- BS Engineering 2001
Katerina Aifantis '01 is accustomed to being the youngest in the room.
At the age of sixteen, the Houghton High School student sweet-talked her principal into letting her take courses at Michigan Tech, where she promptly aced calculus and chemistry.
"She just beat everyone in the class," remembers Associate Professor Paul Charlesworth. "She's one of the finest students to ever take my general chemistry course."
The next year, Aifantis went hat in hand to Stephen Hackney, a professor of materials science and engineering, and asked to work with him on his applied elasticity research. He hesitated, Hackney says, until "it became clear that her math skills far exceeded those of many graduate students."
Thus it came to pass that, at an age when many teens would be obsessed with prom dresses or hockey, Aifantis was hip-deep in the micromechanics of lithium-ion battery electrode materials design. With the blessing of Houghton High administrators and the devotion of her mom, who doubled as taxi driver and cheerleader as her daughter juggled college and high school classes, Aifantis earned high school credit while attending Michigan Tech. By the age of nineteen, she had fulfilled the requirements for a BS in Engineering with a minor in mathematics and graduated (are you surprised?) summa cum laude. read more at http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/pr-news/magazine/fall08/stories/phd/
Excerpted from Michigan Tech Magazine, Fall 2008
At the age of sixteen, the Houghton High School student sweet-talked her principal into letting her take courses at Michigan Tech, where she promptly aced calculus and chemistry.
"She just beat everyone in the class," remembers Associate Professor Paul Charlesworth. "She's one of the finest students to ever take my general chemistry course."
The next year, Aifantis went hat in hand to Stephen Hackney, a professor of materials science and engineering, and asked to work with him on his applied elasticity research. He hesitated, Hackney says, until "it became clear that her math skills far exceeded those of many graduate students."
Thus it came to pass that, at an age when many teens would be obsessed with prom dresses or hockey, Aifantis was hip-deep in the micromechanics of lithium-ion battery electrode materials design. With the blessing of Houghton High administrators and the devotion of her mom, who doubled as taxi driver and cheerleader as her daughter juggled college and high school classes, Aifantis earned high school credit while attending Michigan Tech. By the age of nineteen, she had fulfilled the requirements for a BS in Engineering with a minor in mathematics and graduated (are you surprised?) summa cum laude. read more at http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/pr-news/magazine/fall08/stories/phd/
Excerpted from Michigan Tech Magazine, Fall 2008