Scholarship Program
Hörður Jóhannsson
Hörður Jóhannsson finished a BSc in Computer Science at the University of Iceland in 2002 and in 2006 completed a MSc in CS from the same institution. During fall of 2008 he started in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program as a PhD student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology EECS Department. Prior to joining MIT he worked in industry for several years developing the Gavia AUV.
At MIT, as an Eiriksson Scholar, Hörður is working with Prof. John Leonard in the Marine Robotics Laboratory. Currently his research is in underwater navigation around complex structures using imaging and profiling sonars. One application is autonomous ship-hull inspection where a vehicle needs to be able to navigate safely around the ship and get a complete image of the whole ship-hull.
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.
Carl Olsen
Carl Olsen received his BA from UC Santa Barbara in 2001 and his
Masters in the Department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley in 2005. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Scandinavian at UC
Berkeley, where he is busy finishing his dissertation. He has taught one year of Swedish and several years of Reading and Composition for his department. In 2007 Carl received the Outstanding Graduate Student
Instructor award and the Teaching Effectiveness award. He has presented several times at the annual conference for the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies and has written the entries on Prose Edda and Poetic Edda for The Literary Encyclopedia (online at www.litencyc.com).
Carl's dissertation is on ekphrasis in Old Norse poetry, focusing
particularly on the "shield poems," in which the poet recounts myths
painted on a shield which he has received from his patron. The Leifur
Eiriksson scholarship allowed Carl to spend the academic year of 2008-2009 at the Arnamagnaean Institute (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar) in Reykjavik,where he had access to the manuscripts and facsimiles relevant to his research, along with working space and access to the Institute's library.
Christine Schott
Christine Schott received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 2005. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Virginia, working on a dissertation that studies manuscript culture in medieval England—that is, how people produced and valued their books as cultural artifacts. As a complement to her work in English literature, she is also studying book culture in medieval Iceland.
As a Leifur Eiríksson scholar, Christine pursued a master’s degree in Medieval Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík. Her master’s thesis explores several medieval manuscripts in which the scribes left collections of notes and comments in the margins. This marginalia helps us not only to reconstruct the experiences of individual scribes (most of whom seemed rather displeased with their work) but also to begin understanding the culture’s attitude toward books and literacy that has left very few other traces in the historical record.
Elisabeth Ida Ward
Elisabeth Ida Ward is a PhD Candidate from the University of California, Berkeley Scandinavian Languages and Literature Department. Although much of her expertise is on the medieval Icelandic sagas, her background in archeology and museum studies has influenced both her theoretical and practical understanding of the sagas. She was the assistant curator of the special traveling exhibition Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, produced by the Smithsonian Institution (opened April 2000).
In addition to writing her dissertation, Elisabeth also serves as the exhibition director for Vikingaheimar Museum in Reykjanesbær, Iceland. Of dual American-Icelandic descent, Elisabeth hopes to spend a lifetime making the sagas meaningful to people on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
Jason Kaiser
Jason Kaiser graduated from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2008 with a BS in geology and geophysics. He is finishing his MSc from the University of Massachusetts, studying igneous petrology and volcanology with his advisor, Sheila Seaman. His research interests focus on why and how volcanoes erupt as well as how they evolve during and after each eruption. By using chemical characteristics of erupted material he is trying to piece together the history of an extinct Icelandic volcano.
Jason used the Leifur Eiriksson scholarship to do field work in the Oxnadalur Volcanic Complex outside the city of Akureyri in northern Iceland. Samples’ representing each of the lava flows and ashes were collected and analyzed for element trends that describe the history of the magma chamber or chambers beneath the volcanic complex.
Jessica Langley
Jessica Langley graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Painting and Printmaking department at Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2008, and she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts
degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005. Jessica has exhibited nationally across the United States and internationally in Bolivia, and Iceland. She was featured in issue 75 of New American Paintings and has participated in several artist residencies around
Iceland.
During her studies, Jessica developed works that utilized tropes of Romantic painting combining them with images and objects from contemporary life, nature photography, and abstract drawing. Her
work often teeters between representation and abstraction, blurring
the boundary between reality and the imaginary.
The Leifur Eiríksson Scholarship allowed Jessica to travel extensively in Iceland researching the contemporary concept of landscape -
looking at how it is represented in art, image, folktale and commerce. Her research brought her to live in unsuspecting places like Skagaströnd in the North and Seydisfjördur in the East. While participating in artist residencies around the country, Jessica
developed relationships with international and Icelandic artists.
Jessica hopes to bring these experiences back to the U.S. to develop programs for artists that strengthen the exchange between local and international artists.
Kári Helgason
Kári Helgason became interested in astronomy during his high school years at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík. He studied Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iceland and later at the University of Copenhagen. He received his B.S. Degree in Physics in 2008 from the University of Iceland. The same year he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and enrolled in the University of Maryland where he is currently working towards his PhD in Astronomy.
