Make-a-Wish foundation with another go-cart project and gave the go-cart to a special little boy.
Rick's educational outreach extends to other schools in the area. He gave a presentation on engineering to McLoughlin Middle School students and met with River's Edge High School students to discuss engineering and assist with a class project. Rick is a founding member of the local professional chapter of Engineers without Borders and assisted in starting a student chapter at WSU-TC. He has actively mentored 10 interns through the years, two of which are now full-time employees at PNNL.
Rick is an active member of the Area Wide Pre-Engineering Advisory Committee whose purpose is to provide industry support and input on curriculum and activities of the high school pre-engineering, drafting, and CAD programs as well as to provide opportunities for instructors and students to learn first-hand through tours, internships and guest speakers.