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Gregory Brockman, INTEL SCIENCE SEARCH
2007 Legacy Award Winner
Greg Brockman is a resident of Thompson, North Dakota. He attends Red River High School and takes a large portion of his courses at the University of North Dakota. He is involved in a number of extracurricular activities, ranging from playing in his school's Drumline to running a math club at a local middle school. He is also captain of Red River's state-champion Science Bowl team and an active member of its Latin club. Brockman also is a writer for his local paper's Teen Page.
Brockman won 6th place in the 2007 Intel Science Talent Search for his theoretical math research project. He investigated Ducci sequences, deceptively simple mathematical objects that have intrigued mathematicians for nearly a century. Brockman discovered criteria for determining the behavior of these sequences. His results have been accepted for publication in the professional mathematics journal Fibonacci Quarterly. This work was conducted under the guidance of Dr. Ryan Zerr at the University of North Dakota. Brockman was selected by the other finalists to be the Glenn T. Seaborg Award speaker at the Science Talent Search Awards Banquet, an honor given to the student who best represents a commitment to scientific cooperation and communication.
Brockman's interests lie in diverse fields. He is currently considering studying any of mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, and philosophy at either Harvard or Stanford universities. His long-term goals, though rather nebulous, include becoming a researcher and furthering the knowledge of the human race.
Brockman was also a member of the 2006 US team to the International Chemistry Olympiad, held in Gyeongsan, Korea, where he won a silver medal. He has been awarded several physics honors, including twice earning semi-finalist status in the Physics Olympiad. In mathematics, he has distinguished himself, winning many honors including an invitation to the Math Olympiad Summer Program. Brockman has also been recognized for his volunteer work; in 2006 he was named a Prudential Spirit of the Community Award Distinguished Finalist.
Brockman is the son of Ellen Feldman and Ronald Brockman.
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Laura Powers, PHILLIPS BROOKS HOUSE, HARVARD
2007 Legacy Award Winner
Laura Powers was raised in Barrington, RI and Avon, CT, and currently resides in Darien, CT. As a student at Harvard, she is a member of the Harvard AIDS Coalition and the Harvard Cancer Society's Pediatric Oncology Program, as well as serving as the Mentoring Programming Group Officer for the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) and volunteering with PBHA's Franklin Teen Mentoring Program.
As a member of the Harvard AIDS Coalition, Laura has devoted most of her efforts to raising awareness on campus about the global AIDS crisis. She has helped plan numerous speaking events, film screenings, etc. to try to educate the campus community about the pandemic and encourage interested students to take action. In planning the events surrounding World AIDS Day, though, Laura decided to venture a bit further outside the box. She wanted to grab students' attention so as to make it impossible for them not to think about the issue of HIV/AIDS. In the two years that she's been involved in coordinating World AIDS Day events, Laura has helped implement projects such as the construction a 6-foot paper-mache AIDS ribbon which was displayed outside Harvard's Science Center, a 3-story high AIDS ribbon made out of Christmas lights which was hung on one of the dormitories in Harvard Yard, a display using stakes in the ground to represent the percent of HIV patients in the United States in need of treatment who were not receiving it, and an installation piece of sorts in which red ribbons were tied around many of the trees in the usually un-tampered-with Yard.
Outside of the AIDS Coalition, Laura devotes much of her time to the Phillips Brooks House Association, an independent student-led non-profit affiliated with Harvard, which consists of over 70 different programs. She currently serves as a member of the Franklin Teen Mentoring Program, and she directed the Franklin I-O Summer Program last summer. Both programs work with youth from the Franklin Hill and Franklin Field housing developments in Dorchester, MA.
Additionally, Laura volunteers on the stem cell transplant unit of Children's Hospital Boston, part of the Pediatric Oncology Program run by the Harvard Cancer Society. After graduation, Laura will attend the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, with a plan to go into pediatrics.
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Timothy Dusenbury, LONGY SCHOOL OF MUSIC
2007 Legacy Award Winner
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Timothy Dusenbury grew up in Laurel, Maryland. Homeschooled through high school, he took the opportunity to pursue a variety of activities in addition to his studies, swimming and backpacking a great deal, holding a variety of part-time jobs, and pursuing his interest in music performance, history, and theory. At seventeen, he was accepted as a private student of Gwyn Roberts (recorder) at the Peabody Conservatory, in Baltimore, where he performed and recorded with several early music ensembles. During this time he also studied privately at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC, with Dr. Chiara Selby (piano) and Dr. Anthony Stark (composition).