Kári is currently working on his thesis in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He has used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to investigate a faint glow in space called the Cosmic Infrared Background radiation. This background light has been suggested to come from the first stars that formed in the Universe. Kári uses computer simulations to explore these early stars and their effects on the apparent infrared signal. His work at NASA focuses on the next generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and determining how it can help us understand the first moments of light production shortly after the Big Bang. The JWST will replace the famous Hubble Space Telescope in 2014 and by then Kári hopes to have a clear picture of its capabilities in terms of Cosmic Infrared Background observations.
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.
Kevin Foster
Kevin Foster received his B.S. in Civil Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. He worked as a staff geotechnical engineer for Langan Engineering & Environmental Services, an engineering design and consulting firm in Manhattan, before returning to school to pursue his master's degree at Virginia Tech in 2008. When awarded the Leifur Eiriksson Foundation Scholarship, he began a year of thesis research centered on re-calibration of a finite-fault earthquake source model using a recently published earthquake database. He spent one year in Iceland on this project working with his Icelandic co-advisor, Benedikt Halldorsson, an expert on that source model. The research was performed in the town of Selfoss, at the University of Iceland's Earthquake Engineering Research Centre (www.eerc.hi.is).
After the rewarding research experience in Iceland, Kevin will return to Virginia Tech to begin a Ph.D. under the guidance of his master's advisor, Dr. Russell Green. Kevin's doctoral studies will be in the area of soil dynamics, particularly the phenomenon of soil liquefaction under earthquake loading, and will combine his background in geotechnical engineering with the experience gained in strong-motion seismology in his time in Iceland. Kevin enjoys running and travel, and developed a new love for hiking while in Iceland.
Pamela Wood
Pamela Wood obtained a B.A. in Biology with a specialization in marine science from Boston University in 2001, finished her M.S. from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington in 2005, and is now completing a joint doctoral degree from the University of Washington and the University of Iceland. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she also used a Fulbright Scholarship to study European lake whitefish evolutionary ecology in Switzerland and worked as a research scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
Pamela used the Leifur Eiríksson Scholarship to fund a study on food web ecology of Arctic charr in Icelandic lakes using naturally occurring stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to track the long-term dietary habits. This species exhibits a wide range in diet and can become specialized on certain dietary items in many cases, leading to differences in size, shape, and reproductive characteristics among populations. The most extreme differences within this species is found in Iceland, most likely as a result of the extreme variability in Iceland´s volcanic landscape. This study links this biological variability with physical variability to understand how piscivory, or the tendency to consume other fish, develops in different lakes, and how this is dependent on hydrological and terrestrial conditions.
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.
Steinunn Arnardóttir
Steinunn Arnardóttir received her B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iceland in 2006 and a M.A. in Music, Science and Technology from Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2008.
She is currently working toward a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and will graduate in Spring 2010. Research interests include Audio Signal Processing and Brainwave Classification of Musical and Auditory Stimuli. Steinunn holds a Research Assistantship at Suppes Brain Laboratory in the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University where she works on designing and running Electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments on brainwave classification of musical and visual stimuli. The lab is directed by Professor Patrick
Suppes, and works on analyzing how the brain reacts to speech and music.
Steinunn used the Leifur Eiriksson Scholarship to conduct a research in Audio Signal Processing and emulation of Vintage Audio Equipment. Along with Professors Jonathan Abel and Julius O. Smith she has been working on a digital emulation of the Echoplex tape delay. The Echoplex is a tape delay device commonly used by guitar players in the
1960´s and 70´s, and then later in Ska music and hip hop in the 1980´s. First results were published at the 125th Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention in San Francisco in Octorber 2008.
Þórhildur Halldórsdóttir
Þórhildur Halldórsdóttir graduated from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in 2004 and then enrolled in psychology at the University of Iceland. She became interested in disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), especially ADHD, while working on her BA thesis which she did in cooperation with the Icelandic innovative company, Mentis Cura. The objective of the thesis was to examine whether the electrical activity of the brain can be used to diagnose ADHD. Þórhildur is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in clinical child psychology at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include child and adolescent psychopathology (especially DBDs), evidence-based approaches to assessment, preventive interventions, neuroimaging, cognitive behavior therapy, and behavior modification systems.
During the past year, Þórhildur has used the Leifur Eiriksson funds to research ADHD, specifically behavioral interventions, at the University of Maryland, College Park under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Chronis-Tuscano. Þórhildur was involved in several NIMH funded studies, e.g. a study examining whether an integrated group parenting training and depression treatment program for mothers of children with ADHD can enhance the effects of traditional parent training in mothers who have elevated symptoms of depression.
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.