Christian Stevens ’14
HOCKEY HAS AFFORDED Christian Stevens ’14 many opportunities. Te sport unleashed his physical capa-
bilities, placed him on a professional team and funded his college education. Stevens hit the ice at age 10—inspired
by a family friend and the Seattle Tun- derbirds hockey team—and glided through three schools and states before hitting a crossroad. “Mudd was always my No. 1 college
choice, but was not an option for me. I had to play hockey in college to have a chance of affording it and, unfortunately, Mudd doesn’t have a hockey team,” Stevens says. His skills, however, caught the attention of the
Canadian major junior hockey league, which lured him with the promise of an educational package. In 2007, Stevens signed on with the Kitchener Rangers and secured a full, four-year college scholarship. He played two years with the Ontario Hockey League. Te experience revealed
My balance tip: Spend time with friends who help keep you on the right track.
the strengths and limits of his body and cultivated a hunger for academic challenge. “I learned that I didn’t love hockey as much as I
thought. I was unbelievably bored, and my brain felt like it was atrophying. I wanted to learn things.” His professional sports career behind him, Stevens began
his pursuit of a joint biology and chemistry major at Harvey Mudd College. At HMC, Stevens has participated in research in both
disciplines. He built a pressure sensor system for a “biomechan- ics of walking” bioengineering project, which gave him hands-on lessons in electrical engineering and com- puter science. He presented the results from his team’s research at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Last summer, he worked on a chemistry research
project in the lab of Associate Professor of Chem- istry and Biology Karl Haushalter. Te team ex- plored a gene therapy approach for treating HIV. “I have always had a deep interest in virology, and
what I want to do:
molecular biology research.
“
liaison on the Educational Planning Committee. His spare time is spent playing basketball, volleyball and
hockey. A member of the 5-C Hockey Club, he serves as defenseman for the Claremont Centaurs roller hockey team, which is coached by HMC engineering Professor Pat Little.
to have a professor at a small school doing real work on HIV was unbelievable,” Stevens says. “In his lab, I have found what I want to do for the rest of my life: molecular biology research.” Stevens’ contributions at HMC include
serving as a campus tour guide, dorm mentor, Science Bus tutor and board of trustees student
” Brianna Posadas ’13
BRIANNA POSADAS ’13 has a passion for growing things. Whether plants or people, they thrive under the engineering major’s care. She discovered her call-
ing after an engineering class exposed her to the concept of vertical farming, a form of sus- tainable agriculture that turns skyscrapers into greenhouses.
20
“Tat really excited me,” she says. “I want to bring fresh food into areas that typically don’t get it, while reducing carbon emissions normally pro- duced from transporting food all over the country.” A junior-year Clinic project
introduced her to “seed chip- ping,” a technology that analyz- es a seed’s DNA to determine
Har vey Mudd College FALL/WINTER 2012
if it will yield abundant crops. Such methods can reduce land and resource waste, she says, by guiding farmers to plant only those seeds that will do well. For her senior Clinic
project, she is exploring ways to use chitosan to remove radioactive con- taminants from soldiers exposed in the field.
I have found
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