Kewei Xu ’15, a chemistry major in

Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences

, will receive the first place Norma Slepecky Undergraduate Research Prize at the annual Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Awards Ceremony on Friday, April 24, at 3:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Heroy Geology Laboratory.

Free and open to the public, the ceremony includes a keynote address by Dr. Noelle Eckley Selin, a leading researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who will discuss “Mercury Pollution: Tracking Emissions to Impacts.” Much of her presentation will focus on the fundamental uncertainties about the transport and fate of mercury in the environment.

Selin is MIT’s Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Assistant Professor of Engineering Systems and Atmospheric Chemistry and a 2011 recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Xu will earn a B.S. degree in chemistry, before pursuing a Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology. At Syracuse, she has served as the Dooley Ornstein Reisman, Robert Charles Ornstein, & Lt. Adolph Ornstein Scholar (awarded annually to upperclassmen pursuing degrees in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, or physics) and as a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society.

Named for the late Syracuse professor who was a renowned auditory neuroanatomist, the Slepecky Undergraduate Research Award celebrates the achievements of undergraduate women researchers in the STEM disciplines. The first award was given in 2004.

Slepecky was a bioengineering and neuroscience professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), as well as a member of the University’s Institute for Sensory Research. Prior to her passing in 2001, family, friends, and colleagues joined together to endow the Norma Slepecky Memorial Lectureship and Undergraduate Research Prize, which, in turn, is overseen by the University’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program.

The memorial lecture is co-sponsored by WiSE, the Normal Slepecky Endowment, ECS’ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the University’s Water Science and Engineering Initiative.