Upon graduating from high school, he studied music composition for one year at Catholic University, and in the fall of 2002 he left Catholic and took a position teaching junior high and high school music at Trinity School at Meadow View in northern Virginia. Because Trinity was a young school, he was given a great deal of freedom to shape and install a working music curriculum. During his years there he authored a textbook on basic theory and solfège, and served as director for a number of instrumental and vocal ensembles. While all of these experiences were very educational and enjoyable, the primary insights he took from Trinity were his own love of the classroom environment and the work of teaching.
In 2005 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to complete his undergraduate degree in composition with Howard Frazin at the Longy School of Music. The eccentric, somewhat desultory nature of his formal studies has offered, and frequently necessitated, his working at a variety of trades, such as bookseller, mover, baker, manager, kitchen staff, construction worker, swim coach, and most recently an emergency room orderly at the Medical College of Virginia.
In the past five years his music has been performed throughout the United States in such venues as the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Gasson Hall (Boston College), Pickman Hall (Longy), and the John Paul II Cultural Center (Washington, DC). His Sonata for violin and piano was featured on the final concert of Longy's SeptemberFEST concert series in 2006. He has had two choral works published by Canon Press, and has received commissions and performances from numerous choral and instrumental ensembles. In 2006 his music appeared in two independent films as part of a collaboration with filmmaker Jonathan Demaree. He is currently working on a piece for fellow Creativity Foundation Legacy Award winner, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.
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John Toukatly, WHARTON SCHOOL
2007 Legacy Award Winner
John was born in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 18th, 1984. He grew up in the suburb of Wayne, Pennsylvania where he thrived at Devon Preparatory School. While attending Devon, John participated or founded several groups, including the Student Council, the Piano Society, the Chess Club and several athletic teams. The leadership experiences John had at Devon allowed for exceptional personal and scholastic growth and proved to be invaluable as he embarked on his college career.
At the Wharton School, John's concentration was Real Estate with a minor in Classical Studies. His studies across all business classes allowed him to gain a broad perspective of the business world before truly finding his passion in real estate. During his four years at Wharton, John surrounded himself with the real estate professors and their work. He became a research assistant to Professor Joe Gyourko and a teaching assistant to Professor Todd Sinai.
In the summer before his senior year, John proved instrumental to two executives at a real estate investment trust in constructing the Exeter Property Group. Exeter is a newly established real estate private equity fund based on the vision and principles of the real estate icon, the late Willard Rouse. Rouse's motto was to enhance people's lives through exceptional communities. His ideals are instilled among the fund's management team even today.
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Cerstin Johnson
DUKE ELLINGTON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
2007 Legacy Award Winner
Cerstin Johnson was born on January 3, 1990 in Metairie Louisiana. She attended Hazel Park Hilda Knoff Elementary, where she was accepted into the Gifted and Talented Program in the fourth grade. Through this program, she first discovered the art of creative writing, throwing her energies into writing tall tales, myths, and legends. Yet her interests in sports often overruled her passion for the arts. It wasn't until the sixth grade when introduced to her new English teacher Mrs. Mary Sue North at J.D.Meisler Middle School, that she discovered her true creative writing capabilities. Mrs. North always insisted that Johnson do her best, and pushed her to experiment with all sorts of writing, from poetry, to fiction, to narratives. Johnson then developed her current love for writing, entering into various contests for Young Authors during her years at Meisler, and ultimately applying for entry into New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA).
Johnson began her high school career, at both grace King High School and NOCCA, where she studied Fiction. There, under the direction of Anne Gisleson and Ed Skoog, she learned about the disciplines necessary for her art, finally moving beyond just raw talent and into form and character. Johnson relocated in her 10th grade year to Washington, DC after Hurricane Katrina, where she attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts. She is a student in Ellington's Literary Media Arts Department, and there continues her interest in fiction and playwriting.
Some of Johnson's earliest achievements include being featured in many programs and other functions around her schools and church, Hill of Zion Baptist Church, where she often broadcasted her love for the arts and writing. In 2004 Johnson had two poems published in Make Some Noise: A Youth Poetry Anthology, a nationwide poetry contest for teens. And in 2006 she was honored as the first place winner of the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools' Dream Me Home Safely essay contest, a citywide competition.
Johnson is an active member of the Worship By Choice Gospel Choir and Ministries, under the direction of Gregory Watkins, along with many both Ellington and other high school students. The group spreads praise and worship throughout the Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia areas.
Some of Johnson's aspirations include to grow as an artist, as a writer, and as a human being. She hopes to someday publish a book of fiction and to become an artistic educator, so that she can push future high school students to discover their talents just as she did.
See our 2006 Legacy Winners |
