Grantees go to Caltech

Two undergraduate students at the University of Iceland received the Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu scholarship for a 10 week project this summer at California Institute of Technology - Caltech in Pasadena, California. The students that are on their way to Caltech are Harpa Ósk Björnsdóttir, student in electrical and computer engineering, and Stefán Eggertsson, student in molecular biology.

This is the eleventh time these grants are awarded. The University of Iceland and Caltech have been in a structured partnership since 2008 in the fields of teaching and research. The collaboration involves the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, or SURF, at Caltech. This programme is based on research collaboration between supervisor and student in undergraduate studies. From the beginning of the SURF collaboration 28 students from the University of Iceland have gone to Caltech, and this year two more are going. Students from Caltech also come to the University of Iceland; this year Jake Mattinson, who works on a research project with Guðlaugur Jóhannesson, research scholar at the Science Institute.

Caltech university is one of the world's leading research universities, and is placed third on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Dr Kiyo Tomiyasu (1919-2015), was a world renowned scientist in the field of electrical engineering and a key figure in establishing the collaboration between Caltech and the University of Iceland. The grants allocated now bear the name of the couple Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu who have shown the Icelandic students at Caltech exceptional kindness through the years